From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Feb 1 02:31:31 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 19:31:31 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] perceiving deception? In-Reply-To: <01C5077B.CE9F37C0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C5077B.CE9F37C0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <41FEEA03.1020202@solution-consulting.com> These are interesting, thanks for your help, Steve Steve Hovland wrote: >I remember hearing that but can't recall the words. > >Try this- some interesting stuff came up: > >http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=people+detect+lying&btnG=Google+Search > > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 7:58 AM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: [Paleopsych] perceiving deception? > >Some time ago there was a report of a portion of the brain being >specialized for perceiving deception. I cannot find that reference; can >anyone help me? >Lynn > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Feb 1 09:16:20 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 01:16:20 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] A superpower on life support Message-ID: <01C507FB.A4058CA0.shovland@mindspring.com> In recent years the US has been styling itself as the last remaining superpower, able to dictate the establishment of a Pax Americana without significant opposition. If you look at our finances, you see a different picture. The USSR crumbled because they could no longer afford the Cold War game. We are about to crumble because we can no longer pay cash to finance our activities. Most of our prosperity is financed by a mountain of debt that now threatens the economy of the entire planet. In their foolish greed our largest corporations have exported vast amounts of capital to India or China, who now have trade surpluses while we have trade deficits that compound our budget deficits. This is a zero sum game. The day will come when the world recognizes that we have spent all of the gold that we found at the end of our continental rainbow a mere 200 years ago. When that day comes they will no longer buy Dollar bonds, but Euro bonds. Indeed, the last straw with Saddam Hussein was that he started to price his oil in Euro's. When that day comes we will find that India, China, Japan, and Europe will be our equal partners because we won't be in any position to refuse their demands. When that day comes we will no longer be a psychotic Gulliver stomping on all who dare to oppose us. We will be one among equals living in a more benign equilibrium with the planet. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Feb 1 13:59:41 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 06:59:41 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Kerrey on Social Security Message-ID: <41FF8B4D.1060802@solution-consulting.com> No, not John Kerry, the smart Kerrey. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006234 Pride and Prejudice "Hell no, we won't go" is the wrong liberal approach on Social Security reform. BY BOB KERREY Tuesday, February 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST The late Pat Moynihan used to joke when I asked him why liberals were so reluctant to consider changing Social Security so that it guaranteed wealth as well as income: "It's because they worry that wealth will turn Democrats into Republicans." Leaving aside that possible correlation, it will be a shame if liberal voices, values and ideas are not brought into the debate initiated by President Bush's Social Security reform proposal. To make certain the reforms are done correctly liberal thinking is urgently needed. There is no doubt that Social Security and Medicare are two of liberalism's most enduring and popular triumphs. And there is no doubt that a vocal and influential minority remains true to its strong conservative belief that the Social Security Act of 1935 and the 1965 amendments to this act, which created Medicare and Medicaid, represent socialistic and dangerous interferences with the marketplace. However, liberals are wrong to fear that President Bush's proposal represents a threat to Social Security. I sincerely hope they do not merely defend their proudest achievement. I hope they see that President Bush is giving them an opportunity to finally do something about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. First of all, fears that Social Security will be destroyed are exaggerated. Across all generations and within both major parties, Social Security and Medicare are seen as a vital part of American life. They represent a powerful intergenerational contract between younger Americans in the work force who agree to be taxed on behalf of older, eligible Americans. What makes the contract work is that the expectation of those in the work force is that when they pass the age of eligibility, successive generations of workers will not object to the taxes that must be imposed on them to cover the costs of their income and health benefits. Secondly, President Bush's fears of a bankrupt Social Security and his rhetoric of the program being in financial crisis are also exaggerated. Relatively small changes in taxes and/or benefits would restore the promise to all living beneficiaries--those eligible today and those eligible in the future. Unlike the situation that existed in 1983, when Congress and the president acted to avoid a financial crisis, today's financial problems are relatively small. On the other hand, there are two problems with Social Security that are serious enough to be called a crisis. The first is that in eight years the income from a 12.4% payroll tax will be insufficient to pay the old age, survivor and disability benefits owed at that time. From that point on, Social Security will begin to redeem some of the hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasury bonds it has "accumulated in the trust fund" in order to issue monthly checks to beneficiaries. Though these bonds are far from "worthless," as some critics allege, the picture of them "accumulating in a trust fund" is not accurate either. That is because, in order to convert these bonds into cash, the U.S. Treasury will use the cash from individual and corporate income taxes. While some income taxes are currently used to pay Social Security benefits, the dollar amounts do not pose a serious budgetary challenge. In eight years that will change. Coupled with the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, the annual benefit demands of Social Security will put real pressure on Congress to cut spending on defense and nondefense appropriations. It is at this point in time that the demographic and monetary demands of the baby boom generation will become painfully apparent. The disinvestment in public infrastructure caused by the growth in Medicare and Medicaid will become even worse than it is today. And the nature of this crisis will be considerably more daunting than that faced squarely by Congress and the president in 1983. Liberals, who have silently watched the share of state and federal spending apportioned to the elderly grow at the expense of education, training, child care and research, will be appalled to discover how much their silence has cost them. The second crisis is the one for which liberals are even more urgently needed. This crisis is the shockingly low rates of savings and pitifully inadequate amount of preparation being made by American households for their old age. If liberals were to join this debate and insist upon provisions that would lead to dramatic reductions of the numbers of poor elderly, the outcome could be a dramatically enhanced quality of life for all, reduced dependency upon welfare in old age, and downward pressure on the social costs of growing old. If liberals joined this debate they would insist that the guaranteed transfer payment of Social Security remain intact. With the evidence that trade, technology and immigration are putting downward pressure on unskilled wages, they might even be able to succeed in changing the current benefit formula so that more than 50% of the first $900 of income was replaced. Perhaps they could even convince their Republican colleagues to eliminate penalties that affect stay-at-home women. Liberals would fight to make certain that contributions to private accounts were progressive in order to benefit lower-wage workers. They might even argue that accounts be opened at birth, thus giving Americans the longest possible time to accumulate wealth. No doubt they would insist that investment options be carefully regulated to keep administrative costs and risks as low as possible. And since liberals oftentimes understand the good that markets can do even more than some of their conservative colleagues, they could see the wisdom of changing the tax code so that no income taxes were levied on income that went into these savings accounts. All of these would practically guarantee a muscular market response that would give future Americans larger amounts of insured non-employment income to add to the $800 per month on average they receive from Social Security. None of this will happen if liberals merely shout "hell no, we won't go." The best they can hope for with that strategy is to prevent reform from happening. They should feel no pride of accomplishment if that is the result. Mr. Kerrey, a Democratic former senator from Nebraska, is the president of New School University, in New York City. From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Feb 1 14:01:57 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 07:01:57 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The future of oil Message-ID: <41FF8BD5.9020805@solution-consulting.com> I tried to send this yesterday; I don't think it went through. This is a very counter-intuitive piece, good for challenging the popular notions. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006228 Oil, Oil Everywhere . . . Why is it expensive? Because it's so cheap. BY PETER HUBER AND MARK MILLS Sunday, January 30, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST The price of oil remains high only because the cost of oil remains so low. We remain dependent on oil from the Mideast not because the planet is running out of buried hydrocarbons, but because extracting oil from the deserts of the Persian Gulf is so easy and cheap that it's risky to invest capital to extract somewhat more stubborn oil from far larger deposits in Alberta. The market price of oil is indeed hovering up around $50 a barrel on the spot market. But getting oil to the surface currently costs under $5 a barrel in Saudi Arabia, with the global average cost certainly under $15. And with technology already well in hand, the cost of sucking oil out of the planet we occupy simply will not rise above roughly $30 a barrel for the next 100 years at least. The cost of oil comes down to the cost of finding, and then lifting or extracting. First, you have to decide where to dig. Exploration costs currently run under $3 per barrel in much of the Mideast, and below $7 for oil hidden deep under the ocean. But these costs have been falling, not rising, because imaging technology that lets geologists peer through miles of water and rock improves faster than supplies recede. Many lower-grade deposits require no new looking at all. To pick just one example among many, finding costs are essentially zero for the 3.5 trillion barrels of oil that soak the clay in the Orinoco basin in Venezuela, and the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta, Canada. Yes, that's trillion--over a century's worth of global supply, at the current 30-billion-barrel-a-year rate of consumption. Then you have to get the oil out of the sand--or the sand out of the oil. In the Mideast, current lifting costs run $1 to $2.50 per barrel at the very most; lifting costs in Iraq probably run closer to 50 cents, though OPEC strains not to publicize any such embarrassingly low numbers. For the most expensive offshore platforms in the North Sea, lifting costs (capital investment plus operating costs) currently run comfortably south of $15 per barrel. Tar sands, by contrast, are simply strip mined, like Western coal, and that's very cheap--but then you spend another $10, or maybe $15, separating the oil from the dirt. To do that, oil or gas extracted from the site itself is burned to heat water, which is then used to "crack" the bitumen from the clay; the bitumen is then chemically split to produce lighter petroleum. In sum, it costs under $5 a barrel to pump oil out from under the sand in Iraq, and about $15 to melt it out of the sand in Alberta. So why don't we just learn to love hockey and shop Canadian? Conventional Canadian wells already supply us with more oil than Saudi Arabia, and the Canadian tar is now delivering, too. The $5 billion (U.S.) Athabasca Oil Sands Project that Shell and ChevronTexaco opened in Alberta last year is now pumping 155,000 barrels per day. And to our south, Venezuela's Orinoco Belt yields 500,000 barrels daily. But here's the catch: By simply opening up its spigots for a few years, Saudi Arabia could, in short order, force a complete write-off of the huge capital investments in Athabasca and Orinoco. Investing billions in tar-sand refineries is risky not because getting oil out of Alberta is especially difficult or expensive, but because getting oil out of Arabia is so easy and cheap. Oil prices gyrate and occasionally spike--both up and down--not because oil is scarce, but because it's so abundant in places where good government is scarce. Investing $5 billion over five years to build a new tar-sand refinery in Alberta is indeed risky when a second cousin of Osama bin Laden can knock $20 off the price of oil with an idle wave of his hand on any given day in Riyadh. The one consolation is that Arabia faces a quandary of its own. Once the offshore platform has been deployed in the North Sea, once the humongous crock pot is up and cooking in Alberta, its cost is sunk. The original investors may never recover their capital, but after it has been written off, somebody can go ahead and produce oil very profitably going forward. And capital costs are going to keep falling, because the cost of a tar-sand refinery depends on technology, and technology costs always fall. Bacteria, for example, have already been successfully bioengineered to crack heavy oil molecules to help clean up oil spills, and to mine low-grade copper; bugs could likewise end up trampling out the vintage where the Albertan oil is stored. In the short term anything remains possible. Demand for oil grows daily in China and India, where good government is finally taking root, while much of the earth's most accessible oil lies under land controlled by feudal theocracies, kleptocrats, and fanatics. Day by day, just as it should, the market attempts to incorporate these two antithetical realities into the spot price of crude. But to suppose that those prices foreshadow the exhaustion of the planet itself is silly. The cost of extracting oil from the earth has not gone up over the past century, it has held remarkably steady. Going forward, over the longer term, it may rise very gradually, but certainly not fast. The earth is far bigger than people think, the untapped deposits are huge, and the technologies for separating oil from planet keep getting better. U.S. oil policy should be to promote new capital investment in the United States, Canada, and other oil-producing countries that are politically stable, and promote stable government in those that aren't. Messrs. Huber and Mills are co-authors of "The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy," just out from Basic Books From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 15:34:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:34:35 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Miami Herald: Lizzie Grubman spins a comeback Message-ID: Lizzie Grubman spins a comeback http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/10658534.htm Jail time softened PR goddess' intensity. Soon, you'll see it on TV. BY LYDIA MARTIN It's 3 in the morning, New Year's Eve. Ingrid Casares, she of the celebrity liaisons, guards the door to a VIP room at the Raleigh Hotel like a riled Doberman. Bouncers just stand there while Ingrid dismisses partyers who claim they know -- whomever. Here comes New York celebrity publicist Lizzie Grubman, who once would have swiftly beaten Casares in a contest for most high-strung. But she's now soft and Zen, even as things heat up and beefy guys in black suits and earpieces start shepherding in stars. Lizzie, who on March 10 will make a debut in her own MTV reality show, wants to help a friend get a couple of not-so-fabulous associates past Ingrid, and though they're throwing the party together, Lizzie has to engage in a little back and forth with Ingrid before Ingrid relents and lets the guys in. ''It's OK, Ingrid,'' Lizzie says in a hushed tone, avoiding what once upon a time might have turned into an amusing little power clash. ''I've changed a lot as a person,'' Lizzie says a couple of days later over bubbly water and cigarettes at the Shore Club. As publicist for Britney Spears, Jay-Z, the Backstreet Boys and P. Diddy, she was used to seeing her name in bold. But she got more press than she could stand when she backed her father's Mercedes SUV into a crowd outside a Hamptons nightclub in the summer of 2001, injuring 16. Witnesses claimed she used choice words as she bolted. She pleaded guilty to assault charges and leaving the scene of an accident, and in the fall of 2002 served 37 days of a 60-day sentence, getting off early for good behavior. The ordeal seems to have left an impression. Lizzie speaks calmly now, and she listens. ``I'm more centered, more focused. Words can't even explain everything I've learned. I feel so fortunate to get a second chance. I realize how lucky I was to have such great family and friends around me when it all happened. I hid for so long. But I was lucky that I had people working for me, and clients, too, who were so loyal. I was virtually a zombie. I would go to the office, but I was not functioning.'' Lizzie says her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer on the day of the accident. She died 21 days later. ``A client of mine made me drive to the Hamptons anyway, to open a place that didn't even open. I should have stayed with my mother. When I got there he didn't have the permits. I wish that night had never happened. And I wish I could have properly mourned my mother.'' The nightmare may be close to over (there are still pending civil suits) but Lizzie continues lying low. ''I work out like a freak, I go to work, I come home and I'm asleep by 9:30 or 10,'' says Lizzie, who now avoids drinking and clubbing. ``I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm spiritual now. I just realized I needed to slow down. I think I'm approachable now, and much more humble.'' READY FOR PRIME TIME? The homebody thing seems exactly the wrong image for Lizzie as her reality show prepares to hit MTV. PoweR Girls will feature Lizzie and her lovely assistants as they run star-studded events in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Miami and Los Angeles. ''It's not that I don't go out. It's just that now I only do it if I have to,'' she says. ``I tell a lot of clients, listen, I'll represent you, but you won't see me at the event. I have young kids who do that for me. That's their job now. I paid my dues. And I'm 33. There's no reason why any 33-year-old girl should be in the nightclubs every night.'' How about for the sake of meeting a guy? Lizzie broke up with her boyfriend of a year and a half just a month ago. ``All my old boyfriends were nightclub owners. Never again.'' The MTV show has been billed as Apprentice meets Sex and the City. But it's not a contest. It's more about celebrity gawking. ''The show is about these girls in their early 20s who work for Lizzie, who is their mentor,'' says Tony DiSanto, senior vice president of production for MTV. ``She gives them a lot of rope. She's nurturing, but she's also tough on the girls.'' ''I'm in it as much as Donald Trump is in his show,'' says Lizzie. ``It's about the ins and outs of the PR business. You'll get the behind-the-scenes of a celebrity getting ready to launch a CD or whatever.'' Some of the show was shot on South Beach this past summer during MTV's Video Music Awards, at Mansion, Mynt and the Shore Club. FAMOUS, NOT INFAMOUS Lizzie says she now imparts her keep-a-low-profile philosophy on clients. She has learned that less is more. ``My job is to make people famous. But getting famous is not about going out at night. Going out at night can be your fatal flaw. Overexposure is the worst. People don't want to see you every day. They don't want to read about you every day. It's boring. You have to go to the right events, or you won't have any credibility.'' So, like, Paris Hilton is totally overexposed? ''I love Paris. She's a very good friend of mine,'' says Lizzie, who isn't a publicist for nothing. When Casares and her partners decided to throw a blowout New Year's Eve party at the Raleigh, they enlisted Lizzie's help. Lizzie was glad to, since she was putting another event together right next door at the Shelbourne. Among the names in bold who showed at the Raleigh: Paris and Nicky Hilton, Boris Becker, Lindsay Lohan, the Olsen twins, a couple of Wayans, John Stamos. ''Basically, I brought my celebrities over,'' says Lizzie. Then she remembers to be nice. ``But I mean, Ingrid and Paris are very good friends. So it wasn't just me.'' As open as she comes off these days, Lizzie draws the line at talking about her time in jail. She also won't shed light on what her close friend Martha Stewart might be going through. ``I can't talk about her or prison or give you any other details because I have civil cases still pending. But, yes, I can relate to what she's going through.'' Lizzie's cell phone, Blackberry and Sidekick, all three lined up on the table, keep going off. She needs to take her leave. But not before she offers the one line she keeps repeating to the media. Only a cynic would call it just spin. There's something about the barely audible tone that says the whole thing still smarts. ``There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the people who got hurt in that car accident. I feel awful, I really do.'' From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 15:37:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:37:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Gawker: Monica's Comeback Message-ID: Soho House Showdown: Monica Lewinsky Vs. Chelsea Clinton http://www.gawker.com/news/culture/nightlife/soho-house-showdown-monica-lewinsky-vs-chelsea-clinton-028999.php chelsea.JPG A reader sends us a very special Page Six sighting: Chelsea Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in Soho House last night at different ends of the lounge. Whoa. We didn't know Soho House was still open! And we can only imagine how things went down in the ladies' room: Monica: Um, this is awkward. Chelsea: Yeah. Monica: Come on, Chelsea--can't we get past this? Aren't we ever going to be friends? Chelsea: No, Monica. You humped my dad's Cristo. Monica: But I brought [3]analingus to the forefront of national consciousness. Surely that's helped things with you and Ian! Chelsea: Stay the hell away from my boyfriend. [4]Sightings... [Page Six] ? [6]Monica Lewinsky ? [7]Monica Lewinsky, reality TV show host ? [8]Monica Lewinsky Continues To Make The Universe Collapse ? [9]Chelsea Clinton at "McKinney" ? [10]"I love Chelsea Clinton" ? [11]Soho House NY ? [12]more... ? [13]Back to Gawker front page [14]Front Page email [15]"tips at gawker.com" , or AIM [16]gawkbox [17]Published by Gawker Media References 3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/icreport/7groundsfoot.htm 4. http://www.nypost.com/seven/01062005/gossip/37735.htm 5. http://www.gawker.com/topic/advertising-010293.php 6. http://www.gawker.com/news/unused/urges/monica-lewinsky-011930.php 7. http://www.gawker.com/news/unused/diary/monica-lewinsky-reality-tv-show-host-011661.php 8. http://www.gawker.com/news/unused/entertainment/monica-lewinsky-continues-to-make-the-universe-collapse-023039.php 9. http://www.gawker.com/news/unused/diary/chelsea-clinton-at-mckinney-011083.php 10. http://www.gawker.com/news/unused/diary/i-love-chelsea-clinton-011685.php 11. http://www.gawker.com/news/unused/diary/soho-house-ny-010435.php 12. http://www.gawker.com/news/culture/nightlife/index.php 13. http://www.gawker.com/ 14. http://www.gawker.com/ 15. mailto:tips at gawker.com From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 15:38:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:38:58 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Newt's Comeback Message-ID: The New York Times > Books > Books of The Times | 'Winning the Future': Does Tomorrow Belong to Gingrich's 'Popular Majority'? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/books/01kaku.html 5.2.1 BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'WINNING THE FUTURE' Does Tomorrow Belong to Gingrich's 'Popular Majority'? By MICHIKO KAKUTANI WINNING THE FUTURE: A 21st Century Contract With America By Newt Gingrich 243 pages. Regnery. $27.95 In his sloppy, poorly reasoned new book "Winning the Future," the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich sets up an either/or dynamic between "the liberal elite minority" and "the popular majority," and makes this aggrieved assertion: "Since the 1960's, the conservative majority has been intimidated, manipulated and bullied by the liberal minority. The liberal elites who dominate academia, the courts, the press and much of the government bureaucracy share an essentially European secular-socialist value system. Yet they have set the terms of the debate, which is why 'politics as usual' is a losing proposition for Americans." Never mind that the Republicans currently control the White House and both houses of Congress. Never mind that a majority of the nation's governors are Republicans and that a majority of Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republican presidents. Never mind that Fox News further established itself as the dominant cable news network last year, outdrawing all of its competitors combined in prime time and extending its lead over CNN. Never mind that the Bush administration argues the last election gave it a mandate for the war in Iraq, or that it is now pushing Social Security reform (of a sort supported by Mr. Gingrich) and a conservative agenda on a host of social issues. Indeed Mr. Gingrich's complaint that "the liberal elite minority is winning and the popular majority is losing" suggests that the author still has a mindset from the 1980's and early 90's (when his party was in the minority and he made a name for himself as a backbench revolutionary). It also points to larger problems with this book as a whole: the author's fondness for reductive Manichean dichotomies; his tendency to ignore facts that might contradict or undermine his thesis; and his substitution of attention-grabbing assertions for thoughtful analysis. Similar problems contributed to Mr. Gingrich's fall from grace in 1998, when he announced that he was stepping aside as speaker and leaving Congress in the wake of unexpected Republican losses in the midterm elections. It was a fall brought about, in part, by Mr. Gingrich's reputation as a polarizing bomb-thrower, his proclivity for overreaching, his failure to unite House Republicans around a persuasive agenda and his misreading of the public mood about the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Combined with voter anger at the Republicans for the budget-related federal shutdowns in 1995 and Mr. Clinton's co-option of issues like welfare reform and a balanced budget, these missteps helped sink Mr. Gingrich, the man who four years earlier had been hailed as a visionary for winning Republican control of Congress with a 52-seat pickup and a controversial Contract With America that proposed to radically cut back the size of the federal government. In "Winning the Future," Mr. Gingrich hops and skips over his earlier travails to deliver a kind of updated version of the Contract With America, a move that also seems designed as the opening sally in a political comeback attempt. Book-tour stops in Iowa and New Hampshire are on the author's schedule, and much of the volume reads like a platform for a possible 2008 presidential run. As with the 1994 Contract With America, Mr. Gingrich here stresses less regulation, more free enterprise, lower taxes and fewer entitlements. But some chapters suggest that the author is trying to reposition himself within the Republican Party: whereas Mr. Gingrich, as House speaker, was more identified with tax cutters than with social conservatives and the religious right, he includes an entire chapter in this volume about "the centrality of our Creator in defining America" (in which he rails against what he calls "the secular left's unending war against God in America's public life"). He vigorously endorses President Bush's plan to export democracy to the Middle East (he calls it "the only strategy that can make America secure"), but acknowledges the alarming inadequacies of the administration's postwar planning: "Iraq is a mess," he writes. "It is going to remain a mess for a long time." Like his 1995 book "To Renew America," this volume is replete with windy talk about big, ambitious plans (in this case, remaking health care and the Social Security system) but short on details, slip-sliding over counter arguments and practical impediments to his vision. Mr. Gingrich calls for an intelligence community "about three times the size of the current system," but fails to explain how this would be paid for, how it would be organized or how current problems (from the F.B.I.'s failed computer systems to interagency turf wars) would be corrected. He writes at length about the difficulties faced by the current Social Security system, but fails to apply equal scrutiny to the risks and costs involved in setting up personal investment accounts. On other subjects, Mr. Gingrich settles for chirpy, Pollyanna-ish assertions and fuzzy musings about the sort of technological change he has long championed. On health care and balancing the budget, he writes: "We must transform the health system so people can live longer and healthier lives while taking 20 percent out of the cost of the system. We can achieve this through the efficiencies of information technology, and by the kind of waste reduction and productivity increases that have been common in manufacturing for the last 30 years and in service industries for the last 15 years." Many of Mr. Gingrich's arguments are riddled with gaps in logic. While he repeatedly ratifies the presidency of George W. Bush in this book, he complains that the Supreme Court - which effectively decided the presidential election of 2000 - has become a mechanism by which "appointed lawyers can redefine the meaning of the U.S. Constitution and the policies implemented under that Constitution either by inventing rationales out of thin air or by citing whatever foreign precedent they think helpful." He adds that "this is not a judiciary in the classic sense, but a proto-dictatorship of the elite pretending to still function as a Supreme Court," and yet he cites overrulings and reversals by the Supreme Court to try to impugn decisions made by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which he scorns even more. This same chapter, "Bringing the Courts Back Under the Constitution," is filled with vintage Gingrichian bomblets sure to provoke talk. He asserts that "there is significant precedent in American history for believing that the legislative and executive branches can force the judicial branch into changing its views when they are out of touch with the values of the vast majority of Americans." And he argues that "Ninth Circuit judges who found the motto 'one nation under God' unconstitutional could be considered unfit to serve and be impeached." These are the sorts of pronouncements that won Mr. Gingrich attention as a minority firebrand before the 1994 elections, but they are also the sorts of pronouncements that got him into trouble as speaker of the House. He seems to be hoping that this time they will help him assume the moniker of the Democratic president he was so obsessed with: the Comeback Kid. From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 15:49:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:49:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Law Barring Junk E-Mail Allows a Flood Instead Message-ID: The New York Times > Technology > Law Barring Junk E-Mail Allows a Flood Instead http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/technology/01spam.html 5.2.1 By TOM ZELLER Jr. A year after a sweeping federal antispam law went into effect, there is more junk e-mail on the Internet than ever, and Levon Gillespie, according to [1]Microsoft, is one reason. Lawyers for the company seemed well on the way to shutting down Mr. Gillespie last September after he agreed to meet them at a [2]Starbucks in Los Angeles near the University of Southern California. There they served him a court summons and a lawsuit accusing him, his Web site and 50 unnamed customers of violating state and federal law - including the year-old federal Can Spam Act - by flooding Microsoft's internal and customer e-mail networks with illegal spam, among other charges. But that was the last the company saw of the young entrepreneur. Mr. Gillespie, who operated a service that gives bulk advertisers off-shore shelter from the antispam crusade, did not show up last month for a court hearing in King County, Wash. The judge issued a default judgment against him in the amount of $1.4 million. In a telephone interview yesterday from his home in Los Angeles, Mr. Gillespie, 21, said he was unaware of the judgment and that no one from Microsoft or the court had yet followed up. But he insisted that he had done nothing wrong and vowed that lawsuits would not stop him - nor any of the other players in the lucrative spam chain. "There's way too much money involved," Mr. Gillespie said, noting that his service, which is currently down, provided him with a six-figure income at its peak. "And if there's money to be made, people are going to go out and get it." Since the Can Spam Act went into effect in January 2004, unsolicited junk e-mail on the Internet has come to total perhaps 80 percent or more of all e-mail sent, according to most measures. That is up from 50 percent to 60 percent of all e-mail before the law went into effect. To some antispam crusaders, the surge comes as no surprise. They had long argued that the law would make the spam problem worse by effectively giving bulk advertisers permission to send junk e-mail as long as they followed certain rules. "Can Spam legalized spamming itself," said Steve Linford, the founder of the Spamhaus Project, a London organization that is one of the leading groups intent on eliminating junk e-mail. And in making spam legal, he said, the new rules also invited flouting by those intent on being outlaws. Not everyone agrees that the Can Spam law is to blame, and lawsuits invoking the new legislation - along with other suits using state laws - have been mounted in the name of combating the problem. Besides Microsoft, other large Internet companies like AOL and [3]Yahoo have used the federal law as the basis for suits. Two prolific spam distributors, Jeremy D. Jaynes and Jessica DeGroot, were convicted under a Virginia antispam law in November, and a $1 billion judgment was issued in an Iowa federal court against three spam marketers in December. The law's chief sponsor, Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, said that it was too soon to judge the law's effectiveness, although he indicated in an e-mail message that the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees its enforcement, might simply need some nudging. "As we progress into the next legislative session," Mr. Burns said, "I'll be working to make sure the F.T.C. utilizes the tools now in place to enforce the act and effectively stem the tide of this burden." The F.T.C. has made some recent moves that include winning a court order in January to shut down illegal advertising from six companies accused of profiting from thousands of X-rated spam e-mail messages. But so far, the spam trade has foiled most efforts to bring it under control. A growing number of so-called bulletproof Web host services like Mr. Gillespie's offer spam-friendly merchants access to stable offshore computer servers - most of them in China - where they can park their Web sites, with the promise that they will not be shut down because of spam complaints. Some bulk e-mailers have also teamed with writers of viruses to steal lists of working e-mail addresses and quietly hijack the personal computers of millions of unwitting Internet users, creating the "zombie networks" that now serve, according to some specialists, as the de facto circulatory system for spam. "We've thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this problem," said Chris Smith, the senior director of product marketing for Postini, a company that filters e-mail for corporations. "And yet, all of these efforts have yet to make a significant dent." Mr. Smith was speaking in a conference call with reporters last week to discuss Postini's 2005 e-mail security report, which echoed the bleak findings of recent academic surveys and statistics from other vendors that filter and monitor e-mail traffic. A survey from Stanford University in December showed that a typical Internet user now spends about 10 working days a year dealing with incoming spam. Industry analysts estimate that the global cost of spam to businesses in 2005, in terms of lost productivity and network maintenance, will be about $50 billion ($17 billion in the United States alone). And the Postini report concluded that most legislative measures - in the United States, Europe and Australia - have had little impact on the problem. The American law requires solicitations to be identified as such in the subject line and prohibits the use of fake return addresses, among other restrictions. But the real soft spot in the American law, critics have argued, is that it puts a burden on recipients to choose to be removed from an e-mailers list - an "opt out" feature that bulk mailers are obligated by the law to provide. (The European and Australian systems requires bulk mailers, in most cases, to receive "opt in" authorization from recipients.) While a law-abiding bulk mailer under the American law might remove a person from its list, critics say, the scofflaw spammer simply takes an opt-out message as verification that the e-mail address is current and has a live person behind it. "Any spammer worth his salt is not going to follow Can Spam," said Scott Petry, Postini's founder and senior vice president for products and engineering, "because it would be filtered out immediately." Defenders of the Can Spam Act say blaming any one law is far too simple. "Most people say it's a miserable failure," said Anne Mitchell, who helped draft the legislation and is the chief executive of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy, a research group in California. "But I see it as a lawyer would see it. To think that law enforcement agencies can make spam stop right away is silly. There's no such thing as an instant fix in the law." She and others note that filtering software has become particularly adept at catching the vast majority of spam before it ever gets to a user's in-box. Legitimate e-mail messages do sometimes get caught in such nets - a drawback that generates its own chorus of complaints. But some specialists have also suggested that the overall success of identifying and weeding out junk e-mail from in-boxes may actually help explain the current surge in spam. "The more effective the filtering technology," Ms. Mitchell said, "the more spam they have to send to get the same dollar rate of return." Those rates of return can be staggeringly high (and the costs of entry into the market relatively low). A spammer can often expect to receive anywhere from a 25 percent to a 50 percent commission on any sales of a product that result from a spam campaign, according to a calculus developed by Richi Jennings, an Internet security analyst with Ferris Research, a technology industry consulting firm. Even if only 2,000 of 200 million recipients of a spam campaign - a single day's response rate for some spammers - actually go to a merchant's Web site to purchase a $50 bottle of an herbal supplement, a spammer working at a 25 percent commission will take in $25,000. If a spammer makes use of anonymous virus-enslaved computers to spread the campaign, expenses like bandwidth payments to Internet service providers are low - as is the likelihood of anyone's tracking down who pushed the "send" button. The overlapping and truly global networks of spam-friendly merchants, e-mail list resellers, virus-writers and bulk e-mailing services have made identifying targets for prosecution a daunting process. Merchants whose links actually appear in junk e-mail are often dozens of steps and numerous deals removed from the spammers, Mr. Jennings said, and proving culpability "is just insanely difficult." The new federal law does give prosecutors some leverage to go after the merchants - but it must be proved that they knew, or should have known, that their wares were being fed into the illegal spam chain. "We wait to see a real test case of that," Mr. Jennings said. In the meantime, analysts predict, more viruses will commandeer more personal computers as zombie spam transmitters - which besides free relays give spammers a thicker cloak of anonymity. Mr. Jennings estimates that hijacked machines handle 50 percent of the spam stream, and other analysts have put the percentage higher. Analysts also expect more use of virus bombs - called directory harvest attacks - to wrest working e-mail addresses from Internet service providers. "It's the silent killer of e-mail servers," Mr. Smith of Postini said. And bulletproof services like Mr. Gillespie's and another, [4]Buprhost.com, are intent on continuing to offer spam-friendly merchants a haven from antispam complaints, starting at $89 a month. "If your Web site host receives complaints or discovers that your Web site has been advertised in e-mail broadcasts, they may disconnect your account and shut down your Web site," explains Buprhost.com, which promises no such disruptions. "The reason we can do this is that we put your Web site in our overseas server where the local law will protect your Web sites." "It's very simple," Mr. Petry of Postini said of the junk e-mail scourge. "Spam is technically very easy to send." Which is why, according to Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement lawyer, suits against spam enablers like Mr. Gillespie are an important, if incremental, new front to pursue. "Microsoft's efforts in filing these lawsuits is to stop spammers - and in this case hosting services that cater to spammers - from plying their trade," said Mr. Kornblum, who noted that Microsoft was working to enforce the $1.4 million judgment against Mr. Gillespie. "Our objective with sustained enforcement activity is to change the economics of spamming, making it a cost-prohibitive business model rather than a profitable one." References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=MSFT 2. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=SBUX 3. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=YHOO 4. http://Buprhost.com/ From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 15:50:21 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:50:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] J. Studies in Int. Ed.: Wine Is for Drinking, Water Is for Washing: Student Opinions About International Exchange Programs Message-ID: Wine Is for Drinking, Water Is for Washing: Student Opinions About International Exchange Programs First, the summary from The Chronicle of Higher Education: A glance at the current issue of the "Journal of Studies in International Education": What students value about studying abroad Students value their study-abroad experiences, but more for the experience than the study, say two scholars at Pennsylvania State University at University Park. Hubert B. Van Hoof, a professor of hospitality management, and Marja J. Verbeeten, an assistant professor of hospitality management, surveyed college students who had participated in international-study programs, including foreign students who had studied in the United States. The authors found that the students felt "almost unanimous enthusiasm" for their experience in terms of their personal development. Students said they felt that the experience "had brought them a greater understanding of other cultures" and "had helped them appreciate their own culture more," the scholars write. When asked what advice they would give other students considering studying abroad, the survey respondents' most common answers "were along the lines of 'Do it!'; 'You'll regret it if you don't!'; 'Experience as much as possible'; and 'Keep an open mind.'" Mr. Van Hoof and Ms. Verbeeten urge more such research to see what students are getting out of their studies abroad. "It is no longer sufficient," they write, "for educators to say that the international-study experience is invaluable and necessary in the education of our students because they think it is so." The article, "Wine Is for Drinking, Water Is for Washing: Student Opinions About International Exchange Programs," will be online for a limited time at http://jsi.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/9/1/42 ----------------------- Wine Is for Drinking, Water Is for Washing: Student Opinions About International Exchange Programs Hubert B. Van Hoof Marja J. Verbeeten Journal of Studies in International Education, Vol. 9 No. 1, Spring 2005 42-61 This article reports on a study done among students who participated in student exchange programs, both in the United States and other parts of the world, between January 2001 and May 2003. Issues such as why students decide to study abroad, why they select a certain institution, how their home institution compares to a partner institution abroad, and what they consider to be the relevance of their international experience were investigated. Students agreed with the literature on the topic to a large extent and were very positive about the experience. Some interesting differ?ences of opinion between incoming (to United States) and outgoing (from United States) students were observed. Keywords: study abroad; exchange programs; international education When Penny Barend, a 3rd-year hospitality management student at North?ern Arizona University, arrived in Italy for a year of studies at the American International University in Florence, she did so with an open mind. Peers, par?ents, and professors had told her that this was going to be the best experience of her life and that living and studying in Italy were going to be very different from living and studying in Arizona. Different, she had been told, is not better or worse-it is just different. When she sat down for dinner with her host family on her very first night, she asked for some water with her meal, a common request in the United States. Yet, the response she got from a 75-year-old Italian was not what she had expected: "Wine is for drinking, water is for washing," he said. With this, she was wel?comed to the world of living and studying abroad, and this incident stuck with her and became the theme of her valedictorian speech at her graduation cere- mony 3 years later. She will always look upon a glass of water in a different light, as will many who heard her speech. Over the years, we have published several articles on the benefits of students living, working, and studying abroad (Van Hoof, 1999a, 2000, 2001) and have related these experiences to the benefits of international education as identified in the literature on the topic. The most common benefit identified is the student's exposure to different social and cultural environments (Arndt, 1984; Calleja, 1995; Lamey, 1990; Saliba, 1995; Swanson, 1969). Also mentioned is the fact that living in another culture changes one's stereotypes of other nationalities (Stangor, Jonas, Stroebe, & Hewstone, 1994) and that it presents one with an alternative view of the world (Remy, Nathan, Becker, & Torney, 1975). Students acquire a "new-found recognition of the extent to which their own cultural val?ues and norms differ from those of their counterparts in their host country"(Rob-erts, 1998, p. 65). That this does not necessarily lead to a truly global perspective is lamented by some (Anderson, 1990; Van Spaandonck, 1995) but is to be expected, given the age and maturity levels of the students. Yet, it has also been found that students who participate in exchange programs tend to be a little more mature than their peers who did not study abroad (Frisch, 1990). The literature has highlighted the role of these international programs in shaping a rounded, culturally sensitive individual, which happens to be one of the guiding principles of higher education around the world. As Vestal (1994) states, "These programs are commonly based on the conviction that quality edu?cation must reflect and encompass knowledge of diverse societies and cultures as well as the realities of global interdependence" (p. 15). As such, they fit in well with the drive to internationalize, which dominates university campuses across the globe nowadays (Barnett & Wu, 1995; Lawson, White, & Dimitriadis, 1998; Van Hoof, 1996). A concrete example of this drive to internationalizeis Harvard University, where students are now expected to have a passport (which is still not common in the United States), and where internationalization has been made one of the cornerstones of curricular developments at the university. It is safe to assume that the most important benefits of international education have been identified and that, as De Wit (1997) stated some 6 years ago, the time is ripe to move from the descriptive phase to a more analytical phase in the study of international education. In 1999, we analyzed the opinions of U.S. industry recruiters concerning a student's international experience and found that they did not value the international experience very highly (Van Hoof, 1999b). This article reports on a study done among students who participated in exchange programs. The intent of the study was to compare student opinions about inter?national exchange programs to those expressed in the literature and to investi?gate what students saw as the biggest benefits and challenges of the experience, why they decided to go abroad, how the education they received abroad com?pared to that at their home institutions, and what, in their minds, the relevance of the experience was to their personal and professional development. METHOD AND DATA COLLECTION The survey that provided the data for the study was conducted during the months of March, April, and May 2003 among 1,487 undergraduate students in the database of the International Office at Northern Arizona University. These students had studied abroad during the period of January 2001 to May 2003, were either incoming (to the United States) or outgoing (from the United States), and represented numerous majors and disciplines, as well as various age levels. Questionnaire Design The questionnaire was designed to gain insights into the perceptions of stu?dents about their study abroad experiences. As stated earlier, its intent was to determine whether students corroborated the opinions expressed in the literature on international education. The payoffs of international education as identified in the literature can be summarized as follows: (a) exposure to different social and cultural environments; (b) changing of stereotypes that might exist; and (c) students become more mature because they live in other cultures and become well-rounded, culturally sensitive adults. Questions such as, "Why did you decide to study abroad as an exchange student?" "What do you consider the greatest benefit of studying abroad?" and "What do you consider the greatest challenge of studying abroad?" for instance, directly addressed some of these issues (see Appendix). Of secondary relevance was the fact that this survey provided the administra?tors and educators at this particular university with valuable information about their own performance in educating and taking care of international students, as well as with information about their exchange partners. It was decided to use a Web-based survey format in this study. The primary reason for doing so was that it could be distributed to a large target audience at a much lower cost and more quickly than a traditional survey (Couper, 2000; Schonland & Williams, 1996). Moreover, data collection and conversion could be done automatically, and the target audience could be encouraged by meansof a personal e-mail message. Its most important benefits, though, were the conve?nience for both the respondents and the researchers and the fact that it was felt that respondents in this particular age group would be more likely to respond to an electronic format than to any of the more traditional survey tools. An important concern about Web surveys is their low response rate, espe?cially when sent out to the general population (Schaefer & Dillman, 1998; Tse, 1998). Yet, in this case, the population under study was relatively small, and its members could be reached at their personal e-mail addresses. It was expected that these students would be interested in sharing their opinions about their semester abroad experiences, which was supported by the relatively high response rate obtained. The questionnaire was a four-page, self-administered instrument (see Appen?dix). It was estimated that it would take respondents about 10 minutes to com?plete. Most of the questions were closed-ended, requiring a choice from a num?ber of alternatives presented. In the first part of the survey, respondents were asked to provide demographic information. They were asked to provide information about their gender, their country of origin, the country where they had studied abroad, the institution they had studied at, their academic status (freshman, sophomore, etc.), their majors at their home institution and at their exchange institution, and how long theyhad studied abroad. The second part of the survey was divided into six sections and examined the students' perceptions about their international studies and experiences. In the first section, two questions asked them what their reasons were for studying abroad and why they had selected the institution in particular. They were asked to compare their exchange programs to their home institutions by means of rat?ing them on a 5-point Likert-type scale. The questions looked at (a) academic level of difficulty, (b) care for their general needs as students, (c) housing arrangements, and (d) overall levels of organization and structure at the exchange institution. The third section examined what they liked most and least about their exchange institution and what they perceived to be the main difference between studying at home and abroad. Three questions (once again on a 5-point scale)in the fourth section then asked them to rate the relevance of their semester abroad to future job opportunities, their academic program at home, and their own per?sonal development. The fifth section contained four questions. The first two asked the respon?dents if they would study abroad again at the same institution and if they would study abroad again at another institution. Then they rated the overall quality of the academic program abroad and how they felt about the overall experience. The final section then asked them to describe what they felt were the greatest benefits and challenges of studying abroad and what advice they would give to students who were also considering studying abroad. This was done in an open-ended format. Sample Design, Data Collection, and Limitations Sample design. As stated earlier, all 1,487 undergraduate students who were in the database of the International Office at Northern Arizona University were selected to participate in this study for the following reasons: 1. The database was readily available and up-to-date at the university's International Office, with e-mail addresses of all the respondents being part of the database; 2. The International Office was very willing to participate in the study, as they would obtain valuable information about their own performance at the university they represented; 3. The students' interest in the topic and their willingness to complete the survey were expected to be high, due to the nature of the experience; 4. Respondents could be contacted easily by means of e-mail. Data collection. On February 26, 2003, a letter signed by both the director of the International Office at Northern Arizona University and the researchers was sent to a pilot group of 60 students. In the letter, the respondents were requested to cooperate and were directed to a Web site that contained the survey. One week later, 40 pilot group respondents had completed the survey. As there were no major adjustments to be made based on the feedback from the pilot group, the letter was then sent to all the remaining students in the database on March 7, 2003, by means of e-mail. On March 24, 2003, a reminder was sent out. The Web site with the survey was kept open until the end of the spring 2003 semester, May 9, 2003. At that time, a total of 353 students had responded to the survey, a 23.74% response. Given the concern that Web surveys generally tend to generate a low response rate, this was deemed very good. Limitations. The main limitation of this study is the fact that it was based on a database of students at only one university. All outgoing students studied at one of the 10 colleges and schools at Northern Arizona University, and all incoming stu?dents came to the university from its established network of partners abroad. Opin?ions therefore say more about Northern Arizona University and its foreign partners than about other universities, and the results cannot be generalized beyond the scope of the study. Yet, with incoming students coming from 22 different countries, outgo?ing students going to 23 different countries, and more than 50 different majors repre?sented in the sample, the results can be considered characteristic of some general ten?dencies and representative of opinions of students worldwide. This article will first discuss the demographic data and the descriptive results of the analyses. After that, it will look at the outcomes of various comparative analyses and describe whether any observed differences between groups in the descriptive section were significant. Finally, it will summarize some of the pre?dominant opinions about the benefits and challenges of studying abroad and offer some suggestions for further research. All data analyses were done using SPSS 11.0. DESCRIPTIVE RESULTS Demographics Of the 353 students who responded to the survey, 250 (70.8%) were female and 103 (29.2%) were male. As stated earlier, these students came from 22 dif?ferent countries, with a large majority coming from the United States (80.7%). Among these outgoing American students, the largest numbers went to such countries as the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, and Mexico. But there were also students who went to Costa Rica, Chile, Malta, Korea, Japan, Ireland, Italy, Russia, China, and Sweden, for instance. Among the incoming students, Germany and the Netherlands were most heavily represented in the sample. Examples of other countries represented were the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, Spain, France, Czech Republic, China, Malaysia, Bulgaria, Belgium, and the Ukraine. Of course, these countries of ori?gin reflect the international contacts of the university. Yet, they are also indica?tive of the multitude of nationalities in the sample. A large majority (93.7%) of the respondents were juniors (3rd year) or seniors (4th year) at their home institutions, reflecting a trend among universi?ties not to send students abroad very early on in their academic careers. The num?ber of majors represented was considerable, with more than 50 distinctly differ?ent majors or fields of study being identified. These majors ranged from business and management to art, from chemistry to education, from languageto history, and from ceramics to journalism. Most of the respondents had studied abroad for one semester (63.0%), with the remainder either going for two semes?ters (28.7%) or three or more (8.3%) (see Table 1). Reasons for Studying Abroad In the first section of the survey, the respondents were asked why they had decided to study abroad and were requested to rank a number of distinctly different reasons in order of importance. The three most important reasons for studying abroad identified were as follows: 1. It is/was a good opportunity to live in another culture; 2. It is/was a good opportunity to travel; 3. I liked the country my exchange program was located in. Table 1 Student Demographics (N = 353) N Valid % Gender Male 103 29.2 Female 250 70.8 Incoming/outgoinga Incoming 32 9.1 Outgoing 321 90.9 Academic statusa Freshman 3 .9 Sophomore 17 5.3 Junior 98 30.5 Senior 203 63.2 Durationa One semester 213 63.0 Two semesters 97 28.7 Three or more semesters 28 8.3 a. Total N is not 353 because of missing values for the variable. When asked why they had selected the particular institution abroad, the three most important reasons were as follows: 1. It was available as a partner at my home institution; 2. I liked the country the program was located in; 3. People I know also go/went there. Assessments: Academics, Care, Housing, and Organization at the Receiving Institution In four questions, the survey then asked the respondents to rate the academic level of difficulty, care for their needs as a student, housing, and organization/ structure at the exchange institution as compared to their home institution. This was done on a 5-point Likert-type scale, with 1 being much worse/much easier,3 being same,and5being much better/much more difficult. This scale was primar?ily used to allow for comparative analysis of opinions later. A majority of the respondents (59.0%) felt that the academic level of diffi?culty of the program abroad was the same (25.5%) or easier (33.5%) as com?pared to their home institutions, whereas 41.0% felt that academics were more demanding abroad. The mean rating was 3.02, with a standard deviation of 1.05. In terms of the care they received for their needs as students (such as staff avail?ability, academic advising, and counseling), 39.2% of them rated it as better, 30.0% felt it was the same, and 30.8% felt it was worse than at home, a very even distribution (M = 3.08, SD = 1.18). Housing is always a major concern for students when they go abroad, and not only for them but also, for instance, for their parents. In this case, 45.2% of the respondents felt that their housing arrangements were better than at home, 25.7% felt it was the same, and only 29.2% felt they were worse than at home (M =3.25, SD = 1.07). Finally, when asked how they assessed the overall level of structure and organization at their exchange institution, 26.4% rated it as better, 33.0% felt it was the same, and 42.6% thought it was worse than at home (M = 2.81, SD = 1.12) (see Table 2). Relevance of the Experience Three questions asked the respondents to rate the relevance of their interna?tional experience to future job opportunities, the academic program at their home institution, and their own personal development. It is reasonable to assume that it would be difficult for students at this stage of their lives to assessthe rele?vance of the international experience on future job opportunities and their own personal development accurately. Yet, these questions were included for various reasons. First, the answers to these questions could be used to reinforce opinions expressed in other questions about the importance the study abroad respondents attach to the experience. Second, the answers could also be used to provide some insight into whether young adults think about the consequences of their interna?tional experience to their personal and professional lives and place the experi?ence in a much broader perspective. Third, the answers to these questions could be compared to opinions expressed in the literature. Ratings were on a 5-point scale again, with 1 being completely irrelevant,3 being relevant,and5being extremely relevant. When asked to rate the relevance of the experience to their future job opportunities, 58.1% of the students rated it as very or extremely relevant, 33.1% rated it relevant, and only 8.9% felt itwas irrelevant (M = 3.75, SD = .98). With regard to their academic program at home, the ratings were 48.5% very or extremely relevant, 37.5% relevant, and 14.0% irrelevant (M = 3.52, SD = 1.06). Yet, when it came to determining what it had meant to their personal development, the respondents were most enthusiastic: 67.7% considered it extremely relevant, 23.0% felt it was very relevant, and only 2 respondents (.6%) considered it irrelevant. This almost unanimous enthusi?asm was reflected in the mean rating of 4.57 and a standard deviation of .69 (see Table 3). Table 2 Student Assessment of Academic Difficulty, Care, Housing, and Organization: Exchange Institution Compared to Home Institution Exchange Program Compared to Home Na Valid % M/SD Academic level of difficulty Much easier 28 7.9 M: 3.02 Easier 82 24.9 SD: 1.05 Same 84 25.5 More difficult 124 37.7 Much more difficult 11 3.3 Level of care for your general needs Much worse 39 11.8 M: 3.08 Worse 63 19.1 SD: 1.18 Same 99 30.0 Better 91 27.6 Much better 38 11.5 Housing arrangements Much worse 10 3.1 M: 3.25 Worse 85 26.0 SD: 1.07 Same 84 25.7 Better 108 33.0 Much better 40 12.2 Overall level of organization/structure Much worse 42 12.7 M: 2.81 Worse 92 27.9 SD: 1.12 Same 109 33.0 Better 62 18.8 Much better 25 7.6 a. Total N is not 353 because of missing values for the variable. Would You Do It Again? Under the heading of "Would you do it again?" the respondents' opinions and feelings about their semesters abroad were further analyzed. They were asked, if it were possible, whether they would study abroad again at the same institution and at another institution. Moreover, they had the option here to indicate why they would or would not choose to repeat the experience, providing important information on the quality of the programs and the experience to organizersof those programs. Two thirds (61.1%) of the respondents indicated that they would study again at the same institution, and 95.0% of them said that they would study abroad again at another institution-a ringing endorsement, yet more so for the study abroad experience than for the institution they studied at. A sampling of the rea? Table 3 The Relevance of the Study Abroad Experience Relevance of Semester Abroad Experience to Na Valid % M/SD Future job opportunities Completely irrelevant 4 1.4 M: 3.75 Irrelevant 22 7.4 SD: 0.98 Relevant 98 33.1 Very relevant 91 30.7 Extremely relevant 81 27.4 Academic program at home Completely irrelevant 12 4.0 M: 3.52 Irrelevant 30 10.0 SD: 1.06 Relevant 112 37.5 Very relevant 82 27.4 Extremely relevant 63 21.1 Your personal development Completely irrelevant 1 .3 M: 4.57 Irrelevant 1 .3 SD: 0.69 Relevant 26 8.7 Very relevant 69 23.0 Extremely relevant 203 67.7 a. Total N is not 353 because of missing values for the variable. sons for not wanting to go back to the same school includes such comments as "courses are irrelevant," "been there, done that," "I got bored there," "too unor?ganized," and "I would like to get a broader perspective and experience something new." By the same token, some of the reasons that students overwhelmingly endorsed the experience rather than the individual programs were, "the dynam?ics of an exchange teach you a lot," "I realize there are more opportunities now," and "my personal development was incredible, and I want to see more." Overall Ratings Finally, when it was time to ask for some overall assessments, the respondents looked at the overall quality of the academic program they did abroad, and the overall quality of the experience in general, on a scale where 1 = very poor,3= neutral,and5= outstanding. As became apparent throughout all of the other questions, the study abroad experience was perceived as having a much larger effect on the students' personal developments than on their academic careers, as 71.9% of them rated the overall quality of the academic program as good or out?standing (M = 3.84, SD = .92). Nearly all of them (96.2%) felt that the quality of the overall study abroad experience was good or outstanding (M = 4.65, SD = .57). COMPARATIVE RESULTS To determine if any of the observed differences of opinion were significant, t tests were used to compare the groups. The groups compared in this sample were males and females, and incoming versus outgoing students, which was by far the most important comparison. The Effect of Gender on Perceptions The study first looked at whether the gender of the respondent had any signifi?cant effect on his or her perceptions about the study abroad experience. As there were two groups separated based on the value of a single variable (male-female), and as the level of data provided by the questions using the 5-point Likert-type scale was ordinal, this analysis was done by means of t tests. In all instances, the null hypotheses assumed that the population means were equal, and the alpha levelwas setat.05. The study found only one significant difference of opinion between male and female students. It was found that female students rated the level of care for their personal needs as a student at the exchange institution significantly higher than males. With a significance score of .050, the null hypothesis of equality of mean ratings could be rejected. In none of the other questions was there a significant difference of opinions between males and females (see Table 4). Although hardly any of the differences of opinion were found to be signifi?cant, a closer look at the mean ratings of males and females, as expressed in Table 4, shows that in all cases, the female ratings were higher than those ofthe males, suggesting that female students were generally more appreciative of many of the aspects of the study abroad experience than males. The Effect of Incoming Versus Outgoing The obvious and most important comparison this study performed was to look at the differences of opinion between incoming and outgoing students. Once again, t tests were used to determine if any of the differences of opinions were significant. The alpha level was set at .05, and the null hypotheses assumed equality of mean ratings. In this case, the study noticed several significant differences of opinion between the two groups. First, it was found that incoming students rated the overall quality of the academic programs in the United States significantly lower Table 4 Effect of Gender on Perceptions Exchange Program Compared to Home Na M SD F Sig. Academic level of difficulty Male 96 2.93 .976 .698 .404 Female 229 3.07 1.084 Level of care for your general needs Male 96 3.06 1.103 3.862 .050** Female 230 3.10 1.220 Housing arrangements Male 93 3.12 1.051 .213 .645 Female 230 3.31 1.073 Overall level of organization/structure Male 96 2.75 1.086 .057 .811 Female 230 2.83 1.122 Relevance of Semester Abroad Experience to Na M SD F Sig. Future job opportunities Male 87 3.62 .967 .239 .626 Female 206 3.81 .988 Academic program at home Male 87 3.46 .986 1.376 .242 Female 209 3.53 1.083 Personal development Male 87 4.47 .696 1.795 .181 Female 210 4.61 .692 Rate the quality of the academic program you did abroad Male 84 3.71 .964 1.029 .311 Female 194 3.89 .907 Rate the quality of the overall experience abroad Male 84 4.63 .576 .300 .584 Female 197 4.65 .565 a. Total N is not 353 because of missing values for the variable. **Significant at the .05 level. than students who had studied outside of the United States (F prob. = .005). Sec?ond, incoming students rated the quality of the housing arrangements in the United States significantly higher than their peers who had studied outside of the United States (F prob. = .004). And finally, incoming students rated the rele?vance of their semester abroad experience to their academic program at home significantly higher than their peers from the United States who had left the country (F prob. = .17) (see Table 5). The latter was somewhat surprising, given that incoming students had rated the quality of the academic program significantly lower at an earlier stage. CONCLUSION The study of international education has started to move from a purely theo?retical and conceptual approach to a more analytical approach, a sign that inter?national education has not only gained importance as a field of study but also has become an important part of many university curricula all over the world. As more and more institutions have begun to mandate an international experience in the degree programs of their students, be it in the form of a semester of studies or an industry internship, more quantitative and qualitative research is needed to improve the quality of the programs offered and to test the validity of the assumptions on which those programs are built. It is no longer sufficient for edu?cators to say that the international study experience is invaluable and necessary in the education of our students because they think it is so. These opinions have to be backed up with hard facts, and we have to move away from mere anecdotal evidence. There is a wealth of information that needs to be explored empirically, and this study is only at the very tip of that iceberg. It is important for the study of international education to start analyzing the perceptions of the students involved in such programs, not only to corroborate predominant ideas aboutthe benefits and challenges of international education but also for purely practical reasons. The practitioners in the field, those who administer international pro?grams and maintain international relationships on behalf of their universities, need to know what students think about their product offerings. They need tobe aware of consumer sentiments when they market and sell these programs to future respondents and in making modifications to existing programs, and those decisions need to be based on facts. The results of this study can be used in several ways. They can be used not only as a means to test the validity of our theoretical assumptions about interna?tional education, a means to determine whether student perceptions agree with the literature. It can also be a practical tool in the day-to-day administration of the exchange programs. Whereas the results of this study will be of particular interest to the International Office at Northern Arizona University, the results of further research and similar studies at other institutions can benefit practitioners worldwide. Table 5 Effect of Incoming and Outgoing Status on Perceptions Exchange Program Compared to Home Na M SD F Sig. Academic level of difficulty In 26 2.65 1.129 .128 .721 Out 203 3.06 1.039 Level of care for your general needs In 26 3.08 1.093 .491 .484 Out 304 3.08 1.191 Housing arrangements In 25 3.32 .802 8.392 .004*** Out 302 3.25 1.088 Overall level of organization/structure In 26 2.46 .905 1.227 .269 Out 304 2.84 1.128 Relevance of Semester Abroad Experience to Na M SD F Sig. Future job opportunities In 23 3.87 1.180 .304 .582 Out 273 3.74 .966 Academic program at home In 23 3.57 1.343 5.748 .017** Out 276 3.51 1.032 Personal development In 24 4.67 .868 .406 .525 Out 276 4.57 .676 Rate the quality of the academic program you did abroad In 23 3.39 1.196 8.059 .005*** Out 258 3.88 .888 Rate the quality of the overall experience abroad In 23 4.74 .449 2.802 .095 Out 261 4.64 .575 a. Total N is not 353 because of missing values for the variable. **Significant at the .05 level. *** Significant at the .01 level. This study found that students generally corroborate what the literature on the topic has identified as being the most important benefits of international educa?tion. They felt that an international education first and foremost benefited them personally and that it helped them in becoming more mature and worldly adults, compassionate in the face of cultural difference, and able to live and work in environments that are dissimilar to what they are used to at home. As might have been expected, their interest in studying abroad was piqued more by the location of their host institution and by the ability to travel and see something of the world than by academics. Incoming students placed a little more emphasis on the academic aspects of an international education than outgoing students, it seemed, and they were more critical of their exchange institution in that regard. Yet, at the same time they were significantly more impressed with the structure and housing arrange?ments at their U.S. exchange university, as compared to what they experienced at their home institutions. When asked what they saw as the greatest benefits of studying abroad, by far the most common comments were that it had brought them a greater understand?ing of other cultures, that it had helped them appreciate their own culture more, that it enabled them to learn more about themselves, and that it had enriched them personally. The words and ideas that came up most often in the many chal?lenges that were described were sentiments like "adapting," "adjusting,""being away from home," "breaking stereotypes," "culture shock," "language barrier," "managing," "staying patient," and "trying to assimilate." Yet, even though these were seen as challenges, they are, in many ways, not negatives at all and valuable to the development of the student, both personally and academically. In terms of what advice they would give to students considering going abroad, the most common answers were along the lines of "Do it!"; "You'll regret it if you don't!"; "Experience as much as possible"; and "Keep an open mind." What better endorsement for international education than that? We are doing the right thing in enabling students to live, work, and study in other cultures and societies and in helping them understand what water and wine are really for, and our stu?dents agree with us wholeheartedly. APPENDIX Survey: Student Perceptions About International Exchange Programs Demographic Data 1. What is your gender? Male Female 2. What is your country of origin? 3. In which country did you spend your study abroad? Australia Mexico Chile Netherlands France Spain Germany United Kingdom Ireland USA Japan Other (please specify) 4. What is the institution you study/studied at as an exchange student? 5. What is your academic status? Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior 6. What is/was your major at your home institution? 7. What was/is your major at your exchange institution? 8. How long do/did you study abroad? One semester Two semesters More than two semesters Perceptions 1. Please rate the following in order of importance (1 = highest, 7 = lowest) as reasons why you decided to study abroad as an exchange student. It could be used as part of my degree program It is/was a good opportunity to travel My parents/relatives suggested I should go I went because I was interested in the academic institution/program abroad It was a good opportunity to live in another culture I liked the country the program was located in Other (please specify) 2. Why did you select the particular institution you studied at as an exchange student? I had heard of its reputation People I know also go/went there I liked the country it is/was located in It was available as a partner of my home institution I could not go anywhere else It was a cheap alternative Other (please specify) 3. How would you assess the academic level of difficulty of the exchange program you participate(d) in, as compared to that of your home institution? Much Easier Easier Same More Difficult Much More Difficult 4. How would you assess the level of care for your general needs as a student (academic advising, housing, availability of staff, for instance) at your exchange institution as compared to your home institution? Much Less Less Same Better Much Better 5. How would you assess the housing arrangements at your exchange institution as compared to those at your home institution? Much Worse Worse Same Better Much Better 6. How would you assess the overall level of organization and structure at your exchange institution, as compared to that at your home institution? Much Worse Worse Same Better Much Better 7. In general, what do/did you like best about your exchange institution? 8. In general, what do/did you like least about your exchange institution? 9. What was the main difference between studying at your home institution and studying at your exchange institution? 10. How would you assess the relevance of your semester abroad to your future job opportunities? Completely Extremely Irrelevant Irrelevant Relevant Very Relevant Relevant 11. How would you assess the relevance of your semester abroad to your academic program at your home institution? Completely Extremely Irrelevant Irrelevant Relevant Very Relevant Relevant 12. How would you assess the relevance of your semester abroad to your personal development? Completely Extremely Irrelevant Irrelevant Relevant Very Relevant Relevant 13. If it were possible, would you study abroad again at the same institution? Yes No Why? 14. If it were possible, would you study abroad again at another institution? Yes No Why? 15. How would you rate the overall quality of the academic program you did abroad? Very Poor Poor Neutral Good Outstanding 16. How would you rate the quality of the overall experience abroad? Very Poor Poor Neutral Good Outstanding 17. What do/did you consider to be the greatest benefit of studying abroad? 18. What do/did you consider to be the greatest challenge of studying abroad? 19. What advice would you give to students who are considering studying abroad? Thank You! REFERENCES Anderson, L. (1990). A rationale for global education. In K. A. Tye (Ed.), Global education: From thought to action (pp. 13-34). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Arndt, R. T. (1984). Rethinking international education. In W. C. Olson & L.D. Howell (Eds.), International education: The unfinished agenda (pp. 1-39). Indianapolis, IN: White River Press. Barnett, G. A., & Wu, R. Y. (1995). The international student exchange network: 1970 & 1989. Higher Education, 30, 353-368. Calleja, J. (1995). International education: A common direction for our future. In J. Calleja (Ed.), International education and the university (pp. 41-57). Bristol, PA: Jessica Kingsley. Couper, M. P. (2000). Web surveys: A review of issues and approaches. Public Opinion Quarterly, 64(4), 464-494. De Wit, H. (1997). Studies in international education: A research perspective. Journal of Studies in International Education, 1(1), 1-8. Frisch, N. C. (1990). An international nursing student exchange program: An educational experience that enhanced student cognitive development. Jour?nal of Nursing Education, 29(1), 10-12. Lamey, S. L. (1990). Global education: A conflict of images. In K. A. Tye (Ed.), Global education: From thought to action (pp. 49-66). Alexandria, VA: Asso?ciation for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Lawson, D., White, D. S., & Dimitriadis, S. (1998). International businessedu?cation and technology-based active learning: Student-reported benefit evalu?ations. Journal of Marketing Education, 20(2), 141-148. Remy, R. C., Nathan, J. A., Becker, J. M., & Torney, J. V. (1975). International learning and international education in a global age. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Roberts, E. H. (1998). The innocents abroad. Do students face international internships unprepared? Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quar?terly, 39(4), 64-69. Saliba, M. (1995). An institutional framework for international education. In J. Calleja (Ed.), International education and the university (pp. 58-80). Bris?tol, PA: Jessica Kingsley. Schaefer, D. R., & Dillman, D. A. (1998). Development of standard e-mail meth?odology: Results of an experiment. Public Opinion Quarterly, 62(3), 378?397. Schonland, A. M., & Williams, P. W. (1996). Using the Internet for travel and tourism survey research: Experiences from the Net traveler survey. Journal of Travel Research, 35(2), 81-87. Stangor, C., Jonas, K., Stroebe, W., & Hewstone, M. (1994). Influence of student exchange on national stereotypes, attitudes, and perceived group variability. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 663-675. Swanson, G. I. (1969). International education: Portents for the future. In F. R. Paulsen (Ed.), Changing dimensions in international education (pp. 1-8). Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Tse, A. C. (1998). Comparing the response rate, speed and response quality of two methods of sending questionnaires: E-mail vs. mail. Journal of the Mar?ket Research Society, 40(4), 353-361. Van Hoof, H. B. (1996). Studeren in de Poort tot de Canyon [Studying in the gate to the canyon]. Transfer: Journal for International Cooperation in Higher Education and Research, 4(2), 28-29. Van Hoof, H. B. (1999a). The international student experience: A US industry perspective. Journal of Studies in International Education, 3(2), 57-71. Van Hoof, H. B. (1999b). Why send students abroad? A comparison of the opin?ions of hospitality industry recruiters on international internships and inter?national exchange programs. FIU Hospitality Review, 17(1&2), 63-72. Van Hoof, H. B. (2000). The international internship as part of the hospitality management curriculum: Combining work experience with international exposure. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education, 12(1), 6-9, 15. Van Hoof, H. B. (2001). International internship exchange: Using existing resources. NAFSA International Educator, 10(1), 7-9. Van Spaandonck, M. (1995). Multicultural and global education. In J. Calleja (Ed.), International education and the university (pp. 243-260). Bristol, PA: Jessica Kingsley. Vestal, T. M. (1994). International education: Its history and promise for today. Westport, CT: Praeger. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Hubert B. Van Hoof, Ph.D., is the director of the School of Hospitality Manage?ment at Penn State University. Prior to his July 1, 2004, appointment at Penn State, he was the assistant dean at the School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Northern Arizona University where he was responsible for developing and main?taining the school's international contacts. He has published extensively on the benefits of international education, in particular with regard to hospitality management education. Marja J. Verbeeten, Ed.D., is an assistant professor at the School of Hospitality Man?agement at Penn State University. A native of the Netherlands, she has taught at various universities in the United States in the area of hospitality management, with particular emphases in information technology and managerial accounting and cost control. Dur?ing the fall 2003 semester, she taught as a visiting professor at the International Univer?sity of Applied Sciences, Bad Honnef-Bonn in Germany. She was a faculty member in the Summer Studies in Europe program at Northern Arizona University from 1994 to 2004. From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 15:51:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:51:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Scotsman: New research shows Turin Shroud is no medieval fake Message-ID: New research shows Turin Shroud is no medieval fake http://news.scotsman.com/print.cfm?id=102832005&referringtemplate=http%3A%2F%2Fnews%2Escotsman%2Ecom%2Fscitech%2Ecfm&referringquerystring=id%3D102832005 Fri 28 Jan 2005 New research shows Turin Shroud is no medieval fake JAMES REYNOLDS SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT THE Turin Shroud, dismissed as a medieval fake after scientific studies in 1988, could actually date back to 1000BC, according to new research. A study based on new analysis of the shroud, believed by many to be the burial cloth used to wrap Jesus Christ after his crucifixion, suggests it is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old. In 1988, analysis using radiocarbon dating techniques concluded it was a medieval fake. But this was dismissed by the new study, published in the US peer-reviewed journal Thermochimica Acta, which claims the sample used in that research was taken from "an expertly rewoven patch" used to repair fire damage and, as such, does not give a true measure of its age. The shroud is a large piece of linen showing the faint full-body image of a blood-covered man on its surface. Because many believe it to be the burial cloth of Jesus, researchers have tried to determine its origin through numerous modern scientific methods, including the 1988 Carbon-14 tests at three radiocarbon labs which dated the artefact from between 1260 and 1390AD. But Raymond Rogers, a chemist at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, who conducted the tests, said: "As unlikely as it seems, the sample used to test the age of the Shroud of Turin in 1988 was taken from a rewoven area. "Pyrolysis mass spectrometry results from the [new] sample area, coupled with microscopic and microchemical observations, prove that the radiocarbon sample was not part of the original shroud. [That sample] has completely different chemical properties than the main part of the shroud relic." He went on: "The 1988 sample tested was dyed in Italy at about the time the Crusaders' last bastion fell to the Mameluke Turks in AD 1291. The radiocarbon sample cannot be older than about AD 1290, agreeing with the age determined in 1988. However, the shroud itself is actually much older." Since its existence was first recorded in France in 1357, it has been damaged in several fires, including a church inferno in 1532. It is said to have been restored by nuns, who patched the holes and stitched the garment to a reinforcing material known as the Holland cloth. The 1988 study, co-ordinated by the British Museum, which acted as the official clearing house for all its findings, apparently ruled out the possibility that the shroud wrapped the body of Christ. It led to the then Cardinal of Turin, Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero, saying the shroud was a hoax. Since then, several attempts have been made to challenge the authenticity of that analysis. Perhaps the greatest corroboration of the new study will be if the shroud's custodians permit further samples of the original, unrepaired cloth to be taken for radiocarbon analysis. If they do, these tests could confirm the new study. If not, people may draw their own conclusions. Michael Minor, the vice-president of the American Shroud of Turin Association for Research, said: "This is the most significant news about the Shroud of Turin since the C-14 dating was announced in 1988. The C-14 dating isn't being disputed. But [the new research] is saying that they dated the rewoven area." Father Paul Conroy, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland, said: "In order to prevent irreparable damage, only very tiny samples were made available [in 1988]. It seems they were taken from a more recent piece of cloth that was used to try and reinforce the original or repair it after fire damage. "Although the winding cloths themselves are not primary evidence and are more circumstantial, across the centuries this shroud has had a very close association with Christ and the extraordinary event which lies at the heart of the Christian Gospel, Jesus rising from the dead." From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 15:54:40 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 10:54:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Red Herring: The hundred-buck PC Message-ID: The hundred-buck PC http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=11203 [So once everyone has computers--I presume online instruction will be nearly free--and everyone has access to education, there will be no more need for redistribution to achieve equality of opportunity world-wide after one more generation.] MIT's Nicholas Negroponte pushes a cheap PC for the rest of the world. January 29, 2005 The founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab wants to create a $100 portable computer for the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital and the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT, says he has obtained promises of support from a number of major companies, including [35]Advanced Micro Devices, Google, [36]Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp. The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software, Mr. Negroponte said during an interview Friday with Red Herring at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. AMD is separately working on a cheap desktop computer for emerging markets. It will be sold to governments for wide distribution. Mr. Negroponte and his supporters are planning to create a company that would manufacture and market the new portable PCs, with MIT as one of the stakeholders. It is unclear precisely what role the other four companies will play, although Mr. Negroponte hopes News Corp. will help with satellite capacity. An engineering prototype is nearly ready, with alpha units expected by year's end and real production around 18 months from now, he said. The portable PCs will be shipped directly to education ministries, with China first on the list. Only orders of 1 million or more units will be accepted. Mr. Negroponte's idea is to develop educational software and have the portable personal computer replace textbooks in schools in much the same way that France's Minitel videotext terminal, which was developed by [37]France Telecom in the 1980s, became a substitute for phone books. Mr. Negroponte has been interested in developing computing in the developing world for some time. He and his wife have funded three schools in rural Cambodia, helping outfit them with regular laptops and broadband connections. Major companies from [38]Hewlett-Packard to Microsoft to Dupont, facing saturated markets in the richest industrial countries, have shown an interest in developing less expensive products to sell in low-income countries in south Asia, Africa, and Latin America. References 35. http://studio.financialcontent.com/Engine?Account=redherring&PageName=QUOTE&Ticker=AMD 36. http://studio.financialcontent.com/Engine?Account=redherring&PageName=QUOTE&Ticker=MOT 37. http://studio.financialcontent.com/Engine?Account=redherring&PageName=QUOTE&Ticker=FTE 38. http://studio.financialcontent.com/Engine?Account=redherring&PageName=QUOTE&Ticker=HPQ From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 16:02:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 11:02:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Soviet Art of Brain Washing / A Synthesis of the Russian textbook on Psychopolitics Message-ID: The Soviet Art of Brain Washing / A Synthesis of the Russian textbook on Psychopolitics http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics [The other part is appended.] A synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics PSYCHOPOLITICS - the art and science of asserting and maintain- ing dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaus, and masses, and the ef- fecting of the conquest of enemy nations through "mental healing." EDITORIAL NOTE From May 2, 1936, to October 10, 1939, I was a dues-paying member of the Communist Party, operating under my own name, Kenneth Goff, and also the alias John Keats. In 1939, I voluntarily appeared before the Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, D.C., which was chairmanned at that time by Martin Dies, and my testimony can be found in Volume 9 of that year's Congressional Report. During the period that I was a member of the Communist Party, I attended their school which was located at 113 E. Wells St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and operated under the name Eugene Debs Labor School. Here we were trained in all phases of warfare, both psychological and physical, for the destruction of the Capitalistic society and Christian civilization. In one portion of our studies we went thoroughly into the matter of psychopolitics. This was the art of capturing the minds of a nation through brainwashing and fake mental health -- the subjecting of whole nations of people to the rule of the Kremlin by capturing their minds. We were taught that the degradation of the populace is less inhuman than their destruction by bombs, for to an animal lives only once, any life is sweeter than death. The end of a war is the control of a conquered people. If a people can be conquered in the absence of war, the end of war will have been achieved without the destructions of war. During the past few years, I have noted with horror the increase of psychopolitical warfare upon the American public. First, in the brainwashing of our boys in Korea, and then in the well financed drive of mental health propaganda by left-wing pressure groups, wherein many of our states have passed Bills which can well be used by the enemies of America to subject to torture and imprisonment, those who preach the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and who oppose the menace of Communism. A clear example of this can be seen in the Lucille Miller case. In this warfare the Communists have definitely stated: "You must recruit every agency of the nation marked for slaughter into a foaming hatred of religious healing." Another example of the warfare that is being waged can be seen in the attempt to establish a mental Siberia in Alaska, which wa called for in the Alaskan Mental Health Bill. A careful study of this Bill will make you see at once that the land set aside under the allotment could not be for that small territory, and the Bill within itself establishes such authority that it could be turned into a prison camp under the guise of mental health for everyone who raises their voice against Communism and the hidden government operating in our own nation. This book was used in underground schools, and contains the address of Beria to the American students in the Lenin University prior to 1936. The text in the book in general is from the Communist Manual of Instructions of Psychopolitical Warfare, and was used in America for the training of Communist cadre. The only revision in this book is the summary, which was added by the Communists after the atomic bomb came into being. In its contents you can see the diabolical plot of the enemies of Christ and America, as they seek to conquer our nation by subjecting the minds of our people to their will by various sinister means. This manual of the Communist Party should be in the hands of every loyal American, that they may be alerted to the fact that it is not always by armies and guns that a nation is conquered. Kenneth Goff _________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS [1]Editorial Note [2]An Address By Lavrent Pavlovich Beria [3]CHAPTER I: The History and Definition of Psychopolitics [4]CHAPTER II: The Constitution of Man as a Political Organism [5]CHAPTER III: Man as an Economic Organism [6]CHAPTER IV: State Goals for the Individual and Masses [7]CHAPTER V: An Examination of Loyalties [8]CHAPTER VI: The General Subject of Obedience [9]CHAPTER VII: The History and Definition of Psychopolitics [10]CHAPTER VIII: Degradation, Shock and Endurance [11]CHAPTER IX: The Organization of Mental Health Campaigns [12]CHAPTER X: Conduct Under Fire [13]CHAPTER XI: The Use of Psychopolitics in Spreading Communism [14]CHAPTER XII: Violent Remedies [15]CHAPTER XIII: Recruiting of Psychopolitical Dupes [16]CHAPTER XIV: The Smashing of Religious Groups [17]CHAPTER XV: Proposals Which Must Be Avoided [18]CHAPTER XVI: In Summary AN ADDRESS BY [19]LAVRENT PAVLOVICH BERIA American students at the Lenin University, I welcome your attendance at these classes on Psychopolitics. Psychopolitics is an important if less known division of Geo-politics. It is less known because it must necessarily deal with highly educated personnel, the very top strata of "mental healing." By psychopolitics our chief goals are effectively carried forward. To produce a maximum of chaos in the culture of the enemy is our first most important step. Our fruits are grown in chaos, distrust, economic depression and scientific turmoil. At least a weary populace can seek peace only in our offered Communist State, at last only Communism can resolve the problems of the masses. A psychopolitician must work hard to produce the maximum chaos in the fields of "mental healing." He must recruit and use all the agencies and facilities of "mental healing." He must labor to increase the personnel and facilities of "mental healing" until at last the entire field of mental science is entirely dominated by Communist principles and desires. To achieve these goals the psychopolitician must crush every "home-grown" variety of mental healing in America. Actual teachings of James, Eddy and Pentecostal Bible faith healers amongst your mis-guided people must be swept aside. They must be discredited, defamed, arrested, stamped upon even by their own government until there is no credit in them and only Communist-oriented "healing" remains. You must work until every teacher of psychology unknowingly or knowingly teaches only Communist doctrine under the guise of "psychology.". You must labor until every doctor and psychiatrist is either a psycho-politician or an unwitting assistant to our aims. You must labor until we have dominion over the minds and bodies of every important person in your nation. You must achieve such disrepute for the state of insanity and such authority over its pronouncement that not one statement so labeled could again be given credence by his people. you must work until suicide arising from mental imbalance is common and calls forth no general investigation or remark. With the institutions for the insane you have in your country prisons which can hold a million persons and can hold them without civil rights or any hope of freedom. And upon these people can be practiced shock and surgery so that never again will they draw a sane breath. You must make these treatments common and accepted. And you must sweep aside any treatment or any group of persons seeking to treat by effective means. You must dominate as respected men the fields of psychiatry and psychology. You must dominate the hospitals and universities. You must carry forward the myth that only a European doctor is competent in the field of insanity and thus excuse amongst you the high incidence of foreign birth and training. If and when we seize Vienna, you shall have then a common ground of meeting and can come and take your instructions as worshippers of Freud along with other psychiatrists. Psychopolitics is a solemn charge. With it you can erase our enemies as insects. You can cripple the efficiency of leaders by striking insanity into their families through the use of drugs. You can wipe them away with testimony as to their insanity. By our technologies, you can even bring about insanity itself when they seem to resistive. You can change their loyalties by psychopolitics. Given a short time with a psychopolitician you can alter forever their loyalty of a soldier in our hands or a statesman or a leader in his own country, or you can destroy his mind. However, you labor under certain dangers. It may happen that remedies for our "treatments" may be discovered. It may occur that a public hue and cry may arise against "mental healing." It may thus occur that all mental healing might be placed in the hands of ministers and taken out of the hands of our psychologists and psychiatrists. But the Capitalistic thirst for control, Capitalistic in-humanity and general public terror of insanity can be brought to guard against these things. But should they occur, should independent researchers actually discover means to undo psychopolitical procedures, you must not rest, you must not eat or sleep, you must not stint one tiniest bit of available money to campaign against it, dis-credit it , strike it down and render it void. For by an effective means all our actions and researches could be undone. In a Capitalistic state you are aided on all sides by the corruption of the philosophy of man and the times. You will discover that everything will aid you in your campaign to seize, control and use all "mental healing" to spread our doctrine and rid us of our enemies within their own borders. Use the courts, use the judges, use the Constitution of the country, use its medical societies and its laws to further our ends. Do not stint in your labor in this direction. And when you have succeeded you will discover that you can now effect your own legislation at will and you can, by careful organization of healing societies, by constant campaign about the terrors of society, by pretense as to your effectiveness make you Capitalist himself, by his own appropriations, finance a large portion of the quiet Communist conquest of the nation. By psychopolitics create chaos. Leave a nation leaderless. Kill our enemies. And bring to Earth, through Communism, the greatest peace Man has ever known. Thank You CHAPTER I THE HISTORY AND DEFINITION OF PSYCHOPOLITICS Although punishment for its own sake may not be entirely without recompense, it is, nevertheless, true that the end and goal of all punishment is the indoctrination of the person being punished with an idea, whether that idea be one of restraint or obedience. In that any ruler has, from time beyond memory, needed the obedience of his subject in order to accomplish his ends, he has thus resorted to punishment. This is true of every tribe and state in the history of Man. Today, Russian culture has evolved more certain and definite methods of aligning and securing the loyalties of persons and populace, and of enforcing obedience upon them. This modern outgrowth of old practice is called Psychopolitics. The stupidity and narrowness of nations not blessed with Russian reasoning has caused them to rely upon practices which are, today, too ancient and out-moded for the rapid and heroic pace of our time. And in view of the tremendous advance of Russian Culture in the field of mental technologies, begun with the glorious work of Pavlov and carried forward so ably by later Russians, it would be strange that an art and science would not evolve totally devoted to the aligning of loyalties and extracting the obedience of individuals and multitudes. Thus we see that psychopolitical procedures are a natural outgrowth of practices as old as Man, practices which are current in every group of men throughout the world. Thus, in psychopolitical procedures there is no ethical problem, since it is obvious and evident that Man is always coerced against his will to the greater good of the State, whether by economic gains or indoctrination into the wishes and desires of the State. Basically, Man is an animal. He is an animal which has been given a civilized veneer. Man is a collective animal, grouped together for his own protection before the threat of the environment. Those who so group and control him must have in their possession specialized techniques to direct the vagaries and energies of the animal Man toward greater efficiency in the accomplishment of the goals of the State. Psychopolitics, in one form or another, have long been used in Russia, but the subject is all but unknown outside the borders of our nation, save only where we have carefully transplanted our information and where it is used for the greater good of the nation. The definition of Psychopolitics follows. Psychopolitics is the art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of the individuals, officers, bureaus, and masses, and the effecting of the conquest of the enemy nations through "mental healing." The subject of Psychopolitics breaks down into several categories, each a natural and logical proceeding from the last. Its first subject is the constitution and anatomy of Man, himself, as a political organism. The next is an examination of Man as an economic organism, as this might be controlled by his desires. The next is classification of State goals for the individual and masses. The next is an examination of loyalties. The next is the general subject of obedience. The next is the anatomy of the stimulus-response mechanisms of Man. The next is he subjects of shock and endurance. The next is categories of experience. The next is the catalyzing and aligning of experience. The next is the use of drugs. The next is the use of implantation. The next is the general application of Psychopolitics within Russia. The next is the organizations outside Russia, their composition and activity. The next is the creation of slave philosophy in a hostile nation. The next is countering anti-psychopolitical activities abroad, and the final one, the destiny of psychopolitical rule in a scientific age. To this might be added many sub categories, such as the nullification of modern weapons by psychopolitical activity. The strength and power of Psychopolitics cannot be overestimated, particularly when used in a nation decayed by pseudo-intellectualism, where exploitation of the masses combines readily with psychopolitical actions, and particularly where the greed of Capitalistic or Monarchial regimes has already brought about an overwhelming incidence of neurosis which can be employed as the groundwork for psychopolitical action and psychopolitical corps. It is part of your mission, student, to prevent psychopolitical activity to the detriment of the Russian State, just as it is your mission to carry forward in our nation and outside it, if you are so assigned, the missions and goals of Psychopolitics. No agent of Russian could be even remotely effective without a thorough grounding in Psychopolitics, and so you carry forward with you a Russian trust to use well what you are learning here. CHAPTER II THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN AS A POLITICAL ORGANISM Man is already a colonial aggregation of cells, and to consider him an individual would be an error. Colonies of cells have gathered together as one organ or another of the body, and then these organs have, themselves, gathered together to form the whole. Thus we see that man, himself, is already a political organism, even if we do not consider a mass of men. Sickness could be considered to be a disloyalty to the remaining organisms on the part of one organism. This disloyalty, becoming apparent, brings about a revolt of some part of the anatomy against the remaining whole, and thus we have, in effect, an internal revolution. The heart, becoming disaffected, falls away from close membership and service to the remainder of the organism, and we discover the entire body in all of its activities is disrupted because of the revolutionary activity of the heart. The heart is in revolt because it cannot or will not co-operate with the remainder of the body. If we permit the heart thus to revolt, the kidneys, taking the example of the heart, may in their turn rebel and cease to work for the good of the organism. This rebellion, multiplying to the other organs and the glandular system, brings about the death of the "individual." We can see with easy that the revolt is death, that the revolt of any part of the organism results in death. Thus we see that there can be no compromise with rebellion. Like the "individual" man, the State is a collection of aggregations. The political entities within the State must, all of them, co-operate for the greater good of the State lest the State itself fall asunder and die, for with the disaffection of any single distrust we discover and example set for other districts, and we discover, at length, the entire State falling. This is the danger of revolution. Look at Earth. We see here one entire organism. The organism of Earth is an individual organism. Earth has as its organs the various races and nations of men. Where one of these is permitted to remain disaffected, Earth itself is threatened with death. The threatened rebellion of one country, no matter now small, against the total organism of Earth, would find Earth sick, and the cultural state of man to suffer in consequence . Thus, the putrescent illness of Capitalist States, spreading their puss and bacteria into the healthy countries of the world would not do otherwise than bring about the death of Earth, unless these ill organisms are brought into loyalty and obedience and made to function for the greater good of the world-wide State. The constitution of Man is so composed that the individual cannot function efficiently without the alignment of each and every part and organ of his anatomy. As the average individual is incapable, in an unformed and uncultured state, as witness the barbarians of the jungle, so must he be trained into a co-ordination of his organic functions by exercise, education, and work toward specific goals. We particularly and specifically note that the individual must be directed from without to accomplish his exercise, education, and work. He must be made to realize this, for only then can he be made to function efficiently in the role assigned to him. The tenets of rugged individualism, personal determinism, self-will, imagination, and personal creativeness are alike in the masses antipathetic to the good of the Greater State. These willful and unaligned forces are no more than illnesses which will bring about the disaffection, disunity, and at length the collapse of the group to which the individual is attached. The constitution of Man lends itself easily and thoroughly to certain and positive regulation from without of all of its functions, including those of thinking, obedience, and loyalty, and these things must be controlled if a greater State is to ensue. While it may seem desirable to the surgeon to amputate one or another limb or organ in order to save the remainder, it must be pointed out that this expediency is not entirely possible of accomplishment where one considers entire nations. A body deprived of organs can be observed to be lessened by its effectiveness. The world deprived of the workers now enslaved by the insane and nonsensical idiocies of the Capitalists and Monarchs of Earth, would, if removed, create a certain disability in the world-wide State. Just as we see the victor forced to rehabilitate the population of a conquered country at the end of a war, thus any effort to depopulate a disaffected portion of the world might have some consequence. However, let us consider the inroad of virus and bacteria hostile to the organism, and we see that unless we can conquer the germ, the organ or organism which it is attacking will, itself, suffer. In any State we have certain individuals who operate in the role of the virus and germ, and these, attacking the population or any group within the population, produce, by their self-willed greed, a sickness in the organ, which then generally spreads to the whole. The constitution of Man as an individual body, or the constitution of a State or a portion of the State as a political organism are analogous. It is the mission of Psychopolitics first to align the obedience and goals of the group, and then maintain their alignment by the eradication of the effectiveness of the persons and personalities which might swerve the group towards disaffection. In our own nation, where things are better managed and where reason reigns above all else, it is not difficult to eradicate the self-willed bacteria which might attack one of our political entities. But in the field of conquest, in nations less enlightened, where the Russian State does not yet have power, it is not as feasible to remove the entire self-willed individual. Psychopolitics makes it possible to remove that art of his personality which, in itself, is making havoc with the person's own constitution as well as the group with which the person is connected. If the animal man were permitted to continue undisturbed by counter-revolutionary propaganda, if he were left to work under the well-planned management of the State, we would discover little sickness amongst Man, and we would discover no sickness in the State. But where the individual is troubled by conflicting propaganda, where he is made the effect of revolutionary activities, where he is permitted to think thoughts critical of the State itself, where he is permitted to question of those in whose natural charge he falls, we would discover his constitution to suffer. We would discover, from this disaffection, the additional disaffection of his heart and of other portions of his anatomy;. So certain is this principle that when one finds a sick individual, could one search deeply enough, he would discover a mis-aligned loyalty and an interrupted obedience to that person's group unit. There are those who foolishly have embarked upon some spiritual Alice-in-Wonderland voyage into what they call the "subconscious" or the "unconscious" mind, and who, under the guise of "psychotherapy" would seek to make well the disaffection of body organs, but it is to be noted that their results are singularly lacking in success. There is no strength in such an approach. When hypnotism was first invented in Russia, it was observed that all that was necessary was to command the unresisting individual to be well in order, many times, to accomplish that fact. The limitation of hypnotism was that many subjects were not susceptible to its uses, and thus hypnotism has had to be improved upon in order to increase the suggestibility of individuals who would not otherwise be reached. Thus, any nation has had the experience of growing well again, as a whole organism, when placing sufficient force in play against a disaffected group. Just as in hypnotism any organ can be commanded into greater loyalty and obedience, so can any political group be commanded into greater loyalty and obedience should sufficient force be employed. However, force often brings about destruction and it is occasionally not feasible to use broad mass force t o accomplish the ends in view. Thus, it is necessary to align the individual against his desire not to conform. Just as it is a recognized truth that Man must conform to his environment, so it is a recognized truth, and will become more so as the years proceed, that even the body of Man can be commanded into health. The constitution of Man renders itself peculiarly adapted to re-alignment of loyalties. Where these loyalties are indigestible to the constitution of the individual itself, such as loyalties to the 'petit bourgeoisie,' the Capitalist, to anti-Russian ideas, we find the individual body peculiarly susceptible to sickness, and thus we can clearly understand the epidemics, illnesses, mass-neuroses, tumults and confusions of the United States and other capitalist countries. Here we find the worker improperly and incorrectly loyal, and thus we find the worker ill. To save him and establish him correctly and properly upon his goal toward a greater State, it is an overpowering necessity to make it possible for him to grant his loyalties in a correct direction. In that his loyalties are swerved and his obedience cravenly demanded by persons antipathetic to his general good, and in that these persons are few, even in a Capitalist nation, the goal and direction of Psychopolitics is clearly understood. To benefit the worker in such a plight, it is necessary to eradicate, by general propaganda, by other means, and by his own co-operation, and self-willedness of perverted leaders. It is necessary, as well, to indoctrinate the educated strata into the tenets and principles of co-operation with the environment, and thus to insure the worker less warped leadership, less craven doctrine, and more co-operation with the ideas and ideals of the Communist State. The technologies of Psychopolitics are directed to this end. CHAPTER III MAN AS AN ECONOMIC ORGANISM Man is subject to certain desires and needs which are as natural to his being as they are to that of any other animal. Man, however, has the peculiarity of exaggerating some of these beyond the bounds of reason. This is obvious through the growth of leisure classes, pseudo-intellectual groups, the "petit bourgeoisie," Capitalism, and ott her ills. It has been said, with truth, that one tenth of a man's life is concerned with politics and nine-tenths with economics. Without food, the individual dies. Without clothing, he freezes. Without houses and weapons, he is prey to the starving wolves. The acquisition of sufficient items to answer these necessities of food, clothing and shelter, in reason, is the natural right of a member of an enlightened State. An excess of such items brings about unrest and disquiet. The presence of luxury items and materials, and the artificial creation and whetting of appetites, as in Capitalist advertising, are certain to accentuate the less-desirable characteristics of Man. The individual is an economic organism, in that he requires a certain amount of food, a certain amount of water, and must hold within himself a certain amount of heat in order to live. When he has more food than he can eat, more clothing than he needs to protect him, he then enters upon a certain idleness which dulls his wits and awareness, and makes him prey to difficulties which, in a less toxic state, he would have foreseen and avoided. Thus, we have a glut of being a menace to the individual. It is no less different in a group. Where the group acquires too much, its awareness of its own fellows and of the environment is accordingly reduced, and the effectiveness the group in general is lost. The maintaining of a balance between gluttony and need is the province of Economics proper, and is the fit subject and concern of the Communist State. Desire and want are a state of mind. Individuals can be educated into desiring and wanting more than they can ever possibly obtain, and such individuals are unhappy. Most of the self-willed characteristics of the Capitalists come entirely from greed. He exploits the worker far beyond any necessity on his own part, as a Capitalist, to need. In a nation where economic balances are not controlled, the appetite of the individual is unduly whetted by enchanting and fanciful persuasions to desire, and a type of insanity ensues, where each individual is persuaded to possess more than he can use, and to possess it even at the expense of his fellows. There is, in economic balances, the other side. Too great and too long privation can bring about unhealthy desires, which, in themselves, accumulate in left action, more than the individual can use. Poverty, itself, as carefully cultivated in Capitalist States, can bring about an imbalance of acquisition. Just as a vacuum will pull into it masses, in a country where enforced privation upon the masses is permitted, and where desire is artificially whetted, need turns to greed, and one easily discovers in such states exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. If one, by the technologies of Psychopolitics, were to dull the excessive greed in the few who possess it, the worker would be freed to seek a more natural balance. Here we have two extremes. Either one of them are an insanity. If we wish to create an insanity we need only glut or deprive an individual at long length beyond the ability to withstand and we have a mental imbalance. A simple example of this is the alternation of too low with too high pressures in a chamber, an excellent psychopolitical procedure. The rapidly varied pressure brings about a chaos wherein the individual will cannot act and where other wills then, perforce, assume control. Essentially, in an entire country, one must remove the greedy by whatever means and must then create and continue a semi-privation in the masses in order to command and utterly control the nation. A continuous hope for prosperity must be indoctrinated into the masses with many dreams and visions of glut of commodity and this hope must be counter-played against the actuality of privation and the continuous threat of loss of all economic factors in case of disloyalty to the State in order to suppress the individual wills of the masses. In a nation under conquest, such as America, our slow and stealthy approach need take advantage only of the cycles of booms and depressions inherent in Capitalistic nations in order to assert of more and more strong control over individual wills. A boom is as advantageous as a depression for our ends, for during prosperity our propaganda lines must only continue to point up the wealth the period is delivering to the selected few to divorce their control of the State. During a depression one must only point out that it ensued as a result of the avarice of a few and the general political incompetence of the national leaders. The handling of economic propaganda is not properly the sphere of psychopolitics but the psychopolitician must understand the economic measures and Communist goals connected with them. The masses must at last come to believe that only excessive taxation of the rich can deliver them of the "burdensome leisure class" and can thus be brought to accept such a thing as income tax, a Marxist principle smoothly slid into Capitalistic framework in 1909-1913 in the United States. This, even though the basic law of the United States forbade it and even though Communism at that time had been active only a few years in America. Such success as the Income Tax law, had it been followed thoroughly could have brought the United States and not Russia into the world scene as the first Communist nation. But the virility and good sense of the Russian peoples won. It may not be that the United States will become entirely Communist until past the middle of the century, but when it does it will be because of our superior understanding of economics and of psychopolitics. The Communist agent skilled in economics has as his task the suborning of tax agencies and their personnel to create the maximum disturbances and chaos and the passing of laws adapted to our purposes and to him we must leave this task. The psychopolitical operator plays a distinctly different role in this drama. The rich, the skilled in finance,the well informed in government are particular and individual targets for the psychopolitician. His is the role of taking off the board those individuals who would halt or corrupt Communist economic programs. Thus every rich man, every statesman, ever person well informed and capable in government, must have brought to his side as a trusted confidant, a psychopolitical operator. The families of these persons are often deranged from idleness and glut and this fact must be played upon, even created. The normal health and wildness of a rich man's son must be twisted and perverted and explained into neurosis and then, assisted by a timely administration of drugs or violence, turned into criminality or insanity. This brings at once someone in "mental healing" into confidential contact with the family and from this point on the very most must then be made of that contact. Communism could best succeed if at the side of every rich or influential man there could be placed a psychopolitical operator, an undoubted authority in the field of "mental healing" who could then by his advice or through the medium of a wife or daughter by his guided options direct the optimum policy to embroil or upset the economic policies of the country and, when the time comes to do away forever with the rich or influential man, to administer the proper drug or treatment to bring about his complete demise in an institution as a patient or dead, as a suicide. Planted beside a country's powerful persons the psychopolitical operator can also guide other policies to the betterment of our battle. The Capitalist does not know the definition of war. He things of war as attack with force performed by soldiers and machines. He does not know that a more effective if somewhat longer w ar can be fought with bread or, in our case, with drugs and the wisdom of our art. The Capitalist has never won a war in truth. The psychopolitician is having little trouble winning this one. CHAPTER IV STATE GOALS FOR THE INDIVIDUAL AND MASSES Just as we would discover an individual to be ill, whose organs, each one, had a different goal from the rest, so we discover the individuals and the State to be ill where goals are not rigorously codified and enforced. There are those who, in less enlightened times, gave Man to believe that goals should be personally sought and held, and that, indeed, Man's entire impulse toward higher things stemmed from Freedom. We must remember that the same peoples who embraced this philosophy also continued in Man the myth of spiritual existence. All goals proceed from duress. Life is a continuous escape. Without force and threat, there can be no striving. Without pain, there can be no desire to escape from pain. Without the threat of punishment, there can be no gain. Without duress and command, there can be no alignment of bodily functions. Without rigorous and forthright control, there ca be no accomplished goals for the State. Goals of the State should be formulated by the State for the obedience and concurrence of the individuals within that State. A State without goals so formulated is a sick State. A State without the power and forthright wish to enforce its goals is a sick State. When an order is issued by the Communist State, and is not obeyed, a sickness will be discovered to ensue. Where obedience fails, the masses suffer. State goals depend upon loyalty and obedience for their accomplishment. When one discovers a State goal to be interpreted, one discovers inevitably that there has been an interposition of self-willedness, of greed, of idleness, or of rugged individualism and self-centered initiative.The interruption of a State goal will be discovered as having been interrupted by a person whose disloyalty and disobedience is the direct result of his own mis-alignment with life. It is not always necessary to remove the individual. It is possible to remove his self-willed tendencies to the improvement of the goals and gains of the whole. The technologies of Psychopolitics are graduated upon the scale which starts somewhat above the removal of the individual himself, upward toward the removal only of those tendencies which bring about his lack of co-operation. It is not enough for the State to have goals. These goals, once put forward, depend upon their completion, upon the loyalty and obedience of the workers. These, engaged for the most part, in hard labors, have little time for idle speculation, which is good. But, above them, unfortunately, there must be foremen of one or another position, and one of whom might have sufficient idleness and lack of physical occupation to cause some disaffecting independency in his conduct and behaviour. Psychopolitics remedies this tendency toward disaffection when it exceeds the common persuasions of the immediate superiors of the person in question. CHAPTER V AN EXAMINATION OF LOYALTIES If loyalty is so important in the economic and social structure, it is necessary to examine it further as itself. In the field of Psychopolitics, loyalty means simply 'alignment.' It means, more fully, alignment with the goals of the Communist State. Disloyalty means entirely mis-alignment, and more broadly, mis-alignment with the goals of the Communist State. When we consider that the goals of the Communist State are to the best possible benefit of the masses, we can see that disloyalty, as a term, can embrace Democratic alignment. Loyalty to persons not communistically indoctrinated would be quite plainly a mis-alignment. The cure of disloyalty is entirely contained in the principles of alignment. All that is necessary to do, where disloyalty is encountered, is to align the purposes of the individual toward the goals of Communism, and it will be discovered that a great many circumstances hitherto distasteful in his existence will cease to exist. A heart, or a kidney in rebellion against the remainder of the organism is being disloyal to the remainder of the organism. To cure the heart or kidney it is actually only necessary to bring its activities into alignment with the remainder of the body. The technologies of Psychopolitics adequately demonstrate the workability of this. Mild shock of the electric variety can, and does, produce the re-cooperation of a rebellious body organ. It is the shock and punishment of surgery which, in the main, accomplishes the re-alignment of a disaffected portion of the body, rather than the surgery itself. It is the bombardment of X-Rays, rather than the therapeutic value of X-Rays which causes some disaffected organ to once again turn its attention to the support of the general organism. While it is not borne out that electric shock has any therapeutic value, so far as making the individual more sane, it is adequately brought out that its punishment value will create in the patient a greater co-operative attitude. Brain surgery has no statistical data to recommend it beyond its removal of the individual personality from amongst the paths of organs which were not permitted to co-operate. These two Russian developments have never pretended to alter the state of sanity. They are only effective and workable in introducing an adequate punishment mechanism to the personality to make it cease and desist from its courses and egotistical direction of the anatomy itself. It is the violence of the electric shock and the surgery which is useful in subduing the recalcitrant personality, which is all that stands in the road of the masses or the State. It is occasionally to be discovered that the removal of the preventing personality by shock and surgery then permits the regrowth and re-establishment of organs which have been rebelled against by that personality. In what a well-regulated state is composed of organisms, not personalities, the use of electric shock and brain surgery in Psychopolitics is clearly demonstrated. The changing of loyalty consists, in its primary step, of the eradication of existing loyalties. This can be done in one of two ways. First, by demonstrating that previously existing loyalties have brought about perilous physical circumstances, such as imprisonment, lack of recognition, duress, or privation, and second by eradicating the personality itself. The first is accomplished by a steady and continuous indoctrination of the individual in the belief that his previous loyalties have been granted to an unworthy source. One of the primary instances in this is creating circumstances which apparently derive from the target of his loyalties, so as to rebuff the individual. As part of this there is the creation of a state of mind in the individual, by actually placing him under duress, and then furnishing him with false evidence to demonstrate that the target of his previous loyalties is, itself, the course of the duress. Another portion of this same method consists of defaming or degrading the individual whose loyalties are to be changed to the target of his loyalties, i.e., superiors or government, to such a degree that this target, at length, actually does hold the individual in disrepute, and so does rebuff him and serve to convince him that his loyalties have been misplaced. These are the milder methods, but have proven extremely effective. The greatest drawback in their practice is that they require time and concentration, the manufacture of false evidence, and a psychopolitical operator's time. In moments of expediency, of which there are many, the personality itself can be rearranged by shock, surgery, duress, privation, and in particular, that best of psychopolitical techniques, implantation, with the technologies of neo-hypnotism. Such duress must have in its first part a defamation of the loyalties, and in its second, the implantation of new loyalties. A good and experienced psychopolitical operator, working under the most favorable circumstances, can, by the use of psychopolitical technologies, alter the loyalties of an individual so deftly that his own companions will not suspect that they have changed. This, however, requires considerably more finesse than is usually necessary to the situation. Mass neo-hypnotism can accomplish more or less the same results when guided by an experienced psychopolitical operator. An end goal in such a procedure would be the alteration of the loyalties of an entire nation in a short period of time by mass neo-hypnotism, a thing which has been effectively accomplished among the less-usable states of Russia. It is adequately demonstrated that loyalty is entirely lacking in that mythical commodity known as 'spiritual quality.' Loyalty is entirely a thing of dependence, economic or mental, and can be changed by the crudest implementations. Observation of workers in their factories or fields demonstrates that they easily grant loyalty to a foreman or a woman, and then as easily abandon it and substitute another individual, revulsing, at the same time, toward the person to whom loyalty was primarily granted. The queasy insecurity of the masses in Capitalistic nations finds this more common than in an enlightened State, such as Russia. In Capitalistic states, dependencies are so craven, wants and privations are so exaggerated, that loyalty is entirely without ethical foundation and exists only in the realm of dependency, duress, or demand. It is fortunate that Communism so truly approaches an ideal state of mind, for this brings a certain easiness into any changing loyalties, since all other philosophies extant and practiced on Earth today are degraded and debased, compared to Communism. It is then with a certain security that a psychopolitical operator functions, for he knows that he can change the loyalty of an individual to a more ideal level by reason alone, and only expediency makes it necessary to employ the various shifts of psychopolitical technology. Any man who cannot be persuaded into Communist rationale is, of course, to be regarded as somewhat less than sane, and it is, therefore completely justified to use the techniques of insanity upon the non-Communist. In order to change loyalty it is necessary to establish first the existing loyalties of the individual. The task is made very simple in view of the fact that Capitalistic and Fascistic nations have no great security in the loyalty of their subjects. And it may be found that the loyalties of the subjects, as we call any person against whom psychopolitical technology is to be exerted, are already too faint to require eradication. It is generally only necessary to persuade with the rationale and overwhelming reasonability of Communism to have the person grant his loyalty to the Russian State. However, regulated only by the importance of the subject, no great amount of time should be expended upon the individual, but emotional duress, or electric shock, or brain surgery should be resorted to, should Communist propaganda persuasion fail. In a case of a very important person, it may be necessary to utilize the more delicate technologies of Psychopolitics so as to place the per son himself, and his associates, in ignorance of the operation. In this case a simple implantation is used, with a maximum duress and command value. Only the most skilled psychopolitical operator should be employed on such a project, as in this case of the very important person, for a bungling might disclose the tampering with his mental processes. It is much more highly recommended, if there is any doubt whatever about the success of an operation against an important person, to select out as a psychopolitical target persons i his vicinity in whom he is emotionally involved. His wife or children normally furnish the best targets, and these can be operated against without restraint. In securing the loyalty of a very important person one must place at his side a constant pleader who enters a sexual or familial chord into the situation on the side of Communism. It may not be necessary to make a Communist out of the wife, or the children, or one of the children, but it might prove efficacious to do so. In most instances, however, this is not possible. By the use of various drugs, it is, in this modern age, and well within the realm of psychopolitical reality, entirely too easy to bring about a state of severe neurosis or insanity in the wife or children, and thus pass them, with full consent of the important person, and the government in which he exists, or the bureau in which he is operating, into the hands of a psychopolitical operator, who then in his own laboratory, without restraint or fear of investigation or censor, can, with electric shock, surgery, sexual attack, drugs, or other useful means, degrade or entirely alter the personality of a family member, and create in that person a psychopolitical slave subject who, then, on command or signal, will perform outrageous actions, thus discrediting the important person, or will demand, on a more delicate level, that certain measures be taken by the important person, which measures are, of course, dictated by the psychopolitical operator. Usually when the party has no real interest in the activities of decisions of the important person, but merely wishes to remove him from effective action, the attention of the psychopolitical operator need not to be so intense, and the person need only be passed into the hands of some unwitting mental practitioner, who taught as he is by psychopolitical operators, will bring about sufficient embarrassment. When the loyalty of an individual cannot be swerved, and where the opinion, weight, or effectiveness of the individual stands firmly in the road of Communist goals, it is usually best to occasion a mild neurosis in the person by any available means, and then, having carefully given him a history of mental imbalance, to see to it that he disposes of himself by suicide, or by bringing about his demise in such a way as to resemble suicide. Psychopolitical operators have handled such situations skillfully tens of thousands of times, within and without Russia. It is a firm principle of Psychopolitics that the person to be destroyed must be involved at first or second hand in the stigma of insanity, and must have been placed in contact with psychopolitical operators or persons trained by them, with a maximum amount of tumult and publicity. The stigma of insanity is properly placed at the door of such persons' reputations and is held there firmly by bringing about irrational acts, either on his own part or in his vicinity. Such an activity can be classified as a partial destruction of alignment, and if this destruction is carried forward to its furthest extent the mis-alignment on the subject of all loyalties can be considered to be complete, and alignment on new loyalties can be embarked upon safely. By bringing about insanity or suicide on the part of the wife of an important political personage, a sufficient mis-alignment has been instigated to change his attitude. And this, carried forward firmly, or assisted by psychopolitical implantation can begin the rebuilding of his loyalties, but now slanted in a more proper and fitting direction. Another reason for the alignment of psychopolitical activities with the mis-alignment of insanity in that insanity, itself, is a despised and disgraced state, and anything connected with it is lightly viewed. Thus, a psychopolitical operator, working in the vicinity of an insane person, can refute and disprove any accusations made against him by demonstrating that the family itself is tainted with mental imbalance. This is surprisingly effective in Capitalistic countries where insanity is so thoroughly feared that no one would dream of investigating any circumstances in its vicinity. Psychopolitical propaganda works constantly and must work constantly to increase and build up this aura of mystery surrounding insanity, and must emphasize the horribleness of insanity in order to excuse non-therapeutic actions taken against the insane. Particularly in Capitalistic countries, an insane person has no rights under law. No person who is insane may hold property. No person who is insane may testify. Thus, we have an excellent road along which we can travel toward our certain goal and destiny. Entirely by bringing about public conviction that the sanity of a person is in question, it is possible to discount and eradicate all of the goals and activities of that person. By demonstrating the insanity of a group, or even a government, it is possible, then, to cause its people to disavow it. By magnifying the general human reaction to insanity, through keeping the subject of insanity, itself, forever before the public eye, and then, by utilizing this reaction by causing a revulsion on the part of a populace against its leaders or leaders, it is possible to stop any government or movement. It is important to know that the entire subject of loyalty is thus as easily handled as it is. One of the first and foremost missions of the psychopolitician is to make an attack upon Communism and insanity synonymous. It should become the definition of insanity, of the paranoid variety, that "A paranoid believes he is being attacked by Communists." Thus, at once the support of the individual so attacking Communism will fall away and wither. Instead of executing national leaders, suicide for them should be arranged under circumstances which question their demise. In this way we can select out all opposition to the Communist extension into the social orders of the world, and render populace who would oppose us leaderless, and bring about a state of chaos or mis-alignment into which we can thrust, with great simplicity, the clear and forceful doctrines of Communism. The cleverness of our attack in this field of Psychopolitics is adequate to avoid the understanding of the layman and the usual stupid official, and by operating entirely under the banner of authority, with the oft-repeated statement that the principles of psychotherapy are too devious for common understanding, an entire revolution can be effected without the suspicion of a populace until it is an accomplished fact. As insanity is the maximum mis-alignment, it can be grasped to be the maximum weapon in severance of loyalties to leaders and old social orders. Thus, it is of the utmost importance that psychopolitical operative infiltrate the healing arts of a nation marked for conquest, and bring that quarter continuous pressure against the population and the government until at last the conquest is affected. This is the subject and goal of Psychopolitics, itself. In rearranging loyalties we must have a command of their values. In the animal the first loyalty is to himself. This is destroyed by demonstrating errors to him, showing him that he does not remember, cannot act or does not trust himself. The second loyalty is to his family unit, his parents and brothers and sisters. This is destroyed by making a family unit economically non-dependent, by lessening the value of marriage, by making an easiness of divorce and by raising the children whenever possible by the State. The next loyalty is to his friends and local environment. This is destroyed by lowering his tru st and bringing about reportings upon him allegedly by his fellows or the town or village authorities. The next is to the State and this, for the purposes of Communism, is the only loyalty which should exist once the state is founded as a Communist State. To destroy loyalty to the State all manner of forbidding for youth must be put into effect so as to disenfranchise them as members of the Capitalist state and, by promises of a better lot under Communism, to gain their loyalty to a Communist movement. Denying a Capitalist country easy access to courts, bringing about and supporting propaganda to destroy the home, creating and continuous juvenile delinquentcy, forcing upon the state all manner of practices to divorce the child from it will in the end create chaos necessary to Communism. Under the saccharine guise of assistance to them, rigorous child labor laws are the best means to deny the child any right in society. By refusing to let him earn, by forcing him into unwanted dependence upon a grudging parent, by making certain in other channels that the parent is never in other than economic stress, the child can be driven in his teens into revolt. Delinquency will ensue. By making readily available drugs of various kinds, by giving the teen-ager alcohol, by praising his wildness, by stimulating him with sex literature and advertising to him or her practices as taught at the Sexpol, the psychopolitical operator can create the necessary attitude of chaos, idleness and worthlessness into which can then be cast the solution which will give the teen ager complete freedom everywhere --Communism. Should it be possible to continue conscription beyond any reasonable time by promoting unpopular wars and other means, the draft can always stand as a further barrier to the progress of youth in life, destroying any immediate hope to participate in his nation's civil life. By these means the patriotism of youth for their Capitalistic flag can be dulled to a point where they are no longer dangerous as soldiers. While this might require many decades to effect, Capitalisms short term view will never envision the lengths across which we can plan. If we could effectively kill the national pride and patriotism of just one generation, we will have won that country. Therefore, there must be continual propaganda abroad to undermine the loyalty of the citizens in general and the teen-ager in particular. The role of the psychopolitical operator in this is very strong. He can, from his position as an authority on the mind, advise all manner of destructive measures. He can teach the lack of control of this child at home. He can instruct, in an optimum situation, the entire nation in how to handle children -- and instruct them so that the children, given no control, given no real home, can run wildly about with no responsibility for their nation or themselves. The mis-alignment of the loyalty of youth to a Capitalistic nation sets the proper stage for a realignment of their loyalties toward Communism. Creating a greed for drugs, sexual misbehavior and uncontrolled freedom and presenting this to them as a benefit of Communism, will with ease, bring about our alignment. In the case of strong leaders amongst youthful groups, a psychopolitical operator can work in many ways to use or discard that leadership. If it is to be used, the character of a girl or boy must be altered carefully into criminal channels and a control by blackmail, or other means, must be maintained. But where the leadership is not susceptible, where it resists all persuasions and might become dangerous to our Cause, no pains must be spared to direct the attention of the authorities to that person and to harass him in one way or another until he can come into the hands of the juvenile authorities. When this has been effected, it can be hoped that a psychopolitical operator, by reason of child advisor status, can, in the security of the jail and cloaked by processes of law, destroy the sanity of that person. Particularly brilliant scholars, athletes and youth group leaders must be handled in either one of these two ways. In the matter of guiding the activities of juvenile courts, the psychopolitical operator entertains here one of his easier tasks. A Capitalistic nation is so filled with injustice in general that a little more passes without comment. In juvenile courts there are always persons with strange appetites whether these be judges or police man or women. If such do not exist, they can be created. By making available to them young girls or boys in the "security" of the jail or the detention home and by appearing with flash cameras or witnesses one becomes equiped with a whip adequate to direct all the future decisions of that person when these are needed. The handling of youth cases by courts should be led further and further away from law and further and further into "mental problems" until the entire nation thinks of "mental problems" instead of criminals. This places vacancies everywhere in the courts, in the offices of district attorneys, or police staffs which could then be filled with psychopolitical operators and these become the judges of the land by their influence and into their hands comes the total control of the criminal, without whose help a revolution cannot ever be accomplished. By stressing this authority over the problems of youth and adults in courts one day the demand for psychopolitical operators could become such that even the armed services will use "authorities on the mind" to work their various justices and when this occurs, the armed forces of the nation then enter into our hands as solidly as if we commanded them ourselves. With the slight bonus of having thus a skilled interrogator near every technician or handler of secret war apparatus, the country, in even of revolution, as did Germany in 1918 and 1919 will find itself immobilized by its own Army and Navy fully and entirely in Communist hands. Thus the subject of loyalties and their re-alignment is in fact the subject of non-armed conquest of an enemy. _________________________________________________________________ [20] Part 2 References 1. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics#anchorED 2. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics#anchorADD 3. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics#anchor1 4. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics#anchor2 5. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics#anchor3 6. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics#anchor4 7. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics#anchor5 8. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor6 9. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor7 10. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor8 11. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor9 12. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor10 13. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor11 14. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor12 15. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor13 16. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor14 17. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor15 18. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html#anchor16 19. http://www.dana.edu/~dwarman/rwp.htm 20. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html ----------- The Soviet Art of Brain Washing / A Synthesis of the Russian textbook on Psychopolitics http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics-pt2.html A synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics _________________________________________________________________ Part 2 _________________________________________________________________ CHAPTER VI THE GENERAL SUBJECT OF OBEDIENCE Obedience is the result of force. Everywhere we look in the history of the Earth we discover that obedience to new rulers has come about entirely through the demonstration on the part of those rulers of greater force than was to be discovered in the old ruler. A population overridden, conquered by war, is obedient to its conqueror. It is obedient to its conqueror because its conqueror has exhibited more force. Concurrent with force is brutality, for there are human considerations involved which also represent force. The most barbaric, unrestrained, brutal use of force, if carried far enough, invokes obedience. Savage force, sufficiently long displayed toward any individual, will bring about his concurrence with any principle or order. Force is the antithesis of humanizing actions. It is so synonymous in the human mind with savageness, lawlessness, brutality, and barbarism, that it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people, to be granted by those people the possession of force. Any organization which has the spirit and courage to display inhumanity, savageness, brutality, and an uncompromising lack of humanity, will be obeyed. Such a use of force is, itself, the essential ingredient of greatness. We have o hand no less an example to our great Communist Leaders, who, in moments of duress and trial, when faced by Czarist rule, continued over the heads of an enslaved populace, yet displayed sufficient courage never to stay their hands in the execution of the conversion of the Russian State to Communist rule. If you would have obedience you must have no compromise with humanity. If you would have obedience you must make it clearly understood that you have no mercy. Man is an animal. He understands, in the final analysis, only those things which a brute understands. As an example of this, we find an individual refusing to obey and being struck. His refusal to obey is now less vociferous. He is struck again, and his resistance is lessened once more. He is hammered and pounded again and again, until, at length, his only thought is direct and implicit obedience to that person from whom the force has emanated. This is a proven principle. It is proven because it is the main principle of Man, the animal, has used since his earliest beginnings. It is the only principle which has been effective, the only principle which has brought about a wide and continued belief. For it is to our benefit that an individual who is struck again, and again, and again from a certain source, will, at length, hypnotically believe anything he is told by the source of the blows. The stupidity of Western civilizations is best demonstrated by the fact that they believe hypnotism is a thing of the mind, of attention, and a desire for unconsciousness. This is not true. Only when a person has been beaten, punished, and mercilessly hammered, can hypnotism upon him be guaranteed in its effectiveness. It is stated by Western authorities on hypnosis that only some twenty percent of the people are susceptible to hypnotism. This statement is very untrue. Given enough punishment, all of the people in any time and place are susceptible to hypnotism. In other words, by adding force, hypnotism is made uniformly effective. Where unconsciousness could not be induced by simple concentration upon the hypnotist, unconsciousness can be induced by drugs, by blows, by electric shock, and by other means. And where unconsciousness cannot be induced so as to make an implantation or an hypnotic command effective, it is only necessary to amputate the functioning portions of the animal man's brain to render him null and void and no longer a menace. Thus, we find that hypnotism is entirely effective. The mechanisms of hypnotism demonstrate clearly that people can be made to believe in certain conditions, and even in their environments or in politics, by the administration of force. Thus, it is necessary for a psychopolitician to be an expert in the administration of forces. Thus, he can bring about implicit obedience, not only on the part of individual members of the populace, but on the entire populace itself and its government. He need only take unto himself a sufficiently savage role, a sufficiently uncompromising inhuman attitude, and he will be obeyed and believed. The subject of hypnotism is a subject of belief. What can people be made to believe? They can be made to believe anything which is administered to them with sufficient brutality and force. The obedience of a populace is as good as they will believe. Despicable religions, such as Christianity, knew this. They knew that if enough faith could be brought into being a populace could be enslaved by the Christian mockeries of humanity and mercy, and thus could be disarmed. But one need not count upon this act of faith to bring about a broad belief. One must only exhibit enough force, enough inhumanity, enough brutality and savageness to create implicit belief and therefore and thereby implicit obedience. As Communism is a mater of belief, its study is a study of force. The earliest Russian psychiatrists, pioneering this science of psychiatry, understood thoroughly that hypnosis is induced by acute fear. They discovered it could also be induced by shock of an emotional nature, and also by extreme privation, as well as by blows and drugs. In order to induce a high state of hypnosis in an individual, a group, or a population, an element of terror must always be present on the part of those who would govern. The psychiatrist is aptly suited to this role, for his brutalities are committed in the name of science and are inexplicably complex, and entirely out of the view of the human understanding. A sufficient popular terror of the psychiatrist will, in itself, bring about insanity on the part of many individuals. A psychopolitical operative, then, can, entirely cloaked with authority, commence and continue a campaign of propaganda, describing various "treatments" which are administered to the insane. He can, in all of his literature and his books, list large numbers of pretended cures by these means. But these "cures" need not actually produce any recovery from a state of disturbance. As long as the psychopolitical operative or his dupes are the only authorities as to the difference between sanity and insanity, their word as to the therapeutic value of such treatment will be the final word. No layman would dare adventure to place judgement upon the state of sanity of an individual who the psychiatrist has already declared insane. The individual, himself, is unable to complain, and his family, as will be covered later, is already discredited by the occurrence of insanity in their midst. There must be no other adjudicators of insanity, otherwise it could be disclosed that the brutalities practiced in the name of treatment are not therapeutic. A psychopolitical operative has no interest in "therapeutic means" or "cures." The greater number of insane in the country where he is operating, the larger number of the populace will come under his view, and the greater will become his facilities. Because the problem is apparently mounting into uncontrollable heights, he can more and more operate in an atmosphere of emergency, which again excuses his use of such treatments as electric shock, the pre-frontal lobotomy, trans-orbital leucotomy, and other operations long-since practiced in Russia on political prisoners. IT is to the interest of the psychopolitical operative that the possibility of curing the insane be outlawed and ruled out at all times. For the sake of obedience on the part of the population and their general reaction, a level or brutality must, at all costs, be maintained. Only in this way can the absolute judgement of the psychopolitical operative as to the sanity or insanity of public figures be maintained in complete belief. Using sufficient brutality upon their patients, the public at large will come to believe utterly anything they say about their patients. Furthermore, and much more important, the field of the mind must be sufficiently dominated by th e psychopolitical operative, so that whatever tenets of the mind are taught they will be hypnotically believed. The psychopolitical operative, having under his control all psychology classes in an area, can thus bring about a complete reformation of the future leaders of a country in their educational processes, and so prepare them for Communism. To be obeyed, once must be believed. If one is sufficiently believed, one will unquestioningly be obeyed. When he is fortunate enough to obtain into his hands anyone near to a political or important figure, this factor of obedience becomes very important. A certain amount of fear or terror must be engendered in the person under treatment so that this person will then take immediate orders, completely and unquestioningly, from the psychopolitical operative, and so be able to influence the actions of that person who is to be reached. Bringing about this state of mind on the part of a population and its leaders -- that a psychopolitical operative must, at all times, be believed -- could eventually be attended by very good fortune. It is not too much to hope that psychopolitical operatives would then, in a country such as the United States, become the very intimate advisors to political figures, even to the point of advising the entirety of a political party as to its actions in an election. The long view is the important view. Belief is engendered by a certain amount of fear and terror from an authoritative level, and this will be followed by obedience. The general propaganda which would best serve Psychopolitics would be a continual insistence that certain authoritative levels of healing, deemed this or that the correct treatment of insanity. These treatments must always include a certain amount of brutality. Propaganda should continue and stress the rising incidence of insanity in a country. The entire field of human behaviour, for the benefit of the country, can, at length, be broadened into abnormal behaviour. Thus, anyone indulging in any eccentricity, particularly the eccentricity of combatting psychopolitics, could be silenced by the authoritative opinion on the part of a psychopolitical operative that he is acting in an abnormal fashion. This, with some good fortune, could bring the person into the hands of the psychopolitical operative so as to forever more disable him, or to swerve his loyalties by pain-drug hypnotism. On the subject of obedience itself, the most optimum obedience is unthinking obedience. The command gien must be obeyed without any rationalizing on the part of the subject. The command must, therefore, be implanted below the thinking process of the subject to be influenced, and must react upon him in such a way as to bring no mental alertness on his part. It is in the interest of Psychopolitics that a population be told that an hypnotized person will not do anything against his actual will, will not commit immoral acts, and will not act so as to endanger himself. While this may be true of light, parlour hypnotism, it certainly is not true of commands implanted with the use of electric shock, drugs, or heavy punishment. It is counted upon completely that this will be discredited to the general public by psychopolitical operatives, for if it were to be generally known that individuals would obey commands harmful to themselves, and would commit immoral acts while under the influence of deep hypnotic commands, the actions of many people, working unknowingly in favor of Communism, would be too-well understood. People acting under deep hypnotic commands should be acting apparently of their own volition and out of their own convictions. The entire subject of psychopolitical hypnosis, Psychopolitics in general, depends for its defense upon continual protest from authoritative sources that such things are not possible. And, should anyone unmask a psychopolitical operative, he should at once declare the whole thing a physical impossibility, and use his authoritative position to discount any accusation. Should any writings of Psychopolitics come to view, it is only necessary to brand them a hoax and laugh them out of countenance. Thus, psychopolitical activities are easy to defend. When psychopolitical activities have reached a certain peak, from there on it is almost impossible to undo them, for the population is already under the duress of obedience to the psychopolitical operatives and their dupes. The ingredient of obedience is important, for the complete belief in the psychopolitical operative renders this statement cancelling any challenge about psychopolitical operations irrefutable. The optimum circumstances would be to occupy every position which would be consulted by officials on any question or suspicion arising on the subject of Psychopolitics. Thus, a psychiatric advisor should be placed near at hand in every government operation. As all suspicions would then be referred to him, no action would ever be taken, and the goal of Communism could be realized in that nation. Psychopolitics depends, from the viewpoint of the layman, upon its fantastic aspects. These are its best defense, but above all these defenses is implicit obedience on the part of officials and the general public, because of the character of the psychopolitical operative in the field of healing. CHAPTER VII ANATOMY OF STIMULUS-RESPONSE MECHANISMS OF MAN Man is a stimulus-response animal. His entire reasoning capabilities, even his ethics and morals, depends upon stimulus-response machinery. This has long been demonstrated by such Russians as Pavlov, and the principles have long been used in handling the recalcitrant, in training children, and in bringing about a state of optimum behaviour on the part of a population. Having no independent will of his own, Man is easily handled by stimulus-response mechanisms. It is only necessary to install a stimulus into the mental anatomy of Man to have that stimulus reactivate and respond any time an exterior command source calls it into being. The mechanisms of stimulus-response are easily understood. The body takes pictures of every action in the environment around the individual. When the environment includes brutality, terror, shock, and other such activities, the mental image picture gained, contains in itself all the ingredients of the environment. If the individual, himself, was injured during the moment, the injury, itself, will re manifest when called upon to respond by an exterior command source. As an example of this, if an individual is beaten, and is told during the entirety of the beating that he must obey certain officials, he will, in the future, feel the beginnings of the pain the moment he begins to disobey. The installed pain, itself, reacts as a policeman, for the experience of the individual demonstrates to him that he cannot combat, and will receive pain from, certain officials. The mind can become very complex in its stimulus responses. As easily demonstrated in hypnotism, an entire chain of commands, having to do with a great many complex actions, can be beaten, shocked, or terrorized into a mind, and will there lie dormant until called into view by some similarity in the circumstances of the environment to the incident of punishment. The stimulus we call the "incident of punishment" where the response mechanism need only contain small part of the stimulus to call into view the mental image picture, and cause it to exert against the body, the pain sequence. So long as the individual obeys the picture, or follows the commands of the stimulus implantation he is free from pain. The behaviour of children is regulated in this fashion in every civilized country. The father, finding himself unable to bring about immediate obedience and training on the part of his child, resorts to physical violence, and after administering punishment of a physical nature to the child on several occasions, is gratified to experience complete obedience on the part of the child each time the father speaks. In that parents are wont to be lenient with their children, they seldom administer sufficient punishment to bring about entirely optimum obedience. The ability of the organism to withstand punishment is very great. Complete and implicit response can be gained only by stimuli sufficiently brutal to actually injure the organism. The Kossack method of breaking wild horses is a useful example. The horse will not restrain itself or take any of its rider's commands. The rider, wishing to break it, mounts, and takes a flask of strong Vodka, and smashes it between the horse's ears. The horse, struck to its knees , its yes filled with alcohol, mistaking the dampness for blood, instantly and thereafter gives its attention to the rider and never needs further breaking. Difficulty in breaking horses is only occasioned when light punishments are administered. There is some mawkish sentimentality about "breaking the spirit," but what is desired here is an obedient horse, and sufficient brutality brings about an obedient horse. The stimulus-response mechanisms of the body are such that the pain and the command subdivide so as to counter each other. The mental image picture of the punishment will not become effective upon the individual unless the command content is disobeyed. It is pointed out in many early Russian writings that this is a survival mechanism. It has already been well and thoroughly used in the survival of Communism. It is only necessary to deliver into the organism a sufficient stimulus to gain an adequate response. So long as the organism obeys the stimulus whenever it is restimulated in the future, it does not suffer from the pain of the stimulus. But should it disobey the command content of the stimulus, the stimulus reacts to punish the individual. Thus, we have an optimum circumstance, and one of the basic principles of Psychopolitics. A sufficiently installed stimulus will thereafter remain as a police mechanism within the individual to cause him to follow the commands and directions given to him. Should he fail to follow these commands and directions, the stimulus mechanism will go into action. As the commands are there with the moment of duress, the commands themselves need never be repeated, and if the individual were to depart thousands of miles away from the psychopolitical operative, he will still obey the psychopolitical operative, or, himself, become extremely ill and in agony. These principles, built from the earliest days of Pavlov, by constant and continuous Russian development, have, at last, become of enormous use to us in our conquest. For less modern and well-informed countries of Earth, lacking this mechanism, failing to understand it, and coaxed into somnolence by our own psychopolitical operatives, who discount and disclaim it, cannot avoid succumbing to it. The body is less able to resist a stimulus if it has insufficient food and is weary. Therefore, it is necessary to administer all such stimuli to individuals when their ability to resist has been reduced by privation and exhaustion. Refusal to let them sleep over many days, denying them adequate food, then brings about an optimum state for the receipt of a stimulus. If the person is then given an electrical shock, and is told while the shock is in action that he must obey and do certain things, he has no choice but to do them, or to re-experience, because of his mental image picture of it, the electric shock. This highly scientific and intensely workable mechanism cannot be over-estimated in the practice of psychopolitics. Drugging the individual produces an artificial exhaustion, and if he is drugged, or shocked and beaten, and given a string of commands, his loyalties, themselves, can be definitely rearranged. This is P.D.H., or Pain-Drug Hypnosis. The psychopolitical operative in training should be thoroughly studied in the subject of hypnotism and post-hypnotic suggestion. He should pay particular attention to the "forgetter mechanism" aspect of hypnotism, which is to say, implantation in the unconscious mind. He should note particularly that a person given a command in a hypnotic state, and then told when still in that condition to forget it, will execute it on a stimulus-response signal in the environment after he has "awakened" from his hypnotic trance. Having mastered these details fully, he should, by practicing upon criminals and prisoners, or inmates available to him, produce the hypnotic trance by drugs, and drive home post-hypnotic suggestions by pain administered to the drugged person. He should then study the reactions of the person when "awakened," and should give him the stimulus-response signal which would throw into action the commands given while in a drugged state of duress. By much practice he can then learn the threshold dosages of various or additional drug shock necessary to produce the optimum obedience to the commands. He should also satisfy himself that the is no possible method known to Man -- there must be no possible method known to Man -- of bringing the patient to awareness of what has happened to him, keeping him in a state of obedience and response while ignorant of its cause. Using criminals and prisoners, the psychopolitical operative in training should then experiment with duress in the absence of privation,administering electric shocks, beatings, and terror-inducing tactics, accompanied by the same mechanisms as those employed in hypnotism, and watch the conduct of the person when no longer under duress. The operative in training should carefully remark those who show a tendency to protest, so that he may recognize possible recovery of memory of the commands implanted. Purely for his own education, he should then satisfy himself as to the efficiency of brain surgery in disabling the non-responsive prisoner. The boldness of the psychopolitical operative can be increased markedly by permitting persons who have been given pain-drug hypnosis and who have demonstrated symptoms of rebelling or recalling into the society to observe how the label of "insanity" discredits and discounts the statements of the person. Exercises in bringing about insanity seizures at will, simply by demonstrating a signal to persons upon whom pain-drug hypnosis has been used, and exercises in making the seizures come about through talking to certain persons in certain places and times should also be used. Brain surgery, as developed in Russia, should also be practiced by the psychopolitical operative in training, to give him full confidence in 1) the crudeness with which it can be done, 2) the certainty of erasure of the stimulus-response mechanism itself, 3) the production of imbecility, idiocy, and dis-coordination on the part of the patient, and 4) the small amount of comment which casualties in brain surgery occasion. Exercises in sexual attack on patients should be practiced by the psychopolitical operative to demonstrate the inability of the pain-drug hypnosis to recall the attack, while indoctrinating a lust for further sexual activity on the part of the patient. Sex, in all animals, is a powerful motivator, and is no less so in the animal Man, and the occasioning of sexual liaison between females of a target family and indicated males, under the control of the psychopolitical operative, must be demonstrated to be possible with complete security for the psychopolitical operative, thus giving into his hands and excellent weapon for the breaking down of familial relations and consequent public disgraces for the psychopolitical target. Just as a dog can be trained, so can a man be trained. Just as a horse can be trained, so can a man be trained. Sexual lust, masochism, and any other desirable perversion can be induced by pain-drug hypnosis and the benefit of the Psychopolitics. The changes of loyalties, allegiances, and sources of command can be occasioned easily by psychopolitical technologies, and these should be practiced and understood by the psychopolitical operative before he begins to tamper with psychopolitical targets of magnitude. The actual simplicity of the subject of pain-drug hypnosis, the use of electric shock, drugs, insanity-producing injections, and other material, should be masked entirely by technical nomenclature, the protest of benefit to the patient, by an authoritarian pose and position, and by carefully cultivating governmental positions in the country to be conquered. Although the psychopolitical operative working in universities where he can direct the curricula of psychology classes is often tempted to teach some of the principles of Psychopolitics to the susceptible students in the psychology classes, he must be thoroughly enjoined to limit his information in psychology classes to the transmittal of the tenets of Communism under the guise of psychology, and must limit his activities in bringing about a state of mind on the part of the students where they will accept Communist tenets as those of their own action and as modern scientific principles. The psychopolitical operative must not, at any time, educate students fully in stimulus-response mechanisms, and must not impart to them, save those who will become his fellow workers,the exact principles of Psychopolitics. It is not necessary to do so, and it is dangerous. CHAPTER VIII DEGRADATION, SHOCK AND ENDURANCE Degradation and conquest are companions. In order to be conquered, a nation must be degraded, either by acts of war, by being overrun, by being forced into humiliating treaties of peace, or by the treatment of her populace under the armies of the conqueror. However, degradation can be accomplished much more insidiously and much more effectively by consistent and continual defamation. Defamation is the best and foremost weapon of Psychopolitics on the broad field. Continual and constant degradation of national leaders, national institutions, national practices, and national heroes must be systematically carried out, but this is the chief function of the Communist Party Members, in general, not the psychopolitician. The realm of defamation and degradation, of the psychopolitician, is Man himself. By attacking the character and morals of Man himself, and by bringing about,through contamination of youth, a general degraded feeling, command of the populace is facilitated to a very marked degree. There is a curve of degradation which leads downward to a point where the endurance of an individual is almost at end, and any sudden action toward him will place him in a state of shock. Similarly, a soldier held prisoner can be abused, denied, defamed, and degraded until the slightest motion on the part of his captors will cause him to flinch. Similarly, the slightest word on the part of his captors will cause him to obey, or vary his loyalties and beliefs. Given sufficient degradation, a prisoner can be caused to murder his fellow countrymen in the same stockade. Experiments on German prisoners have lately demonstrated that only after seventy days of filthy food, little sleep, and nearly untenable quarters, that the least motion toward the prisoner would bring about a state of shock beyond his endurance threshold, and would cause him to hypnotically receive anything said to him. Thus, it is possible, in an entire stockade of prisoners, to the number of thousands, to being about a state of complete servile obedience, and without the labor of personally addressing each one, to pervert their loyalties and implant in them adequate commands to insure their future conduct, even when released to their own people. By lower the endurance of a person, a group, or a nation, and by constant degradation and defamation, it is possible to induce, thus, a state of shock which will receive adequately any command given. The first thing to be degraded in any nation is the state of Man, himself. Nations which have high ethical tone are difficult to conquer. Their loyalties are hard to shake, their allegiance to their leaders is fanatical, and what they usually call their spiritual integrity cannot be violated by duress. It is not efficient to attack a nation in such a frame of mind. It is the basic purpose of Psychopolitics to reduce that state of mind to a point where it can be ordered and enslaved. Thus, the first target is Man, himself. He must be degraded from a spiritual being to an animalistic reaction pattern. He must think of himself as an animal, capable only of animalistic reactions. He must no longer think of himself, or of his fellows, as capable of "spiritual endurance," or nobility. The best approach toward degradation in its first stages is the propaganda of "scientific approach" to Man. Man must be consistently demonstrated to be a mechanism without individuality, and it must be educated into a populace under attack that Man's individualistic reactions are the product of mental derangement. The populace must be brought into the belief that every individual within it who rebels in any way, shape, or form against the efforts and activities to enslave the whole, must be considered to be a deranged person whose eccentricities are neurotic and insane, and who must have at once the treatment of a psychopolitician. An optimum condition in such a program of degradation would address itself to the military forces of the nation, and bring them rapidly away from any other belief than the disobedient one must be subjected to "mental treatment." An enslavement of a population can fail only if these rebellious individuals are left to exert their individual influences upon their fellow citizens, sparking them into rebellion, calling into account their nobilities and freedoms. Unless these restless individuals are stamped out and given into the hands of psychopolitical operatives early in the conquest,there will be nothing but trouble as the conquest continues. The officials of the government, students, readers, partakers of entertainment,must all be indoctrinated, by whatever means, into the complete belief that the restless, the ambitions, the natural leaders, are suffering from environmental maladjustments, which can only be healed by recourse to psychopolitical operatives in the guise of mental healers. By thus degrading the general belief in the status of Man it is relatively simple, with co-operation from the economic salients being driven into the country, to drive citizens apart, one from another, to bring about a question of the wisdom of their own government, and to cause them to actively beg for enslavement. The educational programs of Psychopolitics must, at every hand, seek out the levels of youth who will become the leaders in the country's future, and educate them into the belief of the animalistic nature of Man. This must be made fashionable. They must be taught to frown upon ideas, upon individual endeavor. They must be taught, above all things, that the salvation of Man is to be found only by his adjusting thoroughly to this environment. This educational program in the field of Psychopolitics, can best be followed by bringing about a compulsory training in some subject such as psychology or other mental practice, and ascertaining that each broad program of psychopolitical training be supervised by a psychiatrist who is a trained psychopolitical operative. As it seems in foreign nations that the church is the most ennobling influence, each and every branch and activity of each and every church, must, one way or another, be discredited. Religion must become unfashionable by demonstrating broadly, through psychopolitical indoctrination, that the soul is non-existent, and that Man is an animal. The lying mechanisms of Christianity lead men to foolishly brave deeds. By teaching them that there is a life here-after, the liability of courageous acts, while living, is thus lessened. The liability of any act must be markedly increased if a populace is to be obedient. Thus, there must be no standing belief in the church, and the power of the church must be denied at every hand. The psychopolitical operative, in his program of degradation, should at all times bring into question any family which is deeply religious, and, should any neurosis or insanity be occasioned in that family, to blame and hold responsible their religious connections for the neurotic or psychotic condition. Religion must be made synonymous with neurosis and psychosis. People who are deeply religious would be less and less held responsible for their own sanity, and should more and more be relegated to the ministrations of psychopolitical operatives. By perverting the institutions of a nation and bringing about a general degradation, by interfering with the economics of a nation to the degree that privation and depression come about, only minor shocks will be necessary to produce, on the populace as a whole, an obedient reaction or an hysteria. Thus, the mere threat of war, the mere threat of aviation bombings, could cause the population to sue instantly for peace. It is a long and arduous road for the psychopolitical operative to achieve this state of mind on the part of the whole nation, but no more than twenty or thirty years should be necessary in the entire program. Having to hand, as we do, weapons with which to accomplish the goal. CHAPTER IX THE ORGANIZATION OF MENTAL HEALTH CAMPAIGNS Psychopolitical operatives should at all times be alert to the opportunity to organize "for the betterment of the community" mental health clubs or groups. By thus inviting the co-operation of the population as a whole in mental health programs, the terrors of mental aberration can be disseminated throughout the populace. Furthermore, each one of these mental health groups,properly guided, can bring, at last, legislative pressure against the government to secure adequately the position of the psychopolitical operative, and to obtain for him government grants and facilities, thus bringing a government to finance its own downfall. Mental health organizations must carefully delete from their ranks anyone actually proficient in the handling or treatment of mental health. Thus must be excluded priests, ministers, actually trained psychoanalysts, good hypnotists, or trained Dianeticists. These, with some cognizance on the subject of mental aberration and its treatment, and with some experience in observing the mentally deranged, if allowed frequency within institutions,and if permitted to receive literature, would, sooner or later, become suspicious of the activities engaged upon by the psychopolitical operative. These must be defamed and excluded as "untrained," "unskillful," "quacks," or "perpetrators of hoaxes." No mental health movement with actual goals of mental therapy should be continued in existence in any nation. For instance, the use of Chinese acupuncture in the treatment of mental and physical derangement must, in China, be stamped out and discredited thoroughly, as it has some efficacy, and, more importantly, its practitioners understand, through long conversation with it, many of the principles of actual mental health and aberration. In the field of mental health, the psychopolitician must occupy, and continue to occupy, through various arguments, the authoritative position on the subject. There is always the danger that problems of mental health may be resolved by some individual or group, which might then derange the program of the psychopolitical operative in his mental health clubs. City officials, socialites, and other unknowing individuals, on the subject of mental health, should be invited to full co-operation in the activity of mental health groups. But the entirety of this activity should be to finance better facilities for the psychopolitical practitioner. To these groups it must be continually stressed that the entire subject of mental illness is so complex that none of them, certainly, could understand any part of it. Thus, the club should be kept on a social and financial level. Where groups interested in the health of the community have already been formed, they should be infiltrated and taken over, and if this is not possible, they should be discredited and debarred, and the officialdom of the area should be invited to stamp them out as dangerous. When a hostile group dedicated to mental health is discovered, the psychopolitician should have recourse to the mechanisms of peyote, mescaline, and later drugs which cause temporary insanity. He should send persons, preferably those well under his control, into the mental health group, whether Christian Science or Dianetics or faith preachers to demonstrate their abilities upon this new person. These, in demonstrating their abilities, will usually act with enthusiasm. Midway in the course of their treatment, a quiet injection of peyote, mescaline, or other drug, or an electric shock, will produce the symptoms of insanity in the patient which has been sent to the target group. The patient thus demonstrating momentary insanity should be immediately be reported to the police and taken away to some area of incarceration managed by psychopolitical operatives, and so placed out of site. Officialdom will thus come into a belief that this group drives individuals insane by their practices,and the practices of the group will them be despised and prohibited by law. The values of a widespread mental health organization are manifest when one realizes that any government can be forced to provide facilities for psychopolitical operatives in the form of psychiatric wards in all hospitals, in national institutions totally in the hands of psychopolitical operatives, and in the establishment of clinics where youth can be contacted and arranged more seemingly to the purposes of Psychopolitics. Such groups form a political force, which can then legalize any law or authority desired for the psychopolitical operative. The securing of authority over such mental health organizations is done mainly be appeal to education. A psychopolitical operative should make sure that those psychiatrists he controls, those psychologists whom he has under his orders, have been trained for an excessively long period of time. The longer the training period which can be required, the safer the psychopolitical program, since no new group of practitioners can arise to disclose and dismay psychopolitical programs. Furthermore, the groups themselves cannot hope to obtain any full knowledge of the subject,not having behind them many, many years of intensive training. Vienna has been carefully maintained by Psychopolitics, since it was the home of Psychoanalysis. Although our activities have long been dispersed any of the gains made by Freudian groups, and have taken over these groups, the proximity of Vienna to Russia, where Psychopolitics is operating abroad, and the necessity "for further study" by psychopolitical operatives in the birth-place of Psychoanalysis, makes periodic contacts with headquarters possible. Thus the word "psychoanalysis" must be stressed at all times, and must be pretended to be a thorough part of the psychiatrist's training. Psychoanalysis has the very valuable possession of a vocabulary, and a workability which is sufficiently poor to avoid recovery of psychopolitical implantations. It can be made fashionable throughout mental health organizations, and by learning its patter, and by believing they see some of its phenomena, the members of mental health groups can believe themselves conversant with mental health. Because its stress is sex, it is, itself, adequate defamation of character, and serves the purposes of degradation well. Thus, in organizing mental health groups, the literature furnished such groups should be psychoanalytical in nature. If a group of persons interested in suppressing juvenile delinquency, in caring for the insane, and the promotion of psychopolitical operatives and their actions can be formed in every major city of a country under conquest, the success of a psychopolitical program is assured, since these groups seem to represent a large segment of the population. By releasing continuing propaganda on the subject of dope addiction, homosexuality, and depraved conduct on the part of the young, even the judges of a country can become suborned into reacting violently against the youth of the country,thus mis-aligning and aligning the support of youth. The communication lines of psychopolitics, if such mental health organizations can be well established, can thus run from its most prominent citizens to its government. It is not too much to hope that the influence of such groups could bring about a psychiatric ward in every hospital in the land,and psychiatrists in every company and regiment of the nation's army, and whole government institutes manned entirely by psychopolitical operatives, into which ailing government officials could be placed, to the advantage of the psychopolitician. If a psychiatric ward could be established in every hospital in every city of a nation, it is certain that, at one time or another, every prominent citizen of that nation could come under the ministrations of psychopolitical operatives or their dupes. The validation of psychiatric position in the armed forces and security-minded institutions of the nation under conquest could bring about a flow and fund of information unlike any other program which could be conceived. If every pilot who flies a new plane could come under the questioning of a psychopolitical operative, if the compiler of every military action could thus come under the review of psychopolitical operatives, the simplicity with which information can be extracted by the use of certain drugs, without the after-knowledge of the soldier, would entirely cripple any over action toward Communism. If the nation could be educated into turning over to psychopolitical operatives ever recalcitrant or rebellious soldier, it would lose its best fighters. Thus, the advantage of mental health organizations can be seen, for these, by exerting an apparent public pressure against the government, can achieve these ends and goals. The financing of a psychopolitical operation is difficult unless it is done by the citizens and government. Although vast sums of money can be obtained from private patients, and from relatives who wish persons put away, it is, nevertheless, difficult to obtain millions, unless the government itself is co-operating. The co-operation of the government to obtain these vast sums of money is best obtained by the organization of mental health groups composed of leading citizens, and who bring their lobbying abilities to bear against the nation's government. Thus can be financed many programs, which might otherwise have to be laid aside by the psychopolitician. The psychopolitical operative should bend consistent and continual effort toward forming and continuing in action innumerable mental health groups. The psychopolitical operative should also spare no expense in smashing out of existence, by whatever means, any actual healing group, such as that of acupuncture, in China; such as Christian Science, Dianetics and faith healing, in the United States; such as Catholicism in Italy and Spain; and the practical psychological groups of England. CHAPTER X CONDUCT UNDER FIRE The psychopolitician may well find himself under attack as an individual or a member of a group. He may be attacked as a Communist, through some leak in the organization, he may be attacked for malpractice. He may be attacked by the families of people whom he has injured. In all cases his conduct of the situation should be calm and aloof. He should have behind him the authority of many years of training, and he should have participated fully in the building of defense in field of insanity which give him the only statement as to the conditions of the mind. If he has not done his work well, hostile feeling groups may expose an individual psychopolitician. These may call into question the efficacy of psychiatric treatment such as shock, drugs, and brian surgery. Therefore, the psychopolitical operative must have to hand innumerable documents which assert enourmously encouraging figures on the subject of recovery by reason of shock, brain surgery, drugs and general treatment. Not one of these cases cited need be real, but they should be documented and printed in such a fashion as to form excellent court evidence. When his allegiance is attacked, the psychopolitical operative should explain his connection with Vienna on the grounds that Vienna is the place of study for all important matters of the mind. More importantly, he should rule into scorn, by reason of his authority, the sanity of the person attacking him, and if the psychopolitical archives of the country are adequate many defamatory data can be unearthed and presented as a rebuttal. Should anyone attempt to expose psychotherapy as a psychopolitical activity, the best defense is calling into question the sanity of the attacker. The next best defense is authority. The next best defense is a validation of psychiatric practices in terms of long and impressive figures. The next best defense is the actual removal of the attacker by giving him, or them, treatment sufficient to bring about a period of insanity for the duration of the trial. This, more than anything else, would discredit them, but it is dangerous to practice this, in the extreme. Psychopolitics should avoid murder and violence, unless it is done in the safety of the institution, on persons who have been proven to be insane. Where institution deaths appear to be unnecessary, or to rise in "unreasonable number," political capital might be made of this by city officials or legislature. If the psychopolitical operative has, himself, or if his group has done a thorough job, defamatory data concerning the person, or connections, of the would-be attacker should be on file, should be documented, and should be used in such a way as to discourage the inquiry. After a period of indoctrination, a country will expect insanity to be met by psychopolitical violence. Psychopolitical activities should become the only recognized treatment for insanity. Indeed, this can be extended to such a length that it could be made illegal for electric shock and brain surgery to be omitted in the treatment of a patient. In order to defend psychopolitical activities, a great complexity should be made of psychiatric, psychoanalytical, and psychological technology. Any hearing should be burdened by terminology too difficult to be transcribed easily. A great deal should be made out of such terms as schizophrenia, paranoia, and other relatively undefinable states. Psychopolitical tests need not necessarily be in agreement, one to another, where they are available to the public. Various types of insanity should be characterized by difficult terms. The actual state should be made obscure, but by this verbiage it can be built into the court or investigating mind that a scientific approach exists and that it is too complex for him to understand. It is not to be imagined that a judge or a committee of investigation should inquire too deeply into the subject of insanity, since they, themselves, part of the indoctrinated masses, are already intimidated if the psychopolitical activity has caused itself to be well-documented in terms of horror in magazines. In case of a hearing or trial, the terribleness of insanity itself, its threat to the society, should be exaggerated until the court or committee believes that the psychopolitical operative is vitally necessary in his post and should not be harassed for the activities of persons who are irrational. An immediate attack upon the sanity of the attacker before any possible hearing can take place is the very best defense. It should become well-known that "only the insane attack psychiatrists." The by-word should be built into the society that paranoia is a condition "in which the individual believes he is being attacked by Communists." It will be found that this defense is effective. Part of the effective defenses should include the entire lack in the society of any real psychotherapy. This must be systematically stamped out, since a real psychotherapy might possibly uncover the results of psychopolitical activities. Jurisprudence, in a Capitalistic nation,is of such clumsiness that cases are invariably tried in their newspapers. We have handled these things much better in Russia, and have uniformly brought people to trial with full confessions already arrived at (being implanted) before the trial took place. Should any whisper, or pamphlet, against psychopolitical activities be published, it should be laughed into scorn, branded an immediate hoax, and its perpetrator or publisher should be, at the first opportunity, branded as insane and by the use of drugs the insanity should be confirmed. CHAPTER XI THE USE OF PSYCHOPOLITICS IN SPREADING COMMUNISM Reactionary nations are of such a composition that they attack a word without understanding of it. As the conquest of a nation by Communism depends upon imbuing its population with communistic tenets, it is not necessary that the term "Communism" be applied at first to the educative measures employed. As an example, in the United States we have been able to alter the works of William James, and others, into a more acceptable pattern, and to place the tenets of Karl Marx, Pavlov, Lamarck, and the data of Dialectic Materialism into the textbooks of psychology, to such a degree that anyone thoroughly studying psychology becomes at once a candidate to accept the reasonableness of Communism. As every chair of psychology in the United States is occupied by persons in our connection, the consistent employment of such texts is guaranteed. They are given the authoritative ring, and they are carefully taught. Constant pressure in the legislatures of the United States can bring about legislation to the effect that every student attending a high school or university must have classes in psychology. Educating broadly the educated strata of the populace into the tenets of Communism is thus rendered relatively easy, and when the choice is given them whether to continue in a Capitalistic or a Communistic condition, they will see, suddenly, in Communism, much more reasonability than in Capitalism, which will now be of our own definition. CHAPTER XII VIOLENT REMEDIES As a populace, in general, understand that a violence is necessary in the handling of the insane, violent remedies seem to be reasonable. Starting from a relatively low level of violence, such as strait-jackets and other restraints, it is relatively easy to encroach upon the public diffidence for violence by adding more and more cruelty into the treatment of the insane. By increasing the brutality of "treatment," the public acceptance of such treatment will be assisted, and the protest of the individual to whom the treatment is given is impossible, since immediately after the treatment he is incapable. The family of the individual under treatment is suspect for having had in its midst, already, an insane person. The family's protest should be discredited. The more violent the treatment, the more command value the psychopolitical operative will accumulate. Brain operations should become standard and commonplace. While the figures of actual deaths should be repressed wherever possible, nevertheless, it is of no great concern to the psychopolitical operative that many deaths do occur. Gradually, the public should be educated into electric shock, first by believing that it is very therapeutic, then by believing that it is quieting, then by being informed that electric shock usually injures the spine and teeth, and finally, that if very often kills or at least breaks the spine and removes, violently, the teeth of the patient. It is very doubtful if anyone from the lay levels of the public could tolerate the observation of a single electric shock treatment. Certainly they could not tolerate witnessing a prefrontal lobotomy or trans-orbital leucotomy. However, they should be brought up to a level where this is possible, where it is the expected treatment, and where the details, of the treatment itself can be made known, thus to the increase of psychopolitical prestige. The more violent the treatment, the more hopeless insanity will seem to be. The society should be worked up to the level where every recalcitrant young man can be brought into court and assigned to a psychopolitical operative, be given electric shocks, and reduced into unimaginative docility for the remainder of his days. By continuous and increasing advertising of the violence of treatment, the public will at last come to tolerate the creation of zombie conditions to such a degree that they will probably employ zombies, if given to them. Thus a large strata of the society, particularly that which was rebellious, can be reduced to the service of the psychopolitician. By various means, a public must be convinced, at least, that insanity can only be met by shock, torture, deprivation, defamation, discrediting, violence, maiming, death, punishment in all its forms. The society, at the same time, must be educated into the belief of increasing insanity within its ranks. This creates an emergency, and places the psychopolitician in a saviour role, and places him, at length, in charge of the society. CHAPTER XIII THE RECRUITING OF PSYCHOPOLITICAL DUPES The psychopolitical dupe is a well-trained individual who serves in complete obedience to the psychopolitical operative. In that nearly all persons in training are expected to undergo a certain amount of treatment in any field of the mind, it is not too difficult to persuade persons in the field of mental healing to subject themselves to mild or minor drugs or shock. If this can be done, a psychological dupe on the basis of pain-drug hypnosis can immediately result. Recruitment into the ranks of "mental healing" can best be done by carefully bringing to it only those healing students who are, to some slight degree, already depraved, or who have been "treated" by psychopolitical operatives. Recruitment is effected by making the field of mental healing very attractive, financially, and sexually. The amount of promiscuity which can be induced in mental patients can work definitely to the advantage of the psychopolitical recruiting agent. The dupe can thus be induced into many lurid sexual contacts, and these, properly witnessed, can thereafter be used as blackmail material to assist any failure of pain-drug hypnosis in causing him to execute orders. The promise of unlimited sexual opportunities, the promise of complete dominion over the bodies and minds of helpless patients, the promise of having lawlessness without detection, can thus attract to "mental healing" many desirable recruits who will willingly fall in line with psychopolitical activities. In that the psychopolitician has under his control the insane of the nation, most of them have criminal tendencies, and as he can, as his movement goes forward, recruit for his ranks the criminals themselves, he has unlimited numbers of human beings to employ on whatever projects he may see fit. In that the insane will execute destructive projects without question, if given the proper amount of punishment and implantation, the degradation of the country's youth, the defamation of its leaders, the suborning of its courts becomes childlishly easy. The psychopolitician has the advantage of naming as a delusory symptom any attempt on the part of the patient to expose commands. The psychopolitician should carefully adhere to institutions and should eschew practice whenever possible, since this gives him the greatest number of human beings to control to the use of Communism. When he does act in private practice, it should be only in contact with the families of the wealthy and the officials of the country. CHAPTER XIV THE SMASHING OF RELIGIOUS GROUPS You must know that until recent times the complete subject of mental derangement, whether so light as simple worry or so heavy as insanity, was the sphere of activity of the church and only the church. Traditionally in civilized nations and barbaric ones the priesthood alone had in complete charge the mental conditions of the citizen. As a matter of great concern to the psychopolitician this tendency still exists in every public in the Western World and scientific inroads into this sphere has occurred only in official and never in public quarters. The magnificent tool wielded for us by Wundt would be as nothing if it were not for official insistence in civilized countries that "scientific practices" be applied to the problem of the mind. Without this official insistence or even if it relapsed for a moment, the masses would grasp stupidly for the priest, the minister, and the clergy when mental condition came in question. Today in Europe and America "scientific practices" in the field of the mind would not last moments if not enforced entirely by officialdom. It must be carefully hidden that the incidence of insanity has increased only since thee "scientific practices" were applied. Great remarks must be made of the "the pace of modern living" and other myths as the cause of the increased neurosis in the world. It is nothing to us what causes it if anything does. It is everything to us that no evidence of any kind shall be tolerated afoot to permit the public tendency toward the church its way. If given their heads, if left to themselves to decide, independent of officialdom, where they would place their deranged loved ones the public would choose religious sanitariums and would avoid as if plagued places where "scientific practices" prevail. Given any slightest encouragement, public support would swing on an instant all mental healing into the hands of the churches. And there are Churches waiting to receive it, clever churches. That terrible monster, the Roman Catholic Church, still dominates mental healing heavily throughout the Christian world and their well schooled priests are always at work to turn the public their way. Among Fundamentalist and Pentecostal groups, healing campaigns are conducted, which, because of their results, win many to the cult of Christianity. In the field of pure healing the Church of Christ Science of Boston, Massachusetts excels in commanding the public favor and operates many sanitariums. All of these must be swept aside. They must be ridiculed and defamed and every cure they advertise must be asserted a hoax. A full fifth of a psychopolitician's time should be devoted to smashing these threats. Just as in Russian we had to destroy, after many, many years of most arduous work, the Church, so we must destroy all faiths in nations marked for conquest. Insanity must be made to hound the footsteps of every priest and practitioner. His best results must be turned to jabbering insanities no matter what means we have to use. You need not care what effect you have upon the public. The effect you care about is the one upon officials. You must recruit every agency of the nation marked for slaughter into a foaming hatred of religious healing. You must suborn district attorneys and judges into an intense belief as fervent as an ancient faith in God that Christian Science or any other religious practice which might devote itself to mental healing is vicious, bad, insanity-causing, publicly hated and intolerable. You must suborn and recruit any medical healing organization into collusion in this campaign. You must appeal to their avarice and even their humanity to invite their co-operation in smashing all religious healing and thus, to our end, care of the insane. You must see that such societies have only qualified Communist-indoctrinees as their advisors in this matter. For you can use such societies. They are stupid and stampede easily. Their cloak and degrees can be used quite well to mask any operation we care to have masked. We must make them partners in our endeavor so that they will never be able to crawl from beneath our thumb and discredit us. We have battled in America since the century's turn to bring to nothing any and all Christian influences and we are succeeding. While we today seem to be kind to the Christian, remember, we have yet to influence the "Christian world" to our ends. When that is done we shall have an end of them everywhere. You may see them here in Russia as trained apes. They do not know their tether is long only until the apes in other lands have become unwary. You must work until "religion" is synonymous with "insanity."" You must work until the officials of city, county and state governments will not think twice before they pounce upon religious groups as public enemies. Remember, all lands are governed by the few and only pretend to consult with the many. It is no different in America. The petty official, the maker of laws alike can be made to believe the worst. It is not necessary to convince the masses. It is only necessary to work incessantly upon the official, using personal defamations, wild lies, false evidences and constant propaganda to make him fight for you against the church or against any practitioner. Like the official, the bona-fide medical healer also believes the worst if it can be shown to him as dangerous competition. And like the Christian, should he seek to take from us any right we have gained, we shall finish him as well. We must be like the vine upon the tree. We use the tree to climb and then, strangling it, grow into power on the nourishment of its flesh. We must strike from our path any opposition. We must use for our tools any authority that comes to hand. And then at last, the decades sped, we can dispense with all authority save our own and triumph the greater glory of the Party. CHAPTER XV PROPOSALS WHICH MUCH BE AVOIDED There are certain damaging movements which could interrupt the psychopolitical conquest. These coming from some quarters of the country, might gain headway and should be spotted before they do, and stamped out. Proposals may be made by large and powerful groups in the country to return the insane to the care of those who have handled mental healing for tribes and populace for centuries--the priest. Any movement to place clergymen in charge of institutions should be fought on the grounds of incompetence and the insanity brought about by religion. The most destructive thing which could happen to a psychopolitical program would be the investment of the ministry with the care of the nation's insane. If mental hospitals operated by religious groups are in existence, they must be discredited and closed, no matter what the cost, for it might occur that the actual figures of recovery in such institutions would become known, and that the lack of recovery in general institutions might be compared to them, and this might lead to a movement to place the clergy in charge of the insane. Every argument must be advanced early, to overcome any possibility of this ever occurring. A country's law must carefully be made to avoid any rights of person to the insane. Any suggested laws or Constitutional Amendments which make the harming of the insane unlawful, should be fought to the extreme, on the grounds that only violent measures can succeed. If the law were to protect the insane, as it normally does not, the entire psychopolitical program would very possibly collapse. Any movements to increase or place under surveillance the orders required to hospitalize the mentally ill should be discouraged. This should be left entirely in the hands of persons well under the control of psychopolitical operatives. It should be done with minimum formality, and no recovery of the insane from an institution should be possible by any process of law. Thus, any movement to add to the legal steps of the processes of commitment and release should be discouraged on the grounds of emergency. To obviate this, the best action is to place a psychiatric and detention ward for the mentally ill in every hospital in a land. Any writings of a psychopolitical nature, accidentally disclosing themselves, should be prevented. All actual literature on the subject of insanity and its treatment should be suppressed, first by actual security, and second by complex verbage which renders it incomprehensible. The actual figures of recovery or death should never be announced in any papers. Any investigation attempting to discover whether or not psychiatry or psychology has ever cured anyone should be immediately discouraged and laughed to scorn, and should mobilize at the point all psychopolitical operatives. At first, it should be ignored, but if this is not possible, the entire weight of all psychopoliticians in the nation should be pressed into service. Any tactic possible should be employed to prevent this from occurring. To rebut it, technical appearing papers should exist as to the tremendous number of cures effected by psychiatry and psychology, and whenever possible, percentages of cures, no matter how fictitious, should be worked into legislative papers, thus forming a background of "evidence" which would immediately rebut any effort to actually discover anyone who had ever been helped by psychiatry or psychology. If the Communistic connections of an psychopolitician should become disclosed, it should be attributed to his own carelessness, and he should, himself, be immediately branded as eccentric within his own profession. Authors of literature which seek to demonstrate the picture of a society under complete mental control and duress should be helped toward infamy or suicide to discredit their works. Any legislation liberalizing any healing practice should be immediately fought and defeated. All healing practices should gravitate entirely to authoritative levels, and no other opinions should be admitted, as these might lead to exposure. Movements to improve youth should be invaded and corrupted, as this might interrupt campaigns to produce in youth delinquency, addiction, drunkenness, and sexual promiscuity. Communist workers in the field of newspapers and radio should be protected wherever possible by striking out of action, through Psychopolitics, any persons consistently attacking them. These, in their turn, should be persuaded to give every possible publicity to the benefits of psychopolitical activities under the heading of "science." No healing group devoted to the mind must be allowed to exist within the borders of Russia or its satellites. Only well-vouched-for psychopolitical operatives can be continued in their practice, and this only for the benefit of the government or against enemy prisoners. Any effort to exclude psychiatrists or psychologists from the armed services must be fought. Any inquest into the "suicide" or sudden mental derangement of any political leader in a nation must be conducted only by psychopolitical operatives or their dupes, whether Psychopolitics is responsible or not. Death and violence against persons attacking Communism in a nation should be eschewed as forbidden. Violent activity against such persons might bring about their martyrdom. Defamation, and the accusation of insanity, alone should be employed, and they should be brought at last under the ministrations of psychopolitical operatives, such as psychiatrists and controlled psychologists. CHAPTER XVI IN SUMMARY In this time of unlimited weapons, and in national antagonisms, where atomic war with Capitalistic powers is possible, Psychopolitics must act efficiently as never before. Any and all programs of Psychopolitics must be increased to aid and abet the activities of other Communist agents throughout the nation in question. The failure of Psychopolitics might well bring about the atomic bombing of the Motherland. If Psychopolitics succeeds in its mission throughout the Capitalistic nations of the world, there will never be an atomic war, for Russia will have subjugated all of her enemies. Communism has already spread across one-sixth of the inhabited world. Marxist Doctrines have already penetrated the remainder. An extension of the Communist social order is everywhere victorious. The spread of Communism has never been by force of battle, but by conquest of the mind. In Psychopolitics we have refined this conquest to its last degree. The psychopolitical operative must succeed, for his success means a world of Peace. His failure might well mean the destruction of the civilized portions of Earth by atomic power in the hands of Capitalistic madmen. The end thoroughly justifies the means. The degradation of populace is less inhuman than their destruction by atomic fission, for to an animal who lives only once, any life is sweeter than death. The end of war is the control of a conquered people. If a people can be conquered in the absence of war, the end of war will have been achieved without the destruction of war. A worth goal. The psychopolitician has his reward in the nearly unlimited control of populace, in the uninhibited exercise of passion, and the glory of Communist conquest over the stupidity of the enemies of the People. THE END ___________________________________ This book was posted by Courageous Lion He can be emailed at... [1]Courageous Lion's Den References 1. mailto:courageouslion at amprom.org?subject=Psychopolitics From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 16:04:46 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 11:04:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: A New Language Arises, and Scientists Watch It Evolve Message-ID: The New York Times > Science > A New Language Arises, and Scientists Watch It Evolve http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/science/01lang.html 5.2.1 By NICHOLAS WADE Linguists studying a signing system that spontaneously developed in an isolated Bedouin village say they have captured a new language being generated from scratch. They believe its features may reflect the innate neural circuitry that governs the brain's faculty for language. The language, known as Al Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language, is used in a village of some 3,500 people in the Negev desert of Israel. They are descendants of a single founder, who arrived 200 years ago from Egypt and married a local woman. Two of the couple's five sons were deaf, as are about 150 members of the community today. The clan has long been known to geneticists, but only now have linguists studied its sign language. A team led by Dr. Wendy Sandler of the University of Haifa says in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today that the Bedouin sign language developed spontaneously and without outside influence. It is not related to Israeli or Jordanian sign languages, and its word order differs from that of the spoken languages of the region. Linguists have long disputed whether language is transmitted just through culture, as part of the brain's general learning ability or is internally generated with the help of genetically specified neural circuits that prescribe the elements of grammar. Since children learn to speak from those around them, there is no obvious way of separating what is learned from what is innate except by observing a new language being developed from scratch, something that happens very rarely. Two special opportunities to study a new language and identify its innate elements have recently come to light. One is Nicaraguan sign language, a signing system developed spontaneously by children at a school for the deaf founded in 1977 in Nicaragua. The other is the Bedouin sign language being described today. Sign languages can possess all the properties of spoken language, including grammar, and differ only in the channel through which meaning is conveyed. Two features of the Bedouin sign language that look as if they come from some innate grammatical machinery are a distinction between subject and object, and the preference for a specific word order, said Dr. Mark Aronoff of Stony Brook University, an author of today's report. The word order is subject-object-verb, the most common in other languages. Dr. Aronoff said that the emergence of a preferred order was the critical feature, and that it was too early to tell if subject-object-verb is the particular order favored by the brain's neural circuitry. Linguists hope to learn more about the brain's language machinery by identifying the features that the Bedouin and Nicaraguan sign languages hold in common. Dr. Ann Senghas, who has studied Nicaraguan sign language for 15 years, said she agreed with Dr. Aronoff that the subject-object distinction and word order could be innate features. Dr. Senghas, who is at Barnard College in New York, said the preferred word order in Nicaraguan sign language kept changing with each cohort of children. The language has now acquired the signed equivalents of case endings, the changes used in languages like Latin to show if a word is the subject or object of a sentence. Word order can be less rigorous in languages that use case endings. The Bedouin sign language, which has not yet acquired case endings, is also under development. The third generation is signing twice as fast as the first and is using longer sentences, said Dr. Carol Padden of the University of California, San Diego, another author of the new report. Dr. Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, said the Bedouin sign language was "unquestionably an important finding." Together with the work on Nicaraguan sign language and other studies, he said, it "suggests that the human mind has the motive and means to create an expressive grammatical language without requiring many generations of fine tuning, trial and error, and accumulation of cultural traditions." The absence of case endings, or inflection, in the clan's language was not surprising, Dr. Pinker said, because this form of change, known as morphology to linguists, often takes many generations to develop. Both morphology and syntax, the ordering of words in phrases, may use "fundamentally the same mental machinery, which operates inside a word in the case of morphology and inside a phrase in the case of syntax," he said. Some researchers have speculated that language evolved first in the form of a system of gestures, with sound taking over only later as the preferred channel of communication. Evidence that gesture is still deeply embedded in language can be seen in the fact that people gesticulate even when on the phone. Does the vigor and spontaneity of Bedouin and Nicaraguan sign languages support the idea that a gesture-based language evolved first? Dr. Senghas said the two languages "are not evidence about what came first" but confirm that gesture is an integral part of language. The clan sign language, which started only 70 years ago, is unusual in being understood by the whole community, not just the deaf, since hearing people use it to communicate with their deaf relatives. The signs have already become symbolic: the sign for "man" is the twirl of a finger to indicate a moustache, although men no longer wear them. The Bedouin village is not geographically remote - it is near a large McDonald's - but is socially isolated from other Bedouin who look down on its origins. There are now more contacts with the outside world, and the deaf children are being exposed to Israeli sign language in school. The Bedouin sign language may not withstand modernization and marriage outside the community. "This is a pretty short flowering," Dr. Aronoff said. From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 16:05:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 11:05:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes Message-ID: The New York Times > Science > Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/science/01evo.html 5.2.1 By CORNELIA DEAN Dr. John Frandsen, a retired zoologist, was at a dinner for teachers in Birmingham, Ala., recently when he met a young woman who had just begun work as a biology teacher in a small school district in the state. Their conversation turned to evolution. "She confided that she simply ignored evolution because she knew she'd get in trouble with the principal if word got about that she was teaching it," he recalled. "She told me other teachers were doing the same thing." Though the teaching of evolution makes the news when officials propose, as they did in Georgia, that evolution disclaimers be affixed to science textbooks, or that creationism be taught along with evolution in biology classes, stories like the one Dr. Frandsen tells are more common. In districts around the country, even when evolution is in the curriculum it may not be in the classroom, according to researchers who follow the issue. Teaching guides and textbooks may meet the approval of biologists, but superintendents or principals discourage teachers from discussing it. Or teachers themselves avoid the topic, fearing protests from fundamentalists in their communities. "The most common remark I've heard from teachers was that the chapter on evolution was assigned as reading but that virtually no discussion in class was taken," said Dr. John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, an evangelical Christian and a member of Alabama's curriculum review board who advocates the teaching of evolution. Teachers are afraid to raise the issue, he said in an e-mail message, and they are afraid to discuss the issue in public. Dr. Frandsen, former chairman of the committee on science and public policy of the Alabama Academy of Science, said in an interview that this fear made it impossible to say precisely how many teachers avoid the topic. "You're not going to hear about it," he said. "And for political reasons nobody will do a survey among randomly selected public school children and parents to ask just what is being taught in science classes." But he said he believed the practice of avoiding the topic was widespread, particularly in districts where many people adhere to fundamentalist faiths. "You can imagine how difficult it would be to teach evolution as the standards prescribe in ever so many little towns, not only in Alabama but in the rest of the South, the Midwest - all over," Dr. Frandsen said. Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, said she heard "all the time" from teachers who did not teach evolution "because it's just too much trouble." "Or their principals tell them, 'We just don't have time to teach everything so let's leave out the things that will cause us problems,' " she said. Sometimes, Dr. Scott said, parents will ask that their children be allowed to "opt out" of any discussion of evolution and principals lean on teachers to agree. Even where evolution is taught, teachers may be hesitant to give it full weight. Ron Bier, a biology teacher at Oberlin High School in Oberlin, Ohio, said that evolution underlies many of the central ideas of biology and that it is crucial for students to understand it. But he avoids controversy, he said, by teaching it not as "a unit," but by introducing the concept here and there throughout the year. "I put out my little bits and pieces wherever I can," he said. He noted that his high school, in a college town, has many students whose parents are professors who have no problem with the teaching of evolution. But many other students come from families that may not accept the idea, he said, "and that holds me back to some extent." "I don't force things," Mr. Bier added. "I don't argue with students about it." In this, he is typical of many science teachers, according to a report by the Fordham Foundation, which studies educational issues and backs programs like charter schools and vouchers. Some teachers avoid the subject altogether, Dr. Lawrence S. Lerner, a physicist and historian of science, wrote in the report. Others give it very short shrift or discuss it without using "the E word," relying instead on what Dr. Lerner characterized as incorrect or misleading phrases, like "change over time." Dr. Gerald Wheeler, a physicist who heads the National Science Teachers Association, said many members of his organization "fly under the radar" of fundamentalists by introducing evolution as controversial, which scientifically it is not, or by noting that many people do not accept it, caveats not normally offered for other parts of the science curriculum. Dr. Wheeler said the science teachers' organization hears "constantly" from science teachers who want the organization's backing. "What they are asking for is 'Can you support me?' " he said, and the help they seek "is more political; it's not pedagogical." There is no credible scientific challenge to the idea that all living things evolved from common ancestors, that evolution on earth has been going on for billions of years and that evolution can be and has been tested and confirmed by the methods of science. But in a 2001 survey, the National Science Foundation found that only 53 percent of Americans agreed with the statement "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals." And this was good news to the foundation. It was the first time one of its regular surveys showed a majority of Americans had accepted the idea. According to the foundation report, polls consistently show that a plurality of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago, and about two-thirds believe that this belief should be taught along with evolution in public schools. These findings set the United States apart from all other industrialized nations, said Dr. Jon Miller, director of the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University, who has studied public attitudes toward science. Americans, he said, have been evenly divided for years on the question of evolution, with about 45 percent accepting it, 45 percent rejecting it and the rest undecided. In other industrialized countries, Dr. Miller said, 80 percent or more typically accept evolution, most of the others say they are not sure and very few people reject the idea outright. "In Japan, something like 96 percent accept evolution," he said. Even in socially conservative, predominantly Catholic countries like Poland, perhaps 75 percent of people surveyed accept evolution, he said. "It has not been a Catholic issue or an Asian issue," he said. Indeed, two popes, Pius XII in 1950 and John Paul II in 1996, have endorsed the idea that evolution and religion can coexist. "I have yet to meet a Catholic school teacher who skips evolution," Dr. Scott said. Dr. Gerald D. Skoog, a former dean of the College of Education at Texas Tech University and a former president of the science teachers' organization, said that in some classrooms, the teaching of evolution was hampered by the beliefs of the teachers themselves, who are creationists or supporters of the teaching of creationism. "Data from various studies in various states over an extended period of time indicate that about one-third of biology teachers support the teaching of creationism or 'intelligent design,' " Dr. Skoog said. Advocates for the teaching of evolution provide teachers or school officials who are challenged on it with information to help them make the case that evolution is completely accepted as a bedrock idea of science. Organizations like the science teachers' association, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science provide position papers and other information on the subject. The National Association of Biology Teachers devoted a two-day meeting to the subject last summer, Dr. Skoog said. Other advocates of teaching evolution are making the case that a person can believe both in God and the scientific method. "People have been told by some evangelical Christians and by some scientists, that you have to choose." Dr. Scott said. "That is just wrong." While plenty of scientists reject religion - the eminent evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins famously likens it to a disease - many others do not. In fact, when a researcher from the University of Georgia surveyed scientists' attitudes toward religion several years ago, he found their positions virtually unchanged from an identical survey in the early years of the 20th century. About 40 percent of scientists said not just that they believed in God, but in a God who communicates with people and to whom one may pray "in expectation of receiving an answer." Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said he thought the great variety of religious groups in the United States led to competition for congregants. This marketplace environment, he said, contributes to the politicization of issues like evolution among religious groups. He said the teaching of evolution was portrayed not as scientific instruction but as "an assault of the secular elite on the values of God-fearing people." As a result, he said, politicians don't want to touch it. "Everybody discovers the wisdom of federalism here very quickly," he said. "Leave it at the state or the local level." But several experts say scientists are feeling increasing pressure to make their case, in part, Dr. Miller said, because scriptural literalists are moving beyond evolution to challenge the teaching of geology and physics on issues like the age of the earth and the origin of the universe. "They have now decided the Big Bang has to be wrong," he said. "There are now a lot of people who are insisting that that be called only a theory without evidence and so on, and now the physicists are getting mad about this." From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 16:07:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 11:07:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: For Some Girls, the Problem With Math Is That They're Good at It Message-ID: The New York Times > Science > Essay: For Some Girls, the Problem With Math Is That They're Good at It http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/science/01math.html 5.2.1 ESSAY For Some Girls, the Problem With Math Is That They're Good at It By CORNELIA DEAN A few years ago, I told Donald Kennedy, editor of the journal Science, that I wanted to write an essay for his publication. It would say, "Anyone who thinks that sexism is no longer a problem in science has never been the first woman science editor of The New York Times." I never wrote the essay. But the continuing furor over Dr. Lawrence H. Summers's remarks on women and science reminds me why I thought of it. For those who missed it, Dr. Summers, the president of Harvard, told a conference last month on women and science that people worried about the relative dearth of women in the upper ranks of science should consider the possibility that women simply cannot hack it, that their genes or the wiring of their brains somehow leave them less fit than men for math, and therefore for science. Dr. Summers has since said clearly that he does not believe that girls are intellectually less able than boys. But maybe his original suggestion was right. If we ever figure out exactly what goes on inside the brain, or how our genes shape our abilities, we may find out that men and women do indeed differ in fundamental ways. But there are other possibilities we should consider first. One of them is the damage done by the idea that there is something wrong about a girl or woman who is really good at math. I first encountered this thinking as a seventh grader who was scarred for life when my class in an experimental state school for brainiacs was given a mathematics aptitude test. The results were posted and everyone found out I had scored several years ahead of the next brightest kid. A girl really good in math! What a freak! I resolved then and there on a career in journalism. I encountered the attitude again shortly after I became science editor, taking up a position I was to hold from 1997 to 2003. I went to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a convention that attracts thousands of researchers and teachers. My name tag listed my new position, and the scientists at the meeting all seemed to have the same reaction when they read it: "You're the new science editor of The New York Times!?" At first I was deluded enough to think they meant I was much too delightful a person for such a heavy-duty job. In fact, they were shocked it had been given to a woman. This point was driven home a few weeks later when, at a dinner for scientific eminences, a colleague introduced me to one of the nation's leading neuroscientists. "Oh yes," the scientist murmured, as he scanned the room clearly ignoring me. "Who is the new science editor of The New York Times, that twerpy little girl in short skirts?" Dumbfounded, I replied, "That would be me." A few weeks after that I was in another group of scientific eminences, this one at a luncheon at the Waldorf. The spokeswoman for the group that organized the event introduced me to one of the group's most eminent guests, a leading figure in American science policy. "Oh," he said kindly but abstractedly, "you work for The New York Times. How nice." The spokeswoman explained, again, that I was the newspaper's science editor. "An editor," he said. "How nice." The woman explained again, but again he could not take it in. "Oh, science," he said, "How nice." At this point the spokeswoman lost patience. She grabbed the honored guest by both shoulders, put her face a few inches away from his and shouted at him - "She's it!" Not long after, I answered the office telephone, and the caller, a (male) scientist, asked to speak to several of my colleagues, all male and all out. "May I help you?" I inquired. "No, no, no," he replied. "I don't want to talk to you, I want to talk to someone important!" Even at the time, I could laugh at these experiences. After all, I was a grown-up person who could take care of herself. (I informed the caller that all the men he wanted to talk to worked for me, and then I hung up. As for Dr. Twerpy, he should know that he was not the first man to refer to me professionally as "that little girl." I reported on the doings of the other one until he was indicted.) But the memories of the seventh grader are still not funny. Neither is it amusing to reflect on what happened to a college friend who was the only student in her section to pass linear algebra, the course the math department typically used to separate the sheep from the mathematical goats. Talk about stigma! She changed her major to American civilization. Another friend, graduating as a math major, was advised not to bother applying for a graduate research assistantship because they were not given to women. She eventually earned a doctorate in math, but one of her early forays into the job market ended abruptly when she was told she should stay home with her husband rather than seek employment out of town. Experiences like hers - the outright, out-loud dashing of a promising mathematician's hopes simply because of her sex - are no longer the norm. At least I hope not. But they are enough, by themselves, to tell us why there are relatively few women in the upper ranks of science and mathematics today. Meanwhile, as researchers have abundantly documented, women continue to suffer little slights and little disadvantages, everything from ridicule in high school to problems with child care, to a much greater degree than their male cohorts. After 10 or 15 years, these little things can add up to real roadblocks. So if I wanted to address the relative lack of women in the upper reaches of science, here is where I would start. By the time these problems are eliminated, maybe we'll know what really goes on inside the brain and inside the chromosomes. Then it will be time to wonder if women are inherently less fit for math and science. From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 18:30:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 13:30:24 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Minds of Their Own: Birds Gain Respect Message-ID: The New York Times > Science > Minds of Their Own: Birds Gain Respect http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/science/01bird.html 5.2.1 [Click on the URL to get to a graphic.] By SANDRA BLAKESLEE Birdbrain has long been a colloquial term of ridicule. The common notion is that birds' brains are simple, or so scientists thought and taught for many years. But that notion has increasingly been called into question as crows and parrots, among other birds, have shown what appears to be behavior as intelligent as that of chimpanzees. The clash of simple brain and complex behavior has led some neuroscientists to create a new map of the avian brain. Today, in the journal Nature Neuroscience Reviews, an international group of avian experts is issuing what amounts to a manifesto. Nearly everything written in anatomy textbooks about the brains of birds is wrong, they say. The avian brain is as complex, flexible and inventive as any mammalian brain, they argue, and it is time to adopt a more accurate nomenclature that reflects a new understanding of the anatomies of bird and mammal brains. "Names have a powerful influence on the experiments we do and the way we think," said Dr. Erich D. Jarvis, a neuroscientist at Duke University and a leader of the Avian Brain Nomenclature Consortium. "Old terminology has hindered scientific progress." The consortium of 29 scientists from six countries met for seven years to develop new, more accurate names for structures in both avian and mammalian brains. For example, the bird's seat of intelligence or its higher brain is now termed the pallium. "The correction of terms is a great advance," said Dr. Jon Kaas, a leading expert in neuroanatomy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who did not participate in the consortium. "It's hard to get scientists to agree about anything." Scientists have come to agree that birds are indeed smart, but those who study avian intelligence differ on how birds got that way. Experts, including those in the consortium, are split into two warring camps. One holds that birds' brains make the same kinds of internal connections as do mammalian brains and that intelligence in both groups arises from these connections. The other holds that bird intelligence evolved through expanding an old part of the mammal brain and using it in new ways, and it questions how developed that intelligence is. "There are still puzzles to be solved," said Dr. Peter Marler, a leading authority on bird behavior at the University of California, Davis, who is not part of the consortium. But the realization that one can study mammal brains by using bird brains, he said, "is a revolution." "I think that birds are going to replace the white rat as the favored subject for studying functional neuroanatomy," he added. The reanalysis of avian brains gives new credibility to many behaviors that seem odd coming from presumably dumb birds. Crows not only make hooks and spears of small sticks to carry on foraging expeditions, some have learned to put walnuts on roads for cars to crack. African gray parrots not only talk, they have a sense of humor and make up new words. Baby songbirds babble like human infants, using the left sides of their brains. Avian brains got their bad reputation a century ago from the German neurobiologist Ludwig Edinger, known as the father of comparative anatomy. Edinger believed that evolution was linear, Dr. Jarvis said. Brains evolved like geologic strata. Layer upon layer, the brains evolved from old to new, from fish to amphibians to reptiles to birds to mammals. By Edinger's standards, fish were the least intelligent. Humans, created in God's image, were the most intelligent. Edinger cut up all kinds of vertebrate brains, noting similarities and differences, Dr. Jarvis said. In mammals, the bottom third of the brain contained neurons organized in clusters. The top two-thirds of the brain, called the neocortex, consisted of a flat sheet of cells with six layers. This new brain, the seat of higher intelligence, lay over the old brain, the seat of instinctual behaviors. In humans, the neocortex grew so immense that it was forced to assume folds and fissures, so as to fit inside the skull. Birds' brains, in contrast, were composed entirely of clusters. Edinger concluded that without a six-layered cortex, birds could not possibly be intelligent. Rather, their brains were fully dedicated to instinctual behaviors. This view persisted through the 20th century and is still found in most biology textbooks, said Dr. Harvey Karten, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the consortium, whose research has long challenged the classic view. There is a bird way and a mammal way to create intelligence, Dr. Karten said. One uses clusters. One uses flat sheet cells in six layers. Each exploits the basic design of having a lower brain and a higher brain with mutual connections. In the 1960's, Dr. Karten carried out experiments using new techniques to trace brain wiring and identify the paths taken by various brain chemicals. In humans, a chemical called dopamine is found mostly in lower brain areas, called basal ganglia, which consist of clusters. Using the same tracing techniques in birds, Dr. Karten found that dopamine also projected primarily to lower clusters and no higher. Later studies show numerous similarities between clusters in the mammalian brain and lower clusters in the avian brain. Experts now agree that the two regions are evolutionarily older structures that lie underneath a newer mantle. Where the experts divide is on the question of the upper clusters in a bird's brain. Agreed, they are not primitive basal ganglia. But where did they come from? How did they evolve? What is their function? Dr. Karten and others in the consortium think these clusters are directly analogous to layers in the mammalian brain. They migrate from similar embryonic precursors and perform the same functions. For example, in mammals, sensory information - sights, sounds, touch - flows through a lower brain region called the thalamus and enters the cortex at the fourth layer in the six-layered cortex. In birds, sensory information flows through the thalamus and enters specific clusters that are functionally equivalent to the fourth layer. In this view, other clusters perform functions done by different layers in the mammal brain. A second group, including Dr. Georg Striedter of the University of California, Irvine, a consortium member, believes that upper clusters in the avian brain are an elaboration of two mammalian structures - the claustrum and the amygdala. In this view, these structures look alike in bird and mammal embryos. But in birds they grow to enormous proportions and have evolved entirely new ways to support intelligence. In mammals, the amygdala is involved in emotional systems, Dr. Striedter said. "But birds use it for integrating information," he said. "It's not emotional anymore." Meanwhile, examples of brilliance in birds continue to flow from fields and laboratories worldwide. Dr. Nathan Emery and Dr. Nicola Clayton at the University of Cambridge in England study comparisons between apes and corvids - crows, jays, ravens and jackdaws. Relative to its body size, the crow brain is the same size as the chimpanzee brain. Everyone knows apes use simple tools like twigs, Dr. Emery said, selecting different ones for different purposes. But New Caledonian crows create more complex tools with their beaks and feet. They trim and sculpture twigs to fashion hooks for fetching food. They make spears out of barbed leaves, probing under leaf detritus for prey. In a laboratory, when a crow named Betty was given metal wires of various lengths and a four-inch vertical pipe with food at the bottom, she chose a four-inch wire, made a hook and retrieved the food. Apes and corvids are highly social. One explanation for intelligence is that it evolved to process and use social information - who is allied with whom, who is related to whom and how to use this information for deception. They also remember. Clark nutcrackers can hide up to 30,000 seeds and recover them up to six months later. Nutcrackers also hide and steal. If they see another bird watching them as they cache food, they return later, alone, to hide the food again. Some scientists believe this shows a rudimentary theory of mind - understanding that another bird has intentions and beliefs. Magpies, at an earlier age than any other creature tested, develop an understanding of the fact that when an object disappears behind a curtain, it has not vanished. At a university campus in Japan, carrion crows line up patiently at the curb waiting for a traffic light to turn red. When cars stop, they hop into the crosswalk, place walnuts from nearby trees onto the road and hop back to the curb. After the light changes and cars run over the nuts, the crows wait until it is safe and hop back out for the food. Pigeons can memorize up to 725 different visual patterns, and are capable of what looks like deception. Pigeons will pretend to have found a food source, lead other birds to it and then sneak back to the true source. Parrots, some researchers report, can converse with humans, invent syntax and teach other parrots what they know. Researchers have claimed that Alex, an African gray, can grasp important aspects of number, color concepts, the difference between presence and absence, and physical properties of objects like their shapes and materials. He can sound out letters the same way a child does. Like mammals, some birds are naturally smarter than others, Dr. Jarvis said. But given their range of behaviors, birds are extraordinarily flexible in their intelligence quotients. "They're right up there with hominids," he said. From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 18:33:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 13:33:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Public Interest: Russia, The Sick Man of Europe Message-ID: Russia, The Sick Man of Europe http://www.thepublicinterest.com/current/article1.html Winter 2005 By Nicholas Eberstadt The Russian Federation today is in the grip of a steadily tightening mesh of serious demographic problems, for which the term "crisis" is no overstatement. This crisis is altering the realm of the possible for the country and its people--continuously, directly, and adversely. Russian social conditions, economic potential, military power, and international influence are today all subject to negative demographic constraints--and these constraints stand only to worsen over the years immediately ahead. Russia is now at the brink of a steep population decline--a peacetime hemorrhage framed by a collapse of the birth rate and a catastrophic surge in the death rate. The forces that have shaped this path of depopulation and debilitation are powerful ones, and they are by now deeply rooted in Russian soil. Altering Russia's demographic trajectory would be a formidable task under any circumstances. As yet, unfortunately, neither Russia's political leadership nor the voting public that sustains it have even begun to face up to the enormous magnitude of the country's demographic challenges. Negative population growth On New Year's Day 1992--one week after the dissolution of the Soviet Union--Russia's population was estimated to be 148.7 million. As of mid 2004, according to the Russian State Statistics Committee (Goskomstat), the Russian Federation's population was 143.8 million. During its first eleven and a half years of post-Communist independence, Russia's population had apparently declined by almost five million people, or over 3 percent. In proportional terms, this was by no means the largest population loss recorded during that period. According to estimates and projections by the U.N. Bureau of the Census, over a dozen states with a million people or more experienced a population decline between mid 1992 and mid 2004, 11 of these amounting to drops of 3.1 percent or more. Unlike some of these drops, however--Bosnia, for example, whose population total fell almost 10 percent--Russia's decline could not be explained by war or violent upheaval. In other places, population decline was due entirely to emigration (Armenia, Kazakhstan), or nearly so (Georgia). Russia, by contrast, had absorbed a substantial net influx of migrants during those years--a total net addition of over 5.5 million newcomers was tabulated between the territory's Soviet-era January 1989 census and its October 2002 population count. Despite the mitigating impact of immigration, Russia's post-Communist population decline was larger in absolute terms than any other country's over the past decade. Furthermore, continuing population decline--at a decidedly faster tempo--is envisioned for Russia for as far as demographers care to project into the future. The only question is how steep the downward path will be. The U.S. Census Bureau, for example, offers the relatively optimistic projection of a "mere" 14 million person drop in Russia's population between 2000 and 2025--an average net decline of about 560,000 persons a year. The U.N. Population Division's (UNPD) "medium variant" projection, by contrast, suggests a drop of more than 21 million over that same quarter century--about 840,000 persons a year for the period as a whole. In the years ahead, Russia's population decline will continue to accelerate because the prospective flow of net migration into Russia is drying up. The officially tabulated annual levels of immigration to, and emigration from, Russia have declined markedly since the early 1990s-and officially measured net inflows to Russia have likewise dropped very significantly. These official numbers reflect the swelling, cresting, and spending of the migration wave of ethnic Russians from the "near abroad" who resettled to the Russian Federation during and immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The draw of Russia to the (now smaller) pool of overseas Russians appears to have been much diminished, while the allure to foreign ethnics of living on Russian soil does not seem to be increasing appreciably. Russia's reported economic growth rate in the very first years of the twenty-first century has been has been positive, even brisk. Nevertheless, according to official figures, the net inflow of migration to Russia totaled less than 80,000 in all of 2002, and a mere 25,000 in the first seven months of 2003. By the first quarter of 2004, according to official statistics, the officially tallied surfeit of immigrants over emigrants was barely 4,000 persons. With in-migration flows thus subsiding, Russia's population must mirror, with ever-greater faithfulness, the actual balance of births and deaths within the country. And in post-Communist Russia, the current disproportion between deaths and births is stark, indeed astonishing. Russia, to be sure, is not the only European country registering more deaths than births nowadays--according to the Council of Europe's numbers, fully 19 European states currently report "negative natural increase." But, in other European settings, the balance is often still quite close. For example, in Italy--the poster child in many current discussions of a possible "depopulation" of Europe--there are today about 103 deaths for every 100 live births. Russia, by contrast, currently reports about 160 deaths for every 100 births. Examples of extreme surfeits of mortality over natality are, to be sure, familiar from human history. But in the past, these were witnessed only during times of famine, pestilence, war, or mass disaster. As a peacetime phenomenon it is utterly new, and while it is not unique to Russia these days--the excess of deaths over births is nearly as great today in Belarus, Bulgaria, and Latvia, and even more exaggerated in Ukraine--the Russian Federation is perhaps the most important example of this post-Communist demographic condition. Russia's abrupt and brutal swerve onto the path of depopulation began during the final crisis of the Soviet state. Over the two decades before Mikhail Gorbachev's 1985 accession to power, Russia's births regularly exceeded deaths; natural increase typically ranged from 700,000 to 1,000,000 during those years. After 1987, however, births began to fall sharply, and deaths to rise. Both tendencies were further accentuated after the collapse of the USSR. The first full year of post-Communist governance for Russia, 1992, also marked the shift to negative natural increase for the Russian Federation, with 200,000 more deaths than births. A decade later, Russia's death total was over 50 percent higher than in 1987 (2.3 million vs. 1.5 million), while its birth level was over one million lower (1.4 million vs. 2.5 million). In 1987, Russia recorded a natural increase of 968,000; in 2002, deaths surpassed births by almost exactly the same magnitude (935,000). This is an extraordinary result, but it is hardly exceptional. Tabulated deaths have outnumbered births by 900,000 or more in Russia in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002, by nearly 900,000 in 2003, and by over 420,000 in the first half of 2004. In all, between the eve of 1992 and the summer of 2004 the Russian Federation evidently recorded 10 million more burials than births. Where have all the babies gone? Russia's current depopulation bears all the trappings of a "demographic shock," reflecting the vast, historic change from Soviet totalitarianism to a commercial democracy. Though it might seem reasonable to expect that earlier, more "normal" demographic patterns would reassert themselves as the reverberations from Russia's "transition" subside, there are good reasons to believe that Russia's current, seemingly anomalous population trends define a new norm for the country. Remarkably low birth rates and terrifyingly high death rates can accurately be described as regular, rather than transitory, features of the new Russian demographic terrain. A powerful and self-reinforcing network of social factors--forces typically resistant to rapid or easy emendation--will likely keep fertility low and mortality high in the Russian Federation. Until these fundamentals change, depopulation and tragically foreshortened lives will be the distinguishing features of the Russian population profile. Consider Russia's current fertility patterns. In a society with the Russian Federation's present survival patterns, women must bear an average of about 2.33 children per lifetime to assure population stability over successive generations. In the late Soviet era, Russian fertility levels were near replacement: The country's total fertility rate (TFR) fluctuated near two births per woman from the mid 1960s through the mid 1980s. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian fertility rate likewise collapsed, plummeting from 2.19 births per woman in 1986-87 to 1.17 in 1999. Moreover, extreme subreplacement fertility is not peculiar to certain regions of Russia today; to the contrary, it prevails across almost the entire territorial expanse of the Federation. Since 2001, there have been some indications of a resurgence of fertility in the Russian Federation. For the year 2002, according to Goskomstat, the country's total fertility rate has risen to 1.32. And for the year 2003, according to Russian Federation President Vladimir V. Putin in his 2004 New Year's Day address, an "especially joyous" auspice was the absolute increase in births over the previous year. According to Goskomstat, Russia's total births rose in 2003 to 1.48 million-by that report, a 6 percent increase over the previous year. Birth figures for the first half of 2004, for their part, are 2 percent higher than for the first half of 2003. These signs of improvement raise the question: If Russian fertility fell suddenly and sharply with the demise of the Soviet Union, might it not also rebound vigorously in an auspicious political and economic environment? That possibility cannot be entirely ruled out. Demographic science, after all, lacks any robust techniques for accurately predicting future fertility patterns. But even supposing an improvement in social conditions and an increase in general levels of confidence (improvements, it should be pointed out, not entirely independent from the demographic trends under discussion here), there are a number of factors weighing against a significant upsurge in the Russian birthrate--much less a return to earlier, Soviet-era, levels of fertility. First, Russia's poor and declining overall health patterns extend to the area of reproductive health. Notably, involuntary infertility is a more significant problem for Russia than for any other Western country. And the problem is getting worse, not better. To be sure, data on infertility for contemporary Russia are not entirely reliable. According to some recent reports, however, 13 percent of Russia's married couples of childbearing age are infertile--nearly twice the 7 percent for the United States in 1995 as reported by the National Center for Health Statistics. Other Russian sources point to an even greater prevalence of infertility today, with numbers ranging as high as 30 percent of all males and females of childbearing age. Whatever the true level, medical diagnoses of infertility in Russia are clearly on the rise--suggesting that the 13 percent estimate and others of its ilk are more than just a statistical fluke. With respect more specifically to female infertility, Russia suffers today from two pronounced and highly unusual risks. For one thing, Russian womanhood has, quite literally, been scarred by the country's extraordinary popular reliance on abortion as a primary means of contraception--with the abortions in question conducted under the less-than-exemplary standards of Soviet and post-Soviet medicine. A Russian woman nowadays can expect to have more abortions than births over the course of her childbearing years. In 1988, at the end of the Soviet era, Russian women underwent an officially tabulated 4.6 million abortions--two for every live birth. In 2002, the country officially reported 1.7 million abortions--over 120 for every 100 live births. And the problem of involuntary infertility in Russia today is further exacerbated by the current explosive spread of potentially curable sexually transmitted infections (STIs). According to official figures, for example, the incidence of syphilis in 2001 was one hundred times higher in Russia than in Germany, and several hundred times higher for Russia than a number of other European countries. One recent survey in St. Petersburg calculated that 15 percent of the college students questioned had at least one sexually transmitted disease. Since untreated or inadequately treated STIs can result in sterility the potential for inadvertent impediments to childbearing for Russia's young men and women due to such infections could be appreciable. A second obstacle to an increase in the Russian birthrate is the Russian family itself. Russian patterns of family formation have been evolving markedly over the past generation--and not in a direction conducive to larger families. Simply put, young Russians are now much less likely to marry--and ever more likely to divorce if they do. Between 1981 and 2001, marriage rates fell by over one third, while divorce rates rose by one third. In 2001, Russia recorded three divorces for every four new marriages--a breakup ratio even higher than Scandinavia's. The human import of these trends can perhaps be better understood by thinking in terms of a woman's odds of getting married or divorced. In 1990, under Russia's then-prevailing nuptiality patterns, marriage was almost universal--and the odds of eventually divorcing were about 40 percent. By 1995, the odds of getting married were down to 75 percent--while the odds of eventual divorce had risen to 50 percent. In just five years a Russian woman's odds of forming a lasting marriage dropped from about three in five to three in eight. Since then, the odds of having a lasting marriage in Russia seem to have declined still further. At the same time that Russian marriages were becoming less common--and more fragile--the disposition to childbearing outside of marriage was increasing. In 1987--the recent high-water mark for Russian fertility--about 13 percent of the country's newborns were out of wedlock. By 2001, the proportion had more than doubled, to nearly 29 percent. The overwhelming majority of Russia's newly emerging cohort of illegitimate children, it seems, were being raised by single mothers. Consensual unions and cohabitation still account for the living arrangements of only a tiny fraction of Russia's young adults. The rapid decline of the two-parent family in contemporary Russia undercuts prospects for substantial increases in national fertility levels. Relative to available household resources, all other things being equal, raising children in a mother-only family is a much more expensive and difficult proposition than in an intact family. It is true that fertility rates in Russia are currently 20 to 30 percent below those of the Scandinavian countries, even though the level of marital commitment in the Nordic countries is low, and the level of illegitimacy is high. But unlike the Scandinavian welfare states, Russia does not provide generous public benefits to help mothers raise their young children--nor could the Russian state afford to do so even if it were so inclined. The third, and perhaps most important, obstacle to higher Russian birthrates is that Russian fertility rates are reflective of larger European trends. True, Russia's levels currently list toward the lower end of the European spectrum. Even so, they are actually higher than for some other post-Communist areas whose "transitions" to democracy and free markets look rather more complete--and are scarcely lower than the current levels in a number of the established market democracies of the European Union. Viewed over a longer horizon, Russia's postwar fertility levels and trends look altogether "European." Although the precise timing of Russia's fertility decline is distinct, Russia has nevertheless clearly followed the same general path as Italy, Spain, and Germany. From a European perspective, in short, Russia's current levels of extremely low fertility would hardly stand out as exceptional. It is thus far from obvious that the further suffusion into Russia of "European" norms and attitudes about family size (to the extent that such attitudes and norms are not already firmly rooted in Russian soil) should serve to buoy childbearing in the Russian Federation. Quite to the contrary. It is equally possible that an embrace of particular aspects of childbearing patterns currently manifest through much of the European Union (EU) could actually depress birth rates in Russia in coming years. Throughout the EU, for example, the median age at marriage for women is the late 20s, while it is still about 22 in Russia; Russia's median female age at first birth, correspondingly, is distinctly lower than in most EU countries (23 vs. 27 to 29). A shift toward these EU patterns of marriage and maternity would have the immediate effect of postponing births, and thus probably lowering annual fertility further. The grim reaper cometh If Russia's low fertility rates are cause enough for concern, its mortality rates are scandalously high. Broad segments of the Russian populace have suffered a disastrous long-term retrogression in health conditions. A marked deterioration of public health in an industrialized society during peacetime is counterintuitive and highly peculiar. At first glance, the very fact that Russia's mortality catastrophe looks so anomalous might seem to suggest that the problem should be intrinsically remediable--if not positively self-correcting. The particulars of Russia's health and mortality woes, however, underscore just how difficult it will be to achieve even modest improvements in the years immediately ahead--and how vulnerable Russia remains to further degradations of public health. Over the four-plus decades between 1961-62 and 2003, life expectancy at birth in Russia fell by nearly five years for males; it also declined for females, although just slightly, making for an overall drop in life expectancy of nearly three years over this four-decade span. Age-standardized mortality rates cast an even grimmer light on Russia's continuing health crisis: Between the mid 1960s and the start of the twenty-first century, these rates underwent a long and uneven rise, climbing by over 15 percent for women and over 40 percent for men. Russia's upswing in mortality was especially concentrated among its working-age population, and here the upsurge in death rates was utterly breathtaking. Over the three decades between 1970-71 and 2001, for example, every female cohort between the ages of 20 and 59 suffered at least a 30 percent increase in death rates; for men between the ages of 40 and 59, the corresponding figures uniformly reached, and some cases exceeded, 60 percent. What accounted for this peacetime collapse in public health standards? To go by Russia's (admittedly less than perfect) cause-of-death statistics, nearly all of the increase in mortality rates for men--and absolutely all of the increase for women--can be traced to an explosion in deaths attributed to cardiovascular disease (CVD--heart disease plus strokes) and injuries. Between the mid 1960s and the end of the twentieth century, CVD mortality rates in Japan, Western Europe, and North America fell sharply. Russia, by contrast, suffered an explosion of cardiovascular death over the same period. Between 1965 and 2001, Russia's age-standardized death rate for CVD surged by 25 percent for women--and it soared by 65 percent for men. Today, CVD-related mortality in Russia is four times higher than in Ireland, five times higher than in Germany, and eight times higher than in France. As for mortality attributed to injury--murder, suicide, traffic, poisoning, and other violent causes-age-adjusted levels for Russian men and women alike more than doubled between 1965 and 2001. Among contemporary societies at peace, Russia's level of violent deaths places the country practically in a category of its own. For men under 65 years of age, Russia's death rate from injury and poisoning is currently over four times as high as Finland's, the nation with the worst rate in the EU. Russia's violent death rate for men under 65 is nearly six times as high as Belgium's, over nine times as high as Israel's, and over a dozen times that of the United Kingdom. As is well known, men are more likely than women to die violent deaths--but in a gruesome crossover, these death rates for Russian women are now higher than for most western European men. Russia's dismal health record can be explained in terms of a multiplicity of unfavorable social, behavioral, and policy tendencies: pervasive smoking; poor diets; sedentary life styles; increasing social atomization and anomie; the special economic stresses of Russia's "transition"; the unimpressive capabilities of the Soviet medical system and the limited coverage of its successor. At the end of the day, however, it is impossible to overlook the deadly contribution of the Russian love of vodka. From the sixteenth century--when vodka was first introduced to a receptive public--up to the present day, Russians have always demonstrated a predilection to drink heavy spirits in astonishing excess--a fact remarked upon by visiting foreigners for centuries. Russia's thirst for hard liquor seems to have reached dizzying new heights in the late Soviet era, and then again in the early post-Communist era. By 1984, according to some estimates, the per capita level of alcohol intake in Russia was roughly three times as high as in 1913 (that pre-revolutionary era not exactly being remembered as a time of temperance). By the mid 1990s, Russian per capita alcohol intake may have even slightly surpassed its previous, Communist-era, zenith. In 1994, for example, the estimate of pure alcohol consumed by the population aged 15 and older amounted to 18.5 liters per capita annually--the equivalent of 125 cc. of vodka for everyone, every day. As it happens, in recent decades variations in alcohol consumption seem to track fairly closely with changes in Russian mortality (and especially with male mortality)--the former being a leading indicator for the latter. Heavy drinking is directly associated with Russia's appallingly high risk of deadly injury--and Russia's binge drinking habits also seems to be closely associated with death through cardiac failure. At the moment, the expert prognosis for Russian mortality in the years immediately ahead is pessimistic. The U.N. Population Division, for example, estimates the life expectancy for Russian men today to be lower than the average for men from the world's "less developed regions" (such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America)--and though UNPD projections envision improvements for Russia in the coming decades, Russia does not reach the level of the less developed regions until around 2020. The U.S. Census Bureau, for its part, estimates that life expectancy for Russian men over the coming two decades will approximate the levels for their counterparts in Bangladesh and Pakistan--and will remain steadily below the levels anticipated for India. Yet somber as these readings appear, they may nevertheless prove excessively optimistic. The Census Bureau projections for Russian mortality, for example, have tended to err on the high side: Where the Census Bureau projections in 2002 put Russian male life expectancy for 2002 at 62.3 years, Goskomstat's actual data for that year turned out to be three and a half years lower. And although the UNPD is imagining unexceptional improvements in male health levels over the next two decades--less than four years' increase between 2000-5 and 2020-25--there are reasons to think such a goal highly ambitious under Russia's current circumstances. The problem, simply put, is that today's Russians seem to be less healthy than their parents. Consequently, merely managing to re-attain the survival rates reported by that earlier generation will take some doing. It is an accomplishment that cannot be taken for granted. Comparing the mortality schedules of successive birth cohorts in Russia places the problem of "negative health momentum" in even clearer perspective. In industrialized Western societies in the postwar era, younger generations have come routinely to enjoy better survival rates than their predecessors. Sometimes these improvements have been truly dramatic. In contemporary Japan, for example, men born in the early 1950s have, over their life course thus far, experienced death rates roughly half as high at any given age as those that were recorded for the cohort born 20 years before them. By contrast, there has been no improvement in survival schedules for rising birth cohorts among the two generations of Russian men born between the late 1920s and the late 1980s. Quite the opposite: Over its life course, each rising cohort of Russian men seems to be charting out a more dismal mortality trajectory than the one traced by its immediate predecessors. The "negative momentum" apparent in Russia's modern-day mortality trends makes the objective of broad, sustained improvements in public health especially unlikely in the years ahead. And this analysis, it is worth noting, has yet to take into account the possibility of additional new health troubles on the horizon. Yet such problems are, quite plainly, gathering today. Foremost among them may be Russia's still-mounting epidemic of HIV/AIDS. As we have already seen, curable STIs are now rampant in Russia--and generally speaking, epidemic levels of curable STIs seem to serve as a leading indicator for the spread of HIV. Russian authorities have registered a cumulative total of just under 300,000 cases of HIV, while the U.N. Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimates that over 800,000 Russians were living with HIV as of 2003 (with an upper estimate of 1.4 million). The U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) suggests that the true number as of 2002 could have been as high as 2 million. If the UNAIDS central estimate were accurate, Russia's adult HIV prevalence rate would be over 2 percent; by the NIC's 2002 estimates, it could already have been as high as 2.5 percent in 2002. The future course of Russia's HIV epidemic is likewise clouded in uncertainty. Clearly, though, HIV has the potential to cancel any prospective health progress in Russia over the coming generation. Progress is, of course, to be prayed for--and under the right circumstances, some progress may be achieved. But major reductions in Russia's awful toll of excess mortality do not look to be in the cards any time soon. The tightening demographic straitjacket Russia's demographic trends have unambiguously negative implications for Russian development and security. The ramifications are manifold and far-reaching, some of them complex--but the basic outlines of the more important considerations can be briefly and simply adduced. Russia's lingering health and mortality crisis promises to be a brake on rapid economic development. In the modern era, the wealth of nations is represented, increasingly, in human rather than natural resources--and the richer the country, the more pronounced the tendency for "human capital" to overshadow or replace physical capital in the production process. Human health figures importantly in the overall composition of human capital, and thus the correspondence between human health and economic productivity has been fairly robust. In recent years, to judge by U.N. and World Bank data, an additional year of male life expectancy at birth has been associated with an increment of GNP per capita of about 8 percent. The relationship between health and economic productivity, to be sure, is multidimensional and simultaneous--improved wealth also makes for better health, and does so through a variety of avenues. But it is difficult to see how Russia can expect, in some imagined future, to maintain a western standard of living if its work force suffers from a third-world schedule of survival--or worse. Skeptics might argue that health does not seem to be constraining Russia's economic progress today--recorded growth rates, after all, have been high for the past several years. Perhaps poor health will not overly constrain Russian economic development in the years ahead, since Russia can earn large dividends from the exploitation and sale of its abundant natural resources. But Russia's dependence upon extractive industries only emphasizes just how limited the role of "human capital" is in Russia's current international trade profile. Russia's poor health prospects, furthermore, stand to influence its economic potential far into the future. According to year 2000 survival schedules, for example, a 20-year-old Russian youth had only a 46 percent chance of reaching age 65 (compared with a 79 percent chance for an American counterpart). That discrepancy will surely affect the cost-benefit calculus of investments in education and job training--and not to the benefit of Russia's younger generation or its overall economic outlook. In the short run, the collapse of Russian fertility may have little practical (as opposed to psychological) import for daily life or affairs of state. If, however, extreme subreplacement fertility persists, current and continued childbearing patterns would directly shape the Russian future. In some nontrivial respects, it could materially limit Russian national options. In the decades immediately ahead, for example, Russia looks set to contend with a sharp fall-off in the nation's youth population. Between 1975 and 2000, for example, the number of young men aged 15 to 24 ranged between 10 million and 13 million--but by 2025, in current UNPD projections, the total will be down to barely 6 million. Those figures would imply a 45 percent decrease between 2000 and 2025 in the size of this pivotal population group--as compared with a projected 15 percent decline in Russia's overall population. The military implications of the envisioned disproportionate shrinkage of the age group from which the Russian army draws its manpower are obvious enough. But there would also be serious economic and social reverberations. With fewer young people rising to replace older retirees, the question of improving (or perhaps maintaining) the average level of skills and qualifications in the economically active population would become that much more pressing. And since younger people the world over tend to be disposed toward, and associated with, innovation and entrepreneurial risk-taking, a declining younger population could have intangible, but real, consequences. In a world of still-growing populations and generally improving health conditions, Russia would seem to face an uphill struggle. Between 2000 and 2025, by UNPD medium variant projections, Russia's share of total global population is envisioned as shrinking by a third, from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent. Over the same period, improvements in Russia's life expectancy are expected to under-perform the global average somewhat. Simply to maintain its share of world output, Russia's per capita economic growth would have to exceed the world's average by 1.6 points a year for the quarter century under consideration to compensate for relative population decline. To some important extent, a country's relative economic potential limits its international political influence and its international security. Russia's demographic prospects thus establish an obvious challenge for the nation over the coming generation. Can it avoid, through compensatory economic policies and foreign policy stratagems, the geopolitical marginalization to which demographic trends alone would seem to consign it? The politics of depopulation Russia's political leaders are by no means incognizant of the demographic vise gripping their nation. The country's politicians and policy makers talk about the nation's population constantly. However, Moscow has done almost nothing worth mentioning to reverse the demographic catastrophe that has been unfolding on Russian soil over the past decade. To the extent that Russian policy makers have concerned themselves with the country's negative natural increase problem, they have focused almost entirely upon the birth rate--and how to raise it. Not surprisingly, this pro-natalist impulse has foundered on the shoals of finance. In plain terms, serious pro-natalism is an expensive business, especially when the potential parents-to-be are educated, urbanized women accustomed to careers with paid recompense. To induce a serious and sustained increase in childbearing, a government under such circumstances must be prepared to get into the business of hiring women to be mothers--and this is a proposition that could make the funding of a national pension system look like pin money by comparison. Consequently, Russia's government has concentrated most of its pro-natalist efforts on attempting to "talk the birth rate up"--and as a century of experience with such official chatter in Western countries will attest, that gambit is almost always utterly ineffectual. In 2003, the Russian government began experimenting with another variant of "pro-natalism on the cheap": a quiet attempt to restrict the previously unconditional availability of abortion on demand. There are, of course, ethical reasons for opposition to the promiscuous destruction of fetuses. But from a strictly demographic standpoint, the dividends derived from a slight and gradual tightening of the rules on pregnancy termination are distinctly limited. Reducing the number of abortions, after all, does not mechanistically increase birth totals. If it did, there should have been a baby-boom in post-Communist Russia. (Remember: Russia had about three million fewer abortions in 2002 than in 1987--but also about a million fewer births.) To the extent that Russia's tentative steps toward the regulation of abortion may be seen as a factor boosting the nation's fertility, the effect would largely be felt through the eventual enhancement of fecundity--which is to say, fewer Russian women would be rendered involuntarily sterile through such procedures in the years ahead. But in the greater scheme of things, that could hardly be described as much of a stimulus. While Russian policy circles trained their attention on a literally fruitless and largely misdirected effort to revitalize the birth rate, they treated the country's catastrophic mortality conditions--upon which sustained interventions would have yielded some predictable results--with an insouciance verging on indifference. Indeed, Russian authorities have adopted a remarkably laissez-faire posture toward the calamitous conditions that currently lead to the "excess mortality" of something like 400,000 of their citizens each year. Russia's devastating cardiovascular epidemic and its carnage from violent death might not be immediately controlled or completely prevented, but their cost could be at least somewhat contained through carefully tailored public policies. Yet government policy makers have shown no interest in pursuing such options. Crisis in democracy Moscow's feckless approach to its ongoing national health emergency would be regarded as a scandal in most foreign quarters. But to Western eyes it also constitutes something of a mystery: How is it possible that such a manifestly inadequate health regimen is tolerated in a still somewhat open and pluralistic political system? The proximate explanation for this puzzle is that, until now, no great political pressure has been brought to bear for correction or adjustment of the government's course--and the absence of such articulated pressures reflects in turn a lack of perceived political concern by the public at large. Russia may have already lost the equivalent of its casualties in two, or more, World War I's through premature mortality since 1992. But as yet there has been almost no public outcry about this peacetime outrage, and none of the dozens of competitive parties in Russia's new electoral environment have seen fit to champion the promotion of the nation's health as its own political cause. This is more than a health crisis. It constitutes nothing less than a fundamental test for Russia's troubled fledgling democracy. This essay is based on the author's "The Russian Federation at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century," NBR Analysis 15, no. 2 and is published with permission of the National Bureau of Asian Research Copyright of The Public Interest, Issue #158 (Winter 2005), National Affairs, Inc. Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, and is a member of the Publication Committee of The Public Interest. From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 18:36:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 13:36:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Prospect (UK): Mother tongue Message-ID: Mother tongue http://prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6608 [No. 106 / Jan 2005] [33]January 2005 | 106 ? [34]Cover story ? [35]Mother tongue What does the fashion for books about the state of the English language tell us? People care about their language because it forms part of their identity, and part of the resistance to changes in English is a resistance to change itself. But correct usage is not an elite affectation; it is a badge of competence Richard Jenkyns Richard Jenkyns is professor of the classical tradition at the University of Oxford, and author of "Westminster Abbey" When you had finished reading your October Prospect, were you purple with rage? One contributor, writing about Gordon Brown, described him as an "heir apparent" who might find that someone else inherited after all. But an heir apparent must necessarily succeed; the term the writer should have used was "heir presumptive." A second contributor discussed why parliament is "like it is"; that should have been "as it is," or so we used to be taught at school. A third contributor wrote about the norms of something being "flaunted," when he meant "flouted." So it seems that even Britain's intelligent conversation is being conducted by people what haven't been learned to talk proper. Fetch me my green ink bottle: I have an article to write. Why do people get so agitated about linguistic misuses and even about changes in the language? Is English in a bad state? Are things getting worse? These questions have been made topical by Lynne Truss's bestselling Eats, Shoots & Leaves and by the spate of books (and a television show) on similar themes by authors hoping to benefit from her success. The subject of John Humphrys's stocking-filler, Lost for Words, is indicated by its subtitle, The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language. Gobbledygook, by Don Watson, an Australian journalist, is a more serious piece of work; again, the subtitle explains its theme: How Clich?s, Sludge and Management-speak are Strangling our Public Language. Vivian Cook's Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary, produced by Profile, Truss's publisher (and mine), is somewhat different. The subtitle - Or Why Can't Anybody Spell? - may suggest that it is another "why oh why" book. In fact, it is a collection of linguistic facts and oddities assembled by a professor who loves words in both their spoken and written form. It is first-rate bedtime browsing and will surely find a place in many of Britain's most cultivated loos. There is probably little mystery about Truss's success. She is a talented journalist, with a gift for the perky phrase; the book was skilfully packaged; and like other fads, it just caught on. Reviewers in this country seem to have been almost all favourable, but on the other side of the Atlantic the book received a withering dismissal from Louis Menand in the New Yorker. Menand is a very clever man, and hiring him to deal with Truss is like sending for Red Adair to put out the bonfire at the bottom of the garden. He began by observing that Truss's first punctuation mistake comes in her dedication and found many more errors and inconsistencies, as well as poor argument. Some people have taken Truss seriously, but she herself, I think, does not. Her subtitle, The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, is mischievous, since in fact she sensibly takes a fairly relaxed view. Her long diatribe against misplaced apostrophes is a comic rant, to be enjoyed as such, and no more. The interesting issue is not the book itself but the public response to it. Reading these books and other articles, and listening to discussion on the broadcast media, I am struck by how widespread is the sense that we are being hoodwinked. "They" - politicians, academics, captains of industry, management consultants, bureaucrats - are misusing the English language as a way of deceiving us. The idea that language can be manipulated to disguise the truth, and even to control and limit thought, is, of course, one of the themes of George Orwell's 1984. Orwell also explored the topic in his famous essay "Politics and the English language," written in 1946. He took five specimens of recent writing to illustrate "various of the mental vices from which we now suffer." The first is a clumsy and contorted sentence by Harold Laski containing so many double negatives that he seems to have ended up saying the opposite of what he meant to say. The second is from another once celebrated intellectual, Lancelot Hogben, whose vices are dying metaphor, pomposity and facetiousness ("we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables"). The third, from an American essay on psychology, is a typical piece of academic prose. The fourth is taken from a ranting communist pamphlet. The last is from a letter published in Tribune, in which rant, pomposity and facetiousness are majestically combined. Orwell found certain faults common to all of these passages - ugliness, staleness of imagery and lack of precision: "The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing." Has anything changed in the last 60 years? The most obvious difference is in political language. People still distrust the politicians - at a guess, they distrust them more now than they did then - but the rant that Orwell attacked now seems quaint and dated. For him, too much heat was the danger; now the enemies of clarity and honesty are euphemism, waffle and evasion. Perhaps the most depressing part of Orwell's essay, when we read it now, is his sample of academic writing, for prolix and obscure though it is, one's first reaction is to wonder what the fuss is about: it is so much better than a great deal of today's professorial prose. The public suspects that much academic production is fraudulent, and they are partly right. Since one of Orwell's targets was imprecision of thought, it is interesting to observe how frequently the word "precisely" is found in a certain type of academic prose, almost always used where "imprecisely" would be more accurate. You can diagnose weak thought from dead language as you can diagnose firedamp from a dead canary, and "precisely" is a dead adverb. It is an example of what Orwell called a meaningless word, an upmarket version of "literally," as in: "He literally wiped the floor with his opponent." In other terms, it is a bad faith word - a symptom of bluster, vagueness or vacuity. In Orwell's fashion, Humphrys hauls in a couple of public intellectuals for questioning. Their offences are of unequal gravity. One is the sociologist Frank Furedi: the passages cited by Humphrys are indeed ineptly written, but at least Furedi is trying to say something serious. The other culprit is Susan Greenfield, in this case from a popular book. Here are the passages from Greenfield that Humphrys quotes: "These doom-laden imaginings need a pinch of salt. Setting aside the obvious precaution of not volunteering for a brain implant, even if the opportunity for psychokinesis was too valuable to pass over the direct implanting of thoughts would still not necessarily be feasible." "At last, at the turn of the century, IT has finally matured into adjectives such as 'cheap' and 'easy to use,' with the tsunami of applications and knock-on implications it has for our lives." It may seem ghoulish to linger at the scene of these verbal pile-ups, but an accident investigation is called for. The first of these passages begins with an ugly mix of metaphors and proceeds to a sentence that is barely literate. "Setting" is a dangling participle (not easily interpreted, though one realises with a shudder that this part of the sentence is meant to be humorous); "was" should be "were," and a comma is needed after "over." In the clause beginning "even if," I suspect that the word "not" has dropped out after "too valuable," but the sentence is so inarticulate that it is hard to be sure. How can an educated person write so badly? The second extract may supply the answer. The meaning towards which Greenfield is groping is probably this: "IT is now so cheap and easy to use that it is having a big effect on our lives." What on earth does "matured into adjectives such as" mean? Is she trying to say something about use of language? Probably not: the likelihood is that "has matured into adjectives such as" is Greenfieldian for "has become." "Tsunami" is pseudo-sophistication, a sort of gimcrack brightness, like those people who say "smorgasbord" for "variety." Insofar as the word makes any sense at all, that sense is wrong: the writer does not mean to say that the effect of home computers on our lives has been sudden, violent and destructive. We might wonder why she has found it so difficult to say something so simple. But that surely is the answer: it is because the proposition is so simple that the expression is so muddled. If it had been put straightforwardly, we would have seen at once that it was hardly worth making. We all know that cheap computers have made a difference. But they have not made that much difference: "tsunami" is, among other things, a factitious attempt to create a bit of drama. One of the reasons that this is bad prose is that it is dishonest prose: in each of these passages the writer is trying to hide the fact that she has very little to say. That was an extreme case; here is something much more ordinary. I read this the other day in an interview with a well-known figure, talking about industry: "You will never deliver a successful bottom line on a sustainable basis unless you have a vibrant organisational dynamic." I understand the first part of this; it means, "You will not make a profit." But what about the second part? It might mean, "unless your staff are happy in their jobs." Or it might mean something quite different: "unless your people argue vigorously with one another." Or it may be meant as a statement of the obvious: "unless your firm is well run." It is impossible to know. "Vibrant," by the way, is another of those bad faith words - a sure indicator of unconscious insincerity. As it happens, the speaker of these words is an administrator of outstanding force and clarity, and he was merely using the common currency of our day. Some people talk like this of their own accord. When I praised my university's computer service to an eminent American scientist, he agreed that it was "a truly consumer-oriented facility." But there are also political pressures to make us talk like this. For instance, universities are now expected to produce mission statements. That ought to be easy: "We teach, study and write, and try to do these things as well as we can." But of course such plain, frank words will not do, and we are driven to swathe simple meaning in the language of bureaucracy. I am unsure why the language of management, Don Watson's main target, is so deplorable, but it is a serious matter, as it clogs the working of schools, hospitals and other public and private businesses. In the academic world, it may be easier to detect the forces which discourage good, plain English. Modern societies have created large salaried intelligentsias, which are required to keep publishing. Some subject matter is essentially difficult: philosophy, for example, must often be done at a high level of abstraction. But the aim ought always to be to make difficult matters as simple as the subject allows, and the conditions of modern academic life tempt people to do the opposite. History is an almost limitless field, and my impression is that historians usually write well. But the study of popular culture easily tends to statement of the obvious, and its practitioners naturally want to disguise that fact. The English literature industry is so big that in many areas there is not enough material to go around, and here the temptation is to claim that even the most perspicuous authors need the professionals to interpret them. It is like the plumber telling you that it will cost a grand to fix that leaky tap. As for politics, all governments reasonably stress their successes and palliate their failures, but many people seem to feel that the present government is more widely and systematically dishonest with fact and language than any of its predecessors. In my view, this suspicion is justified. To take a small example, Labour has for many years deliberately confused the important distinction between spending and investment by avoiding the former word: Gordon Brown would invest in a packet of Polo mints. Tony Blair himself is one of the two most interesting users of English in politics today. Humphrys refers to a couple of notorious habits: his tendency to change his accent to fit his audience, and his use of sentences without verbs when he wants to empty his language of determinate meaning. His 1999 conference speech on the "forces of conservatism" - incidentally, in its demonising of opponents and its aspiration to make the Labour party the political arm of the British people, perhaps the most fascistic speech ever made by a mainstream British politician - exploited the fact that in spoken English, "conservatism" and "Conservatism" are indistinguishable. In his most recent conference speech, he said, "I can apologise" (for the equivocations over Iraq), and the newspapers next morning reported both that he had apologised and that he had not. Perhaps that was too clever by half, but at least it enabled him to utter the cathartic word "apologise" (and to avoid the plain word "sorry" - apologies are what we send when we cannot attend a committee meeting). Later, in the House of Commons, he declared that he took responsibility for the security services. This sounded bold, but was actually a way of acknowledging formal responsibility while denying real responsibility. The long Latinate word "responsibility," like "apologise," was helpful. The five-letter words which would have got to the heart of the matter were "sorry," "fault" and "blame." The use of smear and sneer words to block open-minded thought has declined since Orwell's time (except for "racist" and perhaps the pejorative use of "politically correct"). But in other respects the situation is no better, and in many ways worse. Much of the current fuss over language, however, is about something different from Orwell's concern, although it is related. Take the examples in my very first paragraph. In none of these cases is the meaning in any doubt; if they are objectionable, it is for other reasons. There is a feeling around which might express itself like this: "Everything's going to the dogs. They aren't taught grammar in schools, they can't spell... and don't you hate the way people say 'ballpark figure' and 'at this moment in time.'" People care about their language because it forms part of their identity. Consider Blair's chameleon shifts of accent. Mass immigration has reminded us about the importance of accent: a person who talks with a native accent is "one of us," whatever his skin colour, while a person with a foreign accent, however well respected, remains a foreigner. On the whole, this is good news, for it suggests that shared habits of speech can help a diverse society to hold together. People's sense of local and national identity is often based on things that were familiar when they were young: policemen in tall helmets, Routemaster buses, roast beef for Sunday lunch. People feel like that about language, and part of the resistance to changes in English is a resistance to change itself. It is also significant that, as Humphrys notes, Americanisms are especially resented. Once the change is complete, however, no one notices. Who now sympathises with the don who, on being told by a visitor that he wanted to contact her, replied: "I am delighted that you have arrived in Oxford. The verb 'To contact' has not."? One of the examples in my first paragraph represents language in transition. The use of "like" as a conjunction is now general even in educated speech, and it may soon become accepted in written English too. It grates on me, but it may not grate on the next generation. In the case of manifest language errors, the rule should be simple: resist as long as you can, but once the battle is lost, surrender. It is still worth trying to keep "media" and "data" as plural words, but it would be silly to say, "Her stamina are remarkable." One of the lessons of books like Lost for Words is that everyone has his own b?te noire (one of mine is b?te noir; one of Orwell's was the use of pretentious foreign phrases). One of Humphrys's is the plural in, for example, "the caller withheld their number." "Aargh!" he says (not all his comments are very sophisticated). But "their" is what we have always said in ordinary speech. True, we used to be taught to avoid this in writing, but if people think that so-called inclusive language is important, it is surely better than the ugly and obtrusive "his or her." Humphrys also hates redundancies like "safe haven" and "future prospect," but although these are faults, they are pretty minor ones. What would he make of Webster? I am acquainted with sad misery As the tanned galley-slave is with his oar. No doubt something lingers here of the original meaning of "sad," which was "persistent," but the dull repetition in "sad misery" movingly expresses the monotonous continuance of the Duchess of Malfi's sorrows. In our ordinary discourse, a little redundancy may help to make meaning clear. Nor should we be automatically hostile to padding, as both Orwell and Humphrys are. In the 16th century, Cranmer gave the liturgy rhythm and dignity, in a language much less polysyllabic than Latin, by repetitions, often yoking together an Anglo-Saxon and a classically derived word: "Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain... perfect remission and forgiveness." Clich?s such as "at the end of the day" and "at this moment in time" have become trite with use, but in origin they were virtuous: they grow out of an instinct to give language shape and flow. There are several misunderstandings about clich?. There are clich?s of thought; I used one in my first paragraph, when I referred to the myth that angry letters to the press are written in green ink. These are like family jokes; they are part of the national conversation, and are not to be regretted. Some clich?s are modestly useful, like "tip of the iceberg." Many are metaphors, and of these, some are plain bad, while others were once fresh but have become stale with time, such as "sick as a parrot." But "over the moon," though now horribly hackneyed, was once rather a charming phrase, with a pleasing touch of the surreal; and there was, I suppose, an allusion to the cow jumping over the moon in the nursery rhyme. The nature of grammar, too, is often misunderstood. When Ernie Wise talked about "the play what I wrote," he was using a grammar, but it was not the grammar of educated English. No native English-speaker would say "the play whom I wrote," a mistake which a foreigner learning the language might well make. That would indeed be contrary to English grammar. Another fact which often confuses people is that grammars include irregularities. Humphrys frets over the form "aren't I," before coming to the sensible conclusion that it is all right. But there was never a problem to start with. "Aren't I" is the correct form in modern English; it is simply an irregularity. We need to distinguish ugly language from ungrammatical language: plenty of language is ugly but grammatically correct. And we also need to distinguish between the grammar of informal speech ("aren't I"), non-standard grammar ("what I wrote"), and incorrect grammar ("whom I wrote"). There is a story of a German spy who was caught because his English was "too correct." If he was caught because the natives' speech was muddled and slovenly, he was unlucky; but if he was speaking like a book, he deserved his capture. Spoken English is different from written English - a point which Humphrys makes well - and the foreigner who has not learned this has not fully mastered the language. Some people stress the importance of grammar, in the sense of educated speech and writing; others, in reaction, deny that it matters, and may even claim that it is an elite conspiracy to keep the proles in their place. A similar reaction insists that the English language is in good health, and that there is no need to be concerned about it. This was the claim made by Jean Aitchison at the time of her Reith lectures in 1996, but she seemed to have no criteria for distinguishing good language from bad. It is certainly wrong to suppose that languages cannot improve or deteriorate, or to deny that different languages have particular strengths and weaknesses. Among the disadvantages of English, for example, are the comparatively inflexible word order, the use of "s" both for the genitive case and for the plural and a general excess of sibilance, the inability to distinguish the singular and plural of the second person, and the awkwardness of having to use "it" for what the French distinguish as il and ce. The strength of English is the variety of its registers. The base of our language is Germanic, but it has been overlaid in three stages by words of Latin derivation: those that arrived in Anglo-Saxon times, those that came from French after 1066, and the abstract vocabulary that entered from the Renaissance onwards. We have cases of two words derived from the same Latin original, such as "frail" and "fragile," or "ransom" and "redemption." Good prose can exploit this range of register. We can use short, plain words or sesquipedalian polysyllables; we may want to use both. We should learn educated English, as we should learn to spell, if only because it is a certificate of competence. Mistakes like "should of" or "flaunt" for "flout" are literally childish: they are the result of people picking up language by imitation, as children do, and misunderstanding what they have heard. We should flaunt the rules of grammar, not flout them, if only to show that we know what we are up to. But there is a nobler reason for knowing the rules, and that is that it enables one to speak more variously and effectively. Language does more than inform: there are occasions when it should be sonorous, poetic, dignified or inspiring; and at times it needs to be blunt and coarse. I said earlier that Tony Blair was one of the two most interesting users of English in present politics; the other is Chris Patten. He speaks and writes with force and elegance; he quoted Shakespeare after losing his seat, but he also understands the value of a drop into the demotic ("gobsmacked"). You cannot drop into the demotic, however, unless you have a height to drop from. Patten's case may suggest that there is a practical advantage to good English. Hardly anyone knows whether he did a good job or not in Brussels, but he has acquired the reputation of a wise statesman, and that surely owes much to his way with words. On the other hand, Blair has been immensely successful in electoral politics, and Patten has not, so maybe the price of good language is respect without power. But there are grounds for being cautiously hopeful. I suspect that behind the fuss about grammar, spelling and clich? there lies a larger uneasiness. The feeling is abroad that government and society are hostile to high culture, or at least uneasy with it; that anything demanding has to be simplified or smoothed out ("accessibility" is the weasel word here); that no serious matter can now be treated seriously, the malaise summed up in the phrase "dumbing down." Humphrys's heart is in the right place, but his book, alas, is itself an example of dumbing down, for it is written in a relentlessly chirpy, folksy prose, as though he were trying to jolly along a class of 14 year olds suffering from attention deficit. Popularisation need not and should not be patronising. Think of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation: Clark was superbly patrician, but the reverse of patronising, for he treated us as people who would want to hear a serious argument, elegantly made. Civilisation was popular, and something of the same kind could be popular again now, for there is in the land a hunger to be more serious. The hungry sheep look up, and it is time for them to be fed; why, there might even be money in it. End of the article From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 18:37:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 13:37:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Of Mice, Men and In-Between Message-ID: Of Mice, Men and In-Between http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63731-2004Nov19?language=printer Scientists Debate Blending Of Human, Animal Forms By Rick Weiss Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A01 In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins. In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human. In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls. These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research. Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses. Chimeras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how nascent human cells and organs mature and interact -- not in the cold isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the bodies of living creatures. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and pointing the way toward new medical treatments. But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers above the work: How human must a chimera be before more stringent research rules should kick in? The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the federal government, has been studying the issue and hopes to make recommendations by February. Yet the range of opinions it has received so far suggests that reaching consensus may be difficult. During one recent meeting, scientists disagreed on such basic issues as whether it would be unethical for a human embryo to begin its development in an animal's womb, and whether a mouse would be better or worse off with a brain made of human neurons. "This is an area where we really need to come to a reasonable consensus," said James Battey, chairman of the National Institutes of Health's Stem Cell Task Force. "We need to establish some kind of guidelines as to what the scientific community ought to do and ought not to do." Beyond Twins and Moms Chimeras (ki-MER-ahs) -- meaning mixtures of two or more individuals in a single body -- are not inherently unnatural. Most twins carry at least a few cells from the sibling with whom they shared a womb, and most mothers carry in their blood at least a few cells from each child they have born. Recipients of organ transplants are also chimeras, as are the many people whose defective heart valves have been replaced with those from pigs or cows. And scientists for years have added human genes to bacteria and even to farm animals -- feats of genetic engineering that allow those critters to make human proteins such as insulin for use as medicines. "Chimeras are not as strange and alien as at first blush they seem," said Henry Greely, a law professor and ethicist at Stanford University who has reviewed proposals to create human-mouse chimeras there. But chimerism becomes a more sensitive topic when it involves growing entire human organs inside animals. And it becomes especially sensitive when it deals in brain cells, the building blocks of the organ credited with making humans human. In experiments like those, Greely told the academy last month, "there is a nontrivial risk of conferring some significant aspects of humanity" on the animal. Greely and his colleagues did not conclude that such experiments should never be done. Indeed, he and many other philosophers have been wrestling with the question of why so many people believe it is wrong to breach the species barrier. Does the repugnance reflect an understanding of an important natural law? Or is it just another cultural bias, like the once widespread rejection of interracial marriage? Many turn to the Bible's repeated invocation that animals should multiply "after their kind" as evidence that such experiments are wrong. Others, however, have concluded that the core problem is not necessarily the creation of chimeras but rather the way they are likely to be treated. Imagine, said Robert Streiffer, a professor of philosophy and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, a human-chimpanzee chimera endowed with speech and an enhanced potential to learn -- what some have called a "humanzee." "There's a knee-jerk reaction that enhancing the moral status of an animal is bad," Streiffer said. "But if you did it, and you gave it the protections it deserves, how could the animal complain?" Unfortunately, said Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, speaking last fall at a meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics, such protections are unlikely. "Chances are we would make them perform menial jobs or dangerous jobs," Sandel said. "That would be an objection." A Research Breakthrough The potential power of chimeras as research tools became clear about a decade ago in a series of dramatic experiments by Evan Balaban, now at McGill University in Montreal. Balaban took small sections of brain from developing quails and transplanted them into the developing brains of chickens. The resulting chickens exhibited vocal trills and head bobs unique to quails, proving that the transplanted parts of the brain contained the neural circuitry for quail calls. It also offered astonishing proof that complex behaviors could be transferred across species. No one has proposed similar experiments between, say, humans and apes. But the discovery of human embryonic stem cells in 1998 allowed researchers to envision related experiments that might reveal a lot about how embryos grow. The cells, found in 5-day-old human embryos, multiply prolifically and -- unlike adult cells -- have the potential to turn into any of the body's 200 or so cell types. Scientists hope to cultivate them in laboratory dishes and grow replacement tissues for patients. But with those applications years away, the cells are gaining in popularity for basic research. The most radical experiment, still not conducted, would be to inject human stem cells into an animal embryo and then transfer that chimeric embryo into an animal's womb. Scientists suspect the proliferating human cells would spread throughout the animal embryo as it matured into a fetus and integrate themselves into every organ. Such "humanized" animals could have countless uses. They would almost certainly provide better ways to test a new drug's efficacy and toxicity, for example, than the ordinary mice typically used today. But few scientists are eager to do that experiment. The risk, they say, is that some human cells will find their way to the developing testes or ovaries, where they might grow into human sperm and eggs. If two such chimeras -- say, mice -- were to mate, a human embryo might form, trapped in a mouse. Not everyone agrees that this would be a terrible result. "What would be so dreadful?" asked Ann McLaren, a renowned developmental biologist at the University of Cambridge in England. After all, she said, no human embryo could develop successfully in a mouse womb. It would simply die, she told the academy. No harm done. But others disagree -- if only out of fear of a public backlash. "Certainly you'd get a negative response from people to have a human embryo trying to grow in the wrong place," said Cynthia B. Cohen, a senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics and a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which supported a ban on such experiments there. How Human? But what about experiments in which scientists add human stem cells not to an animal embryo but to an animal fetus, which has already made its eggs and sperm? Then the only question is how human a creature one dares to make. In one ongoing set of experiments, Jeffrey L. Platt at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has created human-pig chimeras by adding human-blood-forming stem cells to pig fetuses. The resulting pigs have both pig and human blood in their vessels. And it's not just pig blood cells being swept along with human blood cells; some of the cells themselves have merged, creating hybrids. It is important to have learned that human and pig cells can fuse, Platt said, because he and others have been considering transplanting modified pig organs into people and have been wondering if that might pose a risk of pig viruses getting into patient's cells. Now scientists know the risk is real, he said, because the viruses may gain access when the two cells fuse. In other experiments led by Esmail Zanjani, chairman of animal biotechnology at the University of Nevada at Reno, scientists have been adding human stem cells to sheep fetuses. The team now has sheep whose livers are up to 80 percent human -- and make all the compounds human livers make. Zanjani's goal is to make the humanized livers available to people who need transplants. The sheep portions will be rejected by the immune system, he predicted, while the human part will take root. "I don't see why anyone would raise objections to our work," Zanjani said in an interview. Immunity Advantages Perhaps the most ambitious efforts to make use of chimeras come from Irving Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine. Weissman helped make the first mouse with a nearly complete human immune system -- an animal that has proved invaluable for tests of new drugs against the AIDS virus, which does not infect conventional mice. More recently his team injected human neural stem cells into mouse fetuses, creating mice whose brains are about 1 percent human. By dissecting the mice at various stages, the researchers were able to see how the added brain cells moved about as they multiplied and made connections with mouse cells. Already, he said, they have learned things they "never would have learned had there been a bioethical ban." Now he wants to add human brain stem cells that have the defects that cause Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease and other brain ailments -- and study how those cells make connections. Scientists suspect that these diseases, though they manifest themselves in adulthood, begin when something goes wrong early in development. If those errors can be found, researchers would have a much better chance of designing useful drugs, Weissman said. And those drugs could be tested in the chimeras in ways not possible in patients. Now Weissman says he is thinking about making chimeric mice whose brains are 100 percent human. He proposes keeping tabs on the mice as they develop. If the brains look as if they are taking on a distinctly human architecture -- a development that could hint at a glimmer of humanness -- they could be killed, he said. If they look as if they are organizing themselves in a mouse brain architecture, they could be used for research. So far this is just a "thought experiment," Weissman said, but he asked the university's ethics group for an opinion anyway. "Everyone said the mice would be useful," he said. "But no one was sure if it should be done." From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 18:38:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 13:38:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Paul Krugman: Confusions about Social Security Message-ID: Paul Krugman: Confusions about Social Security Woodrow Wilson Schoo, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 The Economists' Voice Volume 2, Issue 1 2005 Article 1 A Special Issue on Social Security http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=ev converted from PDF with http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html Summary There is a lot of confusion in the debate over Social Security privatization, much of it deliberate. This essay discusses the meaning of the trust fund, which privatizers declare either real or fictional at their convenience; the likely rate of return on private accounts, which has been greatly overstated; and the (ir)relevance of putative reductions in far future liabilities. KEYWORDS: Social Security, public finance Introduction Since the Bush administration has put Social Security privatization at the top of the agenda, I'll be writing a lot about the subject in my New York Times column over the next few months. But it's hard to do the subject justice in a series of 700- word snippets. So I thought it might be helpful to lay out the situation as I see it in an integrated piece. There are three main points of confusion in the Social Security debate (confusion that is deliberately created, for the most part, but never mind that for now). These are: * The meaning of the trust fund: in order to create a sense of crisis, proponents of privatization consider the trust fund either real or fictional, depending on what is convenient * The rate of return that can be expected on private accounts: privatizers claim that there is a huge free lunch from the creation of these accounts, a free lunch that is based on very dubious claims about future stock returns * How to think about implicit liabilities in the far future: privatizers brush aside the huge negative fiscal consequences of their plans in the short run, claiming that reductions in promised payments many decades in the future are an adequate offset Without further ado, let me address each confusion in turn. The Trust Fund Social Security is a government program supported by a dedicated tax, like highway maintenance. Now you can say that assigning a particular tax to a particular program is merely a fiction, but in fact such assignments have both legal and political force. If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, "Let's increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people," he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box - you might even call it a lockbox - from Reagan's tax cuts. The purpose of that tax increase was to maintain the dedicated tax system into the future, by having Social Security's assigned tax take in more money than the system paid out while the baby boomers were still working, then use the trust fund built up by those surpluses to pay future bills. Viewed in its own terms, that strategy was highly successful. The date at which the trust fund will run out, according to Social Security Administration projections, has receded steadily into the future: 10 years ago it was 2029, now it's 2042. As Kevin Drum, Brad DeLong, and others have pointed out, the SSA estimates are very conservative, and quite moderate projections of economic growth push the exhaustion date into the indefinite future. But the privatizers won't take yes for an answer when it comes to the sustainability of Social Security. Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it's invested in U.S. government bonds. They aren't really saying that government bonds are worthless; their point is that the whole notion of a separate budget for Social Security is a fiction. And if that's true, the idea that one part of the government can have a positive trust fund while the government as a whole is in debt does become strange. But there are two problems with their position. The lesser problem is that if you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits - which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to - then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses. More broadly, we're breaking a major promise if we now, after 20 years of high payroll taxes to pay for Social Security's future, declare that it was all a little joke on the public. The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security's future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it's just part of the federal budget: there can't be a Social Security crisis. All you can have is a general budget crisis. Rising Social Security benefit payments might be one reason for that crisis, but it's hard to make the case that it will be central. But those who insist that we face a Social Security crisis want to have it both ways. Having invoked the concept of a unified budget to reject the existence of a trust fund, they refuse to accept the implications of that unified budget going forward. Instead, having changed the rules to make the trust fund meaningless, they want to change the rules back around 15 years from now: today, when the payroll tax takes in more revenue than SS benefits, they say that's meaningless, but when - in 2018 or later - benefits start to exceed the payroll tax, why, that's a crisis. Huh? I don't know why this contradiction is so hard to understand, except to echo Upton Sinclair: it's hard to get a man to understand something when his salary (or, in the current situation, his membership in the political club) depends on his not understanding it. But let me try this one more time, by asking the following: What happens in 2018 or whenever, when benefits payments exceed payroll tax revenues? The answer, very clearly, is nothing. The Social Security system won't be in trouble: it will, in fact, still have a growing trust fund, because of the interest that the trust earns on its accumulated surplus. The only way Social Security gets in trouble is if Congress votes not to honor U.S. government bonds held by Social Security. That's not going to happen. So legally, mechanically, 2018 has no meaning. Now it's true that rising benefit costs will be a drag on the federal budget. So will rising Medicare costs. So will the ongoing drain from tax cuts. So will whatever wars we get into. I can't find a story under which Social Security payments, as opposed to other things, become a crucial budgetary problem in 2018. What we really have is a looming crisis in the General Fund. Social Security, with its own dedicated tax, has been run responsibly; the rest of the government has not. So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis? It's interesting to ask what would have happened if the General Fund actually had been run responsibly - which is to say, if Social Security surpluses had been kept in a "lockbox", and the General Fund had been balanced on average. In that case, the accumulating trust fund would have been a very real contribution to the government as a whole's ability to pay future benefits. As long as Social Security surpluses were being invested in government bonds, they would have reduced the government's debt to the public, and hence its interest bill. We would, it's true, eventually have reached a point at which there was no more debt to buy, that is, a point at which the government's debt to the public had been more or less paid off. At that point, it would have been necessary to invest the growing trust fund in private-sector assets. This would have raised some management issues: to protect the investments from political influence, the trust fund would have had to be placed in a broad index. But the point is that the trust fund would have continued to make a real contribution to the government's ability to pay future benefits. And if we are now much less optimistic about the government's ability to honor future obligations than we were four years ago, when Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes to avoid excessive surpluses, it's not because Social Security's finances have deteriorated - they have actually improved (the projected exhaustion date of the trust fund has moved back 5 years since that testimony.) It's because the General Fund has plunged into huge deficit, with Bush's tax cuts the biggest single cause. I'm not a Pollyanna; I think that we may well be facing a fiscal crisis. But it's deeply misleading, and in fact an evasion of the real issues, to call it a Social Security crisis. Rates of Return on Private Accounts Privatizers believe that privatization can improve the government's long-term finances without requiring any sacrifice by anyone - no new taxes, no net benefit cuts (guaranteed benefits will be cut, but people will make it up with the returns on their accounts.) How is this possible? The answer is that they assume that stocks, which will make up part of those private accounts, will yield a much higher return than bonds, with minimal longterm risk. Now it's true that in the past stocks have yielded a very good return, around 7 percent in real terms - more than enough to compensate for additional risk. But a weird thing has happened in the debate: proposals by erstwhile serious economists such as Martin Feldstein appear to be based on the assertion that it's a sort of economic law that stocks will always yield a much higher rate of return than bonds. They seem to treat that 7 percent rate of return as if it were a natural constant, like the speed of light. What ordinary economics tells us is just the opposite: if there is a natural law here, it's that easy returns get competed away, and there's no such thing as a free lunch. If, as Jeremy Siegel tells us, stocks have yielded a high rate of return with relatively little risk for long-run investors, that doesn't tell us that they will always do so in the future. It tells us that in the past stocks were underpriced. And we can expect the market to correct that. In fact, a major correction has already taken place. Historically, the priceearnings ratio averaged about 14. Now, it's about 20. Siegel tells us that the real rate of return tends to be equal to the inverse of the price-earnings ratio, which makes a lot of sense.1 More generally, if people are paying more for an asset, the rate of return is lower. So now that a typical price- earnings ratio is 20, a good estimate of the real rate of return on stocks in the future is 5 percent, not 7 percent. [1 For those who want to know: suppose that the economy is in steady-state growth, with both the rental rate on capital and Tobin's q constant. Then the rate of return on stocks is equal to the earnings-price ratio. Obviously that's an oversimplification, but it looks pretty good as a rule of thumb.] Here's another way to arrive at the same result. Suppose that dividends are 3 percent of stock prices, and that the economy grows at 3 percent (enough, by the way, to make the trust fund more or less perpetual.) Not all of that 3 percent growth accrues to existing firms; the Dow of today is a very different set of firms than the Dow of 50 years ago. So at best, 3 percent economic growth is 2 percent growth for the set of existing firms; add to dividend yield, and we've got 5 percent again. That's still not bad, you may say. But now let's do the arithmetic of private accounts. These accounts won't be 100 percent in stocks; more like 60 percent. With a 2 percent real rate on bonds, we're down to 3.8 percent. Then there are management fees. In Britain, they're about 1.1 percent. So now we're down to 2.7 percent on personal accounts - barely above the implicit return on Social Security right now, but with lots of added risk. Except for Wall Street firms collecting fees, this is a formula to make everyone worse off. Privatizers say that they'll keep fees very low by restricting choice to a few index funds. Two points. First, I don't believe it. In the December 21 New York Times story on the subject, there was a crucial giveaway: "At first, individuals would be offered a limited range of investment vehicles, mostly low-cost indexed funds. After a time, account holders would be given the option to upgrade to actively managed funds, which would invest in a more diverse range of assets with higher risk and potentially larger fees." (My emphasis.) At first? Hmm. So the low-fee thing wouldn't be a permanent commitment. Within months, not years, the agitation to allow "choice" would begin. And the British experience shows that this would quickly lead to substantial dissipation on management fees. Second point: if you're requiring that private accounts be invested in index funds chosen by government officials, what's the point of calling them private accounts? We're back where we were above, with the trust fund investing in the market via an index. Now I know that the privatizers have one more trick up their sleeve: they claim that because these are called private accounts, the mass of account holders will rise up and cry foul if the government tries to politicize investments. Just like large numbers of small stockholders police governance problems at corporations, right? (That's a joke, by the way.) If we are going to invest Social Security funds in stocks, keeping those investments as part of a government-run trust fund protects against a much clearer political economy danger than politicization of investments: the risk that Wall Street lobbyists will turn this into a giant fee-generating scheme. To sum up: claims that stocks will always yield high, low-risk returns are just bad economics. And tens of millions of small private accounts are a bad way to take advantage of whatever the stock market does have to offer. There is no free lunch, and certainly not from private accounts. The Distant Future The distant future plays a strangely large role in the current discussion. To convince us of the direness of our plight, privatizers invoke the vast combined infinite-horizon unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. Their answer to that supposed danger is to borrow trillions of dollars to pay for private accounts, which supposedly will solve the problem through the magic of high stock returns (a supposition I've just debunked.) And all that borrowing will be harmless, say the privatizers, because the long-run budget position of the federal government won't be affected: payments 30, 40, 50 years from now will be reduced, and in present value terms that will offset the borrowing over the nearer term. I'm all for looking ahead. But most of this is just wrong-headed, on multiple levels. Let me start with the easiest piece: why the distant future of Medicare is something we really should ignore. And bear in mind that most of those huge numbers you hear about implicit liabilities come from Medicare, not Social Security; more to the point, they mostly come from projected increases in medical costs, not demography. Now the main reason medical costs keep rising is that the range of things medicine can do keeps increasing. In the last few years my father and mother-inlaw have both had life-saving and life-enhancing medical procedures that didn't exist a decade or two ago; it's procedures like those that account for the rising cost of Medicare. Long-run projections assume, perhaps correctly, that this trend will continue. In 2100 Medicare may be paying for rejuvenation techniques or prosthetic brain replacements, and that will cost a lot of money. But does it make any sense to worry now about how to pay for all that? Intergenerational responsibility is a fine thing, but I can't see why the cost of medical treatments that have not yet been invented, applied to people who have not yet been born, should play any role in shaping today's policy. Social Security's distant future isn't quite as speculative, but it's still pretty uncertain. What do you think the world will look like in 2105? My guess is that by then the computers will be smarter than we are, and we can let them deal with things; but the truth is that we haven't the faintest idea. I doubt that anyone really believes that it's important to look beyond the traditional 75-year window. It has only become fashionable lately because it's a way to make the situation look more dire. Now let's return slightly more to the world outside science fiction, and ask the question: can we really count purported savings several decades out as an offset to huge borrowing today? The answer should be a clear no, for one simple reason: a bond issue is a true commitment to repay, while a purported change in future benefits is just a suggestion to whoever is running the country decades from now. If the Bush plan cuts guaranteed benefits 30 years out, what does that mean? Maybe benefits will actually be cut on schedule, but then again maybe they won't - remember, the over-65 voting bloc will be even bigger then than it is now. Or maybe, under budgetary pressure, benefits would have been cut regardless of what Bush does now, in which case his plan doesn't really save money in the out years. Financial markets, we can be sure, will pay very little attention to projections about how today's policies will affect the budget 30 years ahead. In fact, we've just had a demonstration of how little attention they will pay: the prescription drug plan. As has been widely noted, last year's prescription drug law, if it really goes into effect as promised, worsens the long-run federal budget by much more than the entire accounting deficit of Social Security. If markets really looked far ahead, the passage of that law should have caused a sharp rise in interest rates, maybe even a crisis of confidence in federal solvency. In fact, everyone pretty much ignored the thing - just as they'll ignore the putative future savings in the Bush plan. What markets will pay attention to, just as they did in Argentina, is the surge in good old-fashioned debt. Privatization is a solution in search of a problem As I've described it, the case for privatization is a mix of strange and inconsistent budget doctrines, bad economics, dubious political economy, and science fiction. What's wrong with these people? The answer is definitely not that they are stupid. In fact, the case made by the privatizers is fiendishly ingenious in its Jesuitical logic, its persuasiveness to the unprepared mind. But many of the people supporting privatization have to know better. Why, then, don't they say so? Because Social Security privatization is a solution in search of a problem. The right has always disliked Social Security; it has always been looking for some reason to dismantle it. Now, with a window of opportunity created by the public's rally-around-the-flag response after 9/11, the Republican leadership is making a full-court press for privatization, using any arguments at hand. There are both crude and subtle reasons why economists who know better don't take a stand against the illogic of many of the privatizers' positions. The crude reason is that a conservative economist who doesn't support every twist and turn of the push for privatization faces political exile. Any hint of intellectual unease would, for example, kill the chances of anyone hoping to be appointed as Greenspan's successor. The subtle reason is that many economists hold the defensible position that a pay-as-you-go system is bad for savings and long-run growth. And they hope that a bad privatization plan may nonetheless be the start of a reform that eventually creates a better system. But those hopes are surely misplaced. So far, everyone - and I mean everyone - who has signed on to Bush administration plans in the hope that they can be converted into something better has ended up used, abused, and discarded. It happened to John DiIulio, it happened to Colin Powell, it happened to Greg Mankiw, and it's a safe prediction that those who think they can turn the Bush drive to dismantle Social Security into something good will suffer the same fate. Paul Krugman won the John Bates Clark medal in 1991--awarded every second year to a single economist--for his work on imperfect competition and international trade. He is now a Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a regular op-ed columnist for the New York Times. Ph.D. MIT 1977 Letters Commenting on this piece or others may be submitted at http://www.bepress.com/cgi/submit.cgi?context=ev From checker at panix.com Tue Feb 1 18:47:51 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 13:47:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Index on Censorship: D D Guttenplan: How Many Jews Does It Take...? Message-ID: How Many Jews Does It Take...? : Should freedom of speech stop at Holocaust denial? By D D Guttenplan http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2005/1/britain-holocaust-rememberance.shtml This article will appear in issue 2/05 of Index on Censorship: Forgive or Forget. As the world commemorates the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz as Holocaust Memorial Day, there are still those who for their own reasons, deny the testimony of history. D D Guttenplan, author of The Holocaust on Trial: History, Justice and the David Irving Libel Case asks: should freedom of speech stop at Holocaust denial? ----------- The ironies of history are seldom subtle. Thus Charles Clarke's announcement, on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, that the government will seek to end the centuries-long right of habeas corpus and that henceforth mere suspicion of certain terrorist activities may result in detention. Listening to the Prime Minister's plea that we retain a sense of proportion, and that the new measures will only affect "a handful of people" (though the newspaper accounts suggested that coverage would extend to animal rights activists and Northern Irish militants as well as suspected al-Qaeda cells) one could hardly help recalling Martin Niemoller's auto-indictment: `First, they came for the Communists...". So I may perhaps be excused for pointing out that the conflict at the centre of proposals to outlaw Holocaust Denial in Britain -- between freedom of speech and freedom from a form of racist harassment -- has its own history. In 1949 the United States Supreme Court had to decide whether the city of Chicago acted rightly in fining Arthur Terminiello, a Roman Catholic priest, $100 for breaching the peace by making a speech attacking "atheistic, communistic Jewish or Zionist Jews". The record doesn't show whether Terminiello's career as a Jew-baiter extended to Holocaust denial, but his case is relevant to the current debate even without such obvious cues. Robert Jackson, one of the judges who heard Terminiello's appeal, had been chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg. Weimar Germany's failure to defend its constitutional order was still fresh in his mind when Jackson warned his colleagues "if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the Constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact". Not everyone who favours making Holocaust Denial a crime in Britain advances a rational argument for doing so. When Tony Blair said in 1997 that there was "a very strong case" for a law against Holocaust denial he never went into specifics -- an omission which looks prudent now that his government has apparently lost its enthusiasm. Still, while it is unfashionable to say so, I believe there are at least two strong arguments in favor of such a law, and that both arguments deserve to be taken seriously. The first argument is that Holocaust denial is a form of racial abuse directed not just at Jews but at a particularly vulnerable subset of Jews. As someone who spent more time than I liked reading the works of Robert Faurisson, Arthur Butz and David Irving I can attest that this is the case. For all their pseudo-scholarly decoration, the deniers' devotion to historical argument is on a par with Terminiello's contribution to theological disputation. To fail to acknowledge the pain felt by Holocaust survivors at the negation of their own experience -- or to treat such pain as a particularly Jewish problem which need not trouble anyone else -- is to deny our common humanity. Which in many cases is precisely the abuser's aim--not to lure the rest of us into joining in, but simply to further isolate the victims by our indifference. And as a general proposition Jackson was right. Free societies do have not only a right but an obligation to defend themselves. As individuals we are free to emulate Voltaire's willingness "to give my life to make it possible" for someone whose views we detest to continue to express them. But we do not have the right to impose such self-abnegation on our fellow citizens. Jackson's fellow justices needed no reminder of where Jew-baiting could lead. Yet by a 5-4 majority the court overturned Terminiello's conviction, and though I think they were right to do so, the thinness of the margin also seems appropriate. This is not a question where certainty is warranted on either side. In Britain and the United States we regard Free Speech as sacred. Americans venerate the First Amendment, while Britons cite Milton, who in Areopagitica said true Liberty only exists "when free born men / Having to advise the public may speak free". Holocaust denial is currently a crime in Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania and Switzerland. Do the citizens of those countries value freedom less than we do? Or might other factors be involved? Robert Kahn, author of Holocaust Denial and the Law, points to a "fault time" separating the "common law countries" of the US, Britain, and former British colonies from the "civil law countries of continental Europe". In civil law countries the law is generally more prescriptive. Also under the civil law regime the judge acts more as an inquisitor, gathering and presenting evidence as well as interpreting it. Unlike the Anglo-American adversarial system, where fairness is the primary attribute of justice, and the judge functions as a referee, trials under the continental system aim at arriving at the truth. This divergence has a number of consequences. One of them was on view when David Irving, a British author, sued Deborah Lipsadt, an American academic. Irving claimed that since the Holocaust never happened, it was libellous to call him a Holocaust denier. As the claimant under British law Irving was able to force Lipstadt to prove him wrong by in effect proving the historical actuality of the Holocaust. This put an enormous additional burden on Mr Justice Charles Gray, who in presiding over the trial had to constantly attend to the claims of truth as well as justice. Continental judges also have much greater latitude in taking "judicial notice" -- ie in declaring that certain facts are well-established and need not be proven anew. The result is a system where, by habit if not by aptitude, the courts are more comfortable in simply pronouncing on questions of historical fact. Ultimately, though, it is the difference in historical experience that ought to constrain our attitude to other countries. In Germany and Austria Holocaust denial is not "mere" Jew-baiting but also a channel for Nazi resurgence much like the Hitler salute and the display of the swastika, which are also banned. The case for a ban in Israel should also be obvious, if not beyond argument. Similarly, countries where the experience of occupation and the shame of collaboration still rankle ought to be able to make their own decisions. Blasphemy is still illegal in this country, and though Americans are theoretically free to do all sorts of things no American these days can afford to be smug about anyone else's liberty. Nor, after Bosnia and Rwanda, can we pretend that free speech is an absolute value. Sticks and stones may break bones, but name-calling can clear a path for genocide. Where should we set the balance in Britain? My own view is that the existing laws against incitement to racial hatred are sufficient. Making a special case for Holocaust denial might be justified if British Jews were in jeopardy, or if there were a fascist movement in this country, fueled by Holocaust denial, which posed a genuine threat to democracy. Happily we are far from such dangers, and if we take the Prime Minister at his word and retain our sense of proportion we ought to recognise that we have far more to lose from even such a tiny erosion of our liberties. In 1949 the radical journalist I F Stone described himself as "exactly what Terminiello in his harangues meant by an 'atheistic, communistic, zionistic Jew'. I would not demean myself or my people by denying him the right to say it." Stone's denunciation of judges "who would have permitted some measure of suppression in my protection" as "not men whose championship I would care to have" could have been written of any number of recent Home Secretaries. In rejecting Justice Jackson's analogy between Weimar Germany and post-war America Stone proved a better historian as well as a more robust libertarian. As an American Jew resident in twenty-first century Britain it seems to me that free speech is still worth the risk. D D Guttenplan is the author of The Holocaust on Trial: History, Justice and the David Irving Libel Case. London correspondent for The Nation, he is currently writing a biography of I F Stone. From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Feb 1 19:09:37 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 11:09:37 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] No missiles or submarines needed Message-ID: <01C5084E.857907A0.shovland@mindspring.com> Any one of those uninspected cargo containers could take a nuke anywhere in the world. If we need to make war to halt proliferation, Korea, Pakistan, India, and Israel are the most obvious targets. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Feb 1 19:18:56 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 11:18:56 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Kerrey on Social Security Message-ID: <01C5084F.D25AC5D0.shovland@mindspring.com> If it is true that Social Security money would pump up the market, then the market would also go down when the money is withdrawn to finance retirement expenditures. The market is not magic, and there is no free lunch. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 6:00 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: [Paleopsych] Kerrey on Social Security No, not John Kerry, the smart Kerrey. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006234 Pride and Prejudice "Hell no, we won't go" is the wrong liberal approach on Social Security reform. BY BOB KERREY Tuesday, February 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST The late Pat Moynihan used to joke when I asked him why liberals were so reluctant to consider changing Social Security so that it guaranteed wealth as well as income: "It's because they worry that wealth will turn Democrats into Republicans." Leaving aside that possible correlation, it will be a shame if liberal voices, values and ideas are not brought into the debate initiated by President Bush's Social Security reform proposal. To make certain the reforms are done correctly liberal thinking is urgently needed. There is no doubt that Social Security and Medicare are two of liberalism's most enduring and popular triumphs. And there is no doubt that a vocal and influential minority remains true to its strong conservative belief that the Social Security Act of 1935 and the 1965 amendments to this act, which created Medicare and Medicaid, represent socialistic and dangerous interferences with the marketplace. However, liberals are wrong to fear that President Bush's proposal represents a threat to Social Security. I sincerely hope they do not merely defend their proudest achievement. I hope they see that President Bush is giving them an opportunity to finally do something about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. First of all, fears that Social Security will be destroyed are exaggerated. Across all generations and within both major parties, Social Security and Medicare are seen as a vital part of American life. They represent a powerful intergenerational contract between younger Americans in the work force who agree to be taxed on behalf of older, eligible Americans. What makes the contract work is that the expectation of those in the work force is that when they pass the age of eligibility, successive generations of workers will not object to the taxes that must be imposed on them to cover the costs of their income and health benefits. Secondly, President Bush's fears of a bankrupt Social Security and his rhetoric of the program being in financial crisis are also exaggerated. Relatively small changes in taxes and/or benefits would restore the promise to all living beneficiaries--those eligible today and those eligible in the future. Unlike the situation that existed in 1983, when Congress and the president acted to avoid a financial crisis, today's financial problems are relatively small. On the other hand, there are two problems with Social Security that are serious enough to be called a crisis. The first is that in eight years the income from a 12.4% payroll tax will be insufficient to pay the old age, survivor and disability benefits owed at that time. From that point on, Social Security will begin to redeem some of the hundreds of billions of dollars of Treasury bonds it has "accumulated in the trust fund" in order to issue monthly checks to beneficiaries. Though these bonds are far from "worthless," as some critics allege, the picture of them "accumulating in a trust fund" is not accurate either. That is because, in order to convert these bonds into cash, the U.S. Treasury will use the cash from individual and corporate income taxes. While some income taxes are currently used to pay Social Security benefits, the dollar amounts do not pose a serious budgetary challenge. In eight years that will change. Coupled with the cost of Medicare and Medicaid, the annual benefit demands of Social Security will put real pressure on Congress to cut spending on defense and nondefense appropriations. It is at this point in time that the demographic and monetary demands of the baby boom generation will become painfully apparent. The disinvestment in public infrastructure caused by the growth in Medicare and Medicaid will become even worse than it is today. And the nature of this crisis will be considerably more daunting than that faced squarely by Congress and the president in 1983. Liberals, who have silently watched the share of state and federal spending apportioned to the elderly grow at the expense of education, training, child care and research, will be appalled to discover how much their silence has cost them. The second crisis is the one for which liberals are even more urgently needed. This crisis is the shockingly low rates of savings and pitifully inadequate amount of preparation being made by American households for their old age. If liberals were to join this debate and insist upon provisions that would lead to dramatic reductions of the numbers of poor elderly, the outcome could be a dramatically enhanced quality of life for all, reduced dependency upon welfare in old age, and downward pressure on the social costs of growing old. If liberals joined this debate they would insist that the guaranteed transfer payment of Social Security remain intact. With the evidence that trade, technology and immigration are putting downward pressure on unskilled wages, they might even be able to succeed in changing the current benefit formula so that more than 50% of the first $900 of income was replaced. Perhaps they could even convince their Republican colleagues to eliminate penalties that affect stay-at-home women. Liberals would fight to make certain that contributions to private accounts were progressive in order to benefit lower-wage workers. They might even argue that accounts be opened at birth, thus giving Americans the longest possible time to accumulate wealth. No doubt they would insist that investment options be carefully regulated to keep administrative costs and risks as low as possible. And since liberals oftentimes understand the good that markets can do even more than some of their conservative colleagues, they could see the wisdom of changing the tax code so that no income taxes were levied on income that went into these savings accounts. All of these would practically guarantee a muscular market response that would give future Americans larger amounts of insured non-employment income to add to the $800 per month on average they receive from Social Security. None of this will happen if liberals merely shout "hell no, we won't go." The best they can hope for with that strategy is to prevent reform from happening. They should feel no pride of accomplishment if that is the result. Mr. Kerrey, a Democratic former senator from Nebraska, is the president of New School University, in New York City. _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Feb 2 14:25:15 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 06:25:15 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Where are the Iraq exit polls? Message-ID: <01C508EF.F57E7AC0.shovland@mindspring.com> Isn't it suspicious that no one was asked on the way out? What if the exit polls said one thing and the vote count said another? Very embarrassing... Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk Wed Feb 2 15:10:08 2005 From: n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk (Nicholas Bannan) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 15:10:08 -0000 Subject: [Paleopsych] Where are the Iraq exit polls? References: <01C508EF.F57E7AC0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <019001c50939$48d2fd60$6882e186@.rdg.ac.uk> Exit poll operative at the Iraqi elections sounds to me like one of those jokes we used to coin as children in the category Most Dangerous Job In The World. I think the guys could be forgiven for not buying into this aspect of journalism-led Western practice. Is there any evidence that exit polls ever validate the due process? I would estimate that they are as likely to distort it. Nicholas ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Hovland" To: "paleopsych at paleopsych. org (E-mail)" Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 2:25 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] Where are the Iraq exit polls? > Isn't it suspicious that no one was asked on the way out? > > What if the exit polls said one thing and the vote count > said another? Very embarrassing... > > Steve Hovland > www.stevehovland.net > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Wed Feb 2 19:18:36 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 11:18:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Paleopsych] deceptive marketing In-Reply-To: <200502021912.j12JClC25922@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050202191836.22312.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The influence of deceptive marketing grows in the GOP (those familiar with Newt's GOPAC memo and other PR strategies won't be too surprised): NO SHAME by Sheldon Rampton Thanks to PR Watch forums contributor "El Gringo" for calling our attention to a really atrocious example of dishonest propaganda. The graphic at right is by Linda Eddy, an artist for the website, IowaPresidentialWatch.com. Owned by Roger Hughes, chairman of the Republican Party in Hamilton County, Iowa, the website spent the recent U.S. presidential election calling Democratic candidate John Kerry a habitual liar and comparing him to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels - which is awfully ironic in light of its own promotion of a big lie. The image you see here might lead you to believe that the child in the picture has been made "glad" and secure thanks to the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. As "El Gringo" discovered, however, Lindy Eddy doctored the photograph. The original photo, taken by a journalist, depicted a young girl who had just received bullet wounds during a firefight in which her mother was killed and her father was wounded. Eddy doctored the photo by erasing the little girl's own face (which carries the listless expression you would expect from an injured child) and replacing it with someone else's face to make her look positively radiant and adoring. http://www.prwatch.org/node/3220 ===== My blog: http://shallowreflections.blogspot.com/ Link to my website, including art, flash poetry and fledgling CafePress store (t-shirts, bumperstickers etc): http://www.soulaquarium.net We are stardust, we are golden, We are billion year old carbon, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden. - Joni Mitchell "We don't fear the unknown. We fear how the unknown might cause us to re-evaluate the known." - Unknown __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Feb 2 20:21:10 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 12:21:10 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] deceptive marketing Message-ID: <01C50921.AE62F9E0.shovland@mindspring.com> I wonder why some people think I'm a cynic? :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 11:19 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] deceptive marketing The influence of deceptive marketing grows in the GOP (those familiar with Newt's GOPAC memo and other PR strategies won't be too surprised): NO SHAME by Sheldon Rampton Thanks to PR Watch forums contributor "El Gringo" for calling our attention to a really atrocious example of dishonest propaganda. The graphic at right is by Linda Eddy, an artist for the website, IowaPresidentialWatch.com. Owned by Roger Hughes, chairman of the Republican Party in Hamilton County, Iowa, the website spent the recent U.S. presidential election calling Democratic candidate John Kerry a habitual liar and comparing him to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels - which is awfully ironic in light of its own promotion of a big lie. The image you see here might lead you to believe that the child in the picture has been made "glad" and secure thanks to the U.S. troop presence in Iraq. As "El Gringo" discovered, however, Lindy Eddy doctored the photograph. The original photo, taken by a journalist, depicted a young girl who had just received bullet wounds during a firefight in which her mother was killed and her father was wounded. Eddy doctored the photo by erasing the little girl's own face (which carries the listless expression you would expect from an injured child) and replacing it with someone else's face to make her look positively radiant and adoring. http://www.prwatch.org/node/3220 ===== My blog: http://shallowreflections.blogspot.com/ Link to my website, including art, flash poetry and fledgling CafePress store (t-shirts, bumperstickers etc): http://www.soulaquarium.net We are stardust, we are golden, We are billion year old carbon, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden. - Joni Mitchell "We don't fear the unknown. We fear how the unknown might cause us to re-evaluate the known." - Unknown __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:36:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:36:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Meme 039: Ayn Rand Centennial: Patch Still Needed Message-ID: Meme 039: Ayn Rand Centennial: Patch Still Needed sent 2005.2.2 Atlas Shrugged was the book that influenced me more than any other. I read it, at the suggestion of my best friend back home in Colorado, during the Summer between my second and third year in college, that is in 1964, when I was 19. He said, read it a hundred pages a week and you'll be finished by the end of the Summer. At first I thought it was a caricature, and was three or four weeks into the reading before I got caught up in it. I finished it quickly. I had gotten bored with the graduate math courses I had been taking ever since I arrived at the University of Virginia. The beginning graduate level courses were very good, but the later ones struck me as pointless piling up of abstractions. My professors told me that even they lacked intuitive understanding of their research work but nevertheless could crank out papers. So Atlas Shrugged gave me a new direction in life. Most of the books she recommended reading were in economics. At it happened, U.Va. had one of the few free-market graduate economics schools in the world. I convinced James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock on the economics faculty there I could do the work, even though I had had no courses, so I switched majors. However, there was a fight between the "conservative" economics faculty and the Dean of the Graduate School, who was a mediocre political science scholar and a liberal. He was not only envious of Tullock's outstanding scholarship but resented the incursion of economics into his turf of political science. He used his power to block Tullock's promotion to a full professor. Tullock left U.Va. as a result. Next year, Buchanan threatened to leave if Tullock were not brought back. He wasn't and he left, too. I was associated with the Buchanan-Tullock group and was too naive then--and am probably too naive today--to play dissertation politics. I was told, "Mr. Forman, if you give us a dissertation, we will give you a Ph.D.", in other words, no assistance. I went to work for the federal government temporarily in 1969 and am still there! First for the Civil Aeronautics Board, where I came out for deregulation much too early, like the day I arrived. My first boss, Sam Brown, agreed with me, and he gave me my only promotion. His section was abolished after his research questioned the merits of some of the CAB's actions. The Board was abolished at the end of 1984, and I've worked at the U.S. Department of Education ever since. I would keep only that part of it that generates information, which is a public good, or about 1% of it. This attitude, plus the fact that I have worked in policy units and am too hard of hearing to play the policy game even if I were cynically bent on doing so, has kept me stuck at a low level. I am not sure which is the more important factor. Back to the story, I had pretty much forgotten about Ayn Rand by the end of 1984, but I started corresponding with Buchanan about another matter, namely the philosophy of Mario Bunge, who was writing an eight-volume Treatise on Basic Philosophy, designed to show what the world is to actual scientists by clarifying and systematizing their implicit assumptions. Bunge is as Aristotelian as Ayn Rand and far more knowledgeable about science. I told Buchanan that Bunge's "systemism" had the key to reconciling the conflicts between individualism and collectivism. Having moved from Virginia Tech to George Mason, he invited me to write a dissertation under him at GMU, which I did. I got my Ph.D. in 1985, no promotion at work, but an enormous personal satisfaction at having finished a dissertation at last, and under so distinguished an economist. There was only part of a chapter on Ayn Rand in the dissertation, which I expanded into a full chapter in my book, _The Metaphysics of Liberty_ (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic, 1989). The book is on my website, http://www.panix.com/~checker (don't forget the tilde). I lost interest again in Ayn Rand, until I got my first home connection to the Net in early 1995 and spent a great deal of time arguing about Objectivism. On June 7 I sent forth the essay right below. There were a couple of feeble replies and then silence. The need for a patch remains. It took me a few more years to become a Recovered Objectivist, which is to say, just rather bored with the controversies. There are several essays of mine pertaining to Objectivism on my site. I follow my essay with a bunch of items on the centenary that I found from Google News. I do not regret the years I spent wrapped up in Ayn Rand, nor anything about my life, really, and most esp. not the other path down the road of biology and human group differences. I might have been more productive of ideas had I not spent so much time chasing down so many byways. I don't think, bar a major upgrade in the quality of our species, that the grand hopes of a final vision promised by the Enlightenment are going to materialize. I've become a thoroughgoing post-modernist in this respect, and a transhumanist is urging the upgrading. The quest is as important as the vision, anyhow. My autobiography is mostly what I read, readings that I have been sharing with you on my lists, not any partial conclusions that never seem to settle down to anything I can write up. Nietzsche and Peirce had the same problems, not in not writing at all (Wittgenstein stopped after one dissertation and one article) though on a higher level. Thank you, Ayn Rand, for your leading me in the path of righteousness for your name's sake. Wrong metaphor. PATCH NEEDED FOR "THE OBJECTIVIST ETHICS" by Frank Forman Summary I have restudied Ayn Rand's key essay, "The Objectivist Ethics," very closely, but I find a hole in her argument, a gap in her reasoning. She passes from the indisputable fact that dead men make no choices to an entire system of egoist ethics. In what follows, I am going to outline her argument. I shall be arguing that she moves from survival as the supreme aim to happiness. This move requires a patch to cover the hole in her argument, and that patch I denominate the Objectivist psychology, which is at bottom a theory of virtue. But all this is so far mostly implicit. If there are other writings of hers that can provide a fully satisfying patch to cover the hole, or if any readers can provide the patch on their own, we certainly want to hear it. I'm using _The Virtue of Selfishness_ for pagination. Some Concepts **Morality** (here equated with ethics) is "a code of values to guide man's choices and actions--the choices and actions that determine the purpose and the course of his life" (p. 13, the first page of the essay, which ends on p. 35). So, she defines a word, "morality," in terms of other words, "code," "value," "guide," "choice," "action," "determine," "purpose," "course," and "life." Most of the words are not likely to give any trouble, at least not here and at least not now. We can argue how comprehensive this code should be, where the principles leave off, and where one just goes ahead and makes cost-benefit estimates or just acts on one's tastes. We can also argue over the various meanings of "determine." But for now, only "value" and "purpose" are apt to give problems. I am not trying to maximize quibbling, rather to isolate a hole in an argument interpreted as best as I can. **Value** "is that which one acts to gain and/or keep" (p. 15). This definition has been quoted many times by Ayn Rand's fans and/or critics. She does not specify the scope of values or which levels they cover: first level desires like tastes, second level desires that are more considered and deal with longer-range achievements, and what may be top-level values having to do with the overarching purpose of one's life. Again, "purpose" is a word that will be causing trouble. In any case, "value" here is simply a matter of what one does in fact act "to gain and/or keep." Life or Death She goes on: "The concept 'value' is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to _whom_ and for _what_? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and values are possible" (p. 15). Well, yes, but the definition seems clear enough: the value is that which *one* *acts* to gain and/or keep. There is an actor and the value is what that actor acts to gain and/or keep. What she means by a "*primary* concept" is not clear. But I don't want to quibble; nor will I quibble that a new concept, "goal," has been introduced. Then she, speaking through John Galt, tells us that "there is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence--and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self- generated action...." (p. 15). Diamonds, of course, are entities and can cease to exist by being heated to a certain temperature, even though the elemental carbon continues, but diamonds cannot act. So perhaps she means values are to be attributed only to entities that can act. On the next page, however, she speaks of her famous hypothetical "indestructible robot" (p. 16), which (she says) can have no values (cannot act to gain and/or keep anything), since it does not face the "one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence." The term "fundamental" has been introduced without definition, so I cannot be certain whether she is mistaken about there being "only one fundamental alternative in the universe." My own view is that indestructible robots violate the laws of physics, but they are at least logical possibilities and they could indeed have values. Life or Reproduction I make these points only because her next paragraph introduces something that is contrary to what we know about biology: "On the _physical_ level, the functions of all living organisms...are actions generated by the organism itself and directed toward a single goal: the maintenance of the organism's _life_" (p. 16). We know from biology (Miss Rand was not up to date) that *reproduction* is every bit as much the goal of organisms, if not more so, as the maintenance of life. True enough, the organism must remain alive long enough to get the sperm or eggs out (sometimes it dies before birth of its offspring is actually achieved), but the goal of continuing to live can be, and often is, overridden by the goal of reproducing. Self = two children = four grandchildren = ... is the governing equation, since the self is going to die anyway. Organisms, often, will go on living after the birth of their children, but the end is to serve getting one's offspring to the point of _their_ reproduction, not to keep oneself alive. Once Mom and Pop have outlived their usefulness, they die; indeed, they are genetically programmed to die, or so at least claim most biologists. So the "fundamental alternative" is not life but reproduction. Now this view of biology, known as the "selfish gene" view, is not without its critics. The older view, which was Darwin's, was that the individual organism is the fundamental and only unit of selection. Now the consensus view is that individual genes are the sole units. But then there are those claiming that units larger than the individual, even entire species and higher taxa, can also be units of evolution. This gives rise to the difficulties of what is called group selection: there must be a genetic disposition to what biologists call "altruism," meaning a willingness to sacrifice one's life for the good of some group larger than the carrier's of one's own genes. But this means that those organisms with such a disposition will be bred out of the population. Group selection can arise in very limited circumstances, nevertheless, but such circumstances are quite rare, or so goes the consensus opinion. I mention all this, since the question of units of selection has never been satisfactorily conceptualized. I should also state that the biological world is rife with cases of apparent "altruism," and accounting for them is regarded by many biologists, including E.O. Wilson, as the central issue of sociobiology. A great deal of apparent "altruism" can indeed be explained away: how big the residual of unexplained instances is, I do not know. I have not browsed sci.bio.evolution enough to check on any debates there. Objectivism will certainly have to be developed much further, or be replaced with a scientific metaphysics of the sort Mario Bunge has developed, or merged with it, to tackle this extremely important and difficult issue. A Truism Ayn Rand continues: "An _ultimate_ [not _fundamental_, but this seems to be no big change] value is the final goal or end to which all lesser goals are the means--and it sets the standard by which all lesser goals are _evaluated_. An organism's life is its _standard of value_: that which furthers its life is the _good_, that which threatens it is the _evil_.... the fact that living entities exist and function necessitates the existence of values [recall: that which one acts to gain and/or keep] and of an ultimate value which for any given living entity is it own life. Thus the validation of value judgments is to be achieved by reference to the facts of reality. The fact that a living entity _is_, determines what it _ought_ to do. So much for the issue of the relation between "_is_" and "_ought_" (p. 17). Forget for now the problems biologists have with life, not reproduction, being the *fundamental* (or *ultimate*) value. What she is saying, and *all* that she is saying, is that in order for an organism to act to gain and/or keep anything at all, it must stay alive, that *enough* of its actions must be such as to succeed at keeping alive. In other words, though this is a conclusion she did not draw, the organism might act to gain and/or keep any number of things^, but it has to value staying alive and moreover its actions must in fact succeed in its staying alive. ^[What constitutes "things" is unspecified: Ayn Rand just says "that which."] This seems like an utterly harmless truism. Living things are *constrained* in the sorts of action they can undertake, but how constrained is the question. An ethics, at all worthy of the name, can get out of this seemingly harmless truism *only* if the constraints are really vigorous. The task for ethics is to formulate just what these constraints are. Ayn Rand does not go into the full details of what living things must do to get an adequate amount of food, but she does state that plants do so automatically.^ Animals (the higher ones, at any rate) also need consciousness, of at least the sensational variety, to go hunt for their food, and animals higher yet need to operate on the perceptual level. But men have to operate on the _conceptual_ level as well, at least sometimes and perhaps a great deal of the time, if they are to stay alive. Moreover, making concepts is voluntary (p. 20). She never explains why, since she was largely uninterested in biology, but she could have read a statement of V.C. Wynne- Edwards: "Compliance with the social code can be made obligatory and automatic, and it probably is so in almost all animals that possess social homeostatic systems at all. In at least some of the mammals, on the contrary, the individual has been released from this rigid compulsion, probably because a certain amount of intelligent individual enterprise has proved advantageous to the group."^^ ^[So do certain lowly animals like sponges, but I won't quibble.] ^^[V.C. Wynne-Edwards, "Intergroup Selection in the Evolution of Social Systems," _Nature_ 200: 623-26 (1963)). This was available before the paperback edition of _The Virtue of Selfishness_, though no one should blame Ayn Rand for not knowing the article.] Now if Ayn Rand can quote John Galt, I can quote me: "Such an explanation invokes group selection and is bound to be controversial. An alternative explanation might be that a) thinking requires work (uses up costly brain chemicals) and b) free-will circuity allows the animal (or maybe just certain humans) to choose both whether to think and what to think about. Far less brain hardware, in other words, may be required by taking the free will route"^ ^[Frank Forman, _The Metaphysics of Liberty_ (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic, 1989), p. 155).] But now what do we have? Only that, to survive, each individual man must engage in a certain amount of conceptualizing. There is much more to be done before we arrive at the Objectivist ethics as we know it. Ayn Rand goes on in the next few pages to discuss what concepts are ("mental integrations of two or more perceptual concretes" (p. 20)), what reason is ("the faculty that perceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by the senses" (p. 20)), and what thinking is (the process of reasoning) and requires ("a state of full, focused awareness" (p. 20)). She redefines consciousness "in the sense of the word applicable to man" to mean the (voluntary) focusing of his mind. She adds, "the choice 'to be conscious or not' is the choice of life or death" (p. 21). The Hole in the Argument What has happened is that there is an elision between *some* focusing as being necessary to any man's survival and "a state of full, focused awareness." ****It is this elision that constitutes the major hole in the Objectivist ethics and needs to be patched up****. She adds that "a process of thought...is not infallible" (peculiar grammar here) and that man "has to discover how to tell what is true or false and how to correct his own errors; he has to discover how to validate his concepts, his conclusions, his knowledge; he has to discover the rules of thought, _the laws of logic_, to direct his thinking" (pp. 20-21). How man survived the hundreds of thousands of years before he did all these things is not addressed. Again, there is an elision between the minimum necessary and virtuous aspirations. Here is a potential patch: "If some men do not choose to think [at what depth?], but survive by imitating and repeating, like trained animals, the routine of sounds and motions they learned from others, it still remains true that their survival is made possible only by those who did choose to think and discover the motions they are repeating. [This is true of nearly all the thinkers, too.] The survival of such mental parasites depends on blind chance; their unfocused minds are unable to know _whom_ to imitate, _whose_ motions it is safe to follow. _They_ are the men who march into the abyss, trailing after any destroyer who promises them to assume the responsibility of being conscious" (p. 23). Or, you'd better think for yourself, lest you be at the mercy of others. But Ayn Rand, as in many other cases, dichotomizes a continuum: you'd better think and focus to the hilt, or you're a mental parasite and your survival depends on blind chance. She adds presently, "The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals,...by rejecting reason and counting on productive _men_ to serve as their prey. Such looters may achieve their goals for the range of a moment at the price of destruction: the destruction of their victims and their own. As evidence, I offer you any criminal or any dictatorship" (pp. 23-24). (Note that the last sentence here and the last sentence of the previous paragraph leave the individual and discuss social consequences.) Same problem. The hole in her argument, the gap in her reasoning, is still there: this "moment" may very well last an entire lifetime, and it is only a *claim* that if "man is to succeed at the task of survival, if his actions are not to be aimed at his own destruction, man has to choose his course, his goals, his values in the context and terms of a lifetime" (p. 24). And she switches from survival to "man's survival _qua_ man," as opposed to "the momentary physical survival of a mindless brute, waiting for another brute to crush his skull" (p. 24). She adds that a man "_can_ turn himself into [such] a subhuman creature and he _can_ turn his life into a brief span of agony.... But he _cannot_ succeed, as a subhuman, in achieving anything but the subhuman--as the ugly horror of the antirational periods of mankind's history can demonstrate" (pp. 24-25). By again dragging in social consequences of the actions of individuals, she has conflated the individual man with collectivities of them. This, from a prophet of egoism! The hole is still there, but there are ten more pages to go in this essay, as well as in other essays by her and by others like Nathaniel Branden and Leonard Peikoff. And the readers here might supply the patch with their own arguments and evidence. The patch so far is the claim that hoping that others will take up the slack if you default on your thinking is risky. She presents no evidence that the risk is all that great. Her policy is what economists would call extreme "risk aversion": take no chances that others will pick up the slack. But she does not justify this policy. The Objectivist Virtues But there is another way to cover the hole. The patch in the Objectivist ethics is quite implicit in the rest of the essay, which mingles more stuff about the requirements of survival with talk about virtue and happiness. Exercising my brain may not have all that much effect on my life span, after a certain minimal point, but doing so may nevertheless make me better off in some sense. Mental exercise is on all fours with physical exercise: it is self- recommending and you may need specific advice, which you may or may not carry out. So let Ayn Rand stop being our moral *physicist* and become our moral *physician*. The patch between the two I denominate the *Objectivist* *psychology*. "_Value_ is that which one acts to gain and/or keep--_virtue_ is the act by which one gains and/or keeps it. The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics--the three values which, together, are the means to and the realization of one's ultimate value, one's own life--are: Reason, Purpose, Self- Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride. "Productive work is the central _purpose_ [not virtue] of a rational man's life, the central value [not life itself anymore] that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work--pride is the result. "Rationality is man's basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues," and it means "the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action.^ It means one's total commitment to a state of full, conscious awareness, to the maintenance of a full mental focus in all issues, in all choices, in all of one's waking hours...." (p. 25). ^[Can we trust others very much at all? Should be all become our own physicians, if life is the standard of value?] Ayn Rand, the Moral Physician This is Ayn Rand the moral *physician*, not the moral *physicist*, talking.^ It ought to be the job of physicians get their patients actively involved with their own health, rather than just to manage their diseases, to aspire and not just do the minimum.^^ Ayn Rand fits this to a T, and that, I submit, is what her philosophy and her ethics most especially is all about. Her novels are aspirational. She said she was a novelist first. We ought to take her seriously on this. ^[Or should it be moral meta-physicist, with a thesis about life being the standard of value? It was Nathaniel Branden who went on to being a moral *coach*, with his various Institutes. Anyhow, the term metaphysicist should be reserved for Mario Bunge.] ^^[Here I go using the O-word ("ought"), but never mind.] Now watch what happens: Rationality comprises several subvirtues, among them independence, integrity, honesty, and justice. Regards the latter, "one must never seek or grant the unearned or undeserved, neither in matter nor in spirit" (p. 26). Fine, but two new concepts, unearned and undeserved, have appeared out of nowhere in an essay that purports to give a foundation for ethics. You and I have a pre- philosophical understanding of what these two words mean. We have gone to Ayn Rand the moral *physician* for advice on how to live, not Ayn Rand the moral *physicist* for elucidation of ideas.^^ ^^[There's similar stuff about the virtues of productiveness and pride that follows in this part of "The Objectivist Ethics," which I do not need to cite.] And what does this moral physician promise us? Happiness. "The basic _social_ principle of the Objectivist ethics is that just as life is an end in itself, so every living human being is an end in himself, not the means to the ends or the welfare of others--and, therefore, that man must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. To live for his own sake means that _the achievement of his own happiness is man's highest moral purpose_" (p. 27). The *physicist* said life was the fundamental purpose; the *physician* holds out happiness. Here's her justification for the switch: "In psychological terms, the issue of man's survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of 'life or death,' but as an issue of 'happiness or suffering.' Happiness is the successful state of life, suffering is the warning signal of failure, or death. Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is an automatic indicator of his body's welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative--so the emotional mechanism of man's consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering" (p. 25).^ ^[As is the case with thought being volitional, she does not recognize the importance of neurological or evolutionary evidence to verify this harmonious fit. Humans have emotions because the animals we evolved from do, but why animals should burden their brains with an emotional circuit instead of just straightaway doing the right thing as far as survival and reproduction go is a good question, since adding extra circuits has a cost in calories. I tried to get some answers on some other newsgroups but without success.] Cognitive Basis of Emotions What Ayn Rand does claim is that the emotions, in order to pay off in the coin of happiness, must be programmed correctly. And that calls for reason, since man is born without innate ideas.^ Full happiness cannot be obtained unless one thinks to the hilt and thereby ensures that one's values are rational. "If he chooses irrational values, he switches his emotional mechanism from the role of his guardian to the role of his destroyer. The irrational is the impossible; it is that which contradicts the facts of reality; facts cannot be altered by a wish, but they _can_ destroy the wisher. If a man desires and pursue contradictions--if he wants to have his cake and eat it, too--he disintegrates his consciousness; he turns his inner life into a civil war of blind forces engaged in dark, incoherent, pointless, meaningless conflicts (which, incidentally, is the state of most people today)" (p. 28). (What were things like in Russia, then, I ask.) ^[She is wrong here. Men are afraid of snakes even in countries like Madagascar where there are no poisonous snakes. This fear is an emotional reaction by the mind and therefore, on her own theory of the cognition-emotion link, a piece of innate knowledge about snakes and their dangers.] Something very wrong has happened. An obsessive desire (as opposed to some idle daydreaming) for something one is aware is impossible will surely cause emotional problems. But we all pursue goals that turn out not to be feasible, that contradict "the facts of reality." Ayn Rand almost seems to be imagining a mind^ that has direct access to the truth and will punish emotionally those who do things contrary to this truth. What an incredible machine! Of course, she would deny any such thing; in this very essay, she stated that men are fallible. But, nevertheless, that's what she said. I will leave it to others to specify what she should have said, to figure out what she meant by irrational values. We will still need to know how to choose rational values among the myriad available ones, the only limitation being that they support life. ^[She rarely uses the word brain and almost always says "rational being" instead of "rational animal." Methinks her thought is towards the end of the spiritual pole on the spiritual-materialist continuum, even while she officially rejects the mind-body dichotomy.] The message from Ayn Rand, the moral *physician*, however, is clear enough: be ambitious; set up long term goals that are plausible; get to work; be productive; do things yourself; don't mooch; don't loot; don't swindle. Take pride in your achievements. Above all, be independent. Sounds like good advice to me, but independence comes to me naturally. I think it's in my genes. It gets me into trouble, endlessly, but I keep my self-respect and my sanity. I never did care for all those altruists who thought other people came before me. Indeed, when I first read _Atlas Shrugged_ in 1964, for the first few hundred pages, I thought the book was a modernist satire on these people. But that her advice is for everyone, I do not know. Yes, a lot of people would be happier if they were more daring and independent. That they should all be as independent as Ayn Rand is just a claim of one moral physician and one great novelist. Interpersonal Ethics The rest of the essay moves away from the individual's code for his own life to what most people regard as morality, namely rules for dealing with other people. There is more dichotomizing, which is superb exhortation but bad metaphysics. There is her famous metaphysical claim that "the _rational_ interests of men do not clash-- there is no conflict of interests among men who do not desire the unearned [that word again!], who do not make sacrifices nor accept them, who deal with one another as _traders_, giving value for value" (p. 31). She concludes her essay with political philosophy. The word "right" appears out of nowhere four lines from the bottom on page 32, but then she said she had presented the political theory of Objectivism "in full detail in Atlas Shrugged_" (p. 33). I don't think she did; in fact, I know she didn't. If there is what the metaphysicians among philosophers call "preestablished harmony" among the interests of rational men, this needs to be demonstrated. _Atlas Shrugged_ did not do the job, nor did a later essay, "The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests." Whatever the holes, Ayn Rand, to her great credit, focused on what is generally called not "ethical egoism" but "metaethical egoism," or the doctrine that any system of morals must be justified to the individual. The problem, "Why be moral?", goes back at least to Socrates, who gave the same answer Ayn Rand did, namely that it's good for your character. Otherwise, a system of morality is something anyone can draw up however he chooses and it will remain an idle set of rules. Ayn Rand knew better. She tried to ground her system on the necessity of keeping alive. Alas, not very much can be deduced from that. But that was Ayn Rand the moral physicist. Ayn Rand the moral physician had a system that was far, far more comprehensive. But it rests upon an implicit Objectivist psychology. Until that psychology is presented, elucidated, and defended (which will involve more neurology, evolutionary biology, and more just plain empirical drudgery than she ever realized), the Objectivist ethics has holes. They need to be patched. And in the attempts to make the patches, the ethics may be get altered quite a bit, but it may also be able to answer many questions it now cannot. 1995 June 7/First Version --------------------- The New York Times > Books > Critic's Notebook: Considering the Last Romantic, Ayn Rand, at 100 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/books/02rand.html?ei=5070&en=086506d4db45b0c0&ex=1108011600&pagewanted=print&position= 5.2.2 CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN What did Ayn Rand want? Today is the centennial of her birth, and while newsletters and Web sites devoted to her continue to proliferate, and while little about her private life or public influence remains unplumbed, it is still easier to understand what she didn't want than what she did. Her scorn was unmistakable in her two novel-manifestos, "The Fountainhead" (1943), about a brilliant architect who stands proud against collective tastes and egalitarian sentimentality, and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957), about brilliant industrialists who stand proud against government bureaucrats and socialized mediocrity. It is still possible, more than 20 years after her death, to find readers choosing sides: those who see her as a subtle philosopher pitted against those who see her as a pulp novelist with pretensions. She divided her world - and her characters - in similarly stark fashion into what she wanted and what she didn't want. Here is what she didn't want: Ellsworth M. Toohey, "second-handers," Wesley Mouch, looters, relativists, collectivists, altruists. Here is what she did want: Howard Roark, John Galt, individualism, selfishness, capitalism, creation. But her villains have the best names, the most memorable quirks, the whiniest or most insinuating voices. At times, Rand even grants them a bit of compassion. Toohey, the Mephistophelean architecture critic in "The Fountainhead," could be her finest creation. And when she argued against collectivism, her cynicism had some foundation in experience: she was born in czarist Russia in 1905, witnessed the revolutions of 1917 from her St. Petersburg apartment and managed to get to the United States in 1926. Her sharpest satire can be found in some of her caricatures of collectivity. But the good guys are another story. Are "Fountainhead's" Roark and "Atlas's" Galt really plausible heroes, with their stolid ritualistic proclamations and their unwavering self-regard? Did Rand really believe that the world should be run by such creators while second-handers (ordinary workers like most of us) humbly deferred? These are not abstract questions. Fifteen million copies of her books have been sold. "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" still sell 130,000 to 150,000 copies a year. In 1999, Rand even made it onto a United States postage stamp. Her moral justifications of capitalism shaped the thinking of the young Alan Greenspan (now Federal Reserve Chairman) and other conservative acolytes. She declared it permissible to proclaim "I want" and to act to fulfill that demand. But the question remains, what did she really want? Certainly not what we have now. Many of the battles she engaged in rage on today. There are still debates about the free market, movements lobbying for collectivism and state power, and confrontations between doctrines of self-reliance and doctrines of self-sacrifice. But the world Rand actually wanted her heroes to build now seems far from revolutionary; it can even seem somewhat quaint, an almost retro fantasy. It was a Romantic utopia, in which the tensions of democratic life are not resolved but avoided. Consider, for example, works of art created by her heroes: Roark's Stoddard Temple in "The Fountainhead" or Richard Halley's Fifth Concerto in "Atlas Shrugged." Rand reportedly had Frank Lloyd Wright in mind when creating Roark; Warner Brothers tried negotiating with Wright (who admired "The Fountainhead") to create the designs that Gary Cooper's Roark would build in the film version. But Rand's descriptions of the temple hardly bring Wright to mind. She describes it as a small building of gray limestone "scaled to human height." It is a "joyous place," open to the world of nature and the city's skyscrapers in the distance. At its far end stands a statue of a naked woman, the novel's heroine, whom Roark loves. The temple, Rand makes clear, is a kind of anti-cathedral, devoted not to a god but to the spirit of man. It may even be a temple that Roark dedicated to himself, or perhaps, to his Self. The same spirit is heard in Halley's Fifth Concerto in "Atlas Shrugged." It too is a joyous celebration, a "symphony of triumph" whose sounds embody the essence of "upward motion," creating a "sunburst of sound," promising the "freedom of release." It is "the song of an immense deliverance," with a "clear, clear, complex melody at a time when no one wrote melody any more." If you love these joyous works, the novels unconvincingly assure us, your worth is certified. If you are left cold by them, then you belong with the looters who try to bring down Roark and drive Halley into exile. The two works are depicted as revolutionary in their threats and promise. The two creators reject their social surroundings and are rejected in turn. Rand's novels have similar aspirations. They too are meant to be monuments to man's spirit, promising his deliverance. They too suffered from rejection (12 publishers turned down "The Fountainhead" before it was published). And for Rand, their reception divided the world into acolytes (her inner circle had a cultic aura) and enemies. But these novels and the art described in them are actually far from revolutionary. They draw on the Romantic myth of the misunderstood artist and derive more properly from the mid-19th century than from the mid-20th. The statue in the Stoddard Temple can seem like a relic of kitschy Romanticism; Halley's waves of climaxing melody sound as if they are a throwback to Wagner; and Rand's novels can read like Romantic melodramas (one of her favorite novelists was Victor Hugo). This is Rand's utopian art: programmatic neo-Romanticism. Rand was not looking forward, but backward; in this, she shares certain tastes with Socialist Realism. Of course, the Romantic style fits Rand's theme, for mid-19th century Romanticism often celebrated the human spirit, dramatizing conflicts between the striving individual and the surrounding world. But those works were revolutionary because they challenged remnants of an aristocratic world; their notes of triumph ushered in a democratic age. Rand wanted instead the restoration of a pre-democratic age. Or more accurately, she was torn about it, and her novels and ideas reflect that ambivalence, a position that is far from unique in contemplating art in a democratic culture. Democracy, for Rand, always seems to verge on being Soviet: a culture of collectivity dominated by a supposed doctrine of equality. It stifles her heroes and motivates her villains. She referred to Toohey as "the genius of modern democracy in its worst meaning." She might have wanted to be the "genius of modern democracy" in its best meaning, leading humanity into a brave new world. In a new brief biography, "Ayn Rand" (Overlook Press), Jeff Britting, an archivist at the Ayn Rand Institute with access to her papers, shows how deeply she was attached to popular tastes. As a precocious child in Russia, she wrote action adventures and was enraptured by silent-film melodrama. She came to the United States to begin a career in the film business. Late in life she was an avid viewer of television's "Perry Mason" and "Charlie's Angels." But she could never convincingly reconcile elite achievement with democratic culture, which is why she so often seems antidemocratic. She wanted heroes who could straddle that divide. And she created heroes who could presumably be celebrated for their elite achievements within democratic society: the entrepreneur heroes like the industrialists of "Atlas Shrugged," or the artist hero in "The Fountainhead" cut from American folklore, as self-reliant as Paul Bunyan. Rand famously said: "This is the motive and purpose of my writing: the projection of an ideal man." But ultimately, these men find their ideals only in isolated rejection of democratic society, as cardboard reincarnations of the Romantic hero. Perhaps Rand really believed democracy was hopeless and wanted a government ruled by such men. Perhaps she never really cared about working any of this out. Or perhaps, in the end, she really didn't know what she wanted. At any rate, the failure to reconcile democratic culture and high achievement has not been hers alone: it is one reason readers are still choosing sides. OPA News Release, 10/2001 New fellowship for study of objectivism established at The University of Texas at Austin http://www.utexas.edu/opa/news/01newsreleases/nr_200110/nr_fellowship011016.html October 16, 2001 Contact: Robin Gerrow, 232-2145 spacer [1]latest news from UT Office of Public Affairs P O Box Z Austin, Texas 78713-7509 (512) 471-3151 FAX (512) 471-5812 AUSTIN, Texas--The Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship has established a $300,000 fellowship within the Department of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin to promote the study of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism. Funds from the fellowship will be used to educate objectivist doctoral students and help them in securing teaching positions, as well as promote the production and dissemination of scholarly works on objectivism. "Academic interest in Ayn Rand's philosophy has been growing, and we are honored to be supporting the Philosophy Department's investment in this new field of scholarship," said John McCaskey, president of the Anthem Foundation. To date, the fellowship has sponsored a graduate student, and has assisted Tara Smith, university associate professor of philosophy, in producing two papers, "The Metaphysical Case for Honesty" and "Money Can Buy Happiness." Future projects to be funded by the fellowship will include the appointment of visiting faculty and the development of distance-learning options. The Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship is a non-profit organization that sponsors teaching, writing and research on Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivism through fellowships at universities and colleges at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Schools interested in such fellowships should contact [2]McCaskey. References 2. mailto:mccaskey at stanford.edu --------------- The Objectivism Store -- The Literary Art of Ayn Rand http://www.objectivismstore.com/p-277-the-literary-art-of-ayn-rand.aspx The Literary Art of Ayn Rand by William Thomas The Literary Art of Ayn Rand focuses on Rand as a writer: the brilliantly distinctive stylist, the master of aphorism and symbol, the apostle of essentialistic characterization, the rigorous integrator who insisted that all elements in a work serve a single theme, and the igenious plotter who took pride in constructing her magnum opus as a "stunt" novel of mystery and misdirection. Now in one volume, nine essays by six authors shed new light on the depth and complexity behind Rand's inspiring and entertaining writing. The contributors include: Kirsti Minsaas: "Structural Integration in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged" "The Visual Power of Ayn Rand's Fiction" "The Stylization of Mind in Ayn Rand's Fiction." Susan McCloskey: "Odysseus, Jesus, and Dagny: Ayn Rand's Conception of the Hero" "Work and Love in The Fountainhead" Mimi Reisel Gladstein: "Breakthroughs in Ayn Rand Literary Criticism" Nathaniel Branden: "The Literary Method of Ayn Rand" David Kelley: "The Code of the Creator" Stephen Cox: "The Literary Achievement of The Fountainhead" _________________________________________________________________ The Literary Art of Ayn Rand SKU: OPP-OA043 In Stock: Yes Price: $14.95 ----------- Education | A growing concern http://education.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4315554-108234,00.html Mainstream academic interest in the Russian-born novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand continues to grow around the world, writes David Cohen Friday December 7, 2001 The recent news that the philosophy department at one of America's leading public universities has established a $300,000 fellowship in honour of Ayn Rand offered another reminder - if one were needed - of the growing academic dimension to the international following enjoyed by this rather odd Russian-born novelist-philosopher. The fellowship, sponsored by the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, has been established at the University of Texas at Austin and will promote the study of Rand's philosophy of objectivism. The funding will be used to educate objectivist doctoral students and help them secure teaching positions. It will also promote the production and dissemination of scholarly works on the late author's anarcho-capitalist ideas. Rand, a self-styled high empress of the libertarian right, who died in 1982 has long enjoyed wide popularity outside academe. Her coterie extends beyond the 30m (and counting, at a pace of several hundred thousand a year) readers who have purchased her books to include such pop stars as Simon Le Bon and the tennis player Billie Jean King, along with an array of trade union bosses, economists and political insiders on both sides of the Atlantic. Probably her most influential disciple is the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, who has said of his old friend: "She taught me that capitalism is not only practical and efficient but also moral." Educators have until now largely been absent from the roll-call, though, perhaps not surprisingly given the scorn Rand seemed to reserve for universities and their faculties, which she often viewed as being intellectually corrupt. Two long-standing exceptions to this general rule have been American-based academic organisations: the Ayn Rand Institute, based in California, and the Objectivist Center, in New York, both of which have produced an impressive amount of material related to her work over the years, particularly a recently published book, The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, written by David Kelley, a Princeton-trained philosopher. Those groups are largely in-house affairs, however, catering more to Rand's popular following than to academe, while at times also being riven by such ill-feeling over what constitutes the true Ayn Rand message that the former group refuses communication with the latter. Over the past two years, however, a rash of new scholarly books from more mainstream academic sources have appeared on aspects of Rand's aesthetics, moral philosophy, and relevance to such scholarly disciplines as women's studies and the sciences. After years of neglect, in the view of her supporters, her work is finally appearing in a number of general philosophy encyclopaedias and university textbooks as well. The latest issue of a relatively new scholarly publication, the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, contains papers written by a dozen or more international academics from prestigious universities, including professors from Britain and continental Europe. Elsewhere on international campuses, if a quick web search is any guide, the list of new student groups from across the world dedicated to Rand's ideas appears to be getting even lengthier than the jumbo-sized neoliberal orations sprinkled throughout her novels and non-fiction. Similar groups now exist in Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and the US. Ayn Rand never looked the type of person to gather such devotion. A diminutive Russian Jew, she was born Alissa Rosenbaum, in St Petersburg in 1905, the daughter of bourgeois parents. She loathed socialism, particularly as she experienced it during her own years as a student at the University of Leningrad, and emigrated to the US when she was 21, changing her name en route to Rand, after the typewriter she brought with her to the New World. She headed to Hollywood and worked as a movie extra and screenwriter, before moving to New York for a succession of jobs for motion picture companies. In 1943 she published The Fountainhead, the best-seller about an idealistic architect who blows up his construction project when he finds its design has been tampered with by yobbish bureaucrats. Fourteen years later came Atlas Shrugged, a 1,084-page epic about a future decade in which big government and trade unions strangle individualism, leading to a strike by the "men of the mind" and the collapse of future society. These novels, like her later non-fictional writings, came underpinned by objectivism, the author's world-view prizing the "virtue" of selfishness and its corollary, laissez faire capitalism. At a sales conference Rand was once asked to systematically define this philosophy while standing on one foot. This she did, defining it thus: metaphysics - reality; epistemology - reason; ethics - rational self-interest; politics - capitalism. Such gestures pretty much defined her style to the end, and her extremely black and white view of life in general. "In this universe everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly," the critic Whittaker Chambers once noted in a brilliantly corrosive review published many years ago in the conservative American magazine National Review magazine. "This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive storytelling. And, in fact, the somewhat ferro-concrete fairytale the author pours here is, basically, the old one known as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures." A generation on, the accusation of caricature remains, even at a time when Rand's intellectual reputation appears to be on an upward cultural trend elsewhere. Heading the school of Randian naysayers is Jeff Walker, author of The Ayn Rand Cult and a sceptic of the deepest dye. Mr Walker, a Canadian writer, compares Rand to a cult leader, while battering her followers claims about her originality, literary talent and morality. The book contains startling anecdotes drawn from within Rand's inner circle, including descriptions of non-smokers being ostracised from the chain-smoking guru's social gatherings during her lifetime (she later died of lung cancer), and a bizarre love triangle involving Rand and a younger husband and wife team she at one time designated as her intellectual heirs. As for the scholarly value of Rand's work, Mr Walker might just as well have adapted Edward Gibbon's famous view of Thomas Aquinas - her better ideas tend to be borrowed; the words, alas, are entirely her own. He writes that objectivism's greatest intellectual appeal remains with keen minded yet sadly impressionable youths or else platitudinous dullards with a taste for the cult life. In the end, Mr Walker's recently published book may be even more hysterical than the movement he seeks to disparage. What's probably most significant about it, in 2001, is that any student or professor with an interest in debating the kinds of issues it raises can now find haven for the debate in a growing number of institutions of higher learning. ----------- The Ayn Rand Institute: Clarification of ARI's Position on Government Help to Tsunami Victims http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr011=nhuj43n1y2.app7a&page=NewsArticle&id=10728&news_iv_ctrl=1021&printer_friendly=1 Friday, January 7, 2005 On December 30, 2004, the Ayn Rand Institute released as a letter to the editor and as an op-ed a piece that condemned the U.S. government's use of taxpayers' money to help victims of the recent tsunami ("U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims"). That piece was inappropriate and did not accurately convey the Institute's position. We would like to clarify our position. Obviously, the tsunami, with the thousands of innocent victims left in its wake, is a horrible disaster. The first concern of survivors and of those trying to help them is to provide basic necessities and then to begin rebuilding. The American public's predictably generous response to assist these efforts is motivated by goodwill toward their fellow man. In the face of the enormous and undeserved suffering, American individuals and corporations have donated millions of dollars in aid; they have done so by and large not out of some sense of altruistic duty but in the name of the potential value that another human being represents. This benevolence, which we share, is not the same thing as altruism. The ugly hand of altruism--the moral view that need entitles a person to the values of others, whose corresponding duty is to sacrifice their values for that person's sake--did show itself in the petulant demands of U.N. and other officials that "stingy" countries must give more. On their view, the U.S. has no right to the wealth it has produced, because it has produced it; the helpless victims of the tsunami have a right to that wealth, because they desperately need it. This perverse view is not an expression of goodwill toward man. In generously providing aid, the U.S. government should repudiate all such altruistic demands and refuse to associate with the organizations that make them. In a fully free, fully capitalist society--a society toward which ARI works--the government would not have the power to tax citizens and redistribute their wealth for the purpose of charity, domestic or foreign. The government would be restricted to one fundamental function: to protect the citizens' individual rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. To accomplish this, the government would need only a police force and a military to protect citizens from aggressors, and a legal system to adjudicate disputes among citizens who allege that their rights have been infringed. Charity would be left to private individuals and organizations, as it was successfully left in 19th century America (in even a semi-capitalist system, there is no shortage of wealth or of benevolence, as the public's response to the tsunami illustrates). But of all the ways in which our government today fails to uphold individual rights, providing (through compulsory taxation) short-term, emergency relief to foreign victims of a natural disaster is among the most innocuous. It was therefore inappropriate to single out for condemnation the government's offer of assistance. True, it would be preferable to use the aid money for a legitimate function of government, such as to purchase needed military equipment and armor for our soldiers in Iraq, who are being asked to risk their lives to defend our freedom. It is likely, moreover, that the increase in aid offered by our government in the days after the disaster stemmed not from benevolence but from surrender to the altruists' corrupt demand that the U.S. had not sacrificed enough. Nevertheless, thousands of the government's actions are more damaging to our rights. Far worse, for instance, would have been to pour the aid money into government programs and agencies whose very purpose is to violate individual rights, such as into the antitrust division of the Justice Department, which persecutes successful businesses for out-competing other companies on a free market. If one wants to fight the government's growing encroachment on individual rights, such are the areas on which to focus, not emergency relief. The crucial issue in the battle for a free society is to restrict the government to its only legitimate purpose: the protection of individual rights. (The issue of compulsory taxation, the focus of the original piece, is a derivative; it pertains to the appropriate means by which a proper government would finance its activities, and is the last issue to address in establishing a free society. For elaboration, see Ayn Rand's article "Government Financing in a Free Society" in --------------- The evolution of Ayn Rand -- The Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20050201-094832-2692r By Steve Chapman Published February 2, 2005 _________________________________________________________________ Has Ayn Rand gone mainstream? The radical champion of individualism and capitalism, who died in 1982, is no longer an exotic taste. Her image has adorned a U.S. postage stamp. Her ideas have been detected in a new mass-market animated comedy film, "The Incredibles." And today on the 100th anniversary of her birth, there will be a Rand commemoration at the Library of Congress -- an odd site for a ceremony honoring a fierce anti-statist. In her day, Miss Rand was at odds with almost every prevailing American social attitude. She infuriated liberals by preaching economic laissez-faire and lionizing titans of business. She appalled conservatives by rejecting religion in any form while celebrating, she said, "sexual enjoyment as an end in itself." But her novels found countless readers. "The Fountainhead," published in 1943, and "Atlas Shrugged," which followed in 1957, are still in print. In 1991, when the Book of the Month Club polled Americans asking what book had most influenced their lives, "Atlas Shrugged" finished second only to the Bible. In all, Miss Rand's books have sold some 22 million copies and continue selling more than half a million a year. Miss Rand emerged in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the New Deal and World War II -- which were taken as proving the obsolescence of the free market, that prosperity required an all-intrusive government, and that national success demanded subordination of the individual to collective purposes. After the traumas of the 1930s and '40s, America was intent on building a well-ordered welfare state by compromise and consensus. In that setting, Ayn Rand resembled the female athlete in Apple Computer's 1984 Super Bowl commercial, who sprinted into a mass assembly of oppressed drones to hurl a sledgehammer at the Big Brother orating from a giant TV screen -- smashing it and bathing the audience in dazzling light. Miss Rand, a Russian immigrant, saw herself harking back to the Enlightenment values of reason, limited government and personal liberty that fueled the American Revolution. "The United States," she declared, "was the first moral society in history." Her novels were derided by critics, who saw them as interminable philosophical diatribes disguised as melodrama. What she regarded as thoroughgoing consistency struck many readers as overbearing dogmatism. Her political ideas attracted only a fringe following. Outside a tiny band of true believers, few people counted themselves as disciples of Ayn Rand. But many people absorbed much of her thinking and incorporated it into their worldviews. Public figures as diverse as Hillary Clinton, Clarence Thomas and Cal Ripken have cited her influence, on top of millions of other unfamous people. In time, her work bore fruit. By the mid-1970s, wage-and-price controls had wrecked the economy, in perfect accord with Miss Rand's predictions. Her view of capitalism not as a necessary evil but a moral good helped turn public opinion toward free markets, opening the way for the Reagan Revolution. Her celebration of individual joy also echoed in the leftist counterculture of the 1960s, which rebelled against the sterile conformity of the Eisenhower era. However, Ayn Rand had no use for the irresponsible hedonism that spawned the saying, "If it feels good, do it." That was a perversion of her insight that pleasure is not cause for guilt. You can hear Miss Rand even in Bruce Springsteen: "It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive." That's just one illustration of how her influence went beyond economics and political theory. In her eyes, there was no greater good than each person's integrity and self-fulfillment. One of her essay collections had the surprising title, "The Virtue of Selfishness." Looking back, it's hard to recapture how jarring that phrase was a generation ago, when altruism and self-sacrifice were seen as the central elements of an exemplary life. Today, Americans take it for granted that they are entitled to live for their own happiness, without apology. It may seem curious to honor a writer who merely defended free markets, preached the superiority of reason over blind faith and extolled the American ideal of the pursuit of happiness. David Kelley, head of the Rand-oriented Objectivist Center, jokes that he's reminded of the theatergoer who complained that "Hamlet" was full of cliches. Miss Rand's beliefs have been so widely disseminated and absorbed that we have forgotten where they originated. The truth is that for all she did, they are no longer her ideas. To a large extent, they are ours. Steve Chapman is a nationally syndicated columnist. ------------- The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Entertainment http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Entertainment/Books/03SceneBOOK06020205.htm Rand's philosophy, influence still hold weight Cox News Service Last update: February 02, 2005 ATLANTA -- Fay Stephenson's old copy of "Atlas Shrugged" was turned into soggy mush when her basement flooded and ruined a bunch of stored books. Bill Fallin keeps his copy of the novel in his desk and re-reads sections occasionally. Ron Mahre read "The Fountainhead" when he was in college and now plans to give his battered original copy to his 17-year-old daughter Bethany. Like a first rock concert or a first slow dance, some people never forget their first encounter with Ayn Rand, the passionate, controversial author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," creator of the philosophy called objectivism, patron saint of libertarians (both capital "L" and small "l") and galvanizer of several generations of intellectually inclined teenagers. "I think at that age you're still sort of forming who you are and who you will become," said Stephenson, 49, a former marketing executive, recalling her own teenage infatuation with "Atlas Shrugged" while in high school in New York. There was something rebellious and utopian about Rand's harsh but romantic critique of society, she said, that appeals strongly to young people. Today is Rand's centenary -- the 100th anniversary of her birth -- to be marked with a conference at the Library of Congress in Washington sponsored by The Objectivist Center, and a private party in Atlanta Saturday for the Georgia Objectivists. A new illustrated biography, "Ayn Rand," by Jeffrey Britting in the Overlook Illustrated Lives series will be released, and the new issue of Reason magazine devotes its cover story to re-assessing Rand. Ayn (rhymes with "fine") Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and immigrated to the United States in 1926. She was an extra in movies, including Cecil B. DeMille's "King of Kings," but soon made a name for herself as a writer. The most widely read of her many books are "The Fountainhead," her 1943 novel about an architect with a rigid code of honor, and "Atlas Shurgged," a 1,000-plus page 1957 novel about the greatest achievers of the world going on strike. Huge, overblown, romantic, it's packed with lengthy speeches on philosophy and spawned the catchphrase "Who is John Galt?" (the novel's mysterious hero). Rand died in 1982, but her books continue to sell well -- "Atlas" alone sells more than 150,000 copies a year, with overall sales past 5.5 million, according to the Ayn Rand Institute. In a 1991 Library of Congress public opinon poll, it was cited as the second most influential book ever -- after the Bible. Rand was "a cult figure with plenty of worshippers and plenty of desecrators," contributing editor Cathy Young writes in Reason, noting that she offered her millions of readers "a bold, ardent vision of defiance, struggle, creative achievement, joy and romantic love." Yet Rand's intense celebration of the individual, rationalism and capitalism remains, for many readers, "a way station on a journey to some wider outlook," Young writes. Which is another way of saying that many people go through an "Ayn Rand phase." "You initially get sucked in by the pulpiness of her novels," said Merridith Kristoffersen, 34, a trainer for a real estate company, who read "Atlas" and "Fountainhead" in high school in Florida. "They're kind of racy and lavish, but she's sending a message that's more weighty than just pulp." While still a fan of the novels, Kristofferson said Rand's philosophy of unfettered capitalism wouldn't work in today's society. Jean Crabbe, a stay-at-home mother of three, was so into Rand's novels in high school that she wrote her senior term paper on Rand -- "The Fountainhead of Objectivism," she titled it. "Imagine remembering that after all these years and forgetting so much else," she laughs. She remembers arguing with friends in the early '70s over which was the greater novel -- "Atlas Shrugged" or "Lord of the Rings." "And I have to say now in looking back, maybe they were right," Crabbe said. "Maybe 'Lord of the Rings' was better." Better or not, "Lord" hasn't influenced public policy as much as "Atlas." Rand's promotion of laissez-faire capitalism free of all government regulations made her a fountainhead for many economists and conservative thinkers. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, no less, wrote a letter to the editor of The New York Times in 1957, responding to the paper's negative review of "Atlas Shrugged" and calling it "a celebration of life and happiness." Greenspan has called Rand "clearly a major contribution to my intellectual development." Like Greenspan's, some love affairs with Rand last a lifetime and are not a "phase." Bill Fallin, 74, read "Atlas Shugged" more than 30 years ago, when he was on the verge of bankruptcy. The book's message inspired him to turn his business life around, and he went on to be president of three companies. "I've guided a lot of people toward that book," Fallin said. "I've probably recommended it to 200 or 300 people over the years." Like many fans, Fallin agrees with only some of Rand's philosophy. Rand was an atheist, but Fallin, like others, says he has no problem being a Christian and also being inspired by Rand's message. During her life, however, Rand would not have stood for such disagreement among her acolytes. Although she preached individualism as the highest value, she demanded that her close followers agree with her every pronouncement or face banishment from her inner circle. "I was overwhelmed when I first read her," Crabbe said. "It seemed like she had the answers and had it all figured out. When you're that age, that's the way you look at the world. It's either/or, with no in-betweens. Now I understand that that's just not realistic." OBJECTIVISM'S MAIN POINTS -- Reality exists as an absolute -- facts are facts, independent of feelings, wishes, hopes or fears. -- Reason is man's only means of perceiving reality, and his only source of knowledge. (A corollary: Faith in God is not a part of reason, and therefore not a part of objectivism.) -- Every man is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. -- The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. The government should act only as a policeman that protects man's rights; it uses physical force only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. -- Condensed from the Web site of the Ayn Rand Institute [51](www.aynrand.org) -------------- Ayn Rand at 100 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3661&print=Y February 2, 2005 by David Boaz David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute, author of [1]Libertarianism: A Primer (Free Press, 1998), and editor of [2]The Libertarian Reader (Free Press, 1998), which includes a lengthy interview with Ayn Rand by Alvin Toffler. Interest in the bestselling novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand continues to grow, 20 years after her death and 60 years after she first hit the bestseller lists with The Fountainhead. Rand was born February 2, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia. In the dark year of 1943, in the depths of World War II and the Holocaust, when the United States was allied with one totalitarian power to defeat another, three remarkable women published books that gave birth to the modern libertarian movement. Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who had written Little House on the Prairie and other stories of American rugged individualism, published a passionate historical essay called The Discovery of Freedom. Novelist and literary critic Isabel Paterson produced The God of the Machine, which defended individualism as the source of progress in the world. The other great book of 1943 was The Fountainhead, a powerful novel about architecture and integrity by Ayn Rand. The book's individualist theme did not fit with the spirit of the age, and reviewers savaged it. But the book found its intended readers. Sales started slowly, then built and built. It was still on the New York Times bestseller list two full years later. Hundreds of thousands of people read it in the 1940s, millions eventually, and many of them were inspired to seek more information about Ayn Rand's ideas. Rand went on to write an even more successful novel, Atlas Shrugged, in 1957, and to found an association of people who shared her philosophy, which she called Objectivism. Although her political philosophy was libertarian, not all libertarians shared her views on metaphysics, ethics, and religion. Others were put off by the starkness of her presentation and by her cult following. Like Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek, Rand demonstrates the importance of immigration not just to America but to American libertarianism. Mises had fled his native Austria right before the Nazis confiscated his library, Rand fled the Communists who came to power in her native Russia. When a heckler asked her at a public speech, "Why should we care what a foreigner thinks?", she replied with her usual fire, "I chose to be an American. What did you ever do, except for having been born?" George Gilder called Atlas Shrugged the most important novel of ideas since War and Peace. Writing in the Washington Post, he explained her impact on the world of ideas and especially the world of capitalist ideas: Rand flung her gigantic books into the teeth of an intelligentsia still intoxicated by state power, during an era when even Dwight Eisenhower maintained tax rates of 90 percent and confessed his inability to answer Nikita Khrushchev's assertion that capitalism was immoral because it was based on greed. Rands books first appeared when no one seemed to support freedom and capitalism, and when even capitalisms greatest defenders emphasized its utility, not its morality. It was often said at the time that socialism is a good idea in theory, but human beings just arent good enough for socialism. Ayn Rand insisted that socialism is not good enough for human beings. Her books attracted millions of readers because they presented a passionate philosophical case for individual rights and capitalism, and did so through the medium of the vivid, cant-put-it-down novel. The people who read Rand and got the point didnt just become aware of costs and benefits, incentives and trade-offs. They became passionate advocates of liberty. Rand was an anomaly in the 1940s and 1950s, an advocate of reason and individualism in time of big government and conformity. But she was a shaper of the 1960s, the age of do your own thing and youth rebellion; the 1970s, pejoratively described as the Me Decade but perhaps better understood as an age of skepticism about institutions and a turn toward self-improvement and personal happiness; and the 1980s, the decade of tax cuts and entrepreneurship. Throughout those decades her books continued to sell -- 22 million copies over the years, and they still move off the shelves. According to Penguin/Putnam, publisher of her books, sales of Atlas Shrugged exceeded 140,000 copies in 2002, up 10 percent from the previous year. Combined sales of all four of her novels in paperback exceeded 374,000 copies. That level was higher than any year since Rands death in 1982. Add in purchases of hardcovers, book club editions, and Rands nonfiction works, and readers are buying 500,000 copies of her books per year. College students, professors, businessmen, Alan Greenspan, the rock group Rush, and the top economic adviser to Russian president Vladimir Putin all proclaim themselves fans of Ayn Rand. Both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged appear on Barnes and Nobles list of the top 50 classic bestsellers, and screenwriters are working on movie scripts for both. In a survey of Book of the Month Club readers for the Library of Congress, Atlas Shrugged came in second to the Bible as the most influential book for Americans today. Recently Rand has been the subject of profiles in USA Today, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and C-SPANs American Writers series. Her name has turned up in novels by Tobias Wolff and William F. Buckley, Jr.; in stories about Playboys 50th anniversary; in Playbill, the theater magazine; in newspaper profiles of her friend Mickey Spillane; in a Showtime movie, The Passion of Ayn Rand, starring Helen Mirren; and in a documentary, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, that was nominated for an Academy Award in 1997. She even appeared on a first-class stamp as part of the Postal Services Literary Arts series. A quotation from Rand greets visitors to the American pavilion at Walt Disney Worlds Epcot Center. Few writers are more popular or more controversial than Ayn Rand. Despite the enormous commercial success of her books, and the major influence shes had on American culture, reviewers and other intellectuals have generally been hostile. Theyve dismissed her support for individualism and capitalism, ridiculed her purple prose, and mocked her black-and-white morality. None of which seems to have dissuaded her millions of readers. Although she did not like to acknowledge debts to other thinkers, Rands work rests squarely within the libertarian tradition, with roots going back to Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Jefferson, Paine, Bastiat, Spencer, Mill, and Mises. She infused her novels with the ideas of individualism, liberty, and limited government in ways that often changed the lives of her readers. The cultural values she championed -- reason, science, individualism, achievement, and happiness -- are spreading across the world. References 1. http://www.catostore.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&method=cats&scid=14&pid=1441021 2. http://www.catostore.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&method=cats&scid=14&pid=144978 ----------------- Reason: Rand-O-Rama: Ayn Rand's long shelf life in American culture http://www.reason.com/0503/fe.rand.shtml March 2005 This is the only novel of ideas written by an American woman that I can recall.Nothing she has to say is said in a second-rate fashion. You have to think of The Magic Mountainwhen you think of The Fountainhead. Lorine Pruette, The New York Times Book Review (1943) From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: To the gas chambersgo!.A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie [sic] Nation. Whittaker Chambers, National Review (1957) Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should. [The New York Times reviewer] suspiciously wonders about a person who sustains such a mood through the writing of 1,168 pages and some fourteen years of work. This reader wonders about a person who finds unrelenting justice personally disturbing. Alan Greenspan, future chairman of the Federal Reserve, responding to a negative review of Atlas Shrugged, in The New York Times (1957) Its all great, Hef! Exceptdo you really think our readers will dig a nude fold-out of Ayn Rand? Hefner and His Pals, a comic strip in Mad magazine (1967) Like most of my contemporaries, I first read The Fountainhead when I was 18 years old. I loved it. I too missed the point. I thought it was a book about a strong-willed architect...and his love life.I deliberately skipped over all the passages about egoism and altruism. And I spent the next year hoping I would meet a gaunt, orange-haired architect who would rape me. Or failing that, an architect who would rape me. Or failing that, an architect. I am certain that The Fountainhead did a great deal more for architects than Architectural Forum ever dreamed. Nora Ephron, The New York Times Book Review (1968) He spent several days deciding on the artifacts [that would be found with his dead body]....He would be found lying on his back, on his bed, with a copy of Ayn Rands The Fountainhead (which would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by his scorn) and an unfinished letter to Exxon protesting the cancellation of his gas credit card. Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977) With acknowledgement to the genius of Ayn Rand liner notes to the Rush album 2112 (1976) JENNIFER GREY: You cant just leave [the girl you impregnated]. MAX CANTOR: I could blow a summer hauling toasted bagels just to bail out some little chick who probably balled every guy in the place.Some people count, and some people dont. [pulls The Fountainhead from his pocket] Read it. I think its a book youll enjoy. But be sure you return itI have notes in the margin. Dirty Dancing, 1987 Lots of girls fell in love with Definitism because of the erotic power of the books. No one wanted to admit how important the sex was, but lets face itthe books were very erotic. There were all these intrigues going on, all these little girls wanting to satisfy their sexual cravings. Mary Gaitskill, Two Girls, Fat and Thin (1991) MARGE: Maggielikes a bottle of warm milk before nap time. MS. SINCLAIR: A bottle? Mrs. Simpson, do you know what a babys saying when she reaches for a bottle? MARGE: Ba Ba? MS. SINCLAIR: Shes saying I am a leech! Our aim here is to develop the bottle within. MARGE: That sounds awfully harsh. conversation between Marge and the proprietor of the Ayn Rand School for Tots, The Simpsons (1992) LOUIS: I could have you arrested you.creep. Theyd think I put you in jail for beating me up. JOE: I never hit anyone before, I LOUIS: But itd really be for those decisions. It was like a sex scene in an Ayn Rand novel, huh? JOE: I hurt you! Im sorry, Louis. I never hit anyone before, I from Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, conversation between lovers (1992) Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I am never reading again. police officer Barbrady, South Park (1998) However completely you think you preside over your own schedule, there are inflexibilities there. Inflexibilities which not even one of Ayn Rands heroes could do very much about. William F. Buckley Jr., Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography (2004) Unlikeany other Marvel [Comics] author, [Spider-Man co-creator Steve] Ditko received plotting credit as early as Amazing Spider-Man #25 (1965), an unprecedented concession that was most likely the result of Ditkos contemporaneous discovery of Ayn Rands Objectivism, with its hatred of creative dilution and unearned rewards. Andrew Hultkrans in Give Our Regards to the Atom Smashers!: Writers on Comics (2004) The Incrediblessuggests a thorough, feverish immersion in both the history of American comic books and the philosophy of Ayn Rand.Luckily, though, [writer and director Brad] Birds disdain for mediocrity is not simply ventriloquized through his characters, but is manifest in his meticulous, fiercely coherent approach to animation. A.O. Scott, The New York Times (2004) ----------- Reason: Ayn Rand at 100: Loved, hated, and always controversial, the best-selling author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is more relevant than ever. http://www.reason.com/0503/fe.cy.ayn.shtml March 2005 [20]Cathy Young A hundred years after her birth and nearly 25 years after her death, Ayn Rand remains a fascinating and enigmatic presence. She has been mainstreamed enough to have been honored by a U.S. Postal Service stamp in 1999 and to have been featured on C-SPANs American Writers series in 2002. Her novels figure prominently in readers lists of the 20th centurys greatest books. Notably, in a 1991 survey of more than 2,000 Book-of-the-Month Club members about books that made a difference in their lives, Rands magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, came in secondalbeit a very distant secondto the Bible. Rand, a devout atheist, might have seen that as an insult rather than an honor. Yet in many ways Rand remains an outlier and an oddity on the cultural scene, a cult figure with plenty of worshippers and plenty of desecrators. No other modern author has had such extravagant claims of greatness made on her behalf: Followers of her philosophy, Objectivism, regard her as the greatest thinker to have graced this earth since Aristotle and the greatest writer of all time. Mainstream intellectuals tend to dismiss her as a writer of glorified pulp fiction and a pseudo-philosophical quack with an appeal for impressionable teens. Politically, too, Rand is an outsider: Liberals shrink from her defiant pro-capitalist stance, conservatives from her militant atheism, and conservatives and liberals alike from her individualism. Libertarianism, the movement most closely connected to Rands ideas, is less an offspring than a rebel stepchild. In her insistence that political philosophy must be based on a proper epistemology, she rejected the libertarian movement, which embraced a wide variety of reasons for advocating free markets and free minds, as among her enemies. In recent years, at last, some analysis of Rand has appeared that is neither uncritical adulation nor unrelenting bashing. Some of it has come from unorthodox neo-Objectivists, such as the feminist scholar Mimi Gladstein or the political philosopher Chris Matthew Sciabarra. (The two edited the 1999 book Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand, and Sciabarra wrote 1996s controversial Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.) The five-year-old Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, co-founded by Sciabarra, often features essays by mainstream intellectuals that treat Rands legacy in a non-hagiographic way. Two controversial books about Rand the person remain a good place to start for an understanding, but not adulatory, look at her life and work: The Passion of Ayn Rand (1986) by Barbara Branden, no doubt the first-ever sympathetic biography whose subject slept with the biographers husband, and Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand (1989) by Nathaniel Branden, the husband in question. In 1962, when they were still among the faithful, the Brandens co-wrote a book called Who Is Ayn Rand? More than 40 years later, the question still stands. The Appeal of Ayn Rand Reading Rands philosophy can be an exhilarating, head-turning experience; it was for me when I first picked up her nonfiction manifesto For the New Intellectual at the age of 19, two years after coming to the United States from the Soviet Union. (Rand herself was an American immigrant from the Soviet Union, leaving her family behind to move here in 1926.) Rands rejection of the moral code that condemns selfishness as the ultimate evil and holds up self-sacrifice as the ultimate good is a radical challenge to received wisdom, an invitation to a startlingly new way to see the world. While Rand was hardly the first philosopher to advocate an ethos of individualism, reason, and self-interest, no one formulated it as accessibly or persuasively as she didor as passionately. In Rands hands, the virtue of selfishness was not a dry, abstract rationalist construct with a bloodless economic man at its center. It became a bold, ardent vision of defiance, struggle, creative achievement, joy, and romantic love. That vibrancy, more than anything else, accounts for her extraordinary appeal. Politically, Rand wanted to provide liberal capitalism with a moral foundation, to take on the prevalent notion that communism was a noble if unworkable idea while the free market was a necessary evil best suited to flawed human nature. In this she succeeded brilliantly (even if the notion that socialism failed because it has never been properly tried is still alive and well among the intelligentsia). Her arguments against compassionate redistributionand persecutionof wealth have lost none of their power in the decades after they were made. Yet there is a reason Objectivism remains, for most people, a way station on a journey to some wider outlook. Even Nathaniel Branden, who still espouses most Objectivist tenets, has been severely critical of Rands judgmental and contemptuous attitude toward all emotions she deemed irrational, her tendency to glorify emotional repression, and her lukewarm support even for voluntary, non-self-sacrificing mutual aid. The Limits of Ayn Rand Perhaps Rands biggest error was the totalism of her philosophy. Having rightly concluded that the values of the free market were moral, she went on to make the sweeping assertion that those values were the only moral ones, and that all human relations must be based on the principles of trade. Yet there is nothing unreasonable and nothing anti-market or anti-individualist to the belief that individualistic and market-based values need something to complement them. The Victorians emphasized the importance of charity and viewed family and community as havens in a heartless world. This value system had its serious drawbacksfrom preachy sentimentalism to fairly rigid gender roles, with women virtually excluded from economic and intellectual endeavors and relegated to the complementary sphere of love, care giving, and charity. But at least the Victorians recognized the need for a balance and variety of virtues. Politically, too, Rands insistence on de-emphasizing, or even denigrating, family, community, and private charity is not a particularly clever tactic for capitalisms defenders. These are the very institutions that can be expected, in the absence of a massive welfare state, to meet those human needs that people prove unable to satisfy through the market. Rand did claim to be in favor of benevolence, in contrast to altruism; but it would be fruitless to look for providers of private charitable aid among her good guys, except for those who lend a helping hand to a friend. When charity is mentioned in Rands fiction, it is nearly always in a negative context. In The Fountainhead, the chorus of second-handers eager to condemn her heroic, individualist architect protagonist, Howard Roark, include the society woman dressing for a charity bazaar who uses charity as an excuse to flaunt her virtue; in Atlas Shrugged, a club providing shelter to needy young women is mocked for offering help to unworthy sufferers such as drinkers, dope users, and unwed mothers-to-be. Family fares even worse in Rands universe. The virtual absence of children in her work has been noted by many critics, starting with Whittaker Chambers in his infamous roasting of Atlas Shrugged in National Review. Actually, John Galts private utopia in Atlas features a nameless young woman who makes it her career to raise rational children; but this brief passage comes across as little more than a pro forma nod to motherhood. In her 1964 Playboy interview Rand flatly declared that it was immoral to place family ties and friendship above productive work; in her fiction, family life is depicted as a stifling, soul-killing, mainly feminine swamp. Its noteworthy that in The Fountainhead, the heroesRoark, newspaper magnate Gail Wynand, and Roarks troubled lover, Dominique Franconhave all grown up motherless, while the arch-villain, critic Ellsworth Toohey, spent his childhood as his mothers pet and the worthless Peter Keating, who relies on Roark to do his architecture work, has a grotesque caricature of a selfless, smothering, tyrannical mother. The only Randian heroic couple to actually reproduce is the hero of Anthem and his girlfriend, who is pregnant at the end of the dystopian science fiction novelette; but they have the excuse of needing to breed a new race of free men, since the world around them has regressed to post-apocalyptic primitivism and slavery. In its pure form, Rands philosophy would work very well indeed if human beings were never helpless and dependent through no fault of their own. Thus, its hardly surprising that so many people become infatuated with Objectivism as teenagers and grow out of it later, when concerns of family, children, and old agetheir own and their familiesmake that fantasy seem more and more impossible. The Darkness in Ayn Rand In the heyday of the Objectivist movement, Rand used to brush off charges that her ?bermensch heroes were unrealistic by pointing to herself and the Brandens, at one point shouting during a debate, Am I impossible? In fact, what is revealed of Rand in the Brandens biographies dramatically illustrates the gap between ideology and reality in her own life. In the Randiverse, a man whose beloved left him for another would manfully accept her rational decisionmay the best ?bermensch win!and remain friends with her and her new partner. In real life, Rands rational affair with Branden, whom she fantasized as a Galt or Roark come alive, caused devastation all around, to themselves as much as to their spouses. Rands unshakable belief in the power of the human mind led her to refuse to recognize the mental deterioration of her husband, Frank OConnor, and she tormented him with exercises in psycho-epistemology. When she herself was diagnosed with cancer, she refused to disclose her illness publicly, evidently because she believed, according to Barbara Branden, that cancer was the result of philosophical and psychological errors. Rands detractors often brand her a fascist. She is not, of course; but does her work have overtones of a totalitarian or dictatorial mentality? This charge irks even ambivalent Rand admirers, such as Nathaniel Branden, who fully recognize the dogmatism and intolerance in the Objectivist movement. They point out that Rand decisively rejects the use of force except in self-defense. True; but as Branden has observed on the topic of emotional repression, it would be wise to pay attention not just to what Rand says but to what she doesin this case, in her novels. Near the end of Atlas Shrugged, when the heroes go to rescue John Galt from the baddies, female railroad magnate Dagny Taggart calmly and quite unnecessarily shoots a guard who cant decide whether to let her in or not. The man, you see, wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousnessobviously a capital crime. Still more troubling is an earlier passage in Atlas in which bureaucratic incompetence and arrogance lead to a terrible train wreck. Many would say, Rand wryly notes, that the people who died in the accident were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them. Then, in a series of brief portraits, Rand endeavors to show that the passengers were guilty indeed: All of them had benefited from evil government programs, promoted evil political or philosophical ideas, or both. Rand does not advocate their murder, of course (though she sympathetically depicts a trainmaster who chooses not to avert the disaster, partly in revenge against the regulators); but she does suggest that they had it coming. In Atlas and the nonfiction essays she turned to in her final decades, political and ideological debates are treated as wars with no innocent bystanders, and the dehumanization of the enemy reaches levels reminiscent of communist or fascist propaganda. One inevitable consequence of this attitude toward most other human beings is, to quote the title of a George Orwell essay, the prevention of literature. There can be no question that Rand was a highly talented writer with a great gift for plot, description, and yes, characterization. The Fountainhead is a brilliant book, and so is Rands often underappreciated first novel, We the Living, a richly textured, passionate, moving story of life in post-revolutionary Russia. But in these novels Rands philosophy has not yet petrified into dogma. Even the larger-than-life romantic heroes have recognizable human emotions. (Rands detractors often claim that Roark is a robotically unfeeling superman, but consider this passage, when Dominique tells him of her marriage to Peter Keating: It would have been easy, if she had seen a man distorting his mouth to bite off sound, closing his fists and twisting them in defense against himself. But it was not easy, because she did not see him doing this, yet knew that this was being done, without the relief of a physical gesture.) Rands moral scale in The Fountainhead still allows for shades of gray. The power-seeking Gail Wynand is a tragic figure whom Roark loves despite the error of his ways; Dominiques father, Guy Francon, is basically a good guy despite exemplifying none of the Randian virtues; even the despicable Peter Keating merits some sympathy, and his failed romance with his true love, Katie, has some dignity and poignancy. But in Atlas Shrugged, Rands final novel, the ideologue crushes the writer almost completely. While a few characters show occasional glimpses of humanity, most of the heroes are abstractions of greatness, while the villains are subhuman vermin. The story suffocates under endless speechifying and analysis in which each point is flogged to death and each un-Randian idea is reduced to a straw man the heroes can easily beat down and shred. In this effort, all life and beauty are drained from Rands prose style, and we are treated to passages like this one, when industrialist Hank Reardens wife tries to hurt him by telling him she has slept with a man he despises: There, he thought, was the final abortion of the creed of collective interdependence, the creed of non-identity, non-property, non-fact: the belief that the moral stature of one is at the mercy of the action of another. The Paradox of Ayn Rand For all her flaws, Rand remains a towering figure on the last centurys cultural landscape. She arose in an era of competing totalitarian ideologies and declared that communism and Nazism were not opposites but evil twins, and that their true opposite was freedom. In an era when collectivism was seen as the way of the future, she unapologetically asserted the worth of the individual and his right to exist for himself, and declared the spiritual dimension of material achievement. In an age of existential doubt, she offered a celebration of creativity, of the human mind, of the joy of life on this earth. (The Fountainhead has a glorious passage in which a young man who is starting to despair of finding beauty or purpose in life is moved and inspired by the sight of Roarks just-finished construction project.) Atlas Shrugged, clunky and extremist though it is, contains some brilliant and powerful pro-capitalist polemicssuch as Francisco DAnconias speech on the meaning of money and the tale of one factorys disastrous experiment in implementing the slogan, From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Rand zealots, and even moderate fans such as the Brandens, are often prone to credit her with almost single-handedly rolling back the tide of socialist ideology in the 20th century. Thats quite an exaggeration, as is the notion that her philosophy sprang whole from her mind like Athena from the skull of Zeus. Still, Rand was the most successful and widely read popularizer of the ideas of individual liberty and the free market of her day. In the 21st century, as we face Islamist terrorism abroad and when public discourse at home often seems dominated by religious conservatism on the right and politically correct pieties on the left, Rands message of reason and liberty, if its stripped of its odder features, could be a rallying point for what the neo-Objectivist philosopher David Kelley, who runs the Objectivist Center, calls Enlightenment-based values. From yet another perspective, Rand can be seen as a great eccentric thinker and writer whose work is less about a practical guide to real life than about a unique, individual, stylized vision, a romantic vision that transforms and transcends real life. Rands philosophy admitted no contradictions or paradoxes in reality; but reality is full of apparently irreconcilable truths. The truth of what Rand said about the heroic human spirit and individual self-determination does not negate the truth that human beings often find themselves at the mercy of circumstances beyond their control and dependent on others through no fault of theirs. The truth of the self-sufficient soul coexists with the truth of the vital importance of human connections. Rand herself was a creature of paradox. She was a prophet of freedom and individualism who tolerated no disobedience or independent thought in her acolytes, a rationalist who refused to debate her views. She was an atheist whose worship of Man led her to see the human mind as a godlike entity, impervious to the failings of the body or to environmental influences. (Nathaniel Branden reports that she even disliked the idea of evolution.) She was a strong woman who created independent heroines yet saw sexual submission as the essence of femininity and argued that no healthy woman would want to be president of the United States because it would put her above all men. This is perhaps how Rand is best appreciated: as a figure of great achievement and great contradictions, a visionary whose vision is one among many, whose truths are important but by no means exclusive. Rand, it is safe to say, would have regarded such appreciation as far worse than outright rejection. But thats just another paradox of life. ------------------------------------- Contributing Editor Cathy Young is a columnist for the Boston Globe. References 20. mailto:CathyYoung63 at aol.com --------------- Reason: Editor's Note: Rand Redux http://www.reason.com/0503/ed.ng.editors.shtml March 2005 Rand Redux Reason does Ayn Rand on her 100th birthday Nick Gillespie Let me admit up front that I'm no great fan of this month's cover girl, Ayn Rand, whose 100th birthday falls on February 2 and whose legacy we analyze on page 22. It's a doubly embarrassing admission: Not only is Rand one of the most important figures in the libertarian movement of which reason is a part, but this magazine's name is an homage to her philosophy, Objectivism, which ascribes a key role to rationality. When a Boston University student named Lanny Friedlander started reason back in 1968 as a mimeographed call to arms--well, let's just say he very much grokked the Russian-born writer. You'd never catch me writing a letter of complaint like the one former Rand acolyte and current Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan sent to The New York Times in 1957 after the paper blasted Atlas Shrugged. Just what was wrong with a novel in which "parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should?" huffed the man who decades later would popularize the term "irrational exuberance." I'm more simpatico with Officer Barbrady, the illiterate cop on South Park who declared, "At first I was happy to be learning to read...but then I read...Atlas Shrugged... because of this, I am never reading again." Yet as Contributing Editor Cathy Young shows in her brilliant essay about "Ayn Rand at 100," Rand continues not merely to draw our attention but to command it. A century after her birth and more than a decade after her death, Rand remains one of the best-selling and most widely influential figures in American thought and culture. As we document in "Rand-O-Rama," she casts a long shadow, not simply providing punch lines for South Park but infusing such recent movie hits as The Incredibles with what a Times reviewer called "a disdain for mediocrity." She is even getting newfound respect from academics. What's the secret of Rand's cultural staying power? At her best, notes Young, Rand provided "liberal capitalism with a moral foundation." That's no small feat in a world that, even after the fall of Nazism, communism, and other collectivist ideologies, still looks with suspicion on economic self-interest. Rand also celebrated the individual in a mass age, creating a series of memorable, compelling characters who embodied or emboldened the aspirations of millions in a time of often stultifying conformity, bureaucracy, and routinization. But as important to Rand's hold on the public imagination is the great gulf between her fictional heroes and the often tawdry, disheartening details of her own biography, especially the cult-like obedience she demanded of her inner circle. In the gap between Rand's soaring ideals and her lived reality, we see in particularly strong relief both the creative power of individual desire and its vast capacity for intolerance and delusion. In a world in which more people have more control over their lives than ever before, that's something to always be pondering. --Nick Gillespie -------------- ESR | January 31, 2005 | The appeal of Ayn Rand http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0205/0205aynrand.htm The appeal of Ayn Rand By Onkar Ghate web posted January 31, 2005 Ayn Rand February 2 marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of America's most controversial and inspiring writers, Ayn Rand. She continues to be wildly popular among the young: some 14,000 high school students per year submit entries to essay contests on her novels and, in the past two years alone, high school teachers have requested over 130,000 copies of Anthem and The Fountainhead to use in their classrooms. They know that students respond to her stories and heroes as to few other books. It remains, however, all too common for a young person to be told that his interest in Ayn Rand is a stage he will soon grow out of. "It's fine to believe in that now," the refrain goes, "but wait until you're older. You'll discover that life is not like that." But when one actually considers the essence of what Rand teaches, the accusation that her philosophy is childish over-simplification stands as condemnation not of her ideas but of the adult world from which the accusation stems. The key to Rand's popularity is that she appeals to the idealism of youth. She wrote in 1969: "There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days--the conviction that ideas matter." The nature of this conviction? "That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth." To sustain this youthful conviction throughout life, Rand argues, one must achieve a radical independence of mind. Independence does not mean doing whatever one feels like doing but rather forging one's convictions and choosing one's actions rationally, logically, scientifically. It is refusal to surrender one's ideas or values to the "public interest," as liberals demand, or to the "glory of God," as conservatives demand. It is refusal to grant obedience to any authority, human or divine. The independent mind rejects faith, secular or supernatural, and embraces reason as an absolute. "The noblest act you have ever performed," declares the hero of Rand's last novel, Atlas Shrugged, "is the act of your mind in the process of grasping that two and two make four." She meant it. The conviction that ideas matter represents a profound dedication to self. It requires that one regard one's own reasoning mind as competent to judge good and evil. And it requires that one pursue knowledge because one sees that correct ideas are indispensable to achieving the irreplaceable value of one's own life and happiness. "To take ideas seriously," Rand states, "means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true," that you recognize "that truth and knowledge are of crucial, personal, selfish importance to you and to your own life." Her approach here is the opposite of the view that ideals transcend this world, one's interests and human comprehension--that idealism is, in the words of the religious exhortation to America's youth in Bush's inaugural address, "to serve in a cause larger than your wants, larger than yourself." The advice Rand offers the young? Think, reason, logically consider matters of truth and morality. And then, because your own life and happiness depend on it, pursue unwaveringly the true and the good. On this approach, the moral and the practical unite. On this approach, there exists no temptation to think that life on earth requires compromise, the halfway, the middle of the road. "In any compromise between food and poison," she writes, "it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." In a world where our President (as well as the religious warriors we're battling against in the Middle East) equates idealism with otherworldliness, faith, and sacrifice of self, and where commentators otherwise sympathetic to his message lament that it leaves no room for worldly compromises, since, as Peggy Noonan puts it, "perfection in the life of man on earth" is impossible--Ayn Rand stands alone. She argues that perfection is possible to man the rational animal. Hold your own life as your highest value, follow reason, submit to no authority, create a life of productive achievement and joy--enact these demanding values and virtues, Rand teaches, and an ideal world, here on earth, is "real, it's possible--it's yours." Does an adult world that dismisses this philosophy as "simplistic" not convict itself? The centenary of Rand's birth is an appropriate time to recognize the thinker who was courageous enough to take on that world and challenge its rampant skepticism, eager cynicism, and unyielding demand for compromise, the thinker who portrayed and explained--at the most fundamental level--the heroic in man. [esr.jpg] Onkar Ghate, Ph.D. in philosophy, is a senior fellow at the [2]Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the ideas of Ayn Rand--best-selling author of [3]Atlas Shrugged and [4]The Fountainhead and originator of the philosophy she called "Objectivism." ----------- Ayn Rand's Contribution to the Cause of Freedom - Mises Institute http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1738&id=77 Wednesday, February 02, 2005 Ayn Rand's Contribution to the Cause of Freedom by Roderick T. Long [Posted February 2, 2005] Today marks the centenary of Ayn Rand's birth. Born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2nd, 1905, Rand would go on to become one of the 20th century's foremost voices for human freedom. After living through the Russian Revolution, and the economic chaos and political repression that came in its wake--events she would later dramatize in her novel [14]We the Living--Rand fled the Soviet Union for the United States in 1926 to begin her career as screenwriter, playwright, and novelist. Dividing her time between Hollywood and New York, the fiercely anticommunist Rand began to develop a philosophy of ethical and political individualism, and to make the acquaintance of such leaders of the libertarian "Old Right" as John Flynn, Henry Hazlitt, Rose Wilder Lane, H.L. Mencken, Isabel Paterson, Leonard Read, and a fellow refugee from European totalitarianism, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. Rand's chief popular success came from [15]The Fountainhead (1943) and [16]Atlas Shrugged (1957), two epic philosophical novels on the model of Dostoyevksy that quickly established her as one of the century's most controversial authors. The enthusiastic audience these works brought her enabled Rand to build a politico-philosophical movement based on the system of thought she would call "Objectivism," and Rand's attention accordingly turned thereafter to nonfiction; she would devote the remainder of her career to editing a series of Objectivist periodicals and to penning philosophical essays, political commentary, and cultural criticism. Rand always stressed the importance of placing political arguments in a wider philosophical context, insisting that she was "not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism," and "not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason." Rand's influence on the libertarian movement is incalculable; despite her own frequent antipathy toward that movement and even toward the word "libertarian," Rand played a crucial role in helping both to create new advocates of laissez-faire and to radicalize existing ones; Rand encouraged libertarians to view their standpoint as an alternative to, rather than a branch of, conservatism, and to base the case for liberty on moral principle and not on pragmatic economic benefits alone. Rand's influence on popular culture is likewise enormous; an oft-cited Library of Congress survey of "most influential books" placed Atlas Shrugged second only to the Bible. Rand owed much of her success to the power and directness of her writing style. She was a master at what one of my colleagues calls reductio ad claritatem, "reduction to clarity"-- i.e., the method of refuting a position by stating it clearly--as when she wrote that "if some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor," or when she summarized the view that human perception is unreliable because limited by the nature of our sensory organs as: "man is blind, because he has eyes--deaf, because he has ears." Upon the publication of Atlas Shrugged, Mises [17]wrote to Rand praising both her "masterful construction of the plot" and her "cogent analysis of the evils that plague our society"; in another context he called her "the most courageous man in America." Rand in turn enthusiastically promoted Mises's writings in her periodicals, and declared that her ideal curriculum would be "Aristotle in philosophy, von Mises in economics, Montessori in education, Hugo in literature." Rand's biographer Barbara Branden notes that beginning in the late fifties and continuing for more than ten years, Ayn began a concerted campaign to have [Mises's ] work read and appreciated: she published reviews, she cited him in articles and in public speeches [and] recommended him to admirers of her philosophy. A number of economists have said that it was largely as a result of Ayn's efforts that the work of Von Mises began to reach its potential audience. ([18]The Passion of Ayn Rand, p. 188.) A brief intellectual association with Mises's student Murray Rothbard was less successful, beginning in mutual appreciation but dissolving over ideological and personal differences--though Rand and Rothbard would nonetheless share the honor of being drummed out of the "respectable" Right by a statist-minded conservative establishment. (The forthcoming Spring 2005 issue of the [19]Journal of Ayn Rand Studies is devoted to an exploration of the connections between Rand and the Austrian School, and includes contributions from a number of contemporary Austrians.) Because Rand called big business a "persecuted minority" and dismissed the military-industrial complex as "a myth or worse," she is often taken as a na?ve apologist for the corporatist ?lite; but she also condemned the "type of businessmen who sought special advantages by government action" as the "actual war profiteers of all mixed economies"; and it's easy to forget that most of the businessmen characters in Rand's novels are statist villains. As [20]Chris Sciabarra reminds us, Rand likewise grasped the symbiotic relationship between militarism abroad and neo-fascist politics at home; in an era when many of her followers are enthusiastic supporters of American military intervention overseas, it's worth remembering that Rand herself opposed U.S. involvement in World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Rand's philosophy--her rejection of altruism and her embrace of ethical egoism--is also one of the most misunderstood. Despite her sometimes [21]misleading rhetoric about "the virtue of selfishness," the point of her egoism was not to advocate the pursuit of one's own interests at the expense of others', but rather to reject the entire conflictual model of interests according to which "the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another," in favor of an older, more Aristotelean conception of self-interest as excellent human functioning. It was on such Aristotelean grounds that she rejected not only the subordination of one's own interests to those of others (and it is this, rather than mere benevolence, that she labeled "altruism") but also the subordination of others' interests to one's own (which she labeled "selfishness without a self"). For Rand, the Aristotelean recognition of properly understood human interests as rationally harmonious was the essential foundation for a free society. Discussion of Rand since her death in 1982 has often focused on her dogmatic tone and personal eccentricities--traits sometimes imitated by her followers, and effectively satirized by Rothbard in his one-act play [22]Mozart Was a Red. But as David Kelley argues in his book [23]The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand, Rand's intellectual contribution, like anyone else's, can and should be disentangled from the vagaries of her personality. In an era when libertarianism and Aristoteleanism were unfashionable enough separately, Rand had the audacity to defend their systematic fusion, and identified Enlightenment liberalism's roots in the Thomistic recovery of Aristotle at a time when this connection was less widely recognized than it is today. (Though Rand's followers have sometimes intemperately proclaimed her the greatest philosopher of all time, Rand always firmly insisted that Aristotle was the greatest and that Thomas Aquinas was the second greatest--her own atheism notwithstanding.) Whether her specific versions of libertarianism and Aristoteleanism, and the specific terms on which she attempted to unite them, were ultimately the [24]most philosophically defensible ones is perhaps less important than the example she set in making the attempt. In the decades since Rand first began constructing her maverick philosophical system, the philosophical mainstream has moved in Rand's direction. Professional philosophers are far more likely today than they were in the 1960s to agree with Rand about the directness of sense-perception, the relation between meaning and reference, the incompatibility of utilitarianism with individual rights, or the prospects for a neo-Aristotelean ethical theory (or indeed a neo-Aristotelean philosophical approach generally); and many of the dichotomies she rejected--between empiricism and rationalism, analytic and synthetic statements, dualism and materialism, nominalism and conceptual realism, fact and value, liberalism and an ethics of virtue--have fallen into increasing disfavor. These developments are largely independent of Rand's own influence (and, ironically, stem in part from the recent resurgence of Rand's philosophical nemesis Immanuel Kant--who, despite Rand's impassioned denunciations, is actually her ally on most of these points), but they are not entirely so; I can testify, from two decades' experience in the profession, that the number of academic philosophers who will privately admit having been decisively influenced by Rand is far greater than the number who can be found citing her in print. It's a mistake, though, to think that the validation of Rand's legacy depends on academic approval. Human progress is often driven by people either outside or on the margins of the academic establishment, as for example the philosophes of the 18th century or the Austrian revival of the 20th. Whether or not the academy understands or acknowledges her achievements, Rand's inspiring vision of the grandeur of human reason and human liberty has made its mark on modern thought. Still, for what it's worth, scholarly recognition of Rand's work is currently at an [25]all-time high. The days when nearly all discussion of Rand was either slavishly adulatory or sneeringly dismissive seem to be passing, and the new century is likely to see a just assessment of Rand's place in the history of philosophy and the cause of liberty. Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand. _____________________________ Roderick T. Long ([26]email) is senior fellow of the Mises Institute, professor of philosophy at Auburn University, and the new editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. See his [27]website. Subscribe to the [28]Journal today. Post your comments on the [29]blog. References 14. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451187849 15. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451191153 16. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451191145 17. http://www.mises.org/etexts/misesatlas.pdf 18. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038524388X 19. http://aynrandstudies.com/ 20. http://www.solohq.com/Articles/Sciabarra/Understanding_the_Global_Crisis__Reclaiming_Rands_Radical_Legacy.shtml 21. http://praxeology.net/unblog11-02.htm#ego 22. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/mozart.html 23. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765808633 24. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1577240456 25. http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/9929.html 26. mailto:rlong at mises.org 27. http://praxeology.net/ 28. http://www.mises.org/store/product1.asp?SID=2&Product_ID=122 ------------- Chicago Tribune: Rereading 'Atlas' on Ayn Rand's 100th http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/arts/chi-0501300446jan30,1,2299567,print.story?coll=chi-leisurearts-hed&ctrack=3&cset=true LITERATURE By Julia Keller Tribune cultural critic January 30, 2005 There it sits, a thick rectangle whose soft sides -- it's made of paper, after all, ordinary paper -- belie the harsh astringency within. You sense the need to keep an eye on it. You can't just leave it there on a corner of your desktop as if it were an ordinary book, letting it cool its heels amid the messy papers and dried-up pens and the dark-chocolate wafer of your laptop. No telling what it might do, this paperback copy of "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) by Ayn Rand, all 1,069 pages of it. No telling what impact it might have on the desk's detritus or the rest of the room. It's like a radiation leak: You can't see the danger, but you know it's there. Rand, of course, would adore the notion that the novel she began writing six decades ago, right after she'd wrapped up "The Fountainhead" (1943), still is regarded as perilous and possibly even lethal -- lethal, that is, to complacency and lazy thinking and easy goals. Wednesday marks the 100th anniversary of Rand's birth in St. Petersburg, Russia. She died in 1982 -- at least in the narrow physical sense. Measured across the historical timeline of ideas, however, Ayn Rand ("Ayn" rhymes with "fine," although it's often mispronounced "Ann") remains vibrantly alive. The philosophy she created and espoused in novels, plays and nonfiction treatises still enthralls and disgusts, still intrigues and outrages -- there's no middle ground -- a whole new generation. Known as Objectivism, its message of rationality, self-reliance and unrestrained capitalism, and its rejection of altruism or empathy, is perhaps best summarized by the title of one of Rand's non-fiction works: "The Virtues of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism" (1964). "Her impact is large and goes well beyond the world of literature," declares Mimi Gladstein, chair of the department of theater, dance and film at the University of Texas at El Paso, who has written two books and co-written a third about Rand's work. "I do think she's being taken more seriously now." Objectivism is always lighting fires under people's backsides -- it's the wisest thing in the history of the world, it's the dumbest bunch of malarkey on the planet -- but our concern here is not the philosophy but the chief vessel in which Rand chose to serve it up: her novels. And most especially "Atlas Shrugged," the purest, longest, loudest statement of her beliefs, the preposterously romantic tale of railroad magnate Dagny Taggart and the mysterious John Galt. This much, at least, is irrefutable: "Atlas Shrugged" grabs hold of you and shakes you up and challenges everything you thought you believed about the world, about God, about good and evil. That's why it can't be exiled to a corner of your desk, where its slightly curled-back cover looks, in the right light, like a tiny sneer of reproach: How dare you not be reading me now, this minute. How dare you. Rand's fiction has been critically scorned in some quarters, her philosophy reviled, but her influence is undeniable. Did somebody say "influence"? Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, counts himself among her devoted flock. Rand's books, vastly popular in her lifetime, continue to sell at a nifty clip: More than 5.5 million copies of "Atlas Shrugged" have been snapped up since its initial publication, and in the last few years, sales have averaged about 150,000 copies annually, reports Richard E. Ralston, publishing manager for the Ayn Rand Institute. "The Fountainhead" has sold more than 6 million copies, with annual sales currently topping 130,000, he adds. Wooden characters Clearly, then, Rand knew what she was doing when she created dreadfully wooden characters to represent her philosophical and economic ideas, when she put long, impossibly windy speeches in the mouths of those characters. Because for all that, for all the technical flaws that even moderately attentive readers could red-pencil in their sleep, for all the narrative rules Rand breaks -- the novel just won't leave you alone. Of how many books can that be said? Read at the right moment in one's life -- usually in late adolescence, when the world seems like a tangled mess of hypocrisy and confusion, and you hate your parents and especially that stupid assistant principal who is seriously on your case -- "Atlas Shrugged" is a tonic, a dream, a throat-scalding draft of pure, radiant clarity. You feel as if you've been walking upside down for most of your life, seeing things the wrong way, and now -- now -- suddenly you're right-side up again and everything starts to make sense. Turns out it was the world that was upside down, not you. But here's the funny thing: Re-reading Rand as an adult in 2005 is not what you thought it would be. It's not a "Oh, wow, what a chump I was!" feeling. In fact, the ideas from "Atlas Shrugged" you thought you had outgrown don't seem all that outlandish, after all. The themes you abandoned as hopelessly naive and almost comically operatic -- all those fist-shaking tirades about human destiny, all those "Greed is good!" screeds that predate Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" by three decades -- somehow start making a bit of sense again, in a world upended by religious fanaticism and a nation crippled by soaring government deficits. Flaws and all, "Atlas Shrugged" still is a powerful novel, a sweeping epic that either pulls you into its sphere or scares the bejesus out of you, or maybe both. That's how it all struck Michael Paxton back in the early 1970s, when, as a kid coming of age in upstate New York, he discovered Rand's novels. "I was very lost about my direction in life, about what life meant," says Paxton, now a writer and film producer in L.A. "One day I decided to go into a bookstore and find a book that would make sense to me." He found "We the Living" (1936) and worked his way through the rest of the Rand canon. Paxton's 1998 documentary, "Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life," nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary, tells the dramatic story of Rand's life: her birth to a middle-class Russian family as Alice Rosenbaum, just before the Russian Revolution; her escape to America as an eager 21-year-old, aspiring screenwriter; her success as a playwright, novelist and essayist, as the fierceness and originality of her philosophical ideas began to captivate the public. First popular novel Her novel "The Fountainhead," the story of brilliant, headstrong architect Howard Roark, who was played by Gary Cooper in the 1949 film, was her first great popular success. Rand lived intensely, eager to defend her ideas, and she lived passionately. She had a close inner circle of admirers, within which allegiances shifted and dramatic renunciations and reconciliations were routine. But to those who weren't swept away, Rand's conviction that self-interest is a more efficient and plausible motivation than traditional Judeo-Christian ethics was just too shocking even to contemplate. "She's so maligned," Paxton says. "People think she's a fascist -- and, of course, she's the opposite of that." Gladstein believes that Rand's reputation among literary critics -- she's rarely, if ever, included on lists of the 20th Century's greatest authors -- has suffered because of her popularity. "In academe, there are people with certain ideas about `haute' literature. If it's too popular, it can't be taken seriously. They forget the fact that Shakespeare was popular too." None of her books has ever gone out of print, Ralston says. And Penguin recently reissued "The Fountainhead," "Atlas Shrugged" and "Anthem" (1938) in special paperback editions to commemorate the centenary. That is the version of "Atlas Shrugged" that simmers on my desk, an intimidating-looking white volume with a stark cover design: blue sculpture of Atlas holding up the world; simple, blunt typography. This novel is all business. But the book's dialogue -- oh, heavens, that dialogue! That stilted, florid, totally inauthentic dialogue, the kind that would be laughable in any other context but that somehow, when dangling between the pincers of Rand's big ideas, simply works. You believe it. You believe that Dagny's lover, Henry Reardon, would actually rise from the bed upon which they had just made love for the first time and say, I wanted you as one wants a whore -- for the same reason and purpose. . . . You're as vile an animal as I am. I should loathe my discovering it. I don't. Uh, OK. But somehow it holds up, this faintly absurd novel in which a bevy of business types follows the dictates of John Galt right off the edge of the world. Somehow, it works. The novel is worth reading, worth re-reading. Be careful, though; it's dense with powerful ideas and has a mind of its own. So whatever you do, don't leave "Atlas Shrugged" home alone. ------------- Now let us praise free minds (Metro Times Detroit) http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=7267 by [23]Jack Lessenberry 5.2.2 They promise you answers and a blueprint for living your life, if you promise not to think too much. Last week I gave a talk on what I called "The Myth of the Liberal Media" to a pleasingly large and well-informed group called Pointes for Peace, in (surprise) Grosse Pointe Woods. I told them there are mainly two kinds of media in this nation today -- the "mainstream media," which are about as liberal as corporate America in general, and virulently ideological right-wing media. What could honestly be called the "liberal media" consists, pretty much (apart from a few cranks like me), of a handful of columnists like Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, Paul Krugman, and -- did I mention Molly Ivins? All of this was hardly news to anyone paying attention to what Eric Alterman and Ben Bagdikian have been saying for years. This country and its press have shifted dramatically to the right in the last quarter-century, and my craft will pay for this folly for years. Being in the Grosse Pointes, I imagined I'd get challenged by people who think there's really a vast conspiracy of New York intellectuals who want to force gay marriage, partial-birth abortions and fluoridated water on us all. There was none of that. But something did happen that astonished me to the point of speechlessness. An attractive, if a bit steely, dark-haired woman on the sidelines raised her hand and, after ranting on that Bush and Kerry were equally bad, proclaimed that the only hope for salvation, or mankind, or something, was Chairman Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party. Had I been prepared, I might have allowed myself a frisson of nostalgia, and spoken to her in her own artificial language. "Sorry, comrade, but an objective analysis of current conditions demonstrates that the time is not right for the mass uprising, and that what's now needed is a popular front." Part of me wanted to sing the "Internationale" off-key in French, just to watch her swoon with desire, or nausea. But instead, I merely stood there like a geek staring at a two-headed calf until my colleague Dick Wright said, "I think we are all pretty bourgeois here," and brought down the house. Later, a sweetly grandmotherish lady, who said she was a revolutionary communist too, tried to sell me Avakian's autobiography, From Ike to Mao. I was barely mature enough not to say, "Hold the mayo." We tend to think of commies as harmless anachronisms now, which they mostly are. But back in the day -- the 1960s, say -- we tended to regard fundamentalist religious movements the same way. Not now. Both the Marxist-Leninists and the dogmatic Christians are very much alike in that they promise you answers and a blueprint for living your life, if you promise not to think too much, and keep your mouth shut if you do. That promise has proven devastatingly seductive for most men at most times. Ayn Rand offers another system with all the answers, and so does Osama bin Laden, and so do various others of what George Orwell used to call "all the smelly little orthodoxies that are now contending for our souls." What all these systems do is take parts of the truth and construct a brilliantly woven little system and substitute it for reality. Ayn Rand has a lot to say that's worthwhile about the heroic struggle of the individual. There's much that even an intelligent atheist can recognize as true and compelling in most religious dogma. Marxism is a brilliant critique of the sins of capitalism, especially capitalism as it existed during the Industrial Revolution. And most of our multinational corporations today seem to be misbehaving as though following a script written by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. That may well be sparking a mini-revival of revolutionary communist movements. But the Glorious Worldwide Great Proletarian Revolution isn't coming, comrades. Unfortunately all these systems, when in power, eventually bump against annoying reality, which they try to overlook first, then suppress by killing anyone who points out the man behind the curtain, before they finally crash. And none of them rewards the person who points out, however gently, that the system has flaws, or even worse, tries to think for himself. Those who question are seen as heretics, savagely turned on, and true believers are taught to hate them more than they do their ideology's natural enemies. Orwell, my personal hero, was a writer of uncompromising honesty, a socialist who nevertheless was hated, in his day, by many on the left because he pointed out the flaws of his allies as well as his foes. He was attacked especially for noting that Soviet communism had evolved into just another form of murderous totalitarian dictatorship, something he lampooned brilliantly in his masterpieces Animal Farm and 1984. Locally, I have a couple heroes who fit this mold, both of whom, ironically, are religious, rather than political figures. The first is Bishop Tom Gumbleton, best known perhaps for trying to raise our consciousness about the conditions in places such as Haiti and Iraq and El Salvador. These are all countries in wretched shape, and in most of them our nation has managed to make things worse. He's tried to help them when he could, and tried to be a tug on our conscience too. He's no opportunistic, cynical politician with a clerical collar; he deeply believes in God. But he also believes in speaking truth to power, whether that power wears a Haitian general's uniform, works in the White House or sits in the Vatican. He was among the first to demand the Roman Catholic Church he loves come clean on the sex scandals of a few years ago. As a young man studying in Rome, Gumbleton was inspired by the excitement of renewal and the heady intellectual ferment of the Vatican II conferences, which tried to redefine the church's role in the modern world. This set his path for life; he came away believing that his church ought to dedicate itself to transforming this world into as close an imitation of the kingdom of heaven as possible. He was made a bishop in 1968. The leadership of his church is far more reactionary today. Last week, he turned 75, and bishops are traditionally supposed to offer their resignations then. Bishop Tom, who looks and acts two decades younger, has no desire to stop doing what he's doing, and more than one member of his parish (St. Leo's) has told me they'll protest if the church tries to take him from them. The irony, of course, is that the pope is a decade older and in appalling shape. Yet nobody would dare whisper that he step aside. My other hero is the Rev. Harry Cook, rector of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Clawson. In a lecture this week at the University of Colorado, he plans to tell the students that he fears "religion may be the death of us all." He means the kind of religion that actually caused a GOP politician to say that denuding the forests is all right because "when the last tree is felled, Jesus will come again." Cook proclaims himself a "secular agnostic humanist," for which he has taken some heat. I think he deserves more admiration than the pope. What's so moral about being good if you know you'll get paradise as a reward? What's far nobler, I think, is to try and follow Christian principles even if you have no idea what comes after this life, and grappling with the awesome challenge of trying to figure out each unique situation. These are two different, but very inspiring men, and Detroit is lucky to have them. ---------------- Boston Globe/ Opinion / Letters / Plenty of reasons Rand was wrong http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2005/02/01/plenty_of_reasons_rand_was_wrong?mode=PF 5.2.1 SOMEONE NEEDS to point out to Edward Hudgins ("Still a voice of reason," op ed Jan. 29) and other resurgent misty-eyed, laissez-faire-lovin', neo-conservatives that their heroine Ayn Rand was much more a science fiction writer than a true, insightful philosopher or economist. History is riddled with the consequences of unregulated, unbalanced, money-driven societies where power and wealth become concentrated in the top few bricks of what is essentially a very large pyramid scheme. Oftentimes Rand's rugged, ambitious individuals of high achievement might be seen to prefigure some of history's worst criminals. In this country, they were robber barons like Jim Fisk and Joy Gould, who along with other "successful businessmen" propagated the first financial "Black Friday" out of sheer, unmitigated greed devoid of any sense of conscience or concern for others. One does not have to look very hard these days to see similar traits in current "achievers" that the history-ignorant like Hudgins admire so much. BERNIE CONNEELY Somerville ----------- A Strangely Important Figure http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=8235 5.1.26 BY ANDREW STUTTAFORD To call Ayn Rand, the high priestess of the human will, a mere force of nature would to her have been an insult as well as a cliche. But how else to describe this extraordinary, maddening, and indestructible individual? Born a century ago this year into the flourishing bourgeoisie of glittering, doomed St. Petersburg, Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum was to triumph over revolution, civil war, Lenin's dictatorship, an impoverished immigrant existence, and bad reviews in the New York Times to become a strangely important figure in the history of American ideas. Even the smaller details of Rand's life come with the sort of epic implausibility found in - oh, an Ayn Rand novel. On her first day of looking for work in Hollywood, who gives her a lift in his car? Cecil B. DeMille. Of course he does. Frank Lloyd Wright designs a house for her. Years later, when she's famous, the sage of selfishness, ensconced in her Murray Hill eyrie, a young fellow by the name of Alan Greenspan becomes a member of the slightly creepy set that sits at the great woman's feet. Apparently he went on to achieve some prominence in later life. To Rand, none of this would really have mattered (well, the fame was nice). To her, an intensely Russian intellectual despite everything, it was ideas that counted. They were everything. When, after nearly 50 years, her beloved long-lost youngest sister, Nora, made it over from the USSR, they promptly fell out - over politics, naturally. Poor Nora was on her way within six weeks, back to the doubtless more easygoing embrace of Leonid Brezhnev. Scarred by her Soviet experiences, Rand was a woman on a mission. She couldn't stop: not for her sister, not for anyone. She had plenty to say, and she said it - again, and again, and again. She wrote, she lectured, she hectored, she harangued. Words flowed, how they flowed, too much sometimes, too insistent often, but infinitely preferable to the silence of the Soviet Union that she had left behind. And somehow her work has endured in the country she made her own. Her creed of ego and laissez-faire, and the reception it won, was one of the more interesting - and encouraging - cultural phenomena of mid-20th-century America. It has persisted, lasting longer, even, than the vast, daunting paragraphs that mark her prose style. Just over a decade ago, "Atlas Shrugged" (1957) was voted Americans' most influential novel in a joint poll conducted by the Book-of-the-Month club and the Library of Congress. Hers is a remarkable story, and I find it curious that one of the only publications being brought out to commemorate the 100th-birthday girl - besides new printings of the novels by Plume - is Jeff Britting's new, very very brief account (Overlook Duckworth, 144 pages, $19.95). The latest in the series of Overlook Illustrated Lives, it's too short to do Rand much justice; any reader already familiar with Rand's life won't learn much. Biographies in this series are intended as overviews rather than something more comprehensive. The author is an archivist at the Ayn Rand institute, the associate producer of an Oscar-nominated documentary about Rand, and obviously a keeper of the flame. Thus Mr. Britting has little to say about the romantic entanglements, more Peyton Place than Galt's Gulch, that devastated Rand's circle in later years. Most notably, Rand had an affair with her chosen intellectual heir, Nathaniel Brandon. While both Rand's husband and the wife of the intellectual heir agreed (sort of) to this arrangement, it added further emotional complications to what was, given Rand's prominence, a surprisingly hermetic, claustrophobic little world, one best described in "The Passion of Ayn Rand" (Bantam Dell) - the compelling, and sympathetic, biography of Rand written by, yes, the intellectual heir's ex-wife. As I said, Peyton Place. Closed, neurotic environments filled with true believers are the hallmark of a cult, and there's a good case to be made that that's exactly what Rand was running. Take a look at the way in which she treated her acolytes: angry excommunications, overbearing diktats, dramatic interventions, and, disappointing in one who preached self-determination, rather too much fuhrer prinzip. The cult-or-not controversy goes unmentioned in Mr. Britting's book. What a reader will find, particularly in the excellent selection of illustrations, is a real sense of how Rand's life related to her novels. One glance at her Hollywood-handsome husband, and the rugged succession of steely supermen who dominate her fiction make more sense ("All my heroes will always be reflections of Frank"). Rand herself, alas, was no beauty; her glorious heroines, ridiculously gorgeous, impossibly named, remarkably lithe, are less the template for - as some allege - a sinister eugenic agenda than the stuff of Ayn's randy dreams garnished with a dollop of Art Deco kitsch. The first, extraordinarily violent, coupling in "The Fountainhead" of Howard Roark with Dominique Francon is not a general prescription for the relationship between the sexes but merely Rand's own erotic fantasy ("wishful thinking," she once announced, to the cheers of a delighted crowd). Likewise, her sometimes-overwrought style is no more than - well, judge this sentence from "Atlas Shrugged" for yourself: "She looked at the lone straight shaft of the Taggart Building rising in the distance - and then she thought she understood: these people hated Jim because they envied him." Call Dr. Freud. If sex in Rand's fiction can be savage, so is argument. Her sagas deal in moral absolutes, her protagonists are the whitest of knights or the blackest of villains, caricatures of good or evil lacking the shadings of gray that make literature, and life, so interesting. Yet "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," at least, have a wild, lunatic verve that sweeps all before them. Like Busby Berkeley, the Chrysler Building, or a Caddy with fins, they are aesthetic disasters, very American aesthetic disasters, which somehow emerge as something rather grand. There is plenty in Rand to make a modern reader queasy, though you would not know so from Mr. Britting's worshipful text. For example, there is something to the claim that like so many of the intellectuals, left or right, of her time she succumbed to the cruder forms of social Darwinism. For a woman who worshiped man, Rand did not always seem that fond of mankind. But the accusation by Whittaker Chambers in National Review that there was a whiff of the gas chamber about her writings is wrong. Rand lived in an era of stark ideological choices; to argue in muted, reasonable tones was to lose the debate. As a graduate of Lenin's Russia, she knew that the stakes were high, and how effective good propaganda could be. Rand's nonfiction may have a greater claim to intellectual respectability, but it was the lurid, occasionally harsh, simplicities of her novels that would deliver her message to the mass audience she believed was out there. She was right. Her key insight was to realize that there was an appetite among Americans for a moral case for capitalism. In a restless age that believed in the Big Answer, neither historical tradition nor utilitarian notions of efficiency would suffice. Ayn Rand gave Americans that case, perhaps not the best case, but a case, and she knew how to sell it. The establishment always disapproved. Critics sneered. Academics jeered. The publishers Macmillan turned down "Anthem" (1938), saying that Rand, a refugee from the Soviet Union, "did not understand socialism." Oh, but she did, and so did those millions of Americans who bought her books, books that played their part in ensuring that the dull orthodoxies of collectivism never prevailed here. The last image in Mr. Britting's biography is of an exultant Rand speaking at a conference in New Orleans in 1981, the final public appearance of this magnificent, brilliant oddball. Her hosts tried to lure her there with the promise of payment in gold coins and travel in a private rail car. Needless to say, she accepted. Mr. Stuttaford is a contributing editor of National Review Online. ------------- Fountain Headache http://www.ocweekly.com/printme.php?&eid=60355 OC Logo January 21 - 27, 2005 Ayn Rand Institute tries to twist tsunami disaster by Nick Schou You may know Ayn Rand for her lugubrious, stultifying novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and her book of essays (with co-author Nathaniel Branden) The Virtue of Selfishness, which promulgated her "Objectivist" philosophy of personal greed as social progress. But you may not know the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), which was established in Irvine in 1985. The groups website, www.aynrand.org, says ARI was formed to spearhead a "cultural renaissance that will reverse the anti-reason, anti-capitalist trends in todays culture." But since the end of the Cold War and the concurrent demise of the global-communist conspiracy, ARI and its Randian followers have been struggling for a new bugaboo to replace socialism as the chief enemy of "reason, rational self-interest, individual rights and free-market capitalism." Since 9/11, not surprisingly, ARI has directed most of its wrath against "Islamo-fascism." But now, ARI has found an even more dangerous force in the world: poor people who die in great numbers during extreme weather events. On Dec. 30, ARI sent out an unsolicited opinion piece on the Indian Ocean tsunami which killed more than 250,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India four days earlier. Entitled "U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims," the article stated that while private citizens had every right to donate cash, government-financed aid amounted to theft. Later, ARI used the tsunami to attack another enemy: environmentalists. It said nature-lovers were "dead wrong" in their claims that technology causes environmental problems. "Far from being the cause of such tragedies, science, technology and industry provide the only means of safeguarding human lives against natural disasters," ARI argued. The release went on to state that "relatively undeveloped Caribbean islands . . . suffer far worse devastation and loss of life from the same hurricanes that hammer Florida year after year" because the U.S. enjoys "the use of satellites, radar and communication technology" to "warn people well in advance of danger." Apparently, the Randians arent above issuing an apology when theyre wrong. On Jan. 7, ARI issued a follow-up press release entitled "Clarification of ARIs Position on Government Help to Tsunami Victims." ARI called its previous release "inappropriate" and said it "did not accurately convey the Institutes position." What is ARIs actual position? "The ugly hand of altruismthe moral view that need entitles a person to the values of others, whose corresponding duty is to sacrifice their values for that persons sakedid show itself in the petulant demands of U.N. and other officials that stingy countries must give more." Somewherethat would be her fountainhead-shaped graveAyn Rand groaned, not at her followers stunning lack of taste, but at their cowardly compromise. Yet theres nothing altruistic about U.S. government aid to tsunami victims. As exemplified by Colin Powells high-profile tour of the devastationnot to mention the constant footage of U.S. soldiers distributing food and watera major benefit of our assistance is positive public relations for an America widely viewed as preoccupied with blowing shit up in Iraq. Also implied in ARIs attack on the victims of the recent tsunami is the notion that hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if only those nations had invested in the same type of early-warning system as the U.S. But as many as 160,000 Indonesiansby far the lions share of the victimsdied in the tsunami within mere minutes of the waves formation. Because many of those people lived in remote villages so close to the massive earthquakes epicenter, its unclear whether a warning system would have done much good. Secondly, at least some of the Indonesians who did survive lived in technology-free societies with an oral tradition that taught them to run for the hills when the ocean recedes. But theres an even more fundamental problem with ARIs position, especially if you take Ayn Rand and her pro-free market philosophy seriously. The U.S.-run Pacific Tsunami Warning Centerlike the National Earthquake Information Center and the National Oceanographic Service, which warns against hurricanesisnt a product of free-market capitalism. In fact, it was created through taxpayer-funded government interventionwhat ARI would call theft. So if you want to blame something for the most destructive wall of water in recent memory, dont blame nature. Blame capitalist Indonesia, Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka for failing to follow the socialist example of the capitalist U.S.A. by investing in a taxpayer-funded tsunami warning system. ---------- Ayn Rand Introduced Me to Libertarianism http://www.fff.org/comment/com0502a.asp by [17]Jacob G. Hornberger, February 2, 2005 My very first exposure to libertarianism was provided by Ayn Rand, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated today. One afternoon in the fall of 1974, I was sitting around watching television. At the time, I was temporarily working as a waiter in Dallas, having just completed three months of infantry school in Georgia to fulfill my Army Reserves active-duty commitment, before returning to finish law school in Austin the following semester. An afternoon movie quickly engrossed me, becoming my first exposure to libertarianism -- The Fountainhead, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. The credits stated that the movie was based on Ayn Rand's novel by that name and so I ran out at once, bought it, and read it. Howard Roark and Dominique Francon quickly became my heroes! A few years later, I was rummaging through the Laredo public library for something to read and I discovered four volumes of a series of books entitled Essays on Liberty, which had been published by The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in Irvington, New York. Reading those uncompromising essays caused the seed that Rand had planted a few years before to burst forth into what has become a lifelong love of libertarianism. Soon after that, I discovered Atlas Shrugged, which I've read three times (okay, skimming through Galt's speech the third time around!), along with The Virtue of Selfishness, Anthem, We the Living, the Objectivist journal, and most of Rand's other work. It was Ayn Rand and FEE's founder Leonard Read who [18]changed the course of my life. The reason: Both of them emphasized the fundamental importance of moral principles in political and economic analysis. When it came to moral principles, Rand and Read did not deal in shades of gray but rather in black and white. It is morally wrong to take what doesn't belong to you. It is morally wrong to coercively interfere with the peaceful choices that people make in their lives. It is morally right that people be free to make whatever choices they wish so long as their conduct is peaceful, even if -- or especially if -- their choices are considered irresponsible or immoral. In the intellectual arena, that means the unfettered right to write, read, or watch whatever you want without governmental interference. In the economic arena, it means the unfettered right to pursue any business or occupation without governmental permission or interference, to engage in mutually beneficial trades with anyone else anywhere in the world, to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, and to do whatever you want with your own money -- spend, save, hoard, invest, or donate it. Thus, when it comes to morality, there was only one real choice for structuring a political order -- libertarianism, where people are free to live their lives the way the choose, so long as their conduct is peaceful, and where government's primary role is protecting the exercise of such choices by punishing violent, anti-social people who would interfere with them through such actions as murder, assault, stealing, burglary, trespass, rape, and fraud. Fortunately, God has created a consistent universe, one in which freedom produces prosperity and harmony and nurtures the values that most of us hold dear, such as compassion, love of one's neighbors, and honoring one's parents. But it was not the utilitarian case that attracted me to libertarianism. It was the moral case for freedom presented by Ayn Rand, most eloquently in Atlas Shrugged, and Leonard Read. Therefore, the main reason that I've never been attracted to so-called reform plans whose purpose is to reform, not repeal, socialist programs such as Social Security and public (i.e., government) schooling is that such plans, by their very nature, implicitly call for the continuation of an immoral act. As Rand and Read both emphasized, the right approach to an immoral action is to call for its end, not its reform. One of the highlights of my life occurred in 1990 when, in response to my September 1990 Freedom Daily essay, "[19]Letting Go of Socialism," which criticized public-school vouchers (and Social Security reform plans), Milton Friedman leveled a criticism against me in a public speech that was later reprinted in Liberty magazine. His criticism was that my position was too uncompromising, comparing it to the uncompromising positions of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. It was one of the greatest compliments I've ever received -- and from a Nobel Laureate to boot! Another highlight in my life was watching Rand deliver her last public speech in 1981 at Jim Blanchard's National Committee for Monetary Reform (NCMR) annual conference in New Orleans. She died soon after that, on March 6, 1982. As I wrote in "Letting Go of Socialism" some 15 years ago, "People everywhere are letting go of the socialist nightmare. But they are looking through a glass darkly with respect to what should be the alternative. It shall be the Americans, I am firmly convinced, who will yet let go of socialism, once and for all, and lead the world to the highest reaches of freedom ever dreamed of by man!" When that day comes, it will be Ayn Rand who will have played a major role in the restoration of American liberty. Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him [20]email. References 17. http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/bios/jgh.asp 18. http://www.libertyhaven.com/thinkers/leonarderead/leonardmylife.html 19. http://www.fff.org/freedom/0990a.asp 20. mailto:jhornberger at fff.org ----------- On the Centenary of America's Radical for Capitalism http://www.fff.org/comment/com0502b.asp by [17]Sheldon Richman, February 2, 2005 February 2 is the centenary of the birth of Ayn Rand, the novelist who inspired tens of millions of readers with her philosophical action stories celebrating reason, individualism, and freedom under capitalism. Her death in 1982 did not stanch interest in her work either as an artist or as a philosopher. On the contrary, that work has never been taken more seriously, and books about her intellectual and artistic contributions continue to pour forth. What accounts for this growing interest? In her bestsellers [18]The Fountainhead and [19]Atlas Shrugged, Rand captured the essence of America's original identity. On the surface that may seem ironic. She was born in Russia and was a young woman when the Bolsheviks began to turn that place into a charnel house. She was fortunate to find refuge in the United States. But there is nothing ironic in the story. It is unsurprising that a refugee from brutal "humanitarian" totalitarianism would appreciate individual freedom as no native-born American could. She never had the luxury of taking liberty for granted. My favorite story about her comes from the 1940s, when someone in an audience pointed out that she was foreign-born. "That's right," she said. "I chose to become an American. What did you do besides being born?" Rand knew better than to mistake the trappings of "democracy" for actual freedom. One is not really free if the elected officeholders have the power to interfere with the lives of innocent people. Voting is preferable to violence, but how people get into office is not as important as what they can do once they get there. (Most of the commentaries on the Iraqi election have not understood that.) Rand realized that freedom, if it is to last, requires a rock-solid foundation. Just any foundation, or none at all, won't do. She grounded the case for freedom in the conditions required by the nature of man, who needs to live by reason in this world open to his understanding. According to Rand, for persons to be truly human they have to be free to think, to act on their own judgment, and to transform the physical world, that is, to engage in productive work. Each person has the moral authority to make the most of his life. He needs no one's permission. These principles -- rights -- regarding life, liberty, and property form the basis of a peaceful society in which people cooperate through the division of labor. Since all people have these rights, force and fraud are illegitimate. They rob men and women of their humanity. Rand's great achievement was to give capitalism a moral justification. Too often advocates of free markets emphasized the efficiency of markets and abandoned morality to the socialists. Rand passionately declared that capitalism isn't only efficient; it is also good because it is the only social arrangement in which each individual is free to pursue his happiness -- "exist for his own sake" -- without being made a beast of burden forced to serve others. Benevolent generosity is one thing; duty-bound self-sacrifice is quite another. Under capitalism the pursuit of rational self-interest and the attendant innovation produce a cornucopia of goods and services that benefit everyone. But as socialism's history shows, the cart can't be placed before the horse. The "common good" that arises out of rational individuals' making the most of their lives cannot be achieved directly. Another of Rand's achievements follows from this. Going back to the ancient Greeks, production and trade have been seen as degraded activities, inferior to nonmaterial concerns. Rand finally gave the producer his moral due, showing that the passion, genius, and creativity entailed by the production of material goods is like the passion, genius, and creativity entailed by the production of "spiritual" goods, such as works of art. This outlook was a consequence of Rand's rejection of the mind-body dichotomy and her embrace of man's life on earth as something lofty. Considering the squalor in which men lived before capitalism, and the wretched condition of today's remaining socialist countries, Rand, the American radical for capitalism, was surely right. Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of [20]The Freeman magazine. Send him [21]email. References 17. http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/bios/sxr.asp 18. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451191153/thefutureoffreed/103-4475146-3986250 19. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525934189/thefutureoffreed/103-4475146-3986250 20. http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?sec=iolmisc 21. mailto:sheldon at sheldonrichman.com ----------- Neglected Fortieth Anniversary (October 1997) http://www.fff.org/comment/ed1097a.asp by [14]Sheldon Richman, January 1997 A remarkable event occurred 40 years ago this month. Not the launching of Sputnik, which in retrospect, considering the collapse of the Soviet Union, had much less significance than people suspected at the time. Ironically, the event I am thinking of involved a woman who understood from the beginning that the Soviet Union was a fraud, economically, morally, and in all other respects. The woman was Ayn Rand, who died in 1982, and the event was the publication of her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged , a grand novel that has sold more than five million copies, continues to sell very well today, and has had a deep impact on readers around the world. An indication of that impact came in a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club, which asked 2,000 members to name a book that "made a difference" in their lives. Atlas Shrugged placed second behind the Bible. What kind of book could strike such a chord in readers? Rand's novel is big in many ways. It is more than a thousand pages long; but more important, it covers a wide range of personal, political, and economic issues. In fact, it presents a full philosophy of life, from the nature of man and reality to the nature of knowledge, from a doctrine of good and evil to the morality of a free society, from a theory of money and trade to a theory of art. That all of this is integrated into an action thriller makes the book all the more remarkable. Its many aspects are as relevant today as they were four decades ago. Two seem particularly worth mentioning now. One of Rand's lasting achievements in Atlas Shrugged was to set out a moral case for the economic system we call capitalism. Rand often called it "laissez faire capitalism" to emphasize that she meant the complete separation of state and economy. She condemned the "mixed economy," that contradictory brew of freedom and government control that has gripped the United States for much of its history. For Rand, capitalism was not merely the best system for producing material goods. (Today, unlike 40 years ago, hardly anyone disputes that.) Capitalism, Rand believed, was the only moral system, the only one suited to man's nature as a rational, creative being. The free-market economy lets people produce, trade with willing buyers without interference, and keep the fruits of their effort. It is the system that recognizes each person's right to the pursuit of happiness, to use Thomas Jefferson's radical phrase from the Declaration of Independence. Rand, who escaped Bolshevik Russia as a young woman, spent a lifetime trying to show Americans, of all people, how much a break with the past Jeffersonian America was. Until 1776, no political document had ever affirmed the right of the individual to live by his own judgment and for his own sake. That revolutionary philosophy produced the freest, most prosperous, most benevolent society the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, the country soon forgot its revolutionary origins. Rand's book is a ringing reminder of that heritage and a proclamation that the free market embodies the highest human virtues. As Hank Rearden, an industrialist in Atlas Shrugged , says, "I work for nothing but my own profit -- which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it.... I have made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with." There is a related point that shines through every page of Atlas Shrugged . Since life requires the production of values, men and women in business are heroes. They are often treated as villains, yet their ability and dedication make life possible and increasingly better. That point is at the very core of the novel. What, the book asks, would happen if the people of productive ability quit? Atlas Shrugged is a vindication and celebration of those unsung heroes who need never again be embarrassed by their profits. The manifest failure of socialism and communism as economic systems has led to a renewed respect for capitalism. But it is a grudging, half-hearted respect. The economic appreciation of capitalism has not yet been matched by a moral appreciation of the system that leaves people free to make the most of their lives, to translate their ability into achievement, to keep and enjoy the rewards for their effort, and, as an inevitable byproduct, to lift the living standards of everyone. Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, editor of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty (The Foundation for Economic Education), and author of Separating School & State: How to Liberate America's Families (1995) and Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax (1998). References 14. http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/bios/sxr. ----------- Of Course, It All Began with Ayn Rand http://www.fff.org/comment/com0502c.asp by [17]Bart Frazier, February 2, 2005 Like so many others, Ayn Rand has heavily influenced the paths that I have chosen in my life. And like most everyone else, it began with [18]Atlas Shrugged. I was nineteen when someone gave me a worn, pocket-sized edition of Atlas Shrugged. Unlike so many others my age at the time, I was not what some people might call a lost individual. I certainly felt no need to "find myself." I was a proud leftist. I paid little attention to politics, current events, or philosophical debate then. I wasn't dumb and I liked to read, but I enjoyed novels and literature and found political science, economics, and their ilk a bore. When it was handed to me, all I knew of Atlas Shrugged was that it was a work of fiction that several people had told me was a great read. And it was. It was radically different from the novels I was accustomed to reading, and the heroes were unlike the protagonists popular with people my age at the time. You simply could not understand life if you had not read Catcher in the Rye, and seen it through the blue-colored glasses of miserable Holden Caulfield. If you were not familiar with Death of a Salesman, the pointlessness of life itself could not be conveyed to you through pathetic Willy Loman. The list of my favorites at the time is long. The over-indulgent characters of Hemingway. The morally vacuous characters of Fitzgerald and the all-out assault on business of Salinger's. The portrayal of our putrid human nature by Orwell, Steinbeck, and Huxley. Don't get me wrong -- these are great books and I still love them for the great works they are. But they are not inspiring and they always draw the picture of a person that the reader would never want to emulate. Not so with Atlas Shrugged. John Galt, Dagney Taggart, Hank Rearden, Francisco d'Anconia -- these were characters like none that I had ever encountered in a novel. They were people that a reader could aspire to be, they celebrated life, and they were heroes in the truest sense. They were honest and honorable. They believed in principle instead of pragmatism. And without my realizing it until the end of the book, they had me cheering against the government. At the time, if I had been told that Atlas Shrugged was a novel about the evil of the state, I would have declined to read it. But because it was an exciting read with an intricate plot and a mysterious protagonist, I couldn't put the book down and ended up cheering against the government along the way. Many libertarians forget how radical an idea this is to most people even today. Most people conflate the government with society. Whatever the government does is for society's benefit. Government officials always act with our benefit in mind, not their own. Our government is more than a protector of rights; it is the embodiment of the country itself. If you criticize the government or its actions, you are not a true patriot; you are un-American. As Archie Bunker would say, "My government, right or wrong!" The beauty of Atlas Shrugged is that it makes the case against government in a solid yet entertaining way. I flew through the book -- couldn't put it down. When I finished, I suddenly felt that there was more to this whole government thing. Maybe there was another viewpoint about government that I wasn't aware of. Was it possible that my representatives, my representatives, were not looking out for my best interest? Had Ayn Rand written anything else? ([19]She had, by the way.) Atlas Shrugged opened up paths that I had never considered before. Jefferson, Madison, Washington -- these were names that I equated with irrelevance, not irreverence. Wasn't Thoreau just a crazy old hermit? Who on earth is Lysander Spooner? This stuff pertains to economics? But the biggest question I had was, "Am I the only person who thinks like this?" My answer came not long after finishing Atlas Shrugged. I was driving past the capitol building in Tallahassee, Florida, where a small demonstration was going on. And among the many placards that people were waiving at the capitol steps was a sign that read, "Where is John Galt?" I knew then that I was not alone because I had just found out that for someone else, it had all begun with Ayn Rand. Bart Frazier is program director at The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him [20]email. References 17. http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/bios/bxf.asp 18. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525934189/thefutureoffreed/103-4475146-3986250 19. http://www.ayn-rand.com/ayn-rand-biblio.asp 20. mailto:bfrazier at fff.org -------- Philadelphia Inquirer | 01/30/2005 | Assessing Rand at centenary http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/10758015.htm By Carlin Romano Inquirer Book Critic 'I am haunted by a quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche," Ayn Rand once told a Time magazine reporter, explaining her withdrawal from punditry on passing events to focus on writing philosophy. "It is not my function to be a flyswatter." No problem there. Even her enemies never accused the controversial novelist (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) and champion of individualism, rational self-interest and atheism of thinking small. "I did not want, intend or expect to be the only philosophical defender of man's rights in the country of man's rights," she declared with typical grandiosity when she closed down her regular newsletter in 1976. "But if I am, I am." OK, ditch the flyswatter. As the centenary of her birth arrives Wednesday, accompanied by special events around the country and a new illustrated biography - Ayn Rand by Jeff Britting (Overlook, $19.95) - what image does fit her today? Prophet? Steamroller? Esteemed yet occasionally embarrassing great aunt? We now live in a country where the administration in power vigorously embraces some, if not all, of Rand's once iconoclastic ideas about human freedom. A country whose Federal Reserve Board chairman, Alan Greenspan, once sat at her feet as part of the 1950s circle of admirers she sardonically called her "Collective." "Ayn Rand was instrumental in significantly broadening the scope of my thinking," Greenspan told Rand biographer Barbara Branden for her life of the author, The Passion of Ayn Rand (1986), "and was clearly a major contributor to my intellectual development, for which I remain profoundly grateful to this day." Rand's healthy profile in Washington today might be deduced from one of the centenary's main events, a symposium on her work Wednesday morning in the Members of Congress Room at the Library of Congress' Jefferson Building. Sponsored by the Objectivist Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., one of the two major keepers of the Rand flame, its speakers will include Reps. Ed Royce (R., Calif.) and Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), and Howard Dickman, assistant chairman of programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities. The other home of Rand studies, the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. (self-described as the "authoritative" arbiter of matters Randian because Rand anointed it to carry on her legacy), will host a reception Wednesday evening at which biographer Britting, the institute's archivist, and others will talk about Rand and present an exhibition on her. "One of the great urban myths," says Britting, "is the notion that Ayn Rand was a dictator of people's tastes." He sees her as a "generous" and "fiery" philosopher devoted to argument, dialogue, and explanation of her ideas, whose greatest legacy remains her "ability to dramatize ideas." He admits that "vigorous debates about details and specifics of her philosophy" continue. No one, however, now doubts that she pulled off a major, enduring American career as both novelist and thinker, and that her influence and popularity have persisted among readers since her death in 1982. Born Alisa Rosenbaum into a Jewish family in St. Petersburg, Russia - her father was a successful pharmacist and her mother a highly intellectual and opinionated homemaker - Rand emigrated alone to America at 21. Her experience of Russia's forced conversion to communism forever colored her beliefs. To pursue her ambition to be a great writer, she devised her nom de plume by taking "Ayn" from a Finnish writer she'd never read and "Rand" from her typewriter. A lucky encounter with director Cecil B. DeMille drew her into Hollywood life: jobs as a scriptwriter, marriage to actor Frank O'Connor in 1929, and early success as a playwright with The Night of January 16. Following two short novels, We the Living (1936) and Anthem (1938), The Fountainhead (1943) made Rand famous. In it, protagonist Howard Roark illustrated her belief that the model of ethical life is the "hero" - a rational, self-interested, totally independent person. Partly based on architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Roark despised mediocrity and compromise. The 1949 film version starring Gary Cooper only bolstered Rand's status as poster-woman for American individualism in a cultural world still largely inclined to the left. Her other major novel, Atlas Shrugged (1957), only enhanced that image. More schematic than The Fountainhead, it offered another ideal hero - self-assured John Galt - who projected "the virtue of selfishness" and rejection of self-sacrifice at the core of her philosophy, which she came to call Objectivism. It so impressed a young Southern businessman named Ted Turner that he bought cryptic billboard signs across the South asking, "Who is John Galt?" One complication for Rand's reputation over the years became the sharp schisms among her followers over matters of doctrine - a good source is Canadian journalist Jeff Walker's The Ayn Rand Cult (Open Court) - and her unconventional lifestyle. For a thinker who exalted "reason" as the sole guide to life, Rand radiated volatile emotion. In the 1950s, for instance, she conducted a torrid affair with the first young man whom she designated as her "intellectual heir," Nathaniel Branden, winning the grudging consent of her husband and Branden's wife, Barbara (later her biographer). She also began to cut off acolytes - including, eventually, Branden - when she fell out with them. A 1990s Showtime movie, based on Branden's bio, depicted Rand - supporters say unfairly - as histrionic and neurotic. All of that hasn't changed, you might say, the tale of the tape. A 1991 survey by the Library of Congress found Atlas Shrugged to be the American novel most influential on readers' lives. Her books have sold more than 30 million copies around the world and sell hundred of thousands every year in the United States. Even studies in academe - the sector of America most resistent to Rand in her lifetime - are increasing. Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical by Chris Matthew Sciabarra (Penn State, 1995) argued that Russian ideology influenced Rand more than previously understood. What Art Is: The Aesthetic Theory of Ayn Rand by Louis Torres and Michelle Kamhi (Open Court, 2000), thoroughly explored her philosophy of art. The most recent multivolume encyclopedia of philosophy, from Routledge, included an entry on her. According to Branden's biography, Rand liked to be called "Fluff" by O'Connor, her beloved husband of 50 years. Given how her career turned out, no one would dare try that now. At her funeral, a 6-foot-high dollar sign marked the coffin. Conversion rates aside, she's still in the money. _________________________________________________________________ Contact book critic Carlin Romano at 215-854-5615 or [77]cromano at phillynews.com. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:41:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:41:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Iraq: 30 January election review Message-ID: Iraq: 30 January election review http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/iraq-30-january-election-review.shtml Index on Censorship On 30 January Iraqis voted for parties contesting seats in the Iraqi National Assembly, a 275-seat parliament called to serve as a transitional body until elections for a fully fledged assembly under a new constitution are held in December 2005. There were no voting districts - just a single country-wide election. This option was supported by the UN - advisors to the process - because it was thought easier to organise than drawing up electoral districts based on Iraq's cultures and ethnicities, though they did endorse a separate ballot for provincial councils in Iraq's 18 regional governorates. In Iraq's Kurdish region, there was a third ballot for the Kurdish National Parliament, with special arrangements for the disputed northern city of Kirkuk. Expatriates in 14 countries were allowed to vote in the parliamentary polls only. On election day a reported 5,232 polling centres opened throughout Iraq's 18 governorates. The first provisional results are due to be announced by 10 February by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI), established by the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2004. All Iraqis born on or before 31 December 1986 were eligible to vote, provided they could prove their citizenship. Iraq has no current official census, so voters were registered through ration cards used during the sanctions year for the UN oil-for-food programme, which began in 1996. There were roughly 7,700 candidates running for the 275 National Assembly seats and 11,300 for seats on the 18 regional legislatures, but Iraqis did not vote for individuals or specific parties in the traditional sense. Instead they picked from one of 111 "lists" of combined party groups and factions certified by the IECI. The parties picked the order in which their candidates' names appeared on their own lists. This was important as seats were allocated to lists in proportion to the percentage of votes the list collected on election day - first names first - so the higher up the list, the higher the chance the candidate would get a seat. Every third candidate in the order on the list had to be a woman. Most of the campaigners called on supporters to vote for the number of the list, rather than the name. On the day voters ticked off their choice of list from a ballot paper with the name, number, and identifying logos of the 111 lists. A lottery determined the order in which list names appeared on the ballot. Once convened the newly elected National Assembly must then elect an Iraqi president and two deputies - a trio making up a Presidency Council that will represent Iraq abroad and oversee the running of the country. The Presidency Council will be responsible for naming the prime minister and for approving ministerial appointments. The National Assembly will immediately be tasked to draft a permanent Iraqi constitution by 15 August. The constitution should be ratified by the Iraqi people in a general referendum by 15 October. If it fails to do this, it can extend the process for another six months. If a constitution is not ratified by then, its mandate will expire, and fresh elections will be held for a new assembly that will start the process again. But If the constitution is ratified according to schedule in October, Iraqis will elect a permanent government no later than 15 December. That government should assume office by 31 December. The role of the Electoral Commission The elections are organised by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI), established by the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2004. The Commission is run by a nine-member Board of Commissioners, which includes seven voting members who are Iraqi citizens, and two non-voting members. The two non-voting members are the chief electoral officer, an Iraqi, and the Colombian UN expert Carlos Valenzuela, a veteran of 13 previous UN election missions. The UN selected the IECI membership from 1,878 applications short-listed to 25. The Iraqi Commission members were sent on a three week training course in Mexico by the UN. Thirty other U.N. election specialists provided technical expertise to a staff of about 6,000 Iraqi election clerks and monitors. These teams faced severe violence, including a 19 December ambush in central Baghdad, in which three were killed. The US army reported that virtually every election worker in Nineveh province, which includes predominantly Arab Sunni Mosul, quit before the election because of security fears. There were other resignations reported in several other cities, though the Commission frequently disputed or dismissed reports, or claimed that the staff who had resigned had been promptly replaced. Overseas voting was supervised by the International Organisation for Migration, though only 21 percent of the 1.2 million eligible expatriates registered to vote despite the IOM's intensive efforts. Voting papers were printed in Switzerland to avoid counterfeiting and centres established in each of the 18 provinces to collate results before sending them on to Baghdad. The better than expected turnout and the relatively limited scale of the threatened insurgent assault on the process reflected well on the IECI. Its performance was not without its critics among both Iraqi & international media. IECI spokesman Farid Ayar was reported to be in dispute with the commission membership in the days before the vote, while on the day his delivery of interim turnout results to the media was confusing - some said unintentionally misleading. The process itself did not appear flawless. Some polling stations in the so-called `hot areas' did not open when insufficient numbers of election workers turned up to run them. On the day Ayar said that voters in these areas could vote at other stations, without saying where or how they could be reached with regional travel so heavily restricted. Like the turnout the commission's tally of polling stations that opened as planned on 30 January seemed over-estimated, given the flow of media reports from the field, including Samarra, the oil refinery town of Beiji and Baghdad's mainly Iraqi Sunni district of Azamiyah, and ravaged al-Fallujah where no voting at all was said to have taken place. There was no independent monitoring body to confirm or support the validation of interim results from the commission. The UN, having helped organise the election, had made it clear in advance that it would not be involved in observing it, and Carlos Valenzuela, its lead official at the Commission distanced himself and the world body from the IECI's early statements on turnout and totals. A hastily organised independent monitoring group of foreign election experts remained in Amman, Jordan, its members unable to get security clearance to move its operations into Iraq. Instead the specially-founded International Mission for Iraqi Elections (IMIE) plans to `audit' and `assess' the data from Iraqi observers and evaluate the process after the event. The IECI itself, with UN support, had trained several thousand Iraqi election observers, and briefed thousands more from the parties, but their true effectiveness has yet to be independently assessed. In its preliminary statements, the IMIE team in Jordan said it had identified "several strong points regarding today's election, including the extent and quality of (the IECI's) election planning and organisation, and its independence." But it added that "areas recommended for further development include transparency regarding financial contributions and expenditures, improvements to the voter registration process, and reviewing the criteria for candidate eligibility". Registration of candidates, parties and voters Any Iraqi who is at least 30 years old, has a high-school diploma and was not a high-ranking member of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party or responsible for atrocities under Hussein's regime was allowed to run for office. Lower ranking members of the Ba'ath Party who have renounced their affiliation may run. Current serving members of the Iraqi armed services were barred from standing. Under the 30 January system, which like all else in the current voting process, is open to review and may be changed by the National Assembly during 2005 ahead of the next vote, candidates may run as independents or on a list. A list is defined as a political party, an association or a group of people with a common political agenda - such as women's or human rights groups - that submits candidates. Individuals can also apply and, if certified, they can run alone or form a coalition with other certified political entities. Names must appear in rank order on the party lists and every third candidate in order must be a woman. Seats were allocated through a system of proportional representation, with seats allocated proportionate to the percentage of the vote given to each of the 111 lists. The actual names of the 7,471 candidates on the 111 lists were kept secret up until two days before the poll to protect them against insurgent attack. Iraqis born on or before 31 December 1986 were eligible to vote, provided they can prove their citizenship. Iraq has no official census, so voters were registered through ration cards used for the UN oil-for-food programme, which began in 1996. Those voters who did not have ration cards were allowed to vote if they produced two official papers, such as citizenship certificates, identity cards, passports, or military service documents. Where the security situation permitted the process went smoothly, despite some problems with the registration of would be voters born in 1986. Registration was allowed right up to election day on 30 January in the violence-plagued governorates of al-Anbar and Nineveh, where Mosul is located. But in many areas insurgents made verification of the voter lists virtually impossible. Iraq's interim president Ghazi al-Yawar conceded before the vote that there were areas where not one voter registration sheet had been handed out. Some 200,000 refugees who fled the November 2004 US assault on al-Fallujah also faced severe practical difficulties registering and voting, beyond the physical threat posed by insurgents. Even in the relatively peaceful northern governorates, Human Rights Watch reported up to 90 percent of the voter registration forms in Arbil province had mistakes that needed correction and that up to 70,000 people in the area might lose their right to vote as a result. The development of a more rigidly operated registration list, possibly as part of a nationwide census, will be a priority for the Iraqi government in 2005. This will be a politically contentious task, especially in disputed areas such as Kirkuk, and among minorities - Assyrian Christians, and Turkomans in particular - who do not believe their political presence should be measured only by their numbers. Iraq has a population of more than 25 million people, but it is a young country - 40 percent of the population are under the age of 14, twice the percentage recorded in the United Kingdom & United States. That left just 15.5 million Iraqis eligible to vote, with 1.2 million of them living outside the country. Overseas voting was supervised by the International Organisation for Migration, though only 281,000 of the 1.2 million eligible expatriates registered to vote and of them just over two-thirds actually cast a ballot, despite intensive efforts by the IOM. Future overseas registration and voting will probably be managed by Iraqi embassies abroad, as is the case with other nations. Main Party Lists - 30 January 2005 United Iraqi List o Iraqi National Congress (secular) - leader Ahmad Chalabi o Islamic Action Organisation (Shi'ite Islamist) - leader Ibrahim al-Matiri o Islamic Dawa Party in Iraq (Shi'ite Islamist) - leader Iraqi Vice President Ibrahim Jaafari o Islamic Dawa Party Iraq Organisation (Shi'ite Islamist) - leader Abdul Karim Anizi o Islamic Virtue Party (Shi'ite Islamist) - leader Nadim Issa Jabiri o Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Shi'ite Islamist) - leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim o Turkmen Islamic Union (Turkmen) - leader Abbas Hassan al-Bayati o Also includes nine other Shi'ite and Turkmen parties and prominent Saddam-era dissenter Hussain al-Shahristani Iraqi List o Iraqi National Accord (secular) - leader Prime Minister Iyad Allawi o With five other secular parties and one individual Kurdistan Alliance List o Kurdistan Democratic Party (Kurdish) - leader Massoud Barzani o Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Kurdish) - leader Jalal Talabani o With nine other Kurdish parties Patriotic Rafidain Party o Assyrian Democratic Movement (Christian) - leader Yonadim Kanna o Chaldean National Council (Christian) People's Union o Iraqi Communist Party (secular) - leader Hamid Majid Moussa o With one additional individual candidate Main Single Party Lists o Constitutional Monarchy (secular) - leader al-Sharif Ali Bin Hussein o Independent Democratic Movement (secular) - leader Adnan Pachachi o Iraqi Islamic Party (Sunni Islamist) - leader Mohsen Abdul Hamid o Iraqi National Gathering (secular) - leader Hussein al-Jibouri o Iraqis (secular) - leader Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawar o Reconciliation and Liberation Bloc (secular) - leader Mishaan Jibouri Electoral boundaries There were no voting districts for the National Assembly vote - just a single country-wide election. This controversial plan was endorsed by the UN because it was thought easier to organise than drawing up electoral districts based on Iraq's cultures and ethnicities. But the system, not uncommon in Europe and Asia, has its problems. A key part of building representative parliaments and governments is building a sense of confidence that both are accountable to their constituents. Iraq's 30 January system weakens that confidence. Under the 30 January system politicians are more accountable to their party leaders than to Iraqi voters. The party leader can `punish' MPs who put local interests ahead of party interests by pushing them down the order of names in the party list. That way they will be less likely to retain their seat in the next election. Party leaders can also use the list system to promote individuals - including some with Ba'athist era records or hardcore agendas - who would never win popular votes in a straight vote for individually named candidates. Generally, the use of nationwide party lists elsewhere in the Middle East has tended to bolster religious, ethnic and sectarian parties there. The agenda is fixed on the national not local level. And under the 30 January system, because the National Assembly elections are not tied to districts, there will be towns that have no local citizens in the Iraqi Assembly and other towns with scores of them. The new National Assembly will be looking closely at the effectiveness of the separate ballot for provincial councils in Iraq's 18 governorates held on 30 January and the regional ballot for the Kurdish National Parliament as options when it comes to decide on how local the next elections will be. But again, provincial level elections tend to favour tribal identities or the wishes of locally powerful clergy. In Jordan they found that by dividing election areas into smaller voting districts changed the political agenda and the Muslim Brotherhood vote by half. In other countries the local focus has strengthened the hand of parties such as Hezbollah where they have turned to active community-level activism. Voters in single-member districts tend to focus on local issues, such as schools, health provision, electricity, and policing - and in Iraq the polls are clear that it is these issues that are the priority. Finally one of many factors driving the pre- 30 January calls for an Iraqi Sunni election boycott was the understanding that under the agreed system, that 20 percent of the Assembly seats would be the best they could expect in any circumstance. In a vote based purely on national identities, this would inevitably be seen a defeat. But in a vote based on local factors, sectarian matters would be less essential to the voters' choice. NB: Up to mid-January, Kurdish political parties threatened to boycott elections in Kirkuk, alleging that Kurdish residents of Kirkuk who had been expelled from the area during Saddam Hussein's `Arabisation' programme in the 1980s and 1990s were forbidden to vote in the provincial election. On 14 January the IECI ruled that displaced Kurds from the area - up to 100,000 people - could vote in Kirkuk for the al-Tamin provincial government locally. Arab and Turkmen leaders in Kirkuk condemned the decision, complaining that the decision gave the Kurds leadership of the al-Tamin local government throughout 2005, when Kirkuk's territorial status in Iraq is scheduled to be determined. How the media managed "We feel defeated and we are frustrated... We fear that we will be branded as the spies and collaborators of the occupation. There are many whom we fear: The Board of Muslim Clerics, the foreign Jihadis, Muqtada al-Sadr, Zarqawi's people, and finally Saddam's henchmen." Ali Hasan, Institute for War and Peace Reporting. The Iraqi media entered the start of the election campaign period on 15 December working on what media rights groups had already dubbed the world's most dangerous assignment. Nearly 40 journalists and media workers, most of them Iraqis, were killed in the line of duty in 2004. Journalists are no longer seen as impartial observers - by either side. Reporters were beaten, threatened, detained without cause, kidnapped for criminal and political reasons and killed, sometimes deliberately, all to often carelessly by trigger-happy troops. And afterwards it was often impossible for reporters to discover the true circumstances of their colleagues' deaths - whether deliberate or accidental - let alone see the perpetrators brought to justice. This encouraged a climate of impunity, where perpetrators could expect to escape serious consequences for their acts. Conflicting messages were sent out by the US authorities - on the one hand advocating a free media, while on the other, closing down newspapers and detaining accredited journalists. The handover to an interim Iraqi government had not improved matters, as the new authorities had learnt bad lessons from their predecessors. "We face different dangers now and there is no law to protect journalists in Iraq," Hussein Muhammad al-Ajil of al-Mada newspaper told Iranian-American journalist Borzou Daragahi. "There are threats from three sides: the Americans might shoot you if they're ambushed; the Iraqi security forces might stop you or beat you if they suspect you're with the resistance; and the resistance might kill you if they think you're a spy." The danger increased in the run up to the election. On 12 September 2004 al-Arabiya journalist Mazen Tumeisi died in an US helicopter attack. He was the eighth al-Arabiya staffer to die since March 2003, and one of three killed by the US army in circumstances that have yet to be fully explained.. Al-Arabiya reporter Abdel Kader al-Saadi was detained by US troops despite being clearly identified as a journalist and in circumstances that gave rise to allegations of deliberate intimidation. His station has also received numerous threats from claimed supporters of the Jordanian insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, demanding that it support the "jihad" against the US occupation and Iraqi government. The insurgents and the country's criminals have also struck. Al-Sharqiyya television reporter Likaa Abdelrazzak was killed in the street in Baghdad on Oct. 27, Sada Wasit newspaper reporter Raad Beriaej al-Azzawi was kidnapped in November, one among many. Another Iraqi journalist reporting on police patrols in the town of Allawi was caught by the insurgents. They took his notes and tapes and told him to get out of town. Daragahi also reported that one journalist at al-Mada was threatened with death after he wrote about alleged corruption in an Iraqi government ministry and had to flee the country. Al-Mada newspaper was also targeted by rockets. Western journalists, largely trapped in their hotels, relied on Iraqi reporters (stringers) to get information they couldn't, and as the target profile of western journalists increased, so did the threat to Iraqis working with them. A leaflet circulated in al-Fallujah offered money to anyone giving information about Iraqi journalists, translators and drivers working with foreign media. All the Iraqi media faced similar threats, plus the attentions of an interim authority that has sought in the past to impose its views on the media and ordering it not to attach `patriotic descriptions' to the insurgents and criminals," and asked the media to "set aside space in news coverage to make the position of the Iraqi government, which expresses the aspirations of most Iraqis, clear," or face the consequences. Yet with most election hopefuls unable to get out and campaign on the streets, names of candidates kept secret until shortly before the election, and the vote itself judged on national issues, not local agendas, the Iraqi media became the main player in the campaign. The view is that they performed better than expected. "Sunni groups opposed to participating in the election regularly espouse their views in supporting newspapers and are often quoted in what would be considered the popular press, owned by independent or pro-election party newspapers," noted Kathleen Ridolfo of Radio Free Europe before the election. "Sunni groups that will participate in the elections despite some hesitancy over the issue have also made their platforms known." Reports and commentaries in the print media did not shy from discussions about the role that Islam will play in a future Iraqi state with a Shi'ite majority, the possible withdrawal of multinational forces, the Kurdish issue and the coming constitution. Newspapers have covered the activities of the Election Commission. As for television, said Ridolfo, Allawi - "whether by virtue of being prime minister or by intention -- has dominated the airwaves". A new feature for Iraqis was the use of sleekly-produced TV adverts to persuade people to vote and close to election day, to try and persuade Iraqi Sunnis to defy boycott calls. Chat shows on Iraqi radio made a dramatic impact. Party supporters filled streets with campaign posters, replaced as soon as they were ripped down by rivals with new ones. A variety of alternative promotional techniques emerged: the Iraqi Hezbollah published a calendar with its campaign message, another party distributed video CDs with party messages interspersed with comedy clips. The role of election observers The United Nations said from the outset that it would encourage the electoral commission to ask for international observers for the election, though the world body, having helped organise the poll, would not be involved in observing it. About 7,000 representatives of Iraqi political parties and nongovernmental organisations have registered to observe voting, and each list has the right to have members present while votes are counted. International monitoring of the 30 January elections in Iraq was heavily restricted. The United Nations said from the outset that it would encourage the electoral commission to ask for international observers for the election, though the U.N., having helped organise the poll, would not be involved in observing it. A group of two dozen experts brought together by the specially-founded International Mission for Iraqi Elections (IMIE) did its work from over the border in Amman, Jordan. The high profile of some of the figures concerned their national governments, all senior election officials from countries ranging from Albania to Yemen under team leader, Elections Canada chief Jean-Pierre Kingsley. In the end their home governments barred them from crossing the border into Iraq. Observer team members argued that not crossing the border made their job impossible, but others said that trying to cover the election under strict security restrictions would give an inaccurate impression that the vote had been properly observed and validated. In the end Kingsley's team opted for a limited mission, `auditing' and `assessing' the data from Iraqi observers and evaluate the process after the event. Their lection day studies focussed on the following areas: o legal framework o voter registration o electoral preparations o voter information and education o equitable access to media o out-of-country registration and voting o pre-polling complaint procedures o certification of political parties, coalitions and candidates o polling o vote counting and compilation of results o post-election complaints Some 6,000 volunteer Iraqi monitors from some 150 Iraqi organisations were trained by a UN sponsored programme to act as independent observers, registered with the Election Commission while there were a reported 23,000 registered observers from different political parties who stood by to watch the process in action. But this is an unusual methodology. Normally foreign observers are heavily in attendance at this kind of vote. The European Union declined an invitation from Iraq to send observers while the Carter Center, which has monitored more than 50 elections overseas, also decided not to send observers. The 9 January Palestinian elections drew 800 official observers, led by former US president Jimmy Carter and two former European prime ministers. Even the October 2004 Afghanistan polls, where the threats to foreign observers was well stated in advance, drew more than 100 foreign observers. "An election is "free" when it reflects the full expression of the political will of the people concerned. Freedom in this sense involves the ability to participate in the political process without intimidation, coercion, discrimination, or the abridgment of the rights to associate with others, to assemble, and to receive or impart information. The "fairness" of an election refers to the right to vote on the basis of equality, non-discrimination, and universality. No portion of the electorate should be arbitrarily disqualified, or have their votes given extra weight." Human Rights Watch Measures of support: Guestimates & opinion polls Numbers - and predictions of numbers - were the all important issue during the 30 January election. For the US-led forces in Iraq, the actual turnout of voters in the face of the threat of violence was used as a measure of the insurgents' weakness, for example. But the major numbers debate spun around the calls for an Iraqi Sunni boycott before the vote. The decision to base the 30 January elections on a national slate of party lists was logical, but it left Iraqi Sunnis in a quandary. The national slate system could leave them with only no more than 20 percent of the representation in the National Assembly if they voted as Sunnis, but what would it give them if they voted as Iraqis? As it became clear that the closer the number of Iraqi Sunni voters got to 20 percent of the total votes cast, the more the new government would be able claim legitimacy, the issue of the Iraqi Sunni turnout on election day took on major significance. Pre-vote polls by foreign organisations focused heavily on this issue. A poll by the US International Republican Institute from early January projected that 65 percent of Iraqis were `likely' to vote, and 20 percent `very likely'. The difference between the first and the second number was in the people's perceptions of threat, and the appeal of the very diverse arguments for a boycott. It was here that the Iraqi media played a key role. The threat of violence deterred extensive studies by opinion pollsters, and exit polling on the day. Security rules requiring pollsters to stand about 700 yards away from polling stations - outside the security cordons - inhibited them from carrying out exit polls. Though neither are wholly reliable guides to the real level of voter opinion, without them the Iraqi media was given extra responsibility to accurately represent the situation before and during the vote. The media is always tasked to provide the information that the people need to make informed decisions, but here it was also backing up decisions on physical safety. The tone of the coverage as well as the facts reported played as much of a role in this. In addition there were non-sectarian party lists with Iraqi Sunni involvement trying to appeal to voters in the four predominantly Iraqi Sunni provinces where the threat of violence was high and campaigning was largely impossible. The local media - and to an extent, the Arab satellite TV networks - was one of their few means of reaching voters in these areas, and its effectiveness in doing so may have been the Iraqi media's greatest test in the run up to 30 January. Security Security was set predictably high for the election, with major restrictions on movements around election day. Iraq's land borders were closed from January 29-31; only pilgrims returning from the Hajj in Saudi Arabia were allowed to enter the country. Travel between Iraq's provinces was allowed only by special permits, and most civilian travel of all kinds barred on election day to obstruct car bombers. The ban on car travel made it difficult for some voters to reach the polls, especially if they have moved from the neighbourhood where they are registered. The media were required to get special accreditation and coverage from the polling stations was strictly regulated. A reported 100,000 Iraqi police and 60,000 Iraqi National Guardsmen were deployed to protect the stations, backed up by 150,000 US and 10,000 British soldiers. Radio Free Europe reported that an unsigned directive posted to a jihadist website in early January advised militants in Iraq to "prevent the continuation of participation by any members of the election committees through persuasion, threats, kidnapping, and other methods." It continued: "Make sure that once they agree to withdraw from the election committee, their withdrawal is not announced except during the critical and narrow time frame (so that) the government cannot replace them with other (workers).... This will make it extremely difficult to find trained people to manage the elections in such a short period of time." In the week before the election, the government announced the arrest of several senior aides to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, suggesting it was making inroads against the group that had sworn to turn polling day into a bloodbath. However, Reuters reported some government officials had cast doubt on the importance of the arrests, suggesting the announcements were designed to build confidence in security arrangements. Rohan Jayasekera is an associate editor at Index on Censorship and is currently directing Index's programmes of monitoring, publishing, training and advocacy in Iraq. Journalists & media workers killed in Iraq during 2004 1. Duraid Isa Mohammed, producer and translator, CNN - 27 January 2004 2. Yasser Khatab, driver, CNN - 27 January 2004 3. Haymin Mohamed Salih, Qulan TV - 01 February 2004 4. Ayoub Mohamed, Kurdistan TV - 01 February 2004 5. Gharib Mohamed Salih, Kurdistan TV - 01 February 2004 6. Semko Karim Mohyideen, freelance - 01 February 2004 7. Abdel Sattar Abdel Karim, al-Ta'akhi - 01 February 2004 8. Safir Nader, Qulan TV - 01 February 2004 9. Ali Al-Khatib, Al-Arabiya - 18 March 2004 10. Ali Abdel Aziz, Al-Arabiya - 18 March 2004 11. Nadia Nasrat, Diyala Television - 18 March 2004 12. Majid Rachid, technician, Diyala Television - 18 March 2004 13. Mohamad Ahmad, security agent, Diyala Television - 18 March 2004 14. Bourhan Mohammad al-Louhaybi, ABC News - 26 March 2004 15. Omar Hashim Kamal, translator, Time - 26 March 2004 16. Assad Kadhim, Al-Iraqiya TV - 19 April 2004 17. Hussein Saleh, driver, Al-Iraquiya TV - 29 April 2004 18. Mounir Bouamrane, TVP - 07 May 2004 19. Waldemar Milewicz, TVP - 07 May 2004 20. Rachid Hamid Wali, cameraman assistant, Al-Jazira - 21 May 2004 21. Unknown, translator - 25 May 2004 22. Kotaro Ogawa, Nikkan Gendai - 27 May 2004 23. Shinsuke Hashida, Nikkan Gendai - 27 May 2004 24. Unknown, translator - 27 May 2004 25. Mahmoud Ismael Daood, bodyguard, Al-Sabah al-Jadid - 29 May 2004 26. Samia Abdeljabar, driver, Al-Sabah al-Jadid - 29 May 2004 27. Sahar Saad Eddine Nouami, Al-Hayat Al-Gadida - 03 June 2004 28. Mahmoud Hamid Abbas, ZDF - 15 August 2004 29. Hossam Ali, freelance. - 15 August 2004 30. Jamal Tawfiq Salmane, Gazeta Wyborcza - 25 August 2004 31. Enzo Baldoni, Diario della settimana - 26 August 2004 32. Mazen al-Tomaizi, Al-Arabiya - 12 September 2004 33. Ahmad Jassem, Nivive television - 07 October 2004 34. Dina Mohamad Hassan, Al Hurriya Television - 14 October 2004 35. Karam Hussein, European Pressphoto Agency - 14 October 2004 36. Liqaa Abdul-Razzaq, Al-Sharqiya - 27 October 2004 37. Dhia Najim, Reuters - 01 November 2004 Reporters sans Fronti?res 30.01.2005 From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:42:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:42:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Index on Censorship: United States: Taboo subjects on campus Message-ID: United States: Taboo subjects on campus http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2005/1/united-states-taboo-subjects-on-campus.shtml Index on Censorship How free is campus speech? Furore over Harvard president's views raise wider issues. By Sara B. Miller & Amanda Paulson Harvard University president Lawrence Summers says his comment that innate differences between the sexes may partly account for male dominance in science and maths - was intended to provoke discussion. Instead they have ended up raising an even larger question: Have universities become so steeped in sensitivities that certain topics can't be openly discussed? Sara B. Miller & Amanda Paulson discuss. In the weeks since Harvard University president Lawrence Summers suggested that innate differences between the sexes may partly account for male dominance in science and math, the ensuing frenzy of discussion has become a kind of national Rorschach test. Editorialists excoriate his sexism or applaud his candour. The National Organization for Women has called for his resignation. Academics are poring over studies that deal with nature, nurture and gender differences. Dr. Summers's comments - which he said were intended to provoke discussion about why women were underrepresented in top science posts - have ended up raising an even larger question: Have universities become so steeped in sensitivities that certain topics can't be openly discussed? Historically, ivory towers have been society's bulwarks of free intellectual exploration. But critics say that role is jeopardized on issues ranging from gender and race to religion and the politics of the Middle East. "I could give example after example where speech that is considered offensive by any particular group that has a disproportionate amount of power on the campus is subject to censorship and repression," says David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties organization that works on college campuses. "It gives the most sensitive person the veto power on debate and discussion." Many disagree with that assessment. But the Summers flap has revived a longstanding debate on the subject - often waged along ideological lines over whether campuses are hostile to those with conservative ideas. At Columbia University, for example, a different sort of controversy has been brewing about what can and can't be said. In this case, it's not an authority figure who's ruffled feathers, but students. The tensions came to a head this fall when a documentary, Columbia Unbecoming, filmed Jewish students alleging that pro-Palestinian professors, particularly from the school's department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC), were intimidating them. In the film, one student who had served in the Israeli Army says a professor asked him how many Palestinians he had killed when he stood up to ask a question. The charges have angered both students and professors, with both sides waving the banner of academic freedom. Columbia President Lee Bollinger has formed an ad hoc faculty committee to investigate the student complaints, while one professor in MEALAC has likened the situation to a "witch hunt." While teachers say they feel threatened (one has cancelled his most controversial course), the students say theirs is the speech that's being suppressed - and that the pro-Palestinian professors have crossed a line into unacceptable territory. "I don't think I can go before class and say something blatantly racist," says Ariel Beery, a Columbia senior who appears in the documentary. "Creating a collegial environment in order to work together is what a university is about." Others have more sympathy for the professors. The controversy "raises concerns that political disagreement is being conflated with intimidation and harassment," says Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who calls the student attacks a throwback to the McCarthy era. The fact that the students have so publicly denounced the professors and administration, she says, shows that students are "quite empowered" to express opinions. The controversies at Harvard and Columbia are, of course, quite different in terms of both the complaints and who's making them. But both touch on the question of whether academia is increasingly unfriendly to vigorous debate. Summers's repeated apologies, in particular, angered many op-ed columnists who felt they were evidence of academic orthodoxy being enforced. "It would be interesting to know what would have happened if Larry Summers, after the controversy first emerged, had called a press conference and said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, this is what the university is all about,' and stopped there. I think he would have been a national hero," says Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Murray caused a similar storm a decade ago when he co-wrote The Bell Curve, suggesting that there might be innate differences among races regarding intelligence. That idea of inequality, he says, is still one of the biggest taboos. "There's just a part of the dogma in the university that centres on equality as a good in and of itself, not just equality of outcome, but equality of the raw material. It's something we didn't really anticipate when we wrote The Bell Curve." Evalyn Gates, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, sees it differently. It's the not that the idea of studying innate differences is so offensive, she says, referring to the Summers's remarks. Rather it's that other, larger reasons exist for women's poor representation in scientific fields - documented gender bias both early on and within academia, and a culture that makes it hard to balance family life and work. Biological nature, she says, is "a red herring" compared to these issues of nurture. In addition, there's the issue of who's making the comments. "If some researcher at a conference says he wants to study this possibility [of gender difference], that's fine," Dr. Gates says. "But the fact that the president of Harvard has said it I think has done damage." The charge that universities are intolerant of ideas that clash with the accepted line of thinking has been around at least since the 1960s, and gained traction during the culture wars of the 1980s and '90s. Usually the complaints come from conservatives who consider academia too liberal. One recent flash point involves bake sales at which items cost different amounts based on a student's race, used to protest affirmative-action policies, which several universities have banned. Another hot topic is religion. A question du jour: Do universities have the right to refuse to allow religious clubs to require that members hold certain beliefs? But demanding free speech, some academics point out, cuts both ways. "On the one hand, professors should be free to pursue whatever lines of inquiry they think academically sound," says Jonathan Knight, director of the American Association of University Professors' programme on academic freedom and tenure. "But they had best be prepared to deal with the criticism, no matter how acid." At Harvard, Summers has faced such criticism numerous times since he took the helm in 2001. He's angered some with remarks ranging from a rebuke of a celebrated black professor to praise of patriotism - a style that some call candour, and other see as evidence that he's insufficiently aware of the power of his words. At the recent conference, for instance, he only suggested that gender difference be studied as a possible reason for women's absence in the sciences. "But the headlines say, 'Harvard president says men are better at science than women,'" says Gates, the University of Chicago professor. "That kind of phrase repeated over and over, especially when it reinforces an underlying concept people have already, can be extremely damaging." This article first appeared in the [12]Christian Science Monitor. It is republished with permission. 29.01.2005 From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:43:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:43:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: False Memory Creation Recorded Message-ID: False Memory Creation Recorded http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-02-01-3 Brain imaging reveals biology of faulty eyewitness accounts Betterhumans Staff 2/1/2005 1:11 PM Brain imaging has provided insight into faulty eyewitness accounts. Research has shown that people's memories of complex events can be altered by misleading information provided after the event has occurred. Using noninvasive brain imaging methods, Yoko Akado and [8]Craig Stark of [9]Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland have now looked deeper into this process by examining how the brain encodes misinformation when creating a false memory. Misleading slide show For the study, participants were first shown a slide show of a man stealing a woman's wallet and then hiding behind a door. They were then shown a slightly different slide show and told it was the same sequence. Two days later, participants took a memory test in which they were asked to recall details of the slide show and which of the two presentations contained the information. Predicting misinformation Stark and Akado found that participants' brain activity predicted whether their memories would be accurate or false. For memories falsely associated with the first slide show when viewing the second, the researchers found that there was weaker activity in particular brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex. The researchers suggest that activity in the prefrontal cortex is linked with encoding memory context. Weak activity during the misinformation phase therefore suggests that the details of the second experience were poorly placed in context and as a result more easily confused. The research is reported in the journal [10]Learning & Memory. References 8. http://neuroscience.jhu.edu/peopledetail.asp?ID=320 9. http://www.jhu.edu/ 10. http://www.learnmem.org/ From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:50:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:50:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Really?: The Claim: Shoveling Snow Can Set Off a Heart Attack Message-ID: The New York Times > Health > Really?: The Claim: Shoveling Snow Can Set Off a Heart Attack http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/01/health/01real.html 5.2.1 REALLY? The Claim: Shoveling Snow Can Set Off a Heart Attack By ANAHAD O'CONNOR T HE FACTS As Americans dig their way out of the blizzard that blanketed parts of the Northeast last month, reports of people suffering heart attacks, snow shovel in hand, have surfaced. Many people do not take the risk seriously. But the claim that clearing snow is so strenuous that it can be deadly is no exaggeration, experts say. Just being out in the cold raises blood pressure. Add to that the fact that shoveling is a tension-inducing isometric exercise, like weight lifting, and that it is often performed by older, otherwise sedentary men, and it is no surprise that the activity is linked to heart attacks, said Dr. Jacob I. Haft at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In a small study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1996, Dr. Haft found that most heart attacks from shoveling resulted from trauma to coronary arteries, rupturing plaques that disrupt blood flow. Most victims have no history of heart disease. In some cases, up to a quarter of those afflicted are women, a 1999 study by the National Center for Environmental Health found. When shoveling must be done, it is best to do it early, when the snow is lighter, and in short stints, not all at once. Any exercise that involves the upper extremities puts added stress on the cardiovascular system, Dr. Haft said, so be cautious. THE BOTTOM LINE Clearing snow is a common trigger of heart attacks, particularly in people with no previous history of cardiovascular disease. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:52:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:52:11 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Fearing Violence, Hamilton College Cancels Speech by Professor Who Called 9/11 Victims 'Little Eichmanns' Message-ID: Fearing Violence, Hamilton College Cancels Speech by Professor Who Called 9/11 Victims 'Little Eichmanns' News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.2.2 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/02/2005020206n.htm [NYT writeup appended.] by [45]By SCOTT SMALLWOOD Citing what it called "credible threats of violence," Hamilton College has canceled a speech planned for Thursday by a professor who has called those who died in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center "little Eichmanns." A storm of controversy has centered on the Clinton, N.Y., college in recent days as many people, including families of September 11 victims, protested the planned speech by Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Shortly after the attacks, he wrote that those killed were not innocent civilians but a "technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire." He went on to compare them to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official in charge of sending millions of Jews to concentration camps. Mr. Churchill was originally invited to speak at Hamilton by the Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society, and Culture. Nancy Rabinowitz, a professor of comparative literature and the project director, had invited him to speak on American Indian issues, but after other professors and relatives of September 11 victims complained, she says, administrators asked her to change the topic. The event, retitled "Limits of Dissent," became about the controversy itself. As the calls to cancel the event increased, Joan Hinde Stewart, Hamilton's president, at first said the college would defend free speech by allowing it to go forward. But on Tuesday, she announced that holding the event, which had been expanded to a panel discussion, would be too dangerous. "We have done our best to protect what we hold most dear, the right to speak, think, and study freely," she said in a written statement. "But there is a higher responsibility that this institution carries, and that is the safety and security of our students, faculty, staff, and the community in which we live." Before the cancellation, the college had taken the unusual step of posting on its Web site hundreds of the very negative e-mail messages it had received about inviting Mr. Churchill to speak. Critics included prospective students who said they now would not attend Hamilton, parents disturbed by what they called "hate speech," and many television viewers who heard about the controversy on The O'Reilly Factor. One wrote: "I am sure the KKK and Nazi promoters would not be invited to speak at Hamilton. ... This is not a question of free speech. Mr. Churchill can say whatever he wants. ... It is a question of decency and respect. Obviously Hamilton has neither." Why this particular event blew up into such a firestorm remains unclear. Mr. Churchill is a regular speaker on issues of indigenous cultures on campuses across the country. He spoke last month at Miami University in Ohio, and about a year ago he spoke not far from Hamilton at Syracuse University. Those appearances did not generate such reaction. Ms. Rabinowitz suggested the Hamilton event may have grabbed media attention because the victims' families got involved and because the college had just recently been in the news for hiring Susan Rosenberg, a former radical leftist who spent 16 years in federal prison. Ms. Rabinowitz said she was saddened by the president's decision to cancel the event. "I don't sit in her shoes," she said. "I wasn't in the room when they were talking about it." But the decision will chill free speech, she said: "Not just that it's canceled because of the threats, but it will make you rethink other events." In Colorado, meanwhile, Gov. Bill Owens on Tuesday called for Mr. Churchill to resign from the faculty. The professor had already announced on Monday that he was stepping down as chairman of the ethnic-studies department but that he would remain as a faculty member. In addition, the University of Colorado's Board of Regents plans to hold a special meeting on Thursday to discuss Mr. Churchill. Attempts to reach Mr. Churchill were unsuccessful. Ms. Rabinowitz said that the professor was disappointed that the Hamilton event had been canceled and that he and his wife, who was also scheduled to speak, had been prepared to attend the discussion despite receiving death threats. In a written statement released on Monday, Mr. Churchill said the analysis of his comments had been "grossly inaccurate." He said he was not defending the September 11 attacks, "but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned." He also said that the best way to avoid another such attack is for American citizens to force the U.S. government to comply with the rule of law. "The lesson of Nuremburg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation," he said. "To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the 'good Germans' of the 1930s and 40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences." _________________________________________________________________ Background article from The Chronicle: * [61]Former Radical Withdraws From Hamilton College Post (1/7/2005) References 45. mailto:scott.smallwood at chronicle.com 61. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18a00701.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. ----------- College Cancels Speech by Professor Who Disparaged 9/11 Attack Victims http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/education/02hamilton.html?ei=5070&en=f2dad76faf777b82&ex=1108011600&pagewanted=print&position= New York Times, 5.2.2 By PATRICK D. HEALY CLINTON, N.Y., Feb. 1 - Over the last five days, tiny Hamilton College in upstate New York has been barraged with more than 6,000 e-mail messages full of fury, some threatening violence. Some donors have canceled pledges to an ambitious capital campaign. And prospective students have withdrawn applications or refused to enroll. Then, on Monday night, a caller to the college threatened to bring a gun to campus. Stunned and frightened, Hamilton leaders sought to end the turmoil on Tuesday by canceling the event that set it off: a planned speech by a Colorado professor who was invited to talk about American Indian activism but whose earlier essay on the Sept. 11 attacks fueled the criticism and threats. The professor, Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote disparagingly of the victims inside the twin towers and referred to them at one point as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust. The speech, scheduled for Thursday night, was canceled for security reasons, Hamilton officials said. Mr. Churchill said he and his wife had received more than 100 death threats, and other warnings of violence mentioned Hamilton officials, including the president, Joan Hinde Stewart. Yet the uproar also adds a twist to decades of battles over free speech on campus, showing the powerful emotional resonance of Sept. 11. In a telephone interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Churchill called the threats against Hamilton College "American terrorism." He urged those making the threats to "take a look in the mirror." Matt House, a freshman studying government, said, "We have controversial speakers on campus all the time, but I think everyone's so upset because it's only been three years since 9/11 and this is striking New York too close to home." "In this case, 9/11 trumps free speech, I guess," added Brian J. Farnkoff, a senior majoring in public policy. "In the end, free speech couldn't happen at Hamilton." In recent days, Gov. George E. Pataki said he was appalled at Mr. Churchill's remarks and at Hamilton for inviting him, and a Fox News host, Bill O'Reilly, repeatedly urged viewers to e-mail the college in protest. Ms. Stewart, the president, as well as the professors who invited Mr. Churchill, said they did not know about his essay before asking him to campus. She denounced his comments in December, but said rescinding the invitation would harm First Amendment principles. "His remarks about the victims of 9/11 are repellent, but our reaction to 'repellent' is how we test the right to free speech," Ms. Stewart said in an interview on Tuesday shortly before addressing the turn of events with the Hamilton faculty, who gave her a standing ovation. "We did our best to protect the principles and the values that we believe in - the right to speak, to study, to teach freely - but the point came that I simply felt that this threat was too large for us to handle," said Ms. Stewart, who was told by campus security that even additional police officers could not ensure safety. Hamilton, a campus of 1,750 students, has always had a reputation for accepting divergent voices. In November, the same program that invited this speaker - the Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture - hired Susan Rosenberg, a former member of the Weather Underground, after her release from prison on explosives charges. She later withdrew in the face of protest. On another end of the political spectrum, the scholar Elizabeth Fox-Genovese equated abortion to murder during her talk to a packed, polite campus auditorium last Thursday. According to The Spectator, the weekly student newspaper, she also said that empowering humans to choose who lives and who dies "opens the road to the Holocaust." Mr. Churchill - who had planned to give his remarks Thursday in a flak jacket with two bodyguards in tow - was originally scheduled to speak by himself, but Ms. Stewart and others added three people to the panel and changed its focus to free speech. One of those added was Mr. Churchill's wife, who is also a scholar. The Churchills were to be paid $3,500, but volunteered this week to forgo the money because of the complaints. In his original essay, Mr. Churchill wrote that the thousands killed at the World Trade Center had played a role in American sanctions on Iraq that "translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants." "If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it," he wrote. The bulk of the outraged e-mail messages began arriving last weekend, after Mr. O'Reilly of Fox had urged viewers to contact Hamilton. "If you allow this vile individual to speak you forever label yourself as the Auschwitz of American colleges," stated one e-mail message among nearly 400 that Hamilton posted on its Web site to show the reaction to Mr. Churchill. "Would he feel the same way about his own wife or child if they worked in the W.T.C. and were lost because they went to work that day," wrote the spouse of a rescue-operations captain who was killed. "He should be banned on the grounds of slandering the victims of such a brutal terrorist attack." Ms. Stewart said she alone received 6,000 messages, describing them as "ranging from angry to profane, obscene, violent," and asserted that Hamilton's actions had been mischaracterized by many of the writers, as well as by Mr. O'Reilly. Controversial speakers are nothing new to academic institutions: For years, Leonard Jeffries of the City University of New York would create a stir on campus and elsewhere with provocative remarks, and a Columbia University faculty panel is now investigating remarks by some pro-Palestinian professors that offended some Jewish students. In 2002, hundreds of Harvard students protested when a graduating senior was chosen to deliver a commencement speech entitled, "The American Jihad." The student, Zayed Yasin, who received a death threat, said his speech was a defense of the meaning of jihad as a nonviolent struggle to do right. After negotiations with a representative of Harvard's Jewish community, Mr. Yasin changed the title to "Of Faith and Citizenship," and delivered his remarks under tight security. Later in 2002, Harvard College's English Department canceled a campus reading by a poet who had once referred in verse to the Israeli Army as a "Zionist SS." and had criticized American-born Jewish settlers. As at Hamilton, professors at Harvard said they had not known about the remarks of the poet, Tom Paulin, before inviting him. As Hamilton was trying to contain the outrage on Tuesday, political and university officials in Colorado were criticizing Mr. Churchill. Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, called on him to resign from the university, while Representative Mark Udall, a Democrat, said in a statement that the professor was "factually inaccurate" about the terrorist attacks and owed the families of victims an apology. Mr. Churchill gave up his chairmanship of the ethnic studies department this week, and a spokeswoman said that the university's governing body, the nine-member Board of Regents, would meet Thursday to discuss his future. Kirk Johnson and Michelle York contributed reporting for this article. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:56:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:56:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: (Lamar) Congress Should Not Impose Cost Controls on Colleges, Senate Republican Says Message-ID: Congress Should Not Impose Cost Controls on Colleges, Senate Republican Says News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.2.2 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/02/2005020202n.htm [Hooray for Lamar. I've long thought him the best Presidential candidate whose changes of getting elected were greater than minuscule. Note esp. what he said about Larry Summers.] [45]By KELLY FIELD Washington In a far-ranging speech delivered on Tuesday, Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and former U.S. secretary of education, spoke out against price controls and political correctness on college campuses. "The idea of price controls from Washington for colleges and universities is a bad idea," Senator Alexander said at the annual meeting of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. "It's a bad idea because what has made our system of higher education superior is autonomy and choice." The association, known as Naicu, strongly opposes price controls and last year lobbied against legislation proposed by Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, a California Republican, that would have punished colleges for large tuition increases ([62]The Chronicle, October 17, 2003). Mr. McKeon withdrew that bill in March -- citing efforts by colleges to curb costs -- but later included provisions establishing institutional reporting requirements in another bill proposed as part of Congress's work to renew the Higher Education Act. Under that bill, which House Republicans are expected to reintroduce soon, colleges that increased their tuition and other costs of attendance by more than twice the rate of inflation for three consecutive years would be required to provide the government with an explanation of the jumps. In addition, the colleges would have to outline the steps that they planned to take to slow the rate of the increase. If colleges failed to comply with that plan for two years, the institutions would be placed on a government watch list and would have to provide the department with a detailed accounting of all of their costs and expenditures, which would be made public. In addition, the Education Department's inspector general would be allowed to audit those colleges "to determine the cause of the institution[s'] failure," the bill states. While Mr. Alexander supported colleges on price controls, he chastised them for their double-talk on diversity, suggesting that some colleges have become intolerant of unpopular views. As evidence, he cited recent attacks on the president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, for his comments on women in math and science. Mr. Summers was vilified by some academics for suggesting that one reason fewer women make it to the top in mathematics and science may be because of innate differences of ability from men. Colleges and universities "get a little obnoxious sometimes in their self-righteousness," said Mr. Alexander. "Institutions that preach diversity and then don't allow diverse questions to be asked are not doing a very good job of what I think colleges and universities ought to do." Meanwhile, Mr. Alexander urged colleges to combat the view "that every time we increase Pell grants, tuition increases." That theory was advanced by a recent report by the Cato Institute, a conservative think tank, that concluded that increased student aid has driven up college tuition by increasing enrollment. The report recommended phasing out federal assistance to higher education over a 12-year period. Finally, Mr. Alexander vowed to work with his colleagues to reduce delays in processing visa applications for foreign students and scholars. "We're going do our best in Congress over the next year," he said, "to try to put a focus on whatever the federal government can do to make it easier for foreign students and researchers to come here." _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [63]Harvard's President Wonders Aloud About Women in Science and Math (1/28/2005) * [64]Report Blames Federal Student Aid for Rising Tuition and Urges Elimination of Aid Programs (1/26/2005) * [65]Public Colleges See a 10% Rise in Tuition for 2004-5 (10/29/2004) * [66]College Groups Displeased With Higher-Education Legislation (6/11/2004) * [67]Plan to Punish Big Increases in Tuition Is Dropped (3/12/2004) * [68]A House Divided Over Tuition-Control Bill (1/23/2004) * [69]High Stakes on Tuition: Colleges Must Control It or Face Stiff Penalties, Key Congressman Says (5/2/2003) References 45. mailto:Kelly.Field at chronicle.com 63. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i21/21a01201.htm 64. http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/01/2005012602n.htm 65. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i10/10a00101.htm 66. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i40/40a01901.htm 67. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i27/27a00101.htm 68. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i20/20a02702.htm 69. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i34/34a02901.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:57:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:57:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Nature: Profile: Margaret Atwood Message-ID: Profile: Margaret Atwood http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050131/pf/nbt0205-163_pf.html Nature Biotechnology Published online: 31 January 2005; | doi:10.1038/nbt0205-163 Profile: Margaret Atwood Sabine Lou?t Dublin Imagine a world in which biotech could satiate every human desire and correct every human imperfection. Margaret Atwood's latest novel paints a picture and it's not all that rosy. "It is not biotech that's dangerous," claims Margaret Atwood, her sparkly blue eyes betraying the intensity of her conviction. "It is people's fears and desires." Her latest book, Oryx and Crake, paints a grim picture of the future in which a genetically engineered virus has devastated the world, leaving behind a nightmarish wasteland where insects proliferate and chimeric animals run amok. Atwood, a Canadian author with more than 30 books of fiction, short stories, poetry and literary critiques to her credit, has created a chilling vision. Even the precatastrophic world in Oryx and Crake is bleak--fixated on physical perfection and longevity, with economic and intellectual disparities reminiscent of our own. Biotech is the tool of the elite, who live in tightly protected compounds. Everyone else remains on the outside. Despite the negative tone of her book, Atwood stresses she is not antibiotech. "Biotech is not dangerous," [it is] neutral," she says. Only its uses "can be evil," she adds, especially once business interests kick in. By writing the book--part of a long dystopian tradition in fiction, including Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984--Atwood wants to warn her readers by presenting "a blueprint of what you don't want to happen." According to John Durant, professor of public understanding of science at Imperial College, London, similar to other popular media, Atwood's book provides "a thermometer...showing what's going on in public opinion." At the same time, he adds, it shapes and reinforces the public's opinion about biotech. Indeed, Atwood hopes her readers "may at least become aware of the problems facing them" in a society that has come to rely heavily on biotech and that "they may then give some thought to what they are going to do about those kinds of problems." "It is not biotech that's dangerous," claims Margaret Atwood, "It is people's fears and desires." One of the key themes of the novel is the corrupting influence of commerce on science. When business interests dominate "you enter a skewed universe where science can no longer operate as science," Atwood says. The book takes this to extremes. For example, biotech company HelthWyzer puts "hostile bioforms" into vitamin pills while at the same time marketing antidotes. "The best diseases, from a business point of view," the author writes with irony, "would be those that cause a lingering illness." Some see Atwood's book as a bellwether for public concerns about the impact of biotech on society. According to Evelyn Fox Keller, professor of history and philosophy of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, many of these fears result from the tendency of scientists to hype the importance of genes in determining who we are. "If the public has been persuaded that this is the case, no wonder they are alarmed." It does not matter whether that anxiety is misplaced. Atwood grew up among biologists; the "boys at the lab" mentioned in the novel's acknowledgments are the students and postdocs who worked with her father at a forest-insect research station in Northern Quebec. What's more, her brother, Harold, is a professor of physiology and zoology at the University of Toronto. The genesis of Oryx and Crake comes from her lifelong observance of, and interest, in science. Several of the ideas in the book are drawn directly from her childhood in Canada and later stays in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. During her time in Australia, for example, she became acquainted with the ecological havoc wrought by colonial introduction of nonindigenous species, such as pigs. In Oryx and Crake, Australian pigs translate into transgenic oddities called 'pigoons'--animals engineered to provide transplant organs, rather like those that have come from Cambridge, UK-based biotech company Immutran, now part of Novartis in Basel. These pigoons run wild after escaping the highly secluded laboratories where they were created. They have not only humanized organs but also human neocortex tissue, enabling them to compete with wild relatives and with humans in the struggle for survival following the pandemic. According to Atwood, when business interests dominate "you enter a skewed universe where science can no longer operate as science." When pressed for present-day concerns in science ethics that prompted her book, Atwood says she feels particularly strongly about the loss of independence of scientists, citing the suppression of negative data by corporate sponsors. "If you get results that are contrary to what you want to market, the temptation to suppress those results is very strong," she says. Such competing interests are becoming increasingly common as governments across the world encourage more and more scientists to become involved in commercial enterprises. Atwood describes her book as speculative, rather than science, fiction. Joan Leach, editor of the academic journal Social Epistemology and a lecturer in science communication at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Australia, agrees. "It's a kind of cultural critique," she explains. How far should society allow biotech to be exploited on the basis of commercial imperatives? And what are the moral and ethical responsibilities to limit the application of biotech? In her book, Atwood describes the 'ChickieNob,' a type of genetically enhanced chicken with a dozen wings on two legs. With such creations, the book's hero wonders "has [some line] been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?" The lack of oversight for biotech applications is a key problem for biotech today, according to Atwood. She believes an independent watchdog is needed to provide guidance. It would be somewhat like a "restaurant reviewer," she says, forcing scientists to "tell the truth" and rejecting biotech applications that might be ethically dubious or morally distasteful. She also suggests that new legislation should be introduced to protect whistleblowers who wish to come forward and reveal corruption or conflicts in corporate-sponsored research. Biotechnology "is the biggest toy box in the world that we've now opened," Atwood says. The question is should those toys come with more health warnings? From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 21:58:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:58:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Reuters: Half of Bankruptcies in U.S. Due to Medical Bills Message-ID: Half of Bankruptcies in U.S. Due to Medical Bills http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=571&u=/nm/20050202/hl_nm/healt h_bankruptcy_dc&printer=1 Wed Feb 2, 4:28 AM ET [Thanks to James Hughes for this.] By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Half of all U.S. bankruptcies are caused by soaring medical bills and most people sent into debt by illness are middle-class workers with health insurance, researchers said on Wednesday. The study, published in the journal Health Affairs, estimated that medical bankruptcies affect about 2 million Americans every year, if both debtors and their dependents, including about 700,000 children, are counted. "Our study is frightening. Unless you're Bill Gates (news - web sites) you're just one serious illness away from bankruptcy," said Dr. David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (news - web sites) who led the study. "Most of the medically bankrupt were average Americans who happened to get sick. Health insurance offered little protection." The researchers got the permission of bankruptcy judges in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Texas to survey 931 people who filed for bankruptcy. "About half cited medical causes, which indicates that 1.9 to 2.2 million Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical bankruptcy," they wrote. "Among those whose illnesses led to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness." The average bankrupt person surveyed had spent $13,460 on co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services if they had private insurance. People with no insurance spent an average of $10,893 for such out-of-pocket expenses. "Even middle-class insured families often fall prey to financial catastrophe when sick," the researchers wrote. Bankruptcy specialists said the numbers seemed sound. "From 1982 to 1989, I reviewed every bankruptcy petition filed in South Carolina, and during that period I came to the conclusion that there were two major causes of bankruptcy: medical bills and divorce," said George Cauthen, a lawyer at Columbia-based law firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLP. "Each accounted, roughly, for about a third of all individual filings in South Carolina." He said fewer than 1 percent of all bankruptcy filings were due to credit card debt. "That truly is a myth," Cauthen said in a telephone interview. Cauthen said he was not surprised to hear that so many of the bankrupt people in the study were middle-class. "Usually people who have something to protect file bankruptcy," he said. "The truly indigent -- people that we see on the street -- there is no relief that we can give them." Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a Harvard associate professor and physician who advocates for universal health coverage, said the study supported demands for health reform. "Covering the uninsured isn't enough. We must also upgrade and guarantee continuous coverage for those who have insurance," Woolhandler said in a statement. She said many employers and politicians were pressing for what she called "stripped-down plans so riddled with co-payments, deductibles and exclusions that serious illness leads straight to bankruptcy." From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:00:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:00:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Geology Course Gives Students a Down-to-Earth Understanding of Sherlock Holmes's Worke Message-ID: Geology Course Gives Students a Down-to-Earth Understanding of Sherlock Holmes's Worke The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.1.7 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18a02202.htm SYLLABUS By DANIEL ENGBER In the Sherlock Holmes tale A Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson jots down a list of Holmes's various areas of expertise. The sixth item on the list: "knowledge of geology -- practical, but limited." Students at Smith College who take Lawrence D. Meinert's class on the fictional detective, "Sherlock Holmes and the Scientific Method," can add some geology to their own lists of proficiencies. Mr. Meinert, a geologist specializing in the detection of gold deposits, hopes that his first-year seminar can serve as both a writing workshop and an introductory science course. "This is my subversive effort to get everyone to think about scientific reasoning," he explains. "When a student says, 'You tricked us. I learned some science,' that obviously makes me quite thrilled." As part of the course, students read a number of Sherlock Holmes stories and discuss how the detective uses the scientific method to solve mysteries. By making observations, gathering evidence, and then proposing a testable hypothesis, "Sherlock uses scientific reasoning in a romantic and entertaining fashion," says Mr. Meinert. Some stories, like "The Blue Carbuncle," involve minerals or gems as central plot elements. The Hound of the Baskervilles takes place on the moors, amid a variety of interesting geological features. In one writing exercise, students develop what Mr. Meinert calls "a geologic augmentation" of that story, taking its central plot and tying in the geology of the setting. Other exercises build toward a final paper, for which members of the class devise their own mysteries starring Sherlock Holmes. The story must illustrate the use of the scientific method to solve a mystery, and must incorporate a geologic phenomenon as a central plot element. Mr. Meinert asks each student to read his or her assignment out loud, which "has an amazing effect," he says. "The effect of my grading, or of their internal motivation, doesn't hold a candle to the mortification of reading your own work aloud in front of your peers." Reading list: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volumes I and II, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Bantam Classics, 1986); Understanding Earth, by Frank Press, Raymond Siever, John Grotzinger, and Tom Jordan (W.H. Freeman & Company, 2003). Assignments: In addition to writing an original Holmes story, each student writes a short paper on dinosaurs. They go on several field trips throughout the semester, including a behind-the-scenes tour of a jewelry store and visits to dinosaur footprints, a local cemetery, and a quarry. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:01:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:01:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Don Quixote at 400: Still Conquering Hearts Message-ID: Don Quixote at 400: Still Conquering Hearts The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.1.7 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18b01101.htm By ILAN STAVANS The Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance is turning 400. By some accounts, the first part of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes's masterpiece, was available in Valladolid by Christmas Eve 1604, although Madrid didn't get copies until January 1605. Thus came to life the "ingenious gentleman" who, ill equipped with antiquated armor "stained with rust and covered with mildew," with an improvised helmet, atop an ancient nag "with more cracks than his master's pate," went out into a decaying world where there were plenty of "evils to undo, wrongs to right, injustices to correct, abuses to ameliorate, and offenses to rectify." Cervantes catches a glimpse of the down-and-out hidalgo at around 50, the prime of one's life by today's standards but a synonym of decrepitude during what was considered Spain's "Golden Age," an appellation Cervantes complicates. The protagonist, we are told, is weathered, his flesh scrawny, and his face gaunt. We know nothing of his childhood and adolescence and only a modicum about his affairs, including that too little sleep and too many chivalry novels have addled his brain. Almost 1,000 pages later, Don Quixote (or Alonso Quixada or Quexada, some names Cervantes gives to the hidalgo) lies on his deathbed. Finally, well into the second book, issued in 1615, Don Quixote dies -- but only after an impostor, Alonso Fern?ndez de Avellaneda, impatient that Cervantes kept procrastinating, brought out an unofficial second part that pushed the author to complete his work. Cervantes may also have been sensing that his own demise, which came in April 1616, was close. About to die the exemplary death, Don Quixote is nevertheless consumed by the grief of countless defeats and frustrated in his impossible mission to see his beloved Dulcinea of Toboso. Is he wiser? Disenchanted? Does he die of melancholia? The limits of age? "Don Quixote's end," we are told, "came after he had received all the sacraments and had execrated books of chivalry with many effective words. The scribe happened to be present, and he said he had never read in any book of chivalry of a knight errant dying in his bed in so tranquil and Christian a manner as Don Quixote, who, surrounded by the sympathy and tears of those present, gave up the ghost, I mean to say, he died." Don Quixote might be dead, but his ever-ambiguous ghost lives on. His admirers -- and, in unequal measure, detractors -- are legion. Operas, musicals, theatrical and film adaptations, as well as fictional recreations keep piling up: Laurence Sterne was inspired by Don Quixote's misadventures when writing Tristram Shandy; Gustave Flaubert paid homage to him in Madame Bovary, as did Fyodor Dostoyevsky in The Idiot. Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Gimpel the Fool" can be read as a reimagining of the knight's simplicity. And so on. Then there are the multilayered interpretations of Don Quixote's pursuit. Anybody that is somebody has put forth an opinion, from Miguel de Unamuno, Jos? Ortega y Gasset, Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo, and Am?rico Castro, to name a handful of Iberians first, to Samuel Johnson, Denis Diderot, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Lionel Trilling, and Vladimir Nabokov. Over the years, Don Quixote has been a template of the times: The 18th century believed the knight to be a lunatic, lost to reason; the Victorians approached him as a romantic dreamer, trapped, just like artists and prophets, in his own fantasy; the modernists applauded his quest for an inner language; the postmodernists adore his dislocated identity. Psychiatrists have seen him as a case study in schizophrenia. Communists have turned him into a victim of market forces. Intellectual historians have portrayed him as a portent of Spain's decline into intellectual obscurantism. Some scholars call Don Quixote the first modern novel, a bildungsroman that traces the arch of its protagonist's life and the inner transformation to which it gives room. In the spirit of Erasmus of Rotterdam's In Praise of Folly, parody reinforces the divide between the life of the mind and the strictures of society. Others stress the novel's irony, the multiple voices and blurring of fiction and reality -- the latter an aspect that Gabriel García M?rquez would pay tribute to in One Hundred Years of Solitude. Don Quixote is one of the first characters to comment on his own readers ("for me alone was Don Quixote born," Cervantes writes in the second book, in response to the publication of the sham version); he is caught at the turning point of the Enlightenment, between the secular and the religious, reason and belief. Detractors argue that Cervantes is a careless stylist and a clumsy plot-builder, pointing out the fractured nature of the novel, the endless repetitions. No doubt all that would have come as a surprise to Cervantes himself, a tax collector with a tarnished reputation, a soldier whose old battleground glories and often pathetic dreams of literary success kept him alive. He envied Lope de Vega, the dramaturge of 1,000 comedias, and was looked down upon by the snobbish literary figures of his day. In short, Cervantes was an outcast. Indeed, in spite of all the hoopla, he remains one in Spain, perhaps because Spaniards today still don't know what to make of him. In Madrid the house of de Vega has been turned into a museum; the one nearby where Cervantes wrote has been sold time and again, commemorated by a miserable plaque. One wonders: Would Don Quixote pass the test and be published in New York today? I frankly doubt it. It would be deemed what editors call "a trouble manuscript": too long, the story line problematic, the plot stuffed with too many adventures that do too little to advance the narrative and too many characters whose fate the reader gets attached to but who suddenly disappear. And that awkward conceit of a character finding a book about himself! The style! Those careless sentences that twist and turn! The first part of Cervantes's manuscript was sent (possibly under the title of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha) to the Counsel of Castilla for permission to print it. It then went to the Inquisitorial censors for approval. Around August 1604, Cervantes tried in vain to enlist a celebrity to compose a poem eulogizing his protagonist, as it was the custom of the time to include such praise at the outset of a novel. He failed, his narrative considered too lowbrow, and composed his own poems. For all that, the first part of the novel was successful early on. The initial printing of some 1,800 copies was quickly insufficient, and new editions were issued (including one in English in 1612). By the time the second part was released in 1615, Don Quixote was a best seller. The parodic quality of the novel, the way it pokes fun at erudition and paints love as the only redemption for the heart, enchanted readers. As did Cervantes's digressions on his country's delusions of grandeur. In my personal library, I have some 80 different versions, including ones produced for children, as well as translations into Yiddish, Korean, Urdu, and part of the novel that I translated into Spanglish. I guess my collection is proof of my passion. I can't think of a book that better illustrates the tension between private and public life, one that speaks louder to the power of the imagination in such an ingenious, unsettling fashion. If ever I wanted to live my life like a literary character, it would be as Cervantes's sublime creation. As the forerunner of antiheroes and superheroes, Don Quixote, with his flawed aspirations, may not subdue giants or imaginary enemies like the Knight of the Wood, but he continues to conquer hearts, precisely because he is so ridiculous, inhabiting a universe of his own concoction. He is the ultimate symbol of freedom, a self-made man championing his beliefs against all odds. His is also a story about reaching beyond one's own confinements, a lesson on how to turn poverty and the imagination into assets, and a romance that reaches beyond class and faith. Some authors are so influential that their names have been turned into adjectives: Dantean, Proustian, Hemingway-esque. But how many literary characters have undergone a similar fate? "Quixotic," "quixotism," and "quixotry," according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are all related to "Quixote," "an enthusiastic visionary person like Don Quixote, inspired by lofty and chivalrous but false or unrealizable ideals." To be an underdog, to be a fool content with one's delusions, is that what modernity is about? Or is it the impulse to pursue those delusions into action? Undoubtedly we will continue asking ourselves those questions as the enthusiastic visionary starts his fifth century, still as vibrant and mischievous, as resourceful and controversial as ever. Ilan Stavans is a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College. His next book, The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature, will be published this month. Dictionary Days: A Defining Passion will be published by Graywolf Press in April. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:03:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:03:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Anthropologists, Few in Number, Revisit a 1919 Debate Message-ID: Anthropologists, Few in Number, Revisit a 1919 Debate The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.1.7 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18a02901.htm By DAVID GLENN Atlanta At a sparsely attended annual convention here last month, members of the American Anthropological Association took steps to right an 85-year-old wrong done to a pioneer in the field and a founder of the association. In a unanimous (but nonbinding) vote, scholars voted to rescind the organization's 1919 censure of Franz Boas. The censure occurred in the aftermath of World War I, when Boas angered many of his peers by making sharp-tongued criticisms of anthropologists who had covertly served as wartime U.S. spies in Latin America. Boas was then a professor at Columbia University and probably the country's best-known scholarly anthropologist. He had been among the association's founders, in 1902. In late 1919, Boas published a letter in The Nation in which he announced that he had learned that "a number of men who follow science as their profession, men whom I refuse to designate any longer as scientists, have prostituted science by using it as a cover for their activities as spies." Boas's letter did not name names, but among the small circle of American anthropologists it was clear that he was referring to an espionage ring organized in 1917 by Sylvanus G. Morley, a leading scholar of the Maya who was then affiliated with Harvard University's Peabody Museum. The ring's primary task was to search for reputed German submarine bases in Mexico and Central America. Two weeks later, the association's governing council voted, 20 to 10, to censure Boas, declaring his letter un-American. Now the association would like to make posthumous amends. Scholars at December's conference approved a resolution that removes the censure and affirms that it is "immoral for scientists to use their professional identity as cover for governmental spying activities." "This is an issue that has to be revived from generation to generation," said Leni M. Silverstein, one of the resolution's authors, in a telephone interview. Ms. Silverstein, a visiting scholar at Northwestern University, pointed out that similar debates arose during the Vietnam War and are likely to arise again in relation to the conflicts in Iraq and Central Asia. Not everyone agrees with the recision. In a letter that will appear in a forthcoming issue of Anthropology News, David L. Browman, a professor of archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that Boas acted dishonorably in 1919. Among other things, Mr. Browman writes, Boas appears to have manipulated the espionage debate in an effort to win money and resources from the National Research Council for his department at Columbia. The business meeting at the convention lacked a quorum, so the vote to renounce the censure was only advisory. It is likely that the association's executive board will put the question to the entire membership in a mail ballot next year. The resolution is expected to win by a comfortable margin. Southern Exposure The anthropology conference, which had originally been scheduled for San Francisco in mid-November, drew only a fraction of its usual attendance. Less than four weeks before the conference was to have been held, the organization voted to relocate and reschedule the meeting because of a labor dispute at San Francisco's major hotels. The decision was controversial. Some scholars have argued that the association should have gone ahead with the San Francisco meeting, and others have said that the association could have shown more solidarity with the San Francisco hotel workers by completely breaking its contract with the Hilton Hotels Corporation. (The move to Atlanta was the result of a complex negotiation with Hilton, in which the association avoided any financial penalties.) Many people at the conference, however, said the move to Atlanta was the least bad option under the circumstances. More than 6,000 people had been expected to attend the San Francisco meeting, but fewer than 800 were on hand in Atlanta. The association's president, Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, said that low attendance was expected to cost the organization between $385,000 and $500,000. In the original San Francisco program, 25 panels had been announced for Friday afternoon at 1:45 -- the heart of the conference schedule. In Atlanta at that time, only six panels actually took place, with a combined audience of fewer than 100 people. At the meeting, the association's executive board unanimously approved a resolution requiring that, beginning in 2010, all association conferences must be held in unionized hotels. That resolution, too, will probably be brought to the entire membership in a mail ballot. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:05:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:05:04 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Slate: You Must Remember This: Are there memory-enhancement products that work? Message-ID: You Must Remember This: Are there memory-enhancement products that work? http://slate.msn.com/id/2111758/ By Sue Halpern Posted Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2005, at 5:34 AM PT Tell someone you've been spending your days checking out memory-enhancement products and chances are they'll say something like "That's interesting"-long pause-"What did you say you were working on?" The prospect of memory loss makes people so uncomfortable they invariably make stupid jokes about it, then chuckle as if those jokes were actually funny. "Sorry, ha ha, I'm having a senior moment." "Oops, it must be early onset Alzheimer's!" Statistically speaking, unless you live till about 90, the chances of getting Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia is fairly low. Still, the brain gets less agile as we age, and for many people mental tasks that once seemed mindless, like remembering names and recalling words, become noticeably more difficult. Even minor memory lapses can generate big anxieties. So, the possibility that some thing-a vitamin, a supplement, a set of cognitive exercises, a biofeedback machine-will make us sharper, more focused, smarter, less forgetful, is desperately appealing. At least it is for me as I progress farther into my 40s, misplacing my keys and swearing I've never had conversations that others claim to recall with perfect clarity. And what does the word "synecdoche" mean anyway? I used to know. There are currently numerous products that promise stunning gains in IQ and remarkable increases in memory and the number will only increase as the population ages. But do any of them actually work? While my first inclination was to focus on over-the-counter pharmaceuticals like periwinkle extract and colloidal gold because they required no investment of time or mental effort, a quick survey of a defunct FDA Web site (resurrected on The Memory Hole) detailing the harm that had befallen people who blindly swallowed supplements assuming that because they were "natural" they were safe, as well as a recent article in the Lancet demonstrating that no supplement has yet proved to enhance memory, convinced me to stay away from things I'd have to put in my mouth. Instead, I decided to stick with products that might "grow my brain" by laying down additional neural pathways (which typically happens when you learn something new), and those that claimed they would change my brain-wave patterns, making my brain more receptive to remembering. These included compact disc recordings of certain kinds of engineered sounds intended to unite left- and right-brain hemispheres; optical stimulation machines that shoot a Morse code of white light at the eyelids; software-based mental exercise gyms; and books outlining memory programs. I started with 10 products-chosen because I had read about them in best-selling books about memory loss or on those books' Web sites, or that I had found through internet searches-jettisoned three(two because they were far too complicated and the third because it was just too dopey), and stuck with eight, which I used over a period of two months. One problem, though, was finding a reasonable research methodology. As a lone individual, I could not conduct random, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials. And memory, in any case, is elusive-hard to get a bead on, let alone to measure. That you remember to pick up the dry cleaning on Monday but fail to come home with a quart of milk on Tuesday says little about the condition of your memory. (The neurologist's rule of thumb: Don't worry if you misplace the car keys, worry if you don't know what the keys are for.) Still, I needed a way, however crude, of seeing if my memory was getting sharper, so I signed up for an Internet-based memory testing site called MemCheck ($69.95 per year; $9.95 per month). Intended primarily for people with serious concerns about memory loss, such as Alzheimer's or something called Mild Cognitive Impairment, MemCheck offers subscribers two mental screening options. The first is an extensive battery of tests that examines psychomotor processing speed, executive function (defined on the site as planning, organization, and mental quickness), and short-term memory; it takes about half an hour to complete. The second, MemWatch, is an abridged version of the first. It tests short-term memory and processing speed in less than 10 minutes. After testing myself with MemCheck and finding out that my executive functioning was excellent and my short-term memory was just OK, I took the MemWatch test, which gave me a baseline score against which I could compare my results in subsequent testings, after using the various memory-enhancing programs and products. I assumed, much like a weakling entering a gym to lift weights in order to build muscle, that if any of these products worked as advertised, I'd be adding axons and dendrites to my brain that would create neural pathways that would necessarily raise my score. And the fact is, over two months, my score did go up, a full 40 points. Whether this gain is actually meaningful in a practical sort of way is not precisely relevant. What is relevant is that in mid-September I was an 85 and by mid-November I was, consistently, a 126. Something happened. It's possible that I simply got better at taking the test. It's also possible that I got better at taking the test because new neural pathways were laid down each time I took it. On the other hand, maybe my improvement was a direct result of the neural pathways that had been stimulated by one or more of the products I was using. Overall, I felt sharper, more articulate, less forgetful, quicker. I could go to the supermarket without a written list and bring home the 17 items I'd set out to buy (due to a new strategy I'd learned). For the first time in years I beat my husband at pingpong (quicker reflexes). I returned my library books on time (because I could actually recall when they were due). True, I forgot to feed the dog one morning, but these things happen. Though I would like to point to a single product to account for these changes, I can't. They complemented each other. Some taught strategy, some toned reflexes, some claimed to be integrating my brain in subliminal ways. Some were a bust. Some were fun. A couple really seemed to help. I created a rating system with four components, each of which I graded on a scale of -10 to +10: Efficacy (did the product have an effect on my MemWatch score, 0 being "not at all," 5 being "I once saw my score go up after using it" and 10 being "I saw my score go up pretty consistently"); Difficulty (how hard was the program to operate and implement, both in terms of setting it up and sticking to it, 0 being "easy" and -10 being "oy"); Irritation (how annoying was it to use, -10 being extremely and 0 being not); and Fun (was the product fun to use, 0 being "zero" and 10 being "bring it on"). I then separated the products into four categories-Aural; Books; Software; and Optical. My top pick in each category is listed first. AURAL Rembrance CD ($19.95). Rembrance is a CD of electronic music composed by J.S. Epperson using "hemi-sync" "brain-entrainment" technology developed in the 1950s by a sound engineer named Robert Monroe. By sending sounds of one frequency to the right ear and sounds of another frequency to the left ear, a third sound is apparently made by the brain itself as integrates both left and right hemispheres, trying to make sense of the information it's receiving. The name given to this third sound is binaural beat. According to Monroe and his disciples, the binaural beat can be manipulated to induce or "entrain" the brain into a variety of different states, from deep relaxation to high alertness. This particular CD is intended to lead the brain into a more focused state, where it is most receptive to remembering. While it didn't do that for me, its pleasant monotony was effective in shutting out distractions. Its creators say that it works best when listened to through headphones. Scores: Efficacy=2; Difficulty=0; Irritation=-1; Fun=4. Overall score=+5. Brain Enhancement CD (Transparent Corporation, $19.95). This is another method of using sound to trigger particular brainwave patterns that correspond to more focused and attentive states that are "typically exhibited by incredibly intelligent, overachieving individuals." The program uses various white and off-white noises like traffic and repetitious industrial machinery, neither of which is exactly pleasing to the ear. One time (out of many) I popped this in the CD drive of my computer before taking the MemWatch test and was surprised to see my score climb by five points. I took the test again and the increase held. Still, I moved to Vermont to get away from freeways and factories. At least Brain Enhancement emits no pollution. Efficacy=6; Difficulty=0; Irritation=-2; Fun=1. Overall score=+5 BOOKS The Memory Pack by Andi Bell (Carlton Books, $29.95). Andi Bell won the 1998 World Memory Championships by memorizing, among other things, the order of an entire deck of cards in 34.03 seconds. He's got that kind of mind and so, he claims, can you-if you practice the many tricks he shares in the cheesy picture book that comes in the Memory Pack box. Also included are a bean bag imprinted with an image of a bee-he suggests you leave it in a conspicuous place if there's something in particular you need to remember and when you see the beanbag it will jog your brain and make you think of that thing-a set of cards labeled with people's faces and names to help teach name recognition; and a memory board game, the rules of which I'm still trying to learn. Bell's idiosyncratic method for remembering long sequences of numbers by assigning images to every number up to 99 (zero is a hoop; nine is a cat; and 99 is Einstein, because the element Einsteinium has the atomic number 99) and so on, all of which must be memorized, requires more work than anyone but a competitive memorizer like Bell would be willing to take on. Still, he does offer a number of practical, how-to methods for remembering shopping lists and names and appointments, and they work. Efficacy=8; Difficulty=-5; Irritation=-2; Fun=5. Overall score=+6. The Einstein Factor by Win Wenger and Richard Poe (Audio Version, $89.95; paperback version, $15). I was suckered into buying this audio book by its claims that I'd become more focused, remember more, and raise my IQ score about 40 points-all while shuttling my daughter to and from school. While none of that happened (except the driving), I came to appreciate the authors' belief that each of us has a genius buried in our unconscious waiting to emerge through a kind of lucid dreaming (called "image streaming") as a way of recovering memories to spark creativity. (Thus the "portable memory bank" included with The Einstein Factor is nothing more than a blank notebook.) But memories, or stored remnants of the past, are not the same as memory, the physiological function that must precede it. So, while the book encouraged me to listen to the little voice within, it did nothing to boost my MemWatch score or keep me from leaving the Einstein Factor in the car when I meant to bring it into the house. Efficacy=0, Difficulty=0, Irritation=0; Fun=3. Overall score=+3. SOFTWARE My Brain Trainer (The site currently offers a free two-week trial membership but usually charges a nominal fee). If My Brain Trainer, which is billed as "the world's first virtual mental gymnasium" were a real gym, it would have plush towels and state-of-the art elliptical machines. Instead, it has appealing graphics and 14 challenging exercises that stretch different parts of your mind. Want to work on your psychomotor reflexes? How about improving your short-term memory or hand-eye coordination? If you're like me, you'll find yourself doing some exercises because you are good at them, and others because you think you should be better at them, just like at the real gym. I never managed to improve my psychomotor skills, but I progressed steadily on a short-term memory test that required me to remember random strings of letters until I was consistently doing much better than almost everyone else. I knew this because MBT allows each user to measure herself against herself, her age group, all users, and the top performer. It's competitive; it's addictive; and, because it trains some of the same skills as MemWatch tests, it's effective in raising MemWatch scores. Think of it as Pilates for the mind, but more fun. Efficacy=8; Annoyance=0; Difficulty=0; Fun=5. Overall score=+13 Brain Builder ($7.95 month, $49.45 year). Brain Builder started as a stand-alone piece of software, and for those who want something portable, Brain Builder 3.0 ($49.95) is still available. The online version, however, is more powerful because it has an interactive component that allows users to keep track of their progress, a built-in personal trainer, an online diary function, and a random number generator that ensures no exercise is like another. The main premise behind Brain Builder is that memory will improve as one's ability to increase one's sequential processing-remembering longer and longer lists of numbers and letters-improves. As its creators write: "Better sequential processing enables us to take in more of what there is to see and hear." Processing speed, its creators say, is also crucial to a fit working memory, so Brain Builder measures both how much you remember and how fast you can recall it. Oddly, Brain Builder's strength is also its weakness-it is relentless, a boot camp for brains, quick to flash "penalty" when you've made a mistake, and replete with anxiety-producing music meant as "encouragement" that makes you so stressed out, you don't remember why you thought this was a good idea in the first place. Efficacy=8;Difficulty=0;Irritation=-3; Fun=3. Overall score=+8 OPTICAL STIMULATION Mind Spa (A/V Stim Company, $149). Mind Spa is a little machine with big ambitions: to put its user into various brain states (meditative, creative, receptive, attentive) using a combination of flashing white lights delivered through a pair of specially designed glasses and pulsing sounds that come from headphones, both of which are attached to an easy-to-operate, cassette-sized unit. There are 12 programs (with more available on the A/V Stim Web site), each keyed to a different brainwave speed-from the quiet alphas of No. 3 to the high betas of No. 9. The idea here, as with simple aural brain entrainment, is that the sound and light will, over time, encourage new pathways in the brain. (Mind Spa's creator, psychologist Dr. Ruth Olmstead, has recently published research that seems to show that this kind of stimulation is effective in controlling ADD.) While it feels silly to sit at one's desk listening to weird throbbing sounds while wearing goofy glass light-emitting glasses, it can be surprisingly relaxing. I often fell asleep-then woke up and saw my MemWatch score inch up. One caveat: Optical stimulation machines have been known to induce seizures in people with epilepsy and those with undiagnosed seizure disorders. Efficacy= 8; Irritation=0; Difficulty=0; Fun=4. Overall score=+12 Shortly after I concluded my "experiment," I spent some time with real scientists who study the aging brain. I told them about my "work," and how my MemWatch scores kept on going up. They were skeptical. Not skeptical that I was doing better-this they attributed to the fact that my test-taking skills were improving-but skeptical that memory decline could be staved off by increasing the number of random letters one can recall, listening to hemi-syncing music, or slipping on light-emitting glasses. But one of them, a neuropsychologist who specializes in looking at why people who are mentally and physically engaged throughout their lives seem to resist dementia most successfully, was less dismissive. "Look," he said, "We don't really know. Why not do these things-they can't hurt." Sue Halpern is the author of the new novel The Book of Hard Things, as well as two previous books of nonfiction. She lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:05:56 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:05:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Longing to Lose, at a Great Cost Message-ID: Longing to Lose, at a Great Cost New York Times, 5.1.4 By GINA KOLATA How desperate are overweight people to shed their extra pounds? Desperate enough that they are willing to risk death. And so desperate that they value losing weight as much as severely depressed patients value relief from their illness, a new survey has found. The survey, by Dr. Christina C. Wee, an internist at Harvard Medical School and her colleagues, involved 366 patients who were part of a large medical practice based at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. A third of the participants were overweight and 27 percent were obese. The researchers asked people to imagine a treatment that would guarantee them an effortless weight loss of varying amounts. For each amount, they were asked, would they be willing to accept a risk of death to achieve it? If so, how much of a risk of death? The fatter the person, the more he or she would risk death to lose weight. And the more weight the patient imagined he could lose, the greater the risk he would take to achieve it. Nineteen percent of overweight and 33 percent of obese people would risk death for even a modest 10 percent weight loss. In contrast, 4 percent of normal weight people would risk death to lose 10 percent of their weight. Many of the overweight and obese participants also said they would give up some of their remaining years of life if they could live those years weighing slightly less. Thirty-one percent of obese patients and 8.3 percent of overweight patients said they would trade up to 5 percent of their remaining lives to be 10 percent thinner. The survey was published in the December issue of The Journal of General Internal Medicine. Dr. Wee said doctors did not always appreciate how desperately many people longed to be thin. She said she was taken aback by the findings because patients in the study also reported that it would take a lot more than a 10 percent weight loss for them to reach their dream weights. Yet it seemed that almost any weight loss, even 10 percent, was something they longed for. "That was very surprising to me," Dr. Wee said in a telephone interview. In fact, obesity researchers say, it takes only a modest weight loss - 5 to 10 percent - to improve health. Dr. Wee said she advised patients to make small changes that they could stick to. Although she is not overweight, she said she recently switched from regular sodas to diet ones and effortlessly lost five pounds. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/health/04fatb.html From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:06:37 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:06:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Transhumanism: 2000 Years in the Making Message-ID: Transhumanism: 2000 Years in the Making http://www.thecbc.org/redesigned/research_display.php?id=189 by David Pauls, CBC board of directors Examination of the underlying philosophy to remake the human person exhibits qualities that are as old as the Greeks. Disdain for the body, the quest for hidden knowledgce, and the goal to lead others to a higher plane of existence all smack of ancient Gnosticism, an idea that goes back nearly two millennia. Students of New Testament history will recognize Gnosticism as an early opponent of the newfound church, fought by the early Church Fathers into the second and third century. The Gnostic impulse is first characterized by its disdain for the physical body and the general restraints of time and place. Since the temporal was thought to be evil and unredeemed, the Gnostics developed a profound dualistic schism between the body and the mind, which was spiritual and potentially immortal. The body, being bad, was eschewed while the mind was exalted. This led to two poles of behavior regarding the physical. One pole was asceticism with its denial of creature comfort. Material pleasure and comfort was disdained due to the undeserving nature of the body. The other pole was radical libertinism, with an anything goes attitude regarding the attainment of physical pleasure. Why worry about the body and behavior if it was degenerate anyway? The second primary distinction regards redemption via attainment of secret knowledge, or gnosis. This knowledge was potentially available to only a few gifted select people who were endowed with the desire and capacity to attain and use this hidden wisdom. It was only through careful, diligent study that release from the bonds of material existence. Once attained, a person would be able to transcend the bounds of time, nature and history, reaching a plane of spiritual existence. With the Transhumanist movement, one sees the Gnostic strain reasserting itself in the quest to transcend the degenerate body. The body is held in disdain. Advocates for enhancement technology exhibit disdain for the current status of the physical body. There is an abhorrence of the limitations that nature has placed upon the species. The insufficiencies of height, strength, vision, hearing, longevity and cognition are roadblocks to happiness and perpetual fulfillment. Nature has gotten the human race this far, but the inherent limits of existence are hurdles to be leapt. Like the earlier Gnostics, knowledge and insight are the keys to overcome the deficiencies of the physical. With the accumulation of research in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and neural network interfacing, man will be able to overwhelm the frailty and deficiency inherent in the human condition and transform that which was weak into strength. The ability to repair, replace or enhance the various biological systems in the body allows one to overcome the limits of finitude. A logical outcome of this is the prospect of a multitiered view of humanity. If strong advocates of transhumanism have their wish, a new species of Techno sapien will emerge. The vast majority of the population, living in an ignorant and confused state, will be led by the chosen few to a new utopian existence or left behind to wallow in their naivet?. The capability to move the mind into the machine will mark the attainment of the final goal of the Gnostics, that of overcoming the body completely, living in a psychic Nirvana with the constraints of nature, time and history left behind. The old is trotted out as the new, dressed in software, DNA, and nanomachines. An ancient proverb from Solomon says, "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun". His quote is as relevant today as it was two and a half millennia ago. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:09:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:09:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: (Rushton) Social Responsibility in the Genes Message-ID: Social Responsibility in the Genes http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-01-06-1 Twin study suggests that DNA accounts for more than 40% of difference in such behaviors as charitable giving Betterhumans Staff 1/6/2005 1:10 PM Genes may account for more than 40% of such charitable behavior as the massive outpouring of donations following the recent South Asian tsunamis. A study comparing the social responsibility of identical and non-identical twins showed that genes account for 42% of individual differences in attitudes while common environment accounts for 23% and other factors account for the remainder. Conducted by Canadian researcher [8]J. Philippe Rushton of the [9]University of Western Ontario, the study also found that genes have a stronger influence on males than females (50% to 40%) while home upbringing has a stronger influence on females (40% to 0%), suggesting that parents may more closely watch the behavior of daughters than of sons. The study involved 322 pairs of twins. Of these, 174 were identical pairs and 148 were non-identical. If traits are more similar among identical pairs, it suggests a stronger genetic contribution because they share all their genes while non-identical twins share only half. Subjects answered 22 questions such as, "I am a person people can count on" and, "Cheating on income tax is as bad as stealing" using a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Answers are known to predict such behavior as voting and volunteering. Answers were compared to determine patterns of relationships amongst the twins. Most previous studies on the genetics of social behavior have looked at antisocial behavior. The new study reinforces earlier work by Rushton and colleagues showing that genes contribute to about half the variance of self-reported altruism, empathy, nurturance and aggression. The research is reported in the [10]Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences ([11]read abstract). References 8. http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/rushton_bio.htm 9. http://www.uwo.ca/ 10. http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/proc_bio_homepage.shtml 11. http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/proc_bio_content/abstracts/rushton.html From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:12:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:12:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature Message-ID: Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature New York Times Daily Book Review, by 4.8.2 [picked up by the International Herald Tribune maybe later. Note date.] http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=532091.html Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature Reviewed by Edward Rothstein NYT Monday, August 02, 2004 Nonfiction. By William R. Newman. 333 pages. $30. University of Chicago Press. Among the secrets revealed in this unusual history of alchemy is Leonardo da Vinci's recipe for making artificial pearls "as large as you wish" - take a small genuine pearl, dissolve it in lemon juice, dry the paste into a power, mix it with egg white, let it harden, then grind and polish. A less appealing recipe might be one the philosopher John Locke proposed for creating a toad or a serpent by using a duck or a goose: Boil the bird without salt, place it between two platters, seal them against the air with a mixture of earth, salt, sand and tarter, and let the dish sit in a warm place for two or three weeks. Locke wrote that after breaking the seal, he had "found sometimes all Serpents a foot long sometimes all Toads large and black" - a description that suggests he had the temerity to try this more than once. And why not? Over the course of a millennium, the annals of alchemy tell of all manner of generation, transmutation and transfiguration. None of it ever produced pure gold, but it did yield inks and metals and perfumes and pigments, worms and rodents and putrid flesh, and, of course, principles and theories and controversies, along with accusations of witchcraft and heresy and hubris. Alchemy was once broadly dismissed as a form of primitive, prescientific belief - like Aristotle's conviction that lice were spontaneously generated from flesh, or claims that human life was created in the forms of homunculi. But in the last few decades, alchemy emerged out of the condescending and eclipsing shadows cast by modern science. In the 1970s, one of its most radical champions, the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, baldly suggested that there was very little to distinguish between alchemy and science: The techniques were similar, and so was the accuracy of the results. Even more temperate interpreters of science, though, have been changing their ideas about alchemy. Historians now treat the enterprise less as a na?ve activity supplanted by science than as an intellectual discipline out of which science gradually evolved. In "Promethean Ambitions," William R. Newman, who teaches the history and philosophy of science at Indiana University, goes even further. For him, alchemy, from its ancient origins as a servant to the decorative arts to its 17th-century transmutation into modern chemistry, provided the crucible in which many contemporary ideas about nature and artifice were first examined. Today, he writes, "we live in the era of 'Frankenfoods,' cloning, in vitro fertilization, synthetic polymers, Artificial Intelligence, and computer generated 'Artificial Life,'" an era in which Pope John Paul II has warned of the "Promethean ambitions" of biomedical science, and the President's Council on Bioethics has studied Hawthorne's alchemical story, "The Birth-Mark." But Newman argues that most current debates about boundaries between nature and artifice, or boundaries between proper and improper scientific exploration, echo debates that run through the history of alchemy. Critics of alchemy argued that the natural world could not be replicated or improved and that such goals should not be pursued. Advocates found porous boundaries between nature and artifice that could be explored and tested. In Newman's view, this tension between nature and artifice is fundamental. Alchemy is primarily an art of transmutation: One metal is turned into another, one living creature erupts out of the substance of another. Alchemy is concerned with the character of that change. It thus pays attention to categories, differences and boundaries. If one substance is changed into another, does it change its essence or only some of its properties? Is nature being revealed or overturned? Of course, much of the change that alchemists believed was taking place we now know to be illusion - the goose doesn't turn into serpents, nor is mercury transformed into gold. That is why much alchemy really is quaintly prescientific. But Newman's probings also break down the categories in which alchemy itself is usually placed, transforming its character. He shows, for example, that alchemy actually shared many of its goals with the visual arts in the Renaissance. Both enterprises tried to replicate or improve on nature. A number of Renaissance artists, including Leonardo and the French pottery maker Bernard Palissy, even used alchemical techniques to improve colors, glazes and pigments. But artists also considered themselves alchemists' rivals and objected to their claims of superior accomplishment. Palissy, for example, argued that beautiful shells are made by the "most malformed fish that could be found in the sea" but could not be replicated by the alchemist. Palissy said that he, on the other hand, could create animals, "sculpted and enameled so close to nature that other natural lizards and serpents will often come to admire them." As an art, Newman shows, alchemy was an attempt to construct and create objects; it experimented with them. In fact, Newman argues, the methods and ideas of modern science evolved out of alchemical research. Newman even finds references to alchemy in Darwin's theory of evolution, in which animal species are transformed (metaphorically speaking) by the alchemical pressures of the environment. There is more information gathered by Newman than the casual reader can easily absorb, including difficult analyses of philosophical and religious arguments taking place over centuries in Latin, Greek and Arabic. But Newman, a clear and graceful writer, keeps his goal in view. He is an initiate - tapping, testing and transmuting - until something different, still called alchemy, gradually takes shape. From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:15:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:15:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Technology Review: Technology and Happiness Message-ID: Technology and Happiness http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/01/issue/surowiecki0105.asp?p=0 By James Surowiecki January 2005 In the 20th century, Americans, Europeans, and East Asians enjoyed material and technological advances that were unimaginable in previous eras. In the United States, for instance, gross domestic product per capita tripled from 1950 to 2000. Life expectancy soared. The benefits of capitalism spread more widely among the population. The boom in productivity after World War II made goods better and cheaper at the same time. Things that were once luxuries, such as jet travel and long-distance phone calls, became necessities. And even though Americans seemed to work extraordinarily hard (at least compared to Europeans), their avid pursuit of entertainment turned media and leisure into multibillion-dollar industries. By most standards, then, youd have to say that Americans are better off now than they were in the middle of the last century. Oddly, though, if you ask Americans how happy they are, you find that theyre no happier than they were in 1946 (which is when formal surveys of happiness started). In fact, the percentage of people who say theyre very happy has fallen slightly since the early 1970seven though the income of people born in 1940 has increased, on average, 116 percent over the course of their working lives. Nor is this a uniquely American phenomenon: you can find similar data for most developed countries. Perhaps the most striking example of progress having little impact on what economists call peoples sense of subjective well-being is Japan. Between 1960 and the late 1980s, Japans economy was utterly transformed, as the nation went from a low-cost supplier of cheap manufactured goods to what is perhaps the worlds most technologically sophisticated society. Over that stretch, the countrys GDP quintupled. And yet by the late 1980s, the Japanese said they were no happier than they had been in 1960. Even more strikingly, life seems worse for a significant minority of citizens in the rich world. Since the 1950s, reports of major depression have increased tenfold, and while much of that increase undoubtedly represents a new willingness to diagnose mental illness, theres a general consensus among mental-health experts that it also reflects a real development. People are more anxious, trust government and business less, and get divorced more often. In the 1960s Tom Wolfe confounded those who fretted about the gloominess of American life by insisting that Americans were in the midst of a happiness explosion. Forty years later, plenty of people would disagree. There is, though, one group of Americans that is imperturbably sunny: the Amish. Their depression rates are negligibly low relative to the rest of societys. Their happiness levels are consistently high. The Pennsylvania Amish, when asked how much they agree with the statement You are satisfied with your life (using a scale of 1 to 10), turn out to be as happy as the members of the Forbes 400. The Amish, though, do without most of what we think of as modern technology. They dont rely on the automobile, dont need the Internet, and seem to prefer stability and permanence to the heady growth that propels innovation and the U.S. economy. The comparison is a little facile (the Amish have a lot of other characteristics that make people cheerful, including strong community ties, stable families, and religious faith). But it suggests an interesting question: is it possible that technology, instead of liberating us, is holding us back? Is technological progress merely a treadmill, and if so, would we be happier if we stepped off of it? Can we trust people to know what makes them happy? The relationship between happiness and technology has been a perennial subject for social critics and philosophers since the advent of the Industrial [surowiecki20105.jpg] Revolution. But its been left largely unexamined by economists and social scientists. The attention that they have paid to the subject of happiness has involved the more capacious relationship between broad material prosperity and well-being. Gregg Easterbrooks book The Progress Paradox grappled with this question directly. The economists Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer published an academic survey of the subject in Happiness and Economics in 2001. But the truly groundbreaking work on the relationship between prosperity and well-being was done by the economist Richard Easterlin, who in 1974 wrote a famous paper entitled Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Easterlin showed that when it came to developed countries, there was no real correlation between a nations income level and its citizens happiness. Money, Easterlin argued, could not buy happinessat least not after a certain point. Easterlin showed that though poverty was strongly correlated with misery, once a country was solidly middle-class, getting wealthier didnt seem to make its citizens any happier. Easterlins work did not get much attention when it was first published, but its implications were profound. By suggesting that there was no direct link between wealth and well-being, Easterlin was challenging some basic assumptions of mainstream economics. Most economists begin with the idea that people act in their own self-interest most of the time, and that they usually understand that self-interest pretty well. The choices people make, therefore, must be better than the alternatives (or else people would make other choices). By this argument, wealth is a good thing because it increases peoples options and gives them more freedom to pursue whatever it is they want to pursue. For classical economists, it was almost tautological to say that the wealthier people are, the happier they are, too. Easterlins relatively simple study suggested that if what people said about themselves was to be believed, you could give people more choices and more wealth and not have much of an impact on their sense of well-being. Well-being is actually the central idea of economics, says Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University. But weve never really tried to measure it. Weve used proxies, and weve said, If were richer, and we have more options, we must be better off. But we havent tried to find out if thats really true. One response to this, of course, is to say that you cant really trust what people say about themselves in surveys, no matter how well executed. Pay attention to what people do, and youll get a real sense of what they want. On this view, worrying about whether people say they are happy with the choices they make is nonsense. Of course they are. If people spend a lot of money and time buying and using personal computers and wireless phones and personal digital assistants, then these gadgets must make them happy. There is an inherent logic to this argument, and it has the great virtue of not asking economists to decipher peoples motives. But in the last decade or more, deciphering peoples motives (or at least their behavior) is something more economists have become interested in doing, and to great effect. Behavioral economists have moved away from assumptions about individuals perfect rationality in order to develop what they think of as a more realistic model of economic behavior. Theyve explored the idea, hardly radical outside economics but pretty radical inside it, that people might sometimes make mistakes, and that their decisions (whether individual or collective) could actually make them unhappy. For instance, behavioral economists have shown that peoples preferences are what is sometimes called time-inconsistent. We would like to save in the long term, but in the short term wed rather spend. Just as strikingly, behavioral economists have shown that human beings arent very good at anticipating their own desires. Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002, demonstrated that students, when asked to eat a bowl of their favorite ice cream eight days in a row, had a poor sense of whether they would or would not enjoy the experience. Considering how many decisions about new technologies are based on little or no concrete evidence and involve guessing about the future, it seems plausible that people can get stuck with technologies that dont make them happy but that are hard to get rid of. Plausible, but not certain: as well see, when it comes to the vexed relationship between technology and happiness, certainty is not an easy thing to come by. The question of technology: net loss or net gain? In trying to decipher how technology affects well-being, then, its worth paying attention to a few things. First, there have been few rigorous studies of the specific relationship between technological change and how people feel about their own lives. So the question Does more (or better) technology make people happy? is irreducibly speculative. Second, there is something inherently unstable about peoples accounts of their own states of mind. Forget peoples uncertainty about what will make them happy in the future; can we even trust that people know what makes them happy now? Most seriously, thinking about technology is hard because people adapt so quickly to the technologies that are available to them. If you had asked someone in 1870 whether she would be happier if she had a personal vehicle that would give her the freedom to travel hundreds of miles a day, in whatever direction she chose, at relatively little cost; the opportunity to fly across the ocean in a few hours; and the ability to speak to people who were thousands of miles away in real time for a few cents a minute, chances are very good that she would have said, yes, it would make her a lot happier. But today, its the rare person who gets excited about cars, planes, and telephones. We recognize their utility, but theyre also sources of frustration and stress. On balance, most people would say theyd rather have cars and telephones than not, butand this is what makes thinking about happiness so hardits not clear they really make us happier. This seems to be close to a universal phenomenon. In fact, one of happiness scholars most important insights is that people adapt very quickly to good news. Take lottery winners. One famous study showed that although winners were very, very happy when they won, their euphoria quickly evaporated, and after a while their moods and sense of well-being were indistinguishable from what they had been before the victory. Psychologists even have a word for the phenomenon: hedonic adaptation. So, too, with technology: no matter how dramatic a new innovation is, no matter how much easier it makes our lives, it is very easy to take it for granted. You can see this principle at work in the world of technology every day, as things that once seemed miraculous soon become mundane and, worse, frustrating when they dont work perfectly. Its hard, it turns out, to keep in mind what things were like before the new technology came along. Thats why broadband users should occasionally use dial-up: it makes them appreciate just what a difference a high-speed connection really does make. Does our fast absorption of technological progress mean, then, that technology makes no difference? No. It just makes the question of technologys impact, for good and ill, more complicated. Lets start with the downside. There are certain ways in which technology makes life obviously worse. Telemarketing, traffic jams, and identity theft all come to mind. These are all phenomena that make people consciously unhappy. But for the most part, modern critiques of technology have focused not so much on specific, bad technologies as on what Heidegger called the question of technologythat is, the impact of technology on our humanity. Those critiques have staked out two apparently opposed positions, which nonetheless share a common skepticism about peoples ability to use technology to their own ends. The first position, which one can see in the work of the French critic Jacques Ellul or, more oddly, in the novels of Philip K. Dick, is that technological progress is leading to an ever more rigid, controlled, soulless society, in which its easier for people to be manipulated and monitored. The second position, which has been well articulated in books like Neil Postmans Amusing Ourselves to Death and Robert Putnams Bowling Alone, is that technology is central to the increasing privatization of experience, which in turn is creating a fragmented, chaotic society, in which traditional relationships are harder to sustain, community is increasingly an illusion, and peoples relationships to each other, mediated as they often are by machines, grow increasingly tenuous. Theres obviously something to both arguments. Privacy has become increasingly fragile in a world of linked databases. In many workplaces, technologies like keystroke monitoring and full recordings of phone calls make it easier to watch workers. The notion that technology disrupts relationships and fractures community gained mainstream prominence as an attack on television, but in recent years it has also become central to the critique of the Internet. In Bowling Alone, Putnam suggests that TV is a chief culprit in the gradual isolation of Americans from each other and the erosion of the social capital that makes societies run smoothly. Similarly, the deleterious effects of the Internet, which supposedly further isolates people from what critics always call the real world, were pointed to early on in a famous study of 169 Pittsburgh residents, Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being? According to the study, published in the September 1998 issue of American Psychologist, instead of allowing them to connect with a much wider set of potential friends and exposing them to information they might otherwise never have come across, the Internet instead made people more depressed and lonely than they would otherwise have been. This broad criticism of technologys impact on relationships is an interesting one and is especially relevant to the question of happiness, because one of the few things we can say for certain is that the more friends and close relationships people have, the happier they tend to be. But the evidence that the Internet or even television fundamentally erodes relationships as opposed to changing them is not especially convincing. For instance, when the authors of that 1998 study revisited the question a few years later, using a slightly different methodology, they arrived at the opposite conclusion, finding that the Net had a slightly beneficial impact on peoples sociability, connections with others, and sense of well-being. Obviously, a technology as wide-ranging and ubiquitous as the Net will have myriad, immeasurable effects. But the Internet is essentially a communications technology, one that, like the telephone, allows people to expand their affective and informational networks. The Net is hardly the ideal public sphere, where all discussions are rational and everyone agrees on a definition of the common good. But it is a public sphere, and one that crucially functions without gatekeepers. The dominant critiques of technology have, then, something exaggerated about them. But one way in which technology, as a rule, does make people less happy is in its relentless generation of newness. One of the key insights of happiness studies is that people have a very hard time being content with what they have, at least when they know that others have more. Today, technological change is so rapid that when you buy something, you do so knowing that in a few months theres going to be a better, faster version of the product, and that youre going to be stuck with the old one. Someone else, in other words, has it better. Its as if disappointment were built into acquisition from the very beginning (unless youre buying a 70-inch plasma screen, in which case you should be fine for at least a couple of years). Theres no way to circumvent this drooping of the spirit, which creates dissatisfaction in the heart of the modern consumer. Technology ? la carte: bad food, but bigger portions Daily stress, a nagging sense of disappointment, fear that the government knows a lot more about you than you would like it to: if these are some of the ways in which technology reduces peoples sense of well-being, how (if at all) does it increase their happiness? This is terrain that is ordinarily left to the cyberoptimists and trans- humanists, who believe that technology should be celebrated for the way it remakes and improves our bodies and minds. But setting flights of fancy aside, there is some intriguingly suggestive work about how certain new technologies make people not just objectively better off but also happier. In the marketplace, for instance, the Internet has made consumers happier not so much by cutting prices as by expanding the enormous array of choices available to them in a manageable way. In the happiness stakes, expanding consumers options is really a double-edged sword: consumers do have a preference for variety and novelty, and the more choices you have, the better the chance that youll find the thing you really want. But too much choice can actually paralyze people, leaving them, paradoxically, worse off. A well-known experiment conducted by Professors Mark Lepper and Sheena Iyengar (at Stanford and Columbia, respectively) illustrates the point: they set up two tables in a supermarket, one with 24 jars of jam and the other with six, and offered discount coupons to anyone who stopped to sample the jams. Of the people who stopped at the 24-jam table, only 3 percent went on to buy jam, while 30 percent of the people who stopped at the six-jam table did. More choices often make people frustrated because they have no reasonable way to navigate through them. What the Internet offers, at least in a nascent form, is a host of mechanismscollaborative filtering, shopbots, consumer-rating sitesthat give people the tools to make informed choices relatively quickly and easily, reducing paralysis and making them happier. The important point here is that among the infinite choices that the Internet offers, one is the option of less choice. Technology has also radically changed the nature of work, or at least some peoples work. This matters because the workplace is central to peoples sense of well-being and is more important to them than anything, including family. Studies show that nothingnot even divorcemakes people more unhappy than unemployment. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, technologys impact on the workplace was ambiguous at best. While the mechanization of agriculture allowed people to escape the farm, it often propelled them straight into heavy industrial labor, which was well paying but often miserable. Technology increased the productivity of workers, but it also diminished their autonomy: superiors controlled more of the details of their working days. Even the office work of the postwar period exemplified by the endless rows of desks in Billy Wilders The Apartment was deeply bureaucratic and controlled. But recently, the rise of the networked society, and the advent of knowledge-based businesses, means that workplaces have become less formal and more open, even while remaining efficient and productive. Already, as Arlie Hochschild points out in The Time Bind, a significant percentage of Americans find the atmosphere at work more congenial than the one at home. As the number of knowledge workers grows, and as companies strive to keep them happy, well-being should increase. The most important impact of technology on peoples sense of well-being, though, is in the field of health care. Before the Industrial Revolution, two out of every three Europeans died before the age of 30. Today, life expectancy for women in Western Europe is almost 80 years, and it continues to increase. The point is obvious, but important to note: the vast majority of people are happy to be alive, and the more time they get on earth, the better off they feel theyll be. (Remember, the point about prosperity and happiness is not that prosperity makes people unhappy; its that it doesnt necessarily make them happier.) Now, the picture is a little more complicated than this. Living a few extra years as a geriatric may not be ideal. But until very recently, life for the vast majority of people was (in Hobbess formulation) nasty, brutish, and short. Technology has changed that, at least for people in the rich world. As much as we should worry about the rising cost of health care and the problem of the uninsured, its also worth remembering how valuable for our spirits as well as our bodies are the benefits that medical technology and pharmaceuticals have brought us. On a deeper level, what the technological improvement of our health and our longevity underscores is a paradox of any discussion of happiness on a national or a global level: even though people may not be happier, even though they are wealthier and possess more technology, theyre still as hungry as ever for more time. Its like that old Woody Allen joke: the food may not be so great, but we want the portions to be as big as possible. Technology may only improve the taste of the meals slightly, but it makes them a lot bigger, and for most of us, that has the promise of something like happiness. NOTEBOOK [21]Thieves take brain remote control [Simson Garfinkel] The BBC has an interesting story about a poor woman who had the remote-control device for her brian implant stolen.The woman has a brain implant that provides... [22]Interview with Straton Sclavos [Simson Garfinkel] C|Net has a nice interview with Straton Sclavos, CEO of VeriSign, examining whether or not terrorists could attack us with a combination cyber attack and... [23]Get Ready for Podcasting [Wade Roush] You heard it here first: the technology word of the year for 2005 will be "podcasting." Definitions vary (which is typical for a brand new phenomenon) but the... [24]Bloggers of the Year [Wade Roush] PC Magazine recently announced its People of the Year, and they are Evan Williams, Meg Hourihan, and Paul Bausch, the co-creators of Blogger, and Ben and Mena... [25]The Tsunami and Global Warming [David Appell] A meme is starting to develop, that environmentalists and others are linking the recent tsunami to global warming. Chinese meteorologists, Richard Dawkins and... [26]> Read more posts Related Stories: References 21. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1700 22. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1699 23. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1698 24. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1697 25. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1696 26. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/index.asp From checker at panix.com Wed Feb 2 22:18:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:18:09 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Sailer: Tom Wolfe: Clear Eye For The Different Human Message-ID: Tom Wolfe: Clear Eye For The Different Human http://vdare.com/sailer/050102_wolfe.htm 5.1.2 [12]Steve Sailer Archive Tom Wolfe--Clear Eye For The Different Human By [15]Steve Sailer With the 1979 publication of [16]The Right Stuff, a brilliant non-fiction account of the men involved in the [17]Mercury program, [18]Tom Wolfe completed a titanic decade and a half in which he revolutionized American journalism. He then set off to become the greatest satirical-realist novelist in the English language since his idol, [19]Evelyn Waugh. With his third novel, [20]I Am Charlotte Simmons, he has attained that goal. It's the story of a brilliant hillbilly virgin's first half year at Dupont U. (primarily [21]Duke U., where Wolfe's daughter [22]Alexandra graduated in 2002) and the three seniors she attracts--Hoyt, the [23]George W. Bush-like alcoholic frat boy; Adam, the nice but dorky intellectual; and JoJo, the only white starter on the NCAA champion basketball team. I like to think that, in discussing human differences frankly, Wolfe violates many of the same taboos that I do. For example, I frequently defend sensible athletes like [24]Larry Bird, Paul Hornung, [25]Dusty Baker or the late [26]Reggie White from politically-correct sportswriters who want to lynch them for telling the truth about the link between [27]racial differences in physique and sport success. And in his latest book, Wolfe parodies the [28]tired spin on an ESPN talk show where: "... four poorly postured middle-aged white sportswriters sat slouched in little, low-backed, smack-red fiberglass swivel chairs panel-discussing the 'sensitive' matter of the way black players dominated basketball. 'Look,' the well-known columnist Maury Feldtree was saying, his chin resting on a pasha's cushion of jowls, `just think about it for a second. Race, ethnicity, all that--that's just a symptom of something else. There's been whole cycles of different minorities using sports as a way out of the ghetto.'" But Wolfe makes clear the obvious reason: Even the best white players, such as the 6'-10" 250 pound JoJo, generally are inferior in musculature to the best black players--such as the freshman power forward Vernon Congers, with "his mighty pecs, delts, traps, and lats," who is threatening to take his job. Wolfe has been noticing racial differences in muscularity at least since [29]Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers back in 1970. There he noted that white poverty program bureaucrats feared the hard-muscled black protestors, but were less afraid of the Mexicans and not at all scared of the Chinese. The Samoans, however, left them dumbfounded: "Have you ever by any chance seen professional football players in person, like on the street? The thing you notice is not just that they're big but that they are so big, it's weird... From the ears down, the big yoyos are just one solid welded hulk, the size of an oil burner... Well, that will give you some idea of the Samoans, because they're bigger. The average Samoan makes [30]Bubba Smith of the Colts look like a shrimp. They start out at about 300 pounds and from there they just get wider." Although there were no Samoans in the National Football League when Wolfe wrote this, today there are dozens. "A [31]Samoan boy, according to estimates, is 40 times more likely to make it to the NFL than a boy from the mainland," writes [32]Greg Garber. As in his 1998 [33]Atlanta-based novel [34]A Man in Full, Wolfe's new book drives the conventionally-minded crazy by ignoring his characters' facial features in favor of the visible markers of their muscle to fat ratios. He rightly sees that these indicate the hormones driving their behavior. Indeed, Wolfe's book is so "hormono-centric" (as he puts it) that I can guesstimate the body fat percentages of all his new novel's characters. Using PBS fitness expert Covert Bailey's [35]table of recommendations for his clients, I'd say that lovely Charlotte is 22% body fat, while her snobbish and nearly-anorexic roommate Beverly is 16%. Exploited Adam is 21%, handsome Hoyt with his six-pack abs is 11%, jacked-up JoJo 9%, and virile Vernon 5%. Similarly, one of Wolfe's most important but least popular themes is masculinity. In [36]his previous novel, Tom Wolfe describes how a high IQ corporate staffer, known as The Wiz, views his lower IQ boss, [37]Charlie Croker, real estate developer, good old boy, and ex-football star "with a back like a Jersey Bull:" "The Wiz looked upon [Croker] as an aging, uneducated, and out-of-date country boy who had somehow, nonetheless, managed to create a large, and, until recently, wildly successful corporation. That the country boy, with half his brainpower, should be the lord of the corporation and that [the Wiz] should be his vassal was an anomaly, a perversity of fate. . . . Or part of him felt that way. The other part of him was in awe, in unconscious awe, of something the old boy had and he didn't: namely, the power to charm men and the manic drive to bend their wills into saying yes to projects they didn't want, didn't need, and never thought about before... And that thing was manhood. It was as simple as that." During my long corporate career, I repeatedly witnessed exactly the same phenomenon--but putting it so baldly in words leaves most people uncomfortable. Wolfe particularly doesn't [38]win any friends among male reviewers by pointing out that intellectuals, like Charlotte Simmons' Adam, tend to be less masculine than jocks like Jo-Jo, who, through sheer sense of alpha-male entitlement, forces his tutor (Adam) to stay up all night ghostwriting his history class reports. [39]Adam Kirsch in the neocon [40]N.Y. Sun was so unhinged by this that he threatened Wolfe with the [41]neutron bomb of accusations--anti-Semitism--although Wolfe's wife, the mother of his three children, is Jewish. (Kirsch got so many of the book's details wrong that it's hard to tell if he read it or just skimmed, looking for the naughty bits.) ([42]Here's another perfect example of a male reviewer--Theo Tait of the London Review of Books--criticizing Charlotte Simmons for everything that's true about it.) Likewise, Wolfe's message to young women--including, presumably, his daughters--that the [43]tighter rein they keep on their [44]sexual favors, the more power they have over men--has vastly annoyed the many women who don't want to be reminded about how they've [45]messed up their lives by[46] ignoring such advice. What's most striking about Wolfe's version of Duke U. is how, after 35 years of institutionalized feminism, student sexuality hasn't progressed into an egalitarian utopia. Instead, it has regressed to something that a caveman would understand--a Hobbesian sexual marketplace where muscles are the measure of the man. This is exactly why I ended my 1997 article "[47]Is Love Colorblind?" like this: "When, in the names of freedom and feminism, young women listen less to the hard-earned wisdom of older women about how to pick Mr. Right, they listen even more to their hormones. This allows cruder measures of a man's worth--like the size of his muscles--to return to prominence. The result is not a feminist utopia, but a society in which genetically gifted guys can more easily get away with acting like Mr. Wrong." Wolfe has been ahead of his time for his entire career. Indeed, the reputation of his first novel, [48]The Bonfire of the Vanities, has suffered because its [49]plot is now often thought of as a pastiche of stories ripped from the headlines about Al Sharpton's [50]Tawana Brawley hoax, the arrest of the bond king [51]Michael Milken, the [52]Crown Heights anti-Semitic pogrom, the [53]Rodney King riots, and the [54]O.J. Simpson case. But Bonfire appeared in 1987 ... before all those events it seemingly reflects. America's most distinguished jurist-intellectual, Richard A. Posner, has admitted this in his book [55]Overcoming Law: "When I first read The Bonfire of the Vanities ... it just didn't strike me as the sort of book that has anything interesting to say about the law or any other institution.... I now consider that estimate of the book ungenerous and unperceptive. The Bonfire of the Vanities has turned out to be a book that I think about a lot, in part because it describes with such vividness what Wolfe with prophetic insight (the sort of thing we attribute to [56]Kafka) identified as emerging problems of the American legal system... American legal justice today seems often to be found at a bizarre intersection of race, money, and violence, an intersection nowhere better depicted than in The Bonfire of the Vanities even thought the book was written before the intersection had come into view." Moreover, "[57]Law & Order," perhaps the most successful franchise in television history, was clearly influenced by Bonfire. Lennie Briscoe, the late [58]Jerry Orbach's wonderfully [59]sardonic detective, could have come straight from its pages. But producer Dick Wolf drained the irony from Tom Wolfe's portrayal of New York City prosecutors. Bored and depressed by an endless stream of [60]black and brown lawbreakers, they torture the law to snag a Great White Defendant. In contrast, on "Law & Order," the [61]abusive prosecutors who concoct [62]patently nonsensical legal theories to justify arresting the [63]Park Avenue rich are the heroes. Although Wolfe resembles Waugh in his conservatism, they differ in important ways. [64]Waugh was a jealous, cantankerous snob who said that his Roman Catholic faith was the only thing that kept his behavior even marginally tolerable. Except when at his writing desk, Wolfe is a gracious man, perhaps the last of the old-fashioned Virginia gentlemen. He doesn't seem to feel any personal need for religion, but strongly [65]approves of it in others. Waugh used the most elegant English prose imaginable to limn the tawdriness of modern life. In contrast, Wolfe modeled his prose style on his subject: the sloppy, vulgar, and exciting America of the booming second half of the 20th Century. His sentences tended to be flat and functional, but studded with brilliant phrases. For example, "Radical Chic," "The Me Decade," and "The Right Stuff" have all become part of the language. Over the years, Wolfe's verbal inventiveness faded. But he improved as a copy-editor of his own prose, reaching a peak in A Man in Full, which features numerous showstopping set pieces. The chapter "In the Breeding Barn," a detailed description of the astonishing process by which thoroughbred racehorses are mated, is the most overwhelming thing he's ever written. (By nature a prim and private man, Wolfe's discomfort with writing about sex paradoxically makes his descriptions of its power so memorable.) But the quality of Wolfe's writing collapsed over the last 100 pages of A Man in Full--perhaps due to his open-heart surgery and his subsequent clinical [66]depression. This left me wondering whether he'd be able to recover at an age when most people are retired. Fortunately, in Charlotte Simmons, his prose style is back to a serviceable level. And his glee over finding this great topic--student life in a modern university--that nobody important had touched in decades is palpable. Additionally, making his main character a teenage girl solves one of Wolfe's old problems: his fascination with fashion and decorating is hugely important to his books, but in the manly men he normally writes about, it always seemed a little, ahem, [67]gay. Like many artistic geniuses, Wolfe's personality encompasses a wider range of the masculine to feminine continuum than is common among us mortals. Back in the 1960s, Wolfe wrote some brilliant essays about fashionable young women. But then he researched his [68]tremendous account of Navy pilots in combat over [69]North Vietnam, "The Truest Sport: Jousting with Sam and Charlie," and became obsessed with male physical courage (which led to The Right Stuff and much else). He seemed to lose most of his ability to write about women--leading to the underdeveloped female characters in his first two novels. But his Charlotte is a painfully accurate depiction of a how young woman typically feels: i.e., acutely self-conscious. Wolfe has become the Beethoven of embarrassment. He orchestrates thunderous climaxes of social mortification every few pages. Although some have called I am Charlotte Simmons a can't-put-it-down book, personally, I had to put it down every 15 minutes or so. I felt so bad for the young characters as they heartbreakingly learn how the world works. Wolfe has been accused of lacking sympathy for his creations. But his empathy is infinite. As with Waugh, who was mostly dismissed as a dyspeptic middlebrow entertainer until after his death, it will likely be several decades before Wolfe's greatness as a novelist is uncontroversial. Maybe that will be when we are also allowed to be honest about the reality of human differences. [Steve Sailer [[70]email him], is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and [71]movie critic for [72]The American Conservative. His website [73]www.iSteve.com features site-exclusive commentaries.] References 12. http://vdare.com/sailer/index.htm 15. http://vdare.com/sailer/index.htm 16. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553381350/vdare/103-5102193-4946247 17. http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/history/mercury/mercury-overview.htm 18. http://www.tomwolfe.com/home.html 19. http://www.doubtinghall.com/ 20. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0374281580/vdare/103-5102193-4946247 21. http://www.duke.edu/ 22. http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=4619 23. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/bush_thinking.htm 24. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/lynch_mob.htm 25. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/dusty.htm 26. http://www.isteve.com/04DecB.htm#reggieist 27. http://www.isteve.com/mjelegy.htm 28. http://www.vdare.com/misc/entine_boston_marathon.htm 29. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374520720/vdare 30. http://www.bubbascasino.com/bubbasmith.php 31. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ws.html#People 32. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=1387626&type=story 33. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/olympic_moral.htm 34. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553580930/vdare/103-5102193-4946247 35. http://www.isteve.com/IsLoveColorblind.htm 36. http://web.archive.org/web/20000815061102/www.commentarymagazine.com/9902/books.html 37. http://www.tomwolfe.com/ManinFull-excerpt.html 38. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n01/tait01_.html 39. http://www.beatrice.com/archives/000885.html 40. http://www.nysun.com/article/3824 41. http://www.vdare.com/gottfried/foer.htm 42. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n01/tait01_.html 43. http://www.vdare.com/malkin/abstinence.htm 44. http://www.vdare.com/malkin/washingtonienne.htm 45. http://www.vdare.com/malkin/madonna.htm 46. http://www.hillsdale.edu/imprimis/2001/march/default.htm 47. http://www.isteve.com/IsLoveColorblind.htm 48. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553275976/vdare 49. http://www.vdare.com/pb/central_park.htm 50. http://www.issues-views.com/index.php/sect/5000/article/2100 51. http://www.mikemilken.com/biography.taf?page=controversy 52. http://www.ex-iwp.org/docs/1993/Crown%20Heights%20Riot%20Aftermath.htm 53. http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1576 54. http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics4/oj/ 55. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674649265/vdare 56. http://www.kafka.org/ 57. http://www.nbc.com/Law_&_Order/about/index.html 58. http://www.isteve.com/04DecB.htm#orbach1 59. http://users.aol.com/dwalheim/lawandorder/briscoe.html 60. http://www.vdare.com/pb/taylor_review.htm 61. http://www.vdare.com/roberts/injustice2.htm 62. http://www.vdare.com/pb/death_of_due_process.htm 63. http://www.vdare.com/roberts/martha.htm 64. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9305/articles/weigel.html 65. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/12/1100227565721.html?from=storylhs&oneclick=true 66. http://www.thedesertsun.com/news/stories2004/entertainment/20041107003229.shtml 67. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/gay_gene.htm 68. http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/ej/4a5.html 69. http://www.vdare.com/pb/bright_shining_lie.htm 70. mailto:steveslr at aol.com 71. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iSteve-movies/ 72. http://www.amconmag.com/ 73. http://www.isteve.com/ 74. https://www.cfau.org/asp/donate.asp From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Feb 2 23:35:33 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 15:35:33 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: False Memory Creation Recorded Message-ID: <01C5093C.D6216E10.shovland@mindspring.com> That must be why so many people remember Saddam piloting one of the airplanes that hit the WTC :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 1:44 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org; Human Biodiversity Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: False Memory Creation Recorded False Memory Creation Recorded http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-02-01-3 Brain imaging reveals biology of faulty eyewitness accounts Betterhumans Staff 2/1/2005 1:11 PM Brain imaging has provided insight into faulty eyewitness accounts. Research has shown that people's memories of complex events can be altered by misleading information provided after the event has occurred. Using noninvasive brain imaging methods, Yoko Akado and [8]Craig Stark of [9]Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland have now looked deeper into this process by examining how the brain encodes misinformation when creating a false memory. Misleading slide show For the study, participants were first shown a slide show of a man stealing a woman's wallet and then hiding behind a door. They were then shown a slightly different slide show and told it was the same sequence. Two days later, participants took a memory test in which they were asked to recall details of the slide show and which of the two presentations contained the information. Predicting misinformation Stark and Akado found that participants' brain activity predicted whether their memories would be accurate or false. For memories falsely associated with the first slide show when viewing the second, the researchers found that there was weaker activity in particular brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex. The researchers suggest that activity in the prefrontal cortex is linked with encoding memory context. Weak activity during the misinformation phase therefore suggests that the details of the second experience were poorly placed in context and as a result more easily confused. The research is reported in the journal [10]Learning & Memory. References 8. http://neuroscience.jhu.edu/peopledetail.asp?ID=320 9. http://www.jhu.edu/ 10. http://www.learnmem.org/ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From christian.rauh at uconn.edu Thu Feb 3 15:20:12 2005 From: christian.rauh at uconn.edu (Christian Rauh) Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 10:20:12 -0500 Subject: [Paleopsych] A superpower on life support In-Reply-To: <01C507FB.A4058CA0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C507FB.A4058CA0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <4202412C.70303@uconn.edu> Steve, FYI, Brasil has always issued its bonds in US dollars, this year it is issuing 20% of them (at least) in Euros. And private export contracts have been moving to Euros too since the middle of last year. The problem with the Zero Sum game here is that the US will probably stick the gun to the face of its comercial partners before going to the same level of negotiation. As a pre-emptive measure, of course. Christian Steve Hovland wrote: > In recent years the US has been styling itself as > the last remaining superpower, able to dictate > the establishment of a Pax Americana without > significant opposition. > > If you look at our finances, you see a different > picture. > > The USSR crumbled because they could no > longer afford the Cold War game. > > We are about to crumble because we can no > longer pay cash to finance our activities. > > Most of our prosperity is financed by a mountain > of debt that now threatens the economy of the > entire planet. > > In their foolish greed our largest corporations > have exported vast amounts of capital to India > or China, who now have trade surpluses while > we have trade deficits that compound our > budget deficits. This is a zero sum game. > > The day will come when the world recognizes > that we have spent all of the gold that we found > at the end of our continental rainbow a mere > 200 years ago. > > When that day comes they will no longer buy > Dollar bonds, but Euro bonds. Indeed, the last > straw with Saddam Hussein was that he started > to price his oil in Euro's. > > When that day comes we will find that India, > China, Japan, and Europe will be our equal > partners because we won't be in any position > to refuse their demands. > > When that day comes we will no longer be > a psychotic Gulliver stomping on all who dare > to oppose us. We will be one among equals > living in a more benign equilibrium with the > planet. > > > Steve Hovland > www.stevehovland.net > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -- ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt...... If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake. - Thomas Jefferson, from a letter he sent in 1798 after the passage of the Sedition Act _____________________________________________________________________ ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 18:37:37 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:37:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: What's Behind It: A Bit Of Social Engineering In Disguise Message-ID: What's Behind It: A Bit Of Social Engineering In Disguise http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28191-2005Jan22?language=printer [This is the best article I've read on Social Security. There is no CRISIS as such. Retirement age will simply get pushed upward to make ends meet. Robert Fogel, in _The Fourth Great Awakening_, calculated that half of the actuarial value of Social Security has already been taken away through increases in the retirement age. [My understanding is that private investment generates returns of 7-8 percent per year in real terms, before taxes, over the long haul. (My Federal pension gets 6-7% *after* taxes (my own calculations), making it much better. Only certain state and local governments can beat this.) Social Security returns much less, but I've never understood why, except the all-purpose explanation of government incompetence. [I agree with the article about the social engineering, but it's a tad bit disingenuous: all government action has some social engineering consequences. Likewise, a Hayekian decision to call of the bureaucrats is itself an example of rationalistic planning. Or meta-planning.] Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page B02 For Republicans, Social Security reform could be the kind of donnybrook that health care reform was for Democrats in 1994. The magnitude of the political risk is staggering. On Capitol Hill, many Republicans wonder if they are being led off a cliff. What does President Bush think he's doing? Well, he says, there's a Social Security crisis. "The crisis is now," Bush said in December. But he must know this isn't true. Economically speaking, stabilizing Social Security's long-term finances is a task of only middling difficulty and importance. It requires no fundamental change in the program and need not be tackled right away. As for private Social Security accounts, they are -- again, economically speaking -- a solution in search of a problem. No, what Bush and the Republicans are focused on is not the economy, stupid. It is conservative social engineering on the grandest possible scale. When people talk about Social Security reform, they usually mean reforms, plural. They're usually linking two changes that are conceptually and mechanically distinct. Reform No. 1 would reduce the growth of benefits -- or raise payroll taxes -- to bring the program into long-term fiscal balance. Reform No. 2 would structurally revamp the program by creating private accounts: A portion of your Social Security payroll tax would go into an investment account with your name on it instead of going to the U.S. Treasury to finance the benefits of current retirees, as now happens. Congress can adopt one idea, both ideas or neither. Either, by itself, is politically difficult; doing both -- simultaneously cutting and restructuring the program -- is audacious. Yet that is what Bush seems likely to propose. Why take the chance? On close examination, the economic payoffs are unimpressive. The moral and political dividends are potentially another matter. Earlier this month, a White House aide named Peter H. Wehner, director of strategic initiatives, sent selected conservatives a memo making the case for changing Social Security. "We consider our Social Security reform not simply an economic challenge, but a moral goal and a moral good," he wrote. "If we succeed in reforming Social Security, it will rank as one of the most significant conservative governing achievements ever." The emphasis was revealing. The memo said little about long-term growth and other economic effects. It stressed moving "away from dependency on government and toward giving greater power and responsibility to individuals." At the libertarian Cato Institute, Michael Tanner, the director of a Project on Social Security Choice and a long-time proponent of privatization, makes the same case. "We're changing fundamentally the relationship of people to their government," he says. It would be "the biggest shift since the New Deal." Bingo. Once you cancel the zeros on both sides of the equation, neither creating private Social Security accounts nor ratcheting down the growth of future benefits would constitute an economic watershed. Republicans frame Social Security reform as a dollars-and-cents issue, but what they really hope to change is not the American economy but the American psyche. Conservatives used to speak derisively of liberal social engineering. Yet the attempt to create private Social Security accounts is essentially conservative social counter-engineering. Government should help provide for unforeseeable contingencies: tsunamis, unemployment, open-heart surgery. But if there is one event in all of life that is wholly foreseeable, it is the advent of old age. Why, then, shouldn't people save for their own vretirements, instead of relying on welfare from the government -- which is what Social Security, as currently constituted, really is? Tanner argues that people who own assets see their place in society in a new light. Private accounts, he says, would encourage a culture of saving and personal responsibility; they would discourage political class warfare; they may, he argues, improve work habits and even reduce crime and other social pathologies. Create private Social Security accounts, and millions of low-income Americans will be stockholders and bondholders. GOP activists look at the way portfolio investors vote and salivate at the prospect of millions more of them. Many conservatives believe that moral values played a key role in Bush's reelection. It may seem odd, then, that Bush's boldest post-election priority is not abortion or gay marriage or schools but Social Security. The key to the paradox is that Social Security reform is not, at bottom, an economic issue with moral overtones. It is a values issue with economic overtones. By Jonathan Rauch, a senior writer for National Journal magazine, in which a longer version of this article appeared. From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 18:38:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:38:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Dowd: Inherit the Windbags Message-ID: Inherit the Windbags Liberties column by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 5.2.3 WASHINGTON Do male nipples prove evolution? Not at all, according to a Web site for a planned Creation Museum devoted to showing that the Bible is literally true. Nipples may be biologically de trop for men, an "expert" on the site notes, but that doesn't mean they resulted from natural selection. They could just as well be a decorating feature of the Creator's (like a hood ornament). Who are we to question His designs, since we cannot presume to comprehend His mind? The virtual tour of the museum, to be built in rural Kentucky, says its exhibits will explain many such mysteries, like the claim that T. rex lurked around Adam and Eve - "That's the terror that Adam's sin unleashed!" - and how "Noah and his family survive 371 days alone on an animal-filled boat" ("a real 'Survivor' story"). The philosophy of the Creation Museum, part of the "Answers in Genesis" ministry, is summed up this way: "The imprint of the Creator is all around us. And the Bible's clear - heaven and earth in six 24-hour days, earth before sun, birds before lizards. Other surprises are just around the corner. Adam and apes share the same birthday. The first man walked with dinosaurs and named them all! God's Word is true, or evolution is true. No millions of years. There's no room for compromise." Personally, I've decided to stop evolving. No point, really. Evolution is so 20th century. As with Iraq, President Bush has applied his doctrine of pre-emption on evolution, cutting it off before it can pose a threat to our well-being. Ever since he observed during his 2000 campaign that "on the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the earth," Mr. Bush has been reeling backward as fast as he can toward the Garden of Eden, which, if creationists are to be believed, was really "Jurassic Park." Seeing the powerful role of evangelicals in getting Mr. Bush re-elected, teachers across the country are quietly ignoring evolution, even when the subject is in their curriculums. Many teachers take the hint on evolution even without overt pressure, Cornelia Dean wrote this week in Science Times: "Teachers themselves avoid the topic, fearing protests." On eBay, you can even find replicas of the stickers that a Georgia county put on science textbooks to warn that evolution is "a theory, not a fact." Talk about sticker shock. So much for the Tree of Knowledge. Mr. Bush gives us the Ficus of Faith. I knew the president, Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich wanted to wipe out the psychedelic "if it feels good do it" post-Vietnam 60's and go back to the black-and-white 50's - a meaner "Happy Days." They wanted to yank us back in a time machine to a place before Vietnam was lost, free love was found, Roe v. Wade was enacted; they could roll back science to smother stem cells' promise. (Since it was reported last week that all human embryonic lines approved for federally financed research are tainted with a foreign molecule from mice, the administration can't even feign an interest in scientific progress. Who'd a-thunk that science's great hope would turn out to be Arnold Schwarzenegger?) I misunderestimated this ambitious president. His social engineering schemes in the Middle East and America are breathtakingly brazen. He doesn't just want to dismantle the 60's. He wants to dismantle the whole century - from the Scopes trial to Social Security. He can shred one of the greatest achievements of the New Deal and then go after other big safety-net Democratic programs, reversing the prevailing philosophy of many decades that our tax and social welfare systems should equalize the distribution of wealth, just a little bit. Barry Goldwater wouldn't have had the brass to take a jackhammer to that edifice. The White House seems to think Social Security was corrupt from the moment it was enacted in 1935. It wants to replace it with private accounts that will fatten the wallets of stockbrokers and put the savings of Americans who didn't inherit vast fortunes at risk. Mr. Bush and his crew not only want to scrap the New Deal. By weakening environmental and safety protections and trying to flatten the progressive income tax, they're trying to eradicate not just one Roosevelt but two, going after the progressive legacy of Theodore. With their brutal assault on history and their sanctimonious manner, they give a whole new meaning to Teddy's philosophy of the presidency. Bully pulpit, indeed. E-mail: liberties at nytimes.com From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 18:39:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:39:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Relations With Germany Are Broken Off Message-ID: Relations With Germany Are Broken Off http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0203.html [I'm sorry for the delay in forwarding this. This event took place on February 3, 1917, and was reported in the The New York Times the following day. Relations With Germany Are Broken Off _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ Break With Austria Too _________________________________________________________________ Notice of Her Blockade Arrives as President is Speaking _________________________________________________________________ EXPECTS NEUTRAL SUPPORT _________________________________________________________________ President Expresses Belief That They Will Follow America's Course _________________________________________________________________ STILL HOPES AGAINST WAR _________________________________________________________________ Mr. Wilson Unable to Believe That Germany Means to Carry Out Threat _________________________________________________________________ Special to The New York Times RELATED HEADLINES American Ship Housatonic Sunk, Crew Safe: First Sinking Reported: London Hears No Warning Was Given Housatonic Off Scilly Islands: 25 Americans on Board: Armed British Steamer Picks Up the Officers and Crew of the Vessel: News Stirs in Washington: But if U-Boat Took Precautions Attack Will Not Be Adequate Cause for Action Militia Called Out: State Forces Ready Today: Mobilization of Land and Naval Units Starts at Once: Guards Doubled at Forts: Police Posted on Bridges and Home Defense League Ordered to Prepare for Duty: Governors Island Busy: Corporation Employes to Protect Plants -- Germans Meeting Places Listed German Ships Seized: Teuton Ships Are Seized: Federal Officials Take Over Vessels Held in Our Ports: Dispossess Appam's Crew: Two German Auxiliary Cruisers Also Are Among Those Now in Custody: Liner Had Been Crippled: Kronprinzessin Cecile is Found Useless -- Austrian Ship Here is Damaged. Text of President Wilson's Address Bernstorff Was Not Surprised: But on Receiving Passports Did Not Hide His Concern Over Failure of His Efforts: Has No Safe Conduct Yet: Details of Arrangements for His Departure Not Settled -- His Wife an American The St. Louis Held; May Mount Guns: Convoy or Six Rapid-Firers to Protect American Liner on Voyage to Europe: Sailing Tomorrow Likely: Adriatic Leaves for the War Zone With 44 Passengers -- Others to Depart Attempt to Scuttle Destroyer Jacob Jones At Philadelphia; Petty Officer Put In Irons W ashington, Feb. 3 -- Diplomatic relations between Germany and the United States were severed today. It was President Wilson's answer to the German notice that any merchant vessel which entered prescribed areas would be sunk without warning. Count von Bernstorff, the Kaiser's Ambassador, has received his passports, in other words, he has been dismissed by this Government. James W. Gerard, the American Ambassador at Berlin, has been ordered to return home with his staff. President Wilson made the sensational answer in a momentous address delivered before the two houses of Congress assembled in joint session this afternoon. Congress appears to be unanimous in a determination to stand by the President in whatever measures he takes. Party lines have been obliterated in the general desire to support the Administration in dealing with a critical situation that most observers expect to result in the entrance of the United States into the European conflict. War has not been declared. The President in his address said: "we do not desire any hostile conflict with the German Government." But preparations for war are being made. Many yards have been closed to the public. For the present private shipbuilding concerns and other plants engaged in Government work will take their own precautionary measures. Private ship builders have offered to place their establishments under the control of the Government, and a provision authorizing the Secretary of the Navy to do this will be offered by the Naval Committee in the House on Monday. German merchant ships at American ports are being closely guarded, and some have been seized. Our war vessels are said to have received precautionary orders. Army arsenals have been told to guard against danger. Public buildings here and elsewhere are being guarded also. Break With Austria, Too Diplomatic relations with Austria-Hungary are to be severed also. This was made certain by the receipt by the State Department today of a note from the Vienna Government containing notice of adherence to the German submarine blockade policy. President Wilson did not know this when he went to the Capitol. Count Tarnowski von Tarnow, the newly accredited Ambassador of Austria-Hungary, who had reached the United States on Thursday, went to the State Department today to arrange for his formal presentation to President Wilson. Word was brought to him that Secretary Lansing would be unable to receive him. Hardly had the Ambassador gone when the department received a cable message from Frederic C. Penfield, giving the text of the Austro-Hungarian adherence to the German war zone order. As Count Tarnowski has not been formally received by this Government he may not be dismissed in the same way as Count von Bernstorff was, but he will be invited to leave the country, with the members of his suite and embassy staff. Ambassador Penfield and his embassy staff will be ordered home. If war results it will be war with Austria-Hungary and Turkey as well, and possibly with Bulgaria. Demands Release of Americans Taking it for granted that war is inevitable, speculation is being indulged in here as to how soon the clash will come. That it will come soon is a general opinion tonight. A German submarine is reported to have sunk the American freight steamer Housatonic. Word came officially today that Germany was holding as prisoners of war sixty-odd American citizens taken from merchant ships by a German raider. This Government has demanded their release immediately. If Germany refuses - and this is expected- the President may ask Congress to authorize him to take measures of reprisal. He will certainly do so if Germany does not spare American merchantman entering the forbidden areas. An important aspect of the situation to which little attention has been attracted is that President Wilson hopes that other neutral nations will join the United States in blacklisting Germany in proclaiming that Government unworthy of association with other nations in the great world family. The President, as his intention is understood, wants Germany "sent to Coventry," not to be spoken to until she has shown herself worthy of recognition again. The United States stands ready to champion the integrity of neutral rights. Whether this will be done single-handed or with the cooperation of other neutral nations is not known. An exchange of views between the United States and the Foreign Offices of South America and Europe is expected to be in progress by Monday. In Spain's recent reply to President Wilson's note to the belligerent nations that country's willingness to participate in any concert of neutrals was indicated. Other European neutrals are known to be ready to arrive at an understanding with American Government. The President gave a hint of this intention in the address he delivered to Congress today. After he had indicated that he might find it necessary later on that "authority be given to me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people to the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas," the President said, "I take it for granted that all neutral nations will take the same course." Bernstorff Promptly Notified The note of dismissal handed to Count von Bernstorff was practically a paraphrase of the President's address to Congress. It was signed by Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, and was given to the German Ambassador personally by Lester H. Woolsey, an assistant solicitor of the State Department who does most of the confidential legal work for Secretary Lansing. Mr. Woolsey went to the German Embassy in Massachusetts Avenue at exactly 2 o'clock and was received immediately by Count von Bernstorff. Mr. Woolsey's arrival at the embassy was timed to correspond to the moment when President Wilson appeared in the hall of the House of Representatives to inform Congress that diplomatic relations with Germany had been severed. With the note handed to the German Ambassador by Mr. Woolsey were the passports guaranteeing Count von Bernstorff safe conduct out of the United States. When and how he will depart and where he will go are questions to be determined. Count von Bernstorff is still at the embassy. The concluding paragraph of the note of dismissal to Count von Bernstorff gives in brief form the action taken by this Government today, which breaks officially for the first time in history the friendly relations existing between Germany or any German State and the United States. That paragraph reads: "The President has, therefore, directed me to announce to your Excellency that all diplomatic relations between the United States and the German Empire are severed, and that the American Ambassador at Berlin will be immediately withdrawn, and in accordance with such announcement to deliver to your Excellency your passports." And the Secretary of State, whose language was scrupulously courteous throughout his communication, had "the honor to be, your Excellency's obedient servant, Robert Lansing." Precautions at Capital Washington is calm outwardly, but under the surface, the excitement is intense. Having recovered from its first shock of realization that the break with Germany which might mean war had come at last, Washington began to discuss the situation and arrived at the conclusion that a break was the only possible outcome of the German notice that ruthless methods of submarine warfare were to be resumed. This of course, applies to Washington generally. Official Washington showed a bit of excitement as the day wore along. It was impossible not to come under the spell of the air of activity in the Government Departments where the wheels were humming in a way suggestive of the period of the war with Spain. Persons who have been in the habit of passing regularly in and out of Government buildings were stopped at the entrances and told that they could not enter unless they furnished evidence that they were Government employes attending engagements with officials. The great host of clerks who make their homeward way nightly through the White House grounds were politely told by policemen that the grounds were closed to the public for an indefinite period. The gates leading to the footways were closed., and while the gates of the entrances to the driveways were open they were guarded by policemen. Suffragists bearing banners inquiring of President Wilson how long women must wait for liberty and what the President would do for suffrage kept up their vigil at the White House gates. It was bitterly could, but the women stood their watches cheerfully. The part of the White House grounds closed today has never been closed except for the brief periods of ceremonial occasions. Joseph P. Tumulty, Secretary to the President, said the grounds had been closed merely out of excess of caution. He thought it well to take that action in a time likely to lead to great popular excitement. Decision Reached at Night President Wilson's decision to break with Germany at once was apparently reached in the still watches of the night. When he left the Capitol yesterday evening after consulting with sixteen Senators, he did not indicate what course he intended to follow in dealing with the German Government. All that was known was that the new submarine policy of Germany made a break inevitable. But when it was to come was problematical. The President had been advised by some of his conferees to break at once. Others had thought he should wait for an actual sinking of a merchantman without warning by a German submarine. Some - but they were few - suggested that another diplomatic note should be sent to Germany before a severance of relations. Which of these courses the President would be inclined to follow he did not indicate when he left the Capitol. It was about 10:30 o'clock this morning that the President sent for secretary Lansing and told him that he had determined that diplomatic relations with Germany should be broken at once. He then arranged for addressing Congress at 2 o'clock. Secretary Lansing went back to the State Department, to make the necessary arrangements for dismissing Ambassador von Bernstorff and recalling Ambassador Gerard. The scene when President Wilson appeared at the House at 2 o'clock was dramatic. Reports had been in circulation that the President had ordered a break with Germany, but comparatively few persons in that large audience were certain as to what attitude the President had decided to adopt. Floor and galleries were packed and jammed when the President entered the chamber. He got a cordial reception. In the thirty minutes that he stood at the rostrum facing that breathless, eager gathering of men and women, only twice did his hearers become really demonstrative. He had received a round of hand clapping and a cheer or two when he appeared. The audience listened attentively to the President's words as he read from little printed pages. Draws Volleys of Cheers The President had sketched the steps the Government had taken to bring Germany to a realization of her responsibility to other nations in the conduct of submarine warfare. It was near the close of the address when the crowd broke into applause over his declaration that he had directed that all diplomatic relations between Germany and the United States should be severed. A moment later there was another outbreak of approval when he said that he refused to believe that the German Government intended to do in fact what it had given warning of intention to do, but this applause was not very marked. When near the very end of the address, the President said he would come before Congress again to ask authority to protect Americans on the seas if Germany carried out her threats, the audience burst into spontaneous cheering. On the whole the businesslike and direct character of the address brought general commendation from those who heard it and a careful canvass of opinion among Senators and Representatives showed that party lines were obliterated in the patriotic desire to prove to the President that the nation's legislators stood behind him in the most important action he has undertaken in his Presidential term. From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 18:40:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:40:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: U.N. Aims to Cut Poverty in Half as Experts Wonder How to Measure It Message-ID: The New York Times > Business > World Business > Economic Scene: U.N. Aims to Cut Poverty in Half as Experts Wonder How to Measure It http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/03/business/worldbusiness/03scenes.html 5.2.3 ECONOMIC SCENE By ALAN B. KRUEGER ONE of the United Nations' top goals is to cut in half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, compared with 1990. The World Bank is responsible for keeping track. Accurately monitoring poverty is essential for knowing whether the goal is achieved and whether antipoverty strategies are working. But measuring poverty is difficult for a particular country, let alone the world. The movie star Angelina Jolie challenged celebrities at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week to know "absolutely what they're talking about" when it comes to poverty, yet even experts would have trouble meeting her standard. Knowing the extent of the rise or fall of worldwide poverty is difficult because poverty is not easy to define or measure. First, establishing a poverty line - or level of consumption below which one is considered impoverished - involves an element of arbitrariness. For many poor families, not having enough money amounts to not having enough food. But there is no particular threshold level of income or expenditures above which people automatically become fully functioning, nourished members of society. "Poverty lines are as much political as scientific constructions," said Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist and expert on economic development. In such places as different as the United States and India, the poverty line was initially set with reference to minimum standards of food consumption. Yet over time, Professor Deaton noted, the poverty lines in both countries were adjusted to keep pace with overall price inflation, not the price of food or the share of food in the average family's budget. Despite straying from its original conception, the poverty line survived because of its political and administrative usefulness. The U.N. has set the line for extreme poverty at living on less than $1 a day. This threshold has obvious rhetorical appeal and surely qualifies as extreme poverty by any standard in developed countries; it is also not far off the poverty line used by many of the poorest countries themselves. Once an international poverty line is set, it must be converted to local currencies. This is trickier than it sounds. Currency exchange rates are inappropriate because most of the items that the poor consume are not traded on world markets. Living expenses are much lower in rural India than in New York, but this fact is not fully captured if prices are converted with currency exchange rates. To convert the $1 poverty line into foreign currencies, the World Bank uses indexes of "purchasing power parity." Simply put, these indexes reflect the cost of buying a standard bundle of goods in each country. Although it is desirable to use purchasing indexes, they are not available for all countries and are skewed toward representing the purchases of the wealthiest households, not the poorest, when they are available. Another problem is that the bundle of goods that poor families actually buy varies from country to country because of differences in tastes and availability. Thus, the $1 poverty line is best viewed as an approximation. Once the poverty line is set in local currency, the consumption of a representative sample of households must be compared with the line to determine the percent of people getting by on less than $1 a day. (Each household's consumption is spread equally among its members, another leap of faith.) Again, this is harder than it sounds. The World Bank typically relies on whatever government surveys that countries routinely produce. But there is no uniform standard in the way countries collect and process their data, which is important because the poverty rate is sensitive to how consumption is measured. Consider India, home to 33 percent of the world's poor - or 20 percent, depending on how the data are collected. India was a pioneer in social surveys and has one of the best government statistical agencies in the world. Still, uncertainty shrouds the level of poverty in India. In one experiment, India's national survey organization asked half of the households it surveyed to report their spending on certain items over a 30-day period and half over a seven-day period. Households reported 30 percent higher food consumption per day in the shorter interval, enough to cut the poverty rate in half. It is not certain which measure is more accurate, although follow-up work points toward the longer interval. Perhaps the best one can hope for is consistency of measurement within countries to detect changes in poverty over time. But continuing past practices can prolong the use of misleading poverty counts that are not comparable across countries. Clearly, there is a need for Latin American countries, which usually measure poverty by income rather than consumption, to collect reliable household consumption data because consumption is a better measure of living standards. The herculean measurement problems aside, careful research by Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion of the World Bank indicates that much progress has been made toward the goal of halving poverty in China and India. But, they found, little progress has occurred in Latin America and Africa, and the former Soviet states are slipping into deeper poverty. Because China and India accounted for 60 percent of the world's poor in 1990, the goal of halving poverty may be achieved a decade from now, even while many regions see no progress. Despite the progress in China and India, 18 percent of the world's population still somehow survives on less than $1 a day. The United Nations has recently held a number of brainstorming sessions to gather proposals for the secretary general's report to the General Assembly on achieving the development goals, which will be delivered next month. An essential prerequisite is to improve poverty statistics and ensure their integrity. Although the process of setting a poverty line is necessarily political, the task of measuring poverty should be insulated from political influences. The World Bank, however, is an inherently political institution. Yet no other international body currently has the expertise or resources to monitor worldwide poverty, so it is important for the next president of the World Bank to value and protect the impartiality of the statistical and research staff. The U.N. could also help by working with statistical agencies around the world to develop uniform standards for poverty surveys and then to ensure that their data are adequately documented and publicly archived. To this end, the U.N. could restart its Household Survey Capability Program, which supported statistical offices in developing countries in the 1980's. This may not be a cause that celebrities are ready to line up for, but improving poverty data will put the world in a better position to monitor progress and evaluate poverty reduction strategies by the time the poverty line is moved up to $2 a day. Alan B. Krueger is the Bendheim professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. E-mail: akrueger at princeton.edu From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 18:43:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:43:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Sharing and Apart, as a Life Ebbs (5 Letters Message-ID: The New York Times > Opinion > Sharing and Apart, as a Life Ebbs (5 Letters) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/03/opinion/l03aging.html 5.3.3 To the Editor: In "Under One Roof, Aging Together Yet Alone" (front page, Jan. 30), the underlying sadness was evident. While money may afford assisted living residents a nice, comfortable atmosphere with everything they could possibly want, the question that kept coming to my mind was, Where are their children, and why are they not taking care of their parents? We have such vision for the rest of the world in terms of democratizing it and making it like us. And yet we often overlook that we would do well to learn from other countries that honor their responsibility in taking care of their parents. Sara Salvania Provo, Utah, Jan. 30, 2005 To the Editor: Cranky in an assisted living facility, residents wonder why they aren't as happy as those depicted in the glossy brochures. Realistically, one wonders how they could possibly emulate those smiling couples. Old, often alone without a partner, removed from what has been familiar, the possibility of money running out, a limited life. Who wouldn't turn into a first-class curmudgeon? Has a secret been exposed? The myth that this stage of life is one of contentment is questionable. Assisted living facilities are necessary, and they serve a much-needed purpose as we live longer. Should this be in my future down the road, I will simply endure. But save me from Bingo games, and hope I am able to make the best of it. What other options are there? Mary Ramniceanu New York, Jan. 31, 2005 To the Editor: "Humbled by the loss of control and fearful of the future." This phrase from "Under One Roof, Aging Together Yet Alone," made me think of Oregon and its Death With Dignity Act, which was enacted in 1997. Since then, more people have chosen to avail themselves of the act because of their fear of loss of control than for any other reason, including pain. If loss of control is one of our greatest fears (I am 74), why is it only Oregon that allows those who wish to choose the time and manner of their deaths to do so? When will those of us who live elsewhere gain that advantage? Betsy Carpenter Portola Valley, Calif., Jan. 30, 2005 To the Editor: I discovered last July that I had cancer, went through chemo and radiation and still have cancer. I'm going to die, and I know and accept it. But I'm much happier than the people I read about in the article. I was divorced and met a widow some eight years ago, and we decided to share our lives together. We each lived alone and finally wondered why. Now that cancer has entered the scene, nothing has changed because of the great woman I am with, who doesn't want me to leave home and go anywhere. And I don't want to leave. We will share our lives to the end. Families who are considering placing a loved one in one of these assisted living communities might do better to find an organization that places a man and a woman together to share what income they have, staying at home and being happy. It's not a project that can be attempted and completed overnight, but it would benefit everybody. There are plenty of people living alone who would like to share their lives with someone. All it would take would be for someone to start an organization that could accomplish this task. My lady went through open-heart surgery, and I cared for her during her yearlong recovery. Now she is doing the same for me until my end comes. It's called love. Jerry Babb Oakland, Me., Jan. 30, 2005 To the Editor: Having to leave assisted living to go to a nursing home points out a sad, irrational fact of the American health care system. What sense does it make to move a person from an appropriate, less expensive setting - assisted living - to an inappropriate, much more expensive nursing home? It makes no sense at all. This parallels another irrationality in our health care system. Insurance companies and government health financing agencies will pay tens of thousands of dollars for psychiatric hospitalization, but severely limit money for cost-effective outpatient psychotherapy, despite well-documented research showing that outpatient treatment will prevent the much greater expenditure of hospitalization. The gold standard for health care is providing services in the least restrictive setting. The practice of inappropriately shunting people into hospitals and nursing homes grossly violates this standard. In my years of practice as a psychologist, I have not been able to figure out the reason for these truly irrational practices. The best I have been able to come up with is that hospitals and nursing homes have better lobbyists and deeper pockets for political contributions. They certainly - because of the wastrel ways of the government and insurance companies - have more money to spend. Ira Rosofsky New Haven, Jan. 31, 2005 The writer is a psychologist who provides services to nursing homes and assisted living centers. From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 19:59:56 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 14:59:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Jerusalem Report: (Slezkine) Some of My Best Friends Are Mercurians Message-ID: Some of My Best Friends Are Mercurians http://jrep.com/Info/10thAnniversary/ Noah Efron The Jerusalem Report Twenty-five years ago, I met an old American expatriate in Moscow. I was a college kid, sent by the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry to bring prayer books and blue jeans (to be sold or bartered) to Jews denied emigration visas for Israel. In 10 days, I met dozens of these refuseniks, but the man I'll call Josef stood out. His parents had lived in Flatbush, my grandparents' old neighborhood. They had followed news of the Russian Revolution with excitement, Josef told me, and by the time he was 5 years old, in 1920, America to them had become a soulless Babylon, where money and trivial comforts were all that mattered. To raise a boy there, his parents felt, was to sentence him to the life of a petty shopkeeper. But to raise a boy in revolutionary Russia, that was to give him a future with meaning and honor. Eventually Josef's parents sold their books and furniture, and boarded a steamer bound for Libau, in Latvia. From there, they made their way to Moscow, where they took up residence in a tiny third-floor apartment they shared with two other families. It was there, 60 years later, that he gratefully accepted the Levis I brought, and told me tearfully, in Brooklyn-accented English, that his well-meaning parents had thrown away his life before it had ever begun. I took this personally. Josef was born 12 years before my father, just a few blocks over, and it seemed a mere accident that it was his parents, and not my father's, who quit America for the revolution. It could, after all, have been me in a dismal Moscow flat, pathetically taking jeans from some rich, self-important American kid. And it was personal in another way as well. My grandparents had come to America from eastern Europe before the revolution, and while I was thankful that I had avoided Soviet life, I did not find the results of their decision altogether satisfactory. In fact, I too had come to see America as soulless and materialistic, banal and debauched. Which is why I, too, had decided to quit America. I would finish college as I promised my mother and father, but then I would move to Israel to join a desert kibbutz. There I planned to become a wholly different man. I would be ruddy and sinewy; my hands would be rough. I'd farm. I'd serve in the army. I would stop reading the New York Review of Books. (The diploma that cost my parents $150,000 would hang in the bathroom.) I would be earnest and "authentic." And so it came to pass that three years after I'd met Josef, I was a kibbutznik on an army transit nervously accompanying my infantry unit into Sidon, Lebanon. A Jew reinventing himself is by now so familiar a notion that it is easy to overlook the oddity of the expatriate's story, and my own. The experience of Jews in the 20th century was one of grand movements, in both senses of the word. Millions of Jews moved from one place to another, often liquidating possessions, crossing seas, shattering families, learning new languages, and acquiring new passports (and, of course, in wartime Europe, riding the rails to their deaths). And, in the same period, millions of Jews joined movements - communist, socialist, bundist, Zionist and more, in every imaginable combination. Many of my heroes growing up - Rosa Luxembourg, Samuel Gompers, Leon Trotsky, Albert Einstein, David Ben-Gurion - were movement Jews in both senses. Each ended up an ocean away from where he or she began. And each tried to remake the world he or she lived in, along the lines of some creed or ideology. Why were Jews in the 20th century such visible peripatetics, such visible radicals and, in particular, such visible peripatetic radicals? Pick any standard you wish, and Western Jews have excelled by it; first in Europe before the rise of the Nazis, and then in the United States, and then (though less so) in Israel. Why? These are huge questions, of course. Over the years a great number of answers have been given: Jews succeed because they're so damn smart (as Raphael Patai suggested); because generations of Talmudic casuistry sharpened minds and encouraged Jews to question tradition and authority (as Warner Sombart suggested); because the long history of pariahdom forced upon Jews by unaccepting surroundings gave them a kind of detached wisdom (as Thorsten Veblen suggested); or, because their late emancipation left them with fewer restraints of "conservative and traditional thinking," allowing them to ignore or attack existing institutions (as Nathan Glazer suggested). A few of these explanations probably have no validity at all; but even the ones that have something to them are dwarfed by the most recent effort to make sense of this history, Yuri Slezkine's eccentric and brilliant "The Jewish Century." Slezkine, a Russian ?migr? history professor at Berkeley, who learned to his surprise at age 11 that his father's mother was Jewish, begins by challenging the "Jews, God & History" dogma drilled ceaselessly into the mind of every kid who ever attended Hebrew school, the dogma that Jewish history is unique because Jews are unique. "There was nothing particularly unusual about the social and economic position of the Jews in medieval and early Modern Europe," Slezkine writes. Jews belong to a class of ethnic tribes (along with gypsies, Armenians, Nestorians, overseas Chinese, East African Indians and many more) who, for centuries and throughout the world, have assumed certain occupations and dispatched them in a certain way. Slezkine calls these tribes "mercurian," after Mercury, "the god of all those who did not herd animals, till the soil, or live by the sword": messengers, craftsmen, merchants, healers and other intermediaries. Mercurians set down their stakes among "apollonians," after Apollo, the god of agriculture and livestock. Apollonian societies are dominated by farmers, along with soldiers and priests. There was a symbiosis between mercurians and their apollonian hosts, but it was an uneasy one. Mercurians were also susceptible to the charge that they were disloyal parasites who compensate for their weakness (they do no physical labor) with scheming craftiness. Though apollonian societies needed mercurians for their goods and services, they also disparaged and despised them, expressing their disdain in "sporadic grassroots pogroms. and periodic confiscations, conversions, expulsions, and executions." This pattern has repeated itself, Slezkine writes, over centuries and continents. Much of what we rather parochially think of as "anti-Semitism," then, is only a private instance of the far more general phenomenon of anti-mercurianism. But this is only the beginning. In recent generations, the West has quickly, if fitfully, abandoned its apollonian heritage. In Europe and America, fewer and fewer people spend their days on farms, in churches or barracks. Populations have steadily seeped from countryside to city or suburb. Most citizens now work in professions and service industries. In other words, the West has quickly become mercurian. Pick at random a Russian or German or Virginian on the street, and it is far more likely that he earns his living in a manner similar to my (Jewish) great-grandfather than to his own (say, Protestant) great-grandfather; he is more likely to work in Walmart than he is to drive a tractor. In that sense, the past century has been the mercurian century and, since Jews have long been the most visible, literate and successful mercurians in the West, the Jewish century. This, in and of itself, partly explains recent Jewish economic and cultural success, because success in the newly mercurian West demands precisely the sorts of skills that Jews have honed for many generations. Essentially, Jews excelled in the 20th century because they had the home-field advantage. But Slezkine's story gets more complicated still. Pastoral, romantic apollonianism was never completely extinguished. It retained a powerful appeal among people dismayed by the rootless and restless rationality of modern life. Nazism was, to some degree, a revolt against mercurianism, a fact that may shed some light on the passion with which Nazis exterminated Jews (and Roma-gypsies and others). But there were benign rejections of mercurianism as well, one of the most successful being agrarian and labor Zionism. Jews themselves could be found among the most strident critics of their own mercurian past. The Jewish century saw the first great revolt against Jewish mercurianism. Having set out this grand scheme of modern Western history, Slezkine devotes the largest portion of his book to describing the three great migrations of 20th-century Jews, from the Russian Pale to three very different "paradises." The first was to the United States, the most mercurian of all societies. The second was to Palestine, to establish an apollonian, organic Jewish peasant society. And the third was to Moscow and Leningrad, after a revolution that promised to dissolve the age-old dichotomy between the apollonian and mercurian. It is not surprising that, being a Russian historian, Slezkine devotes most of his effort to the fascinating, untold story of Jewish migration from the Pale to the revolution, and their extraordinary success when they arrived. We all tend to see the history of Soviet Jews through the prism of their last generation as a disaffected and persecuted minority. Slezkine describes the stunning integration of Jews in the early Soviet bureaucracy and government, and the influence they achieved in science, academia, arts, administration, army and police, as well as the sincerity of their commitment to the revolution (and to Pushkin). "The Jewish Century" is history on a majestic scale. It explains the great successes of Jews in the liberal West (as well as why Jews tended toward some professions and not others). It explains the radical recoil of many Jews against liberal modernity, in favor of more romantic movements. It explains modern anti-Semitism, and especially the great resonance of romantic anti-Semitism, including Nazism. It explains the central place of Jews in the Soviet Union, and also the eventual deterioration of both their position and their commitment to the state and its revolution, in the century's second half. And it explains all these things in a way that is fresh, compelling and frequently startling. Of course, like any theory that explains so much, it is schematic, relying perhaps too much on archetypes. There is much complexity that Slezkine overlooks, as when he presents American Jews as wholeheartedly liberal mercurians and Israelis as unmitigated apollonians, thereby ignoring, say, the American Jewish back-to-the-land agriculturalist movement (now forgotten, but dynamic in the first third of the 20th century) and the unrepentantly bourgeois Tel Aviv Jews. In fact, of the three great Jewish experiments of the 20th century - the liberal United States, Zionist/statist Israel and Communist Soviet Union - Slezkine explores only the last in satisfying detail (a reasonable choice, since this is the only one of the three that has never been well explored in the past). Still, the schematic nature of Slezkine's analysis is an unavoidable cost of writing on such a capacious scale, and it's a price well worth paying. The clarity of analysis is extraordinary, and the relatively simple conceptual tools Slezkine provides are unexpectedly powerful. After reading Darwin for the first time, Thomas Henry Huxley registered shock that so clear and simple an explanation could explain so much, and that it had been overlooked for so long. I could be Slezkine's Huxley. It's now 22 years since I moved to Israel to remake myself as an apollonian, and I find myself a fat university professor in a room lined with books, waiting for the next issue of the New York Review to arrive. The Soviet Union is gone, of course, and the great-grandchildren of Jewish revolutionaries are mostly trying to make a living in Brooklyn and Bat Yam. We are all mercurians now, but as Slezkine has shown, it may be that my personal failure to remold myself ultimately owes to the Jews' great success remolding the world we all live in. Noah Efron is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and teaches history & philosophy of science at Bar-Ilan University. His book "Real Jews" was published by Basic Books in 2003. The Jewish Century / by Yuri Slezkine. Princeton University Press: 438 pp.: $29.95 http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:Xa46nSgH5QEJ:jrep.com/Books/Article-0.html+Jerusalem+Report+slezkine&hl=en&client=firefox-a From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:00:21 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:00:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Z: Churchill Replies by Ward Churchill Message-ID: Churchill Replies by Ward Churchill http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=7160 5.2.2 In the last few days there has been widespread and grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning my analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, coverage that has resulted in defamation of my character and threats against my life. What I actually said has been lost, indeed turned into the opposite of itself, and I hope the following facts will be reported at least to the same extent that the fabrications have been. * The piece circulating on the internet was developed into a book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book is a detailed chronology of U.S. military interventions since 1776 and U.S. violations of international law since World War II. My point is that we cannot allow the U.S. government, acting in our name, to engage in massive violations of international law and fundamental human rights and not expect to reap the consequences. * I am not a "defender"of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people "should" engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable." * This is not to say that I advocate violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I witnessed and participated in more violence than I ever wish to see. What I am saying is that if we want an end to violence, especially that perpetrated against civilians, we must take the responsibility for halting the slaughter perpetrated by the United States around the world. My feelings are reflected in Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside speech, where, when asked about the wave of urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed . . . without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government." * In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then Ambassador to the UN and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of economic sanctions, but stated on national television that "we" had decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn the victims of the September 11 attacks, just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi children, the more than 3 million people killed in the war in Indochina, those who died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada, Panama and elsewhere in Central America, the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, and the indigenous peoples still subjected to genocidal policies. If we respond with callous disregard to the deaths of others, we can only expect equal callousness to American deaths. * Finally, I have never characterized all the September 11 victims as "Nazis." What I said was that the "technocrats of empire" working in the World Trade Center were the equivalent of "little Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not charged with direct killing but with ensuring the smooth running of the infrastructure that enabled the Nazi genocide. Similarly, German industrialists were legitimately targeted by the Allies. * It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American "command and control infrastructure" in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a "legitimate" target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than "collateral damage." If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these "standards" when the are routinely applied to other people, they should be not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them. * It should be emphasized that I applied the "little Eichmanns" characterization only to those described as "technicians." Thus, it was obviously not directed to the children, janitors, food service workers, firemen and random passers-by killed in the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon logic, were simply part of the collateral damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful or dehumanizing a description when applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone else. If we ourselves do not want to be treated in this fashion, we must refuse to allow others to be similarly devalued and dehumanized in our name. * The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk this responsibility, we, like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and '40s, are complicit in its actions and have no legitimate basis for complaint when we suffer the consequences. This, of course, includes me, personally, as well as my family, no less than anyone else. * These points are clearly stated and documented in my book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, which recently won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus Myer Human Rights Award. for best writing on human rights. Some people will, of course, disagree with my analysis, but it presents questions that must be addressed in academic and public debate if we are to find a real solution to the violence that pervades today's world. The gross distortions of what I actually said can only be viewed as an attempt to distract the public from the real issues at hand and to further stifle freedom of speech and academic debate in this country. Ward Churchill Boulder, Colorado January 31, 2005 From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:02:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:02:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Bookforum: Editorial on Copyright Message-ID: BOOKFORUM | feb/mar 2005 http://bookforum.com/boynton.html Who owns the words you're reading right now? if you're holding a copy of Bookforum in your hands, the law permits you to lend or sell it to whomever you like. If you're reading this article on the Internet, you are allowed to link to it, but are prohibited from duplicating it on your web site or chat room without permission. You are free to make copies of it for teaching purposes, but aren't allowed to sell those copies to your students without permission. A critic who misrepresents my ideas or uses some of my words to attack me in an article of his own is well within his rights to do so. But were I to fashion these pages into a work of collage art and sell it, my customer would be breaking the law if he altered it. Furthermore, were I to set these words to music, I'd receive royalties when it was played on the radio; the band performing it, however, would get nothing. In the end, the copyright to these words belongs to me, and I've given Bookforum the right to publish them. But even my ownership is limited. Unlike a house, which I may pass on to my heirs (and they to theirs), my copyright will expire seventy years after my death, and these words will enter the public domain, where anyone is free to use them. But those doodles you're drawing in the margins of this page? Have no fear: They belong entirely to you. While it was once believed that Marxism would overhaul notions of ownership, the combination of capitalism and the Internet has transformed our ideas of property to an extent far beyond the dreams of even the most fervent revolutionary. Which is not to say that anything resembling a collectivist utopia has come to pass. Quite the opposite. In fact, the laws regulating property--and intellectual property, in particular--have never before been so complex, onerous, and rigid. Copyright protection has been growing in fits and starts since the early days of the Republic. In 1790, a copyright lasted for fourteen years and could be renewed once before the work entered the public domain. Between 1831 and 1909, the maximum term was increased from twenty-eight to fifty-six years. It was extended several more times during the twentieth century until 1998, when the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act added twenty additional years (to both existing and future intellectual property), increasing copyright protection to seventy years after the death of an author. Some of the most significant changes in intellectual property law took place in the Copyright Act of 1976, after which it was no longer required to register one's work in order to protect it. Anything "fixed in a tangible medium"--e-mail messages, those doodles in the margins of this magazine--automatically became copyrighted. Recent laws--like the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which increased protection of copyrighted material on the Internet, and the Sonny Bono Act--have elevated intellectual property's status to such a degree that many courts and corporations often treat it in virtually the same way as they do physical property. This is a category mistake, and one explicitly forbidden according to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.'' Unlike Europe, whose laws center on the "moral rights" of the author to control his creation, American copyright law has always had the strictly utilitarian goal of providing just enough incentive for someone to create. Copyright is a bargain: The government grants a limited right to profit from your intellectual property in exchange for your agreement to give the public limited access to it during that period (such as the "fair use" right of a teacher to make class copies of an essay), and, eventually, for it to lapse into the public domain. But as copyright terms lengthened and intellectual property became a larger part of American industry, the logic of incentive has been overshadowed by the logic of reward, the thinking being that if my work continues to have value, why shouldn't I profit from it for as long as I want? "In our tradition, intellectual property is an instrument. It sets the groundwork for a richly creative society but remains subservient to the value of creativity," writes Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig in his most recent book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. "Yet the current debate has this turned around. We have become so concerned with protecting the instrument that we are losing sight of the value." But if we have fallen into what New York University communications professor Siva Vaidhyanathan calls "the property-talk trap," it has had the unintended effect of mobilizing citizens by demonstrating the stake we all have in the debate over how intellectual property should be considered. Once an arcane part of the American legal system, intellectual property law is now at the center of major disputes in the arts, sciences, and politics. People are increasingly aware of the role intellectual property plays in their everyday lives; they bump up against it every time they discover they can't print a passage from an e-book or transfer a song from their computer to their iPod. These days, it is not uncommon to hear people casually conversing about legal concepts like "fair use" and the "first sale doctrine." Much of this awareness results from the well-publicized lawsuits the Recording Industry Association of America has brought against music downloaders. This is unfortunate, because it has created the impression that those in favor of liberalizing copyright law condone the theft of intellectual property. Leaving aside questions about the appropriate legal remedies for, and the economic implications of, downloading, taking copyrighted material for which one has not paid is simply illegal. The fact that illegal downloading is a mass phenomenon indicates that our intellectual property laws aren't working in much the same way that the speakeasies of the '20s and '30s pointed out the irrationality of Prohibition. Neither downloading nor drinking, however, made the activities more legal. It is in more common--and only marginally illegal--pursuits that ordinary citizens are realizing they have a legitimate stake in the debate over the scope of copyright law. As the price of digital video cameras and editing software plummets, the number of people who sync home movies to music, splice together clips from favorite television shows, and even produce documentaries has soared. TiVo and other digital video recorders have made it possible to trade programs over the broadband Internet connections that are finding their way into homes across the country. Young fathers are practically required to transplant images of their newborns into great works of art by way of Photoshop. In December 2004, Google announced "Google Print," a project to bring millions of easily searchable, digitized books to the Internet. The project, which has already begun and may take a decade to complete, will further heighten awareness of our vexed relationship to intellectual property. After digitizing the entire holdings of Stanford and the University of Michigan libraries (as well as sections of the libraries of Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library), Google Print will search the texts of these books--although one will only be able to read the entire text of those works whose copyright has lapsed and are therefore in the public domain. As for copyrighted titles, one will be able to search their text for names and key phrases but won't be allowed to read the books themselves (a function like Amazon's helpful, but similarly limited, "Search inside this book" service). Instead, one will be directed to a library or bookstore where the book can be located. As amazing an effort as Google Print is (creating nothing less than a virtual "universal library of knowledge"), its logical goal--giving readers full access to the entire contents of that library--will be undercut by our intellectual property laws. It is an inherently unstable situation, and it is only a matter of time before someone (Amazon? Random House?) develops software to link this vast cache of literature to a convenient print-on-demand service (for which the hardware already exists). When it becomes possible to hold an inexpensive, physical copy of one of Google's digitized titles in one's hands--but only if it was first published prior to 1923 and is therefore in the public domain--people will begin to understand the implications of having something so obviously beneficial (universal access to universal knowledge) tethered to laws from another era. Google Print may be the Trojan Horse of the copyright wars. * * * While a range of copyright-infringing technologies has been changing the way we interact with our culture, critics of excessive copyright protection have been forging a coalition to demand that the law be brought more in line with the capabilities of these technologies. The challenge is considerable. Individual intellectual property rights are often in conflict with one another, and the only groups with a common interest in the direction of such laws are those corporations who want to lock up culture in perpetuity (or "forever minus a day," as former Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti once suggested). Even following the twists and turns of the debate is difficult, since negotiations are seldom held in public. "This cultural war is almost invisible," writes David Bollier in Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture. "It is happening quietly and incrementally--in rulings by distant courts, in hearing rooms on Capital Hill and obscure federal agencies, in the digital code that Hollywood and record labels surreptitiously implant into DVDs and CDs." One of the most suggestive responses to this dilemma has come from Duke University law professor James Boyle, who, in his landmark book Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society (1996), diagnosed the problem succinctly. "What we have right now is an exponentially expanding intellectual land grab, a land grab that is not only bad but dumb, about which the progressive community is largely silent, the center overly sanguine, and the right wing short-sighted." Boyle's subsequent work is an extended plea that we value the public domain. "Our art, our culture, our science depend on this public domain every bit as much as they depend on intellectual property,'' he writes. Boyle is one of the founders of "digital environmentalism," the movement that is fashioning a new understanding of what the public domain--the "commons," as Boyle and others have called it--might be. The great achievement of the environmental movement, from which Boyle draws inspiration, was its ability to convince a swath of the population--consumers and industrialists alike--that they all had a stake in this thing called "the environment," rather than just the small patch of land where they lived. Similarly, digital environmentalists are raising our awareness of the intellectual "land" to which people ought to feel entitled. Digital environmentalism is a two-pronged movement, with one group raising the awareness of the cultural stakes of intellectual property among everyday citizens, and the other pressing for legislative and legal change. The difference between the two is one of emphasis, with each participating in the battles of the other. Neither are anarchists or utopians; rather, both perceive of themselves as conservatives in the traditional sense of the term. "The point is not that copyright and trademark law needs to be overthrown," writes Bollier. "It is that its original goals need to be restored. Individual creators need to be empowered more than ever. The volume and free flow of information and creativity need to be protected. The public's rights of access and use must be honored. We must strike a new balance of private and public interests that takes account of the special dynamics of the Internet and digital technology." For those in the legal camp, the central event of recent years was Eldred v. Ashcroft, the 2002 Supreme Court case that challenged the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Appearing before the court, Lessig argued that perpetually extending the term of copyright violated the Constitution's stipulation that copyright exist for only "a limited time.'' The court rejected Lessig's position by a vote of seven to two, holding that while the extension was perhaps unwise on policy grounds, it was still within Congress's constitutional authority. A second legal challenge, which Lessig brought in 2004, went nowhere. Developments on the legislative front have been, if anything, more discouraging. Laws that strengthen copyright and increase penalties for infringement are introduced, and reintroduced, in Congress every year. In 2004, the Induce Act, a bill so broadly drawn that it would have held manufacturers of TiVo and iPods legally responsible if their customers used them for infringing copyright, died in committee, but it is only a matter of time before a similar piece of legislation passes. The cultural prong of digital environmentalism has had somewhat more success. Represented by writers like Bollier, Vaidhyanathan (Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System), Kembrew McLeod (Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity), and others, they all advocate the path of activism and resistance. Working within existing law, they propose that artists and authors aggressively exercise their intellectual property rights in the face of threats and legal challenges from overbearing copyright holders. Bollier, for one, perceives the work of digital environmentalists as benefiting from the momentum generated by legal challenges like Lessig's. "Acts of civil disobedience against the antisocial, personally intrusive claims of copyright law have only grown since the Eldred ruling, in part because of it," he writes. Their premise is that, like a muscle, intellectual rights grow stronger only when exercised. "For the most part, we don't need any new legislation. Fair use is a great solution, but for it to have any real impact on our culture we need to vigorously and confidently (though not carelessly) employ this legal doctrine in daily life," writes McLeod. The problem, they contend, is less the laws than the lawyers. Lawyers representing copyright holders encourage their clients to limit access to their intellectual property as much as possible. "The lawyers tell us 'You may gaze upon and buy the products of American culture,'" Bollier writes in Brand Name Bullies. "'But don't be so na?ve as to think that you can actually use them for your own purposes. We own them.'" And the lawyers representing creators (artists, writers, and filmmakers, for example) who want access to copyrighted material for their work have decided that the transaction cost of boldly exercising fair-use rights is simply too high. Their primary goal is to avoid confrontation, even when they know that the outcome--should the case come to court--would favor their clients. The strategy of the cultural digital environmentalists is twofold. First, they challenge the lawyers at cultural institutions, whether they are book publishers, Internet providers, or movie distributors. Second, they spread the word about how poorly the current intellectual property system balances the rights of individuals and society. This tactic has given birth to the genre of the "copyright horror story." These are tales of intellectual property laws run amok: The artist who receives a cease-and-desist letter from the Vatican for using an image from the Sistine Chapel in a collage titled "The Sistine Bowl-Off." The company that was sued for devising software to teach tricks to a robot dog. McDonald's claim to own phrases like "Play and fun for everyone" and "Hey, it could happen." An Adobe e-book of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that bears a warning forbidding one to read it aloud. In telling such stories, digital-environmentalist writers are trying to do for intellectual property what muckrakers like Lincoln Steffens did for corrupt governments and Eric Schlosser did for fast food: Go behind the curtain to reveal how something we take for granted--in this case, the cultural commons--really works. "We, as citizens, own these commons. They include resources that we have paid for as taxpayers and resources that we have inherited from previous generations," Bollier writes in his previous book, Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth. "They are not just an inventory of marketable assets, but social institutions and cultural traditions that define us as Americans and enliven us as human beings." Some copyright horror stories read like science fiction, depicting life in an anticommons in which everything is owned: letters of the alphabet, familiar phrases, and popular songs like "God Bless America" and "Happy Birthday" (which won't enter the public domain until 2030). And like the best science fiction, these stories pose a serious question: To what extent do we already live in such a place? Is our world an intellectual property version of The Matrix where, despite the illusion of freedom, we are little more than digital sharecroppers, licensers of a culture we mistakenly assume is ours? The science-fiction metaphor helps explain a tension central to the intellectual property wars. We do, in a sense, live in the space between two competing realities: According to the letter of the law, intellectual property is well protected, but legitimate access to it (by artists, parodists, critics) is guaranteed. In practice, however, our rights to access are ambiguously drawn and, as a result, prohibitively expensive to exercise. The difference in views between the commons and the anticommons is one of perspective. Can an artist who spends a fortune in legal fees successfully defending his legitimate fair use of a copyrighted image really be said to have won? "Fuck fair use," Lessig is fond of saying. "Fair use in America simply means the right to hire a lawyer to defend your right to create." * * * The line between science fiction and reality is often difficult to discern, as exhibited by the case of the college student who received trademark #2,127,381 for the phrase "freedom of expression." Fortunately, the student was Kembrew McLeod, who applied for it in order to make a point. McLeod, now professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa, is no stranger to using media pranks to exploit the absurdities of the system. In fact, he even once sold his soul in a glass jar on eBay. McLeod may be the most optimistic of the digital environmentalists. "We can fight back and win, especially because many recent court decisions have upheld free-speech rights in the age of intellectual property," he writes. Getting people to exercise those rights is another issue. "The problem is that many individuals and companies either don't know this or don't want to take a risk." McLeod's and Bollier's books are full of inspirational stories of those who have taken such risks and successfully faced down the corporations who have improperly used their copyrights, such as artist Tom Forsythe (creator of "Food Chain Barbie"), who was awarded $1.8 million in legal fees after Mattel pursued an "unreasonable and frivolous" suit against him. In September 2003, a group of Swarthmore College students posted on the Internet damning copies of internal memos written by employees of Diebold, the largest producer of electronic voting machines. The memos detailed various security flaws in Diebold's machines, and it wasn't long before the students received cease-and-desist letters demanding that they remove the memos from their websites. Although Diebold withdrew its legal threats in the wake of bad publicity, the students sued the company for falsely accusing them of copyright infringement. On September 30, 2004, a judge agreed that Diebold had deliberately misrepresented its copyright claims and awarded the students legal fees and damages. This past summer, director Robert Greenwald made "fair use" of a substantial amount of Fox News footage in order to document its conservative bias in his documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. Fox grumbled about the movie but never sued Greenwald for copyright infringement. In 2004, underground hip-hop artist DJ Danger Mouse edited together the vocals from Jay-Z's Black Album with selections of the Beatles' White Album to produce The Grey Album. Despite a flurry of cease-and-desist letters from EMI/Capitol (which owns the copyright to The White Album), over 170 websites continued to host The Grey Album in support of DJ Danger Mouse's right to create. It went on to become one of the most frequently downloaded independent albums of all time. The Boston Globe called it "the most creatively captivating" album of the year. If anything, Bollier's "bullies" and McLeod's "bozos" are their own worst enemies. "As we look back twenty years from now, Mattel and other businesses like Fox News may ironically be remembered as some of the greatest promoters of fair use," writes McLeod. "Virtually every time these companies try to step on freedom of expression? in court they end up expanding the parameters of fair use in case law, and they also intensify the backlash against this kind of behavior." Recent stirrings in legal theory may give some comfort to the activist wing of digital environmentalism. Taking for granted the fact that the problem is less the letter of intellectual property law than the spirit in which it is interpreted, Richard Posner, a federal appeals judge and prolific legal theorist, and others have suggested some ways to remedy this problem. Foremost among them is the doctrine of "copyright misuse." In his California Law Review article "Fair Use and Statutory Reform in the Wake of Eldred," Posner argues that it is more valuable, and feasible, to strengthen fair-use practices than to lobby for new copyright laws. The problem with the current system, according to Posner, is that copyright owners systematically make improperly broad claims to their rights. The book, DVD, or baseball-game broadcast that comes with a notice stating that no part of the work may be copied without permission is, in fact, in violation of the doctrine of fair use (for which one doesn't need permission). Posner argues that when a copyright holder affixes a warning on copies of his work that "grossly and intentionally exaggerates the copyright holder's substantive or remedial rights, to the prejudice of publishers of public-domain works, the case for invoking the doctrine of copyright misuse" has been made. The copyright misuse doctrine is attractive for a number of reasons. It is a flexible approach to protecting the public-policy goals underlying copyright law (promoting "the progress of science and useful arts") without having to pass new laws every time a technical innovation--radio, movies, television, copy machines, VCR, the Internet--creates a new set of challenges for copyright holders. And it is especially valuable to users of copyright because it is "one of the only copyright-limiting doctrines that arise from actions taken by the copyright holder," writes Kathryn Judge in her Stanford Law Review article "Rethinking Copyright Misuse." Aside from the possibility of being sued, the primary problem for those who want to make fair use of copyrighted material is the uncertainty of their position; while the law seems to support them, their backers and/or insurers may deem the cost of exercising their rights excessive. The doctrine of copyright misuse might provide a mechanism for a creator to address that uncertainty. For example, employing the principle of copyright misuse, an artist who believes he has a legitimate right to make fair use of a copyrighted work can proactively challenge a copyright holder who he believes is protecting his work more broadly than required by copyright law. While such a maneuver wouldn't necessarily guarantee that the artist will prevail (he might of course be wrong), copyright misuse is one way the claims of the copyright holder might be tested without enduring an expensive lawsuit. Copyright misuse isn't as satisfying as a Supreme Court victory or the passing of a new set of intellectual property laws. And it isn't clear that it is robust enough to protect fair use in the way that Posner and others want it to. But perhaps by bolstering the practices of everyday people it will help reclaim a familiar cultural landscape. Because in the end, the goal of digital environmentalism is quite modest: a world in which, as McLeod writes, the digital future looks "a lot like the analog past." Robert S. Boynton is director of New York University's magazine journalism program. His new book, The New New Journalism: Conversations with America's Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft, is being published this month by Vintage. FREE CULTURE: HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND THE LAW TO LOCK DOWN CULTURE AND CONTROL CREATIVITY BY LAWRENCE LESSIG. NEW YORK: PENGUIN. 345 PAGES. $25. [17]BUY NOW BRAND NAME BULLIES: THE QUEST TO OWN AND CONTROL CULTURE BY DAVID BOLLIER. HOBOKEN, NJ: WILEY. 320 PAGES. $25. [18]BUY NOW SHAMANS, SOFTWARE, AND SPLEENS: LAW AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY BY JAMES BOYLE. CAMBRIDGE, MA: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 288 PAGES. $20. [19]BUY NOW FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION?: OVERZEALOUS COPYRIGHT BOZOS AND OTHER ENEMIES OF CREATIVITY BY KEMBREW MCLEOD. NEW YORK: DOUBLEDAY. 384 PAGES. $25. References 7. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28130&cgi=product&isbn=1594200068 8. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28130&cgi=product&isbn=0471679275 9. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28130&cgi=product&isbn=0674805232 10. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28130&cgi=product&isbn=0385513259 11. http://bookforum.com/boynton.html#top 12. http://bookforum.com/archive.html 13. http://www.artforum.com/ 14. http://bookforum.com/contact.html 15. http://bookforum.com/subscribe.html 16. http://bookforum.com/advertise.html 17. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28130&cgi=product&isbn=1594200068 18. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28130&cgi=product&isbn=0471679275 19. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28130&cgi=product&isbn=0674805232 20. http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=28130&cgi=product&isbn=0385513259 From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:04:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:04:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Freeman Dyson: The Darwinian Interlude Message-ID: The Darwinian Interlude http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/03/issue/magaphone.asp?p=0 5.3 Freeman Dyson is professor emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. His research has focused on the internal physics of stars, subatomic-particle beams, and the origin of life. Carl Woese published a provocative and illuminating article, A New Biology for a New Century, in the June 2004 issue of Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews. His main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practiced for the last hundred years, and the need for a new biology based on communities and ecosystems rather than on genes and molecules. He also raises another profoundly important question: when did Darwinian evolution begin? By Darwinian evolution he means evolution as Darwin himself understood it, based on the intense competition for survival among noninterbreeding species. He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution did not go back to the beginning of life. In early times, the process that he calls horizontal gene transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time. Carl Woese is the worlds greatest expert in the field of microbial taxonomy. Whatever he writes, even in a speculative vein, is to be taken seriously. Woese is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, during which horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell separated itself from the community and refused to share. Its offspring became the first species. With its superior efficiency, it continued to prosper and to evolve separately. Some millions of years later, another cell separated itself from the community and became another species. And so it went on, until all life was divided into species. The basic biochemical machinery of life evolved rapidly during the few hundred million years that preceded the Darwinian era and changed very little in the following two billion years of microbial evolution. Darwinian evolution is slow because individual species, once established, evolve very little. Darwinian evolution requires species to become extinct so that new species can replace them. Three innovations helped to speed up the pace of evolution in the later stages of the Darwinian era. The first was sex, which is a form of horizontal gene transfer within species. The second innovation was multicellular organization, which opened up a whole new world of form and function. The third was brains, which opened a new world of co?rdinated sensation and action, culminating in the evolution of eyes and hands. All through the Darwinian era, occasional mass extinctions helped to open opportunities for new evolutionary ventures. Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence that we call globalization. And now, in the last 30 years, Homo sapiens has revived the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species will no longer exist, and the evolution of life will again be communal. In the post-Darwinian era, biotechnology will be domesticated. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners, who will use gene transfer to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also, biotech games for children, played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of the general public, will give us an explosion of biodiversity. Designing genomes will be a new art form, as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and diversity to our fauna and flora. From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:05:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:05:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Guardian: Sex and the single robot Message-ID: Sex and the single robot http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5117562-111400,00.html Jonathan Watts, East Asia correspondent Wednesday February 2, 2005 Scientists have made them walk and talk. There are even robots that can run. But a South Korean professor is poised to take their development several steps further, and give cybersex new meaning. Kim Jong-Hwan, the director of the ITRC-Intelligent Robot Research Centre, has developed a series of artificial chromosomes that, he says, will allow robots to feel lusty, and could eventually lead to them reproducing. He says the software, which will be installed in a robot within the next three months, will give the machines the ability to feel, reason and desire. Kim, a leading authority on technology and ethics of robotics, said: "Christians may not like it, but we must consider this the origin of an artificial species. Until now, most researchers in this field have focused only on the functionality of the machines, but we think in terms of the essence of the creatures." That "essence" is a computer code, which determines a robot's propensity to "feel" happy, sad, angry, sleepy, hungry or afraid. Kim says this software is modelled on human DNA, though equivalent to a single strand of genetic code rather than the complex double helix of a real chromosome. Kim said: "Robots will have their own personalities and emotion and - as films like I Robot warn - that could be very dangerous for humanity. If we can provide a robot with good - soft - chromosomes, they may not be such a threat." Although he admits his ideas sound fantastic, Kim is no crank. In the mid-1990s, the professor launched the robot football world cup, which has since become one of the most popular means for robotics researchers to measure their progress against competitors from around the world. From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:07:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:07:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] (no subject) Message-ID: An Unsettled Forecast for Global Warming The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.1.7 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18b01201.htm THE NATURAL WORLD By MALCOLM G. SCULLY Climate science, Doug Macdougall writes, "is notoriously difficult, because there are so many interconnected variables at work that cause and effect are often impossible to discern with confidence." Those variables, which Macdougall discusses in Frozen Earth: The Once and Future Story of Ice Ages, published recently by the University of California Press, have bedeviled the debate over global warming from the beginning. Complexity breeds uncertainty, and uncertainty can lead to confusion in the general public and to deliberate obfuscation on the part of those who fear that any action to stem global warming would upset the economic status quo or their narrow self-interest. So while environmental activists and many climate scientists warn that the status won't be quo much longer without bold steps to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, skeptics try to sow doubts about the need to respond at all. In that charged political climate, Macdougall, a professor of earth sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego, offers a sober look at what we have learned about climate change and what we still need to learn. His book comes as more and more scientific studies and journalistic accounts document changes that already seem to be taking place. The focus of those reports has shifted from the global phenomenon to the impacts that warming may have on particular places, habitats, and lifestyles. In November a panel of 300 scientists from eight countries released the results of a comprehensive, four-year study of the impact of warming on the Arctic region. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment concluded that the region was undergoing "some of the most rapid and severe climate change on earth." The assessment showed that 386,100 square miles of sea ice -- about 8 percent of the total in the Arctic -- had been lost in the last 30 years and that winter temperatures in Alaska and western Canada had risen by from 5 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the last century. "These changes in the Arctic provide an early indication of the environmental and societal significance of global warming," the assessment said. While the changes may be most extensive in the Arctic, they appear to be worldwide. Glaciers are shrinking in the Himalayas, the Rockies, and, as Mark Lynas, a writer and activist, describes -- in High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis, published last summer by Picador -- in the Peruvian Andes. He reports that glaciers in Peru's Cordillera Central lost a third of their volume from 1970 to 1997 and "will disappear altogether in just a few decades unless global temperatures stop rising." That could have disastrous consequences for the people of Lima, Peru's capital, who depend on the R?mac River for their drinking water. Once the glaciers are gone, he says, the R?mac, "which through the late twentieth century has been temporarily charged with additional meltwater from the rapidly retreating ice fields, will suddenly -- and disastrously -- dry up for half the year." "It's difficult to imagine quite how a massive Third World city might cope with a crisis on this scale," Lynas writes. "With no water supply for six months every year, life will quickly become impossible. Where will the residents go? There is no spare land in the mountains, and few could survive in the jungle. Whilst the rich could pay for fresh water to be trucked in, the poor -- the massive majority of Lima's population, who already have difficulty accessing reliable water supplies -- will be forced to move or die." Last summer the BBC reported on the findings of Scottish scientists who found that on the Shetland and Orkney Islands hundreds of thousands of seabirds had failed to breed this year. The most likely cause, they said, was rising seawater temperatures that had led to the disappearance from waters around the islands of the sand eel, a small fish that has been a key part of the food chain for the seabirds. The scientists speculated that the plankton on which the sand-eel larvae feed are moving northward to avoid the warmer seawater temperatures. In October two environmental groups Results for America and Clean Air-Cool Planet -- held a briefing for reporters in which they warned, "Global warming already is starting to change New England's climate, endangering fall colors from hardwood forest maples and other trees. Over the next 100 years, the emerging climate-change trend could wipe out all or most of the autumnal foliage for which the region is best known and upon which its tourism economy is heavily dependent." At the briefing, Barrett N. Rock, a professor of natural resources at the University of New Hampshire, reported, "Just 40 or 50 years ago, New England and New York produced about 80 percent of the world's maple syrup, compared to 20 percent in Canada. Now the ratio has been reversed as the optimal maple-sugar growing and tapping conditions have shifted north." At another briefing in October, held at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard Medical School, James J. McCarthy, a biological oceanographer at Harvard University, said that "global warming may well be causing bigger and more powerful hurricanes. Warmer seas fuel the large storms forming over the Atlantic and Pacific, and greater evaporation generates heavy downpours." McCarthy, the lead author of one section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report, issued in 2001, added, "With warmer, saltier tropical seas, the IPCC has projected larger storms, heavier rainfalls, and higher peak winds." And a study conducted by 19 scientists of the effects of climate change on California found that warming could, among other things, have a devastating impact on the state's wineries because it would lead to poorer-quality grapes. The study, which was published in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in August, also indicated that the snow pack in the Sierra Nevada could be reduced by 70 to 90 percent. Complicating the debate further, some computer models show that there will be winners and losers as global warming continues, and that -- at least in the short term -- the winners will be in the developed world. A study of the impacts of warming on agriculture by two scientists at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies suggests that climate change will economically benefit countries in temperate areas but damage crops in countries closer to the Equator. "The 'winners,' ironically, are the developed countries that have done the most to produce these warming trends," says Robert Mendelsohn, a professor of forest policy who led the study. For many scientists and environmentalists, such evidence amounts to a compelling case that human-induced warming is producing or will produce significant disruptions in our way of life. Even so, as Macdougall points out in Frozen Earth, we still don't understand exactly what is going on. "There is no such thing as average weather," he notes. "Weather is what we experience daily, and it can be misleading, because we are impressed most by the extremes." To try to understand how the climate, as opposed to the weather, is changing, he looks at large changes on a longer time scale than the last few decades, pointing out that we are still in an ice age that reached its peak 20,000 years ago. At the moment, he says, we "are in the midst of the maximum warmth of an interglacial period." More important, he notes, "A hallmark of Ice Age climate change, at least when viewed from the perspective of its impact on human societies, is abruptness. With little or no warning, there have been drastic shifts in temperature, storminess, and precipitation, both regionally and globally." Rapid climate shifts seem to take place when a threshold has been crossed, he adds, and some external process has to trigger that crossing. Recently, computer simulations have suggested that a change in ocean circulation may be one such trigger. "In particular," Macdougall writes, "changes in the way ocean circulation occurs in the North Atlantic Ocean have been implicated in some of the large and abrupt temperature changes observed in the Greenland ice-core data over the past few tens of thousands of years." He points to evidence from the distant past that large infusions of fresh water into the North Atlantic have affected ocean circulation and brought on prolonged cold periods in the Northern Hemisphere. If today's warming continues, melting glaciers in the Arctic could provide such an infusion. That prospect has caused some scientists to predict that global warming could lead to something akin to the "Little Ice Age," the period from the 14th to the 19th centuries when Europe and North America experienced extended periods of unusual cold. While the mechanisms that lead to abrupt climate change remain mysterious, he says, we have "several good examples of past civilizations collapsing as a result" of it -- from the Akkadians 4,200 years ago in Mesopotamia to the Maya 1,100 years ago in Central America. "Modern societies," he adds, "for the most part are better equipped to deal with such surprises than were those of even a hundred years ago, but are not entirely immune. Just-in-time logistics systems and highly concentrated and specialized agriculture are as likely to be disrupted by abrupt climate change as some earlier technologies." Even now, he says, energy grids have trouble dealing with heat waves and cold snaps. So, while Macdougall warns against reading too much into short-term changes in the weather, his analysis of the long term remains unsettling. We cannot predict, "even in a general way," he says, "what may happen to the climate system as a result of human influences. A great, unintended experiment in 'climate forcing' is under way as we add more and more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Whether or not we shall reach one of those thresholds that seem to separate different climate modes, and what will happen if we do, is still unknown." Malcolm G. Scully is The Chronicle's editor at large. From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:08:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:08:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Fundamentalism and Free Will (Letters) Message-ID: Fundamentalism and Free Will (Letters) The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.1.7 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18a06304.htm To the Editor: As a person who has been intimately involved for over a decade in the evangelical debate over the foreknowledge of God, I read [3]"Can God See the Future?" (The Chronicle, November 26) with great interest. I count as good friends both John E. Sanders and Bruce A. Ware, the two theologians featured in the article, on opposite sides. I grieve over this inquisition within the evangelical academy and hope that those who would expel open theists will achieve a broader vision of the evangelical tent. The article mistakenly refers to open theists and their supporters as "liberals" within evangelicalism. That is not the case. In fact, the open theists interpret the Bible more literally than do their critics. They derive their conclusions about God's foreknowledge from Scripture and not from modern movements such as process philosophy and theology. Furthermore, contrary to what the article implied, evangelicalism has always included believers in free will; Calvinism is not normative for evangelical theology. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist tradition (which strongly emphasizes free will), was just as evangelical as his contemporary Jonathan Edwards, a Calvinist who regarded God as the all-determining reality and who denied freedom of will. What this controversy reveals is that in spite of its own best intentions and efforts, evangelicalism has not fully emerged from its fundamentalist roots. The furor over open theism is a product of latent fundamentalist habits of the mind that continue to plague many evangelical organizations and institutions. Roger E. Olson Professor of Theology Baylor University Waco, Tex. From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:09:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:09:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Corante: Many-to-Many: Fukuyama's Penguin Message-ID: Many-to-Many: Fukuyama's Penguin http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/06/fukuyamas_penguin.php 5.1.6 I have this pet theory, rather grand, and falls into the category of [18]what you believe is true even though you cannot prove it. That open source will realize the end of history. In 1989 Francis Fukuyama wrote the celebrated and controversial book, The End of History, which posited that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a Hegelian triumph of liberal democracy as the last remaining form of government and political philosophy. Fukuyama went on to explore issues of social capital and tyhmos, "desire for recognition" that drives free-market economics. His critics were manifold, particularly those on the wrong side of history. Marxist criticism centered less on liberal politics than liberal economics -- particularly market failure. The classic debate over the role of government centers on what economists call market failure: when the market fails to provide social goods. Similar to how Doc says the demand side is supplying itself, with open source and open content social goods are produced through peer production. Let's explore one aspect that is less about code and more about social dynamics triumphing over economics, [19]language. For a small country like [20]Rwanda, a localized version of Office would never be supplied, so they do it themselves. Some vendors are [21]open sourcing their localization in recognition of unevenly distributed demand. While more research is required, some patterns emerge with stories behind them when comparing language support by markets and peers: Rank [22]World Population [23]Internet Population [24]Web Content [25]Wikipedia [26]LISA.org 1 Chinese (Mandarin) English English English French 2 Spanish Chinese Japanese German German 3 English Spanish German Japanese Spanish 4 Bengali Japanese Chinese French Japanese 5 Hindi German French Swedish Italian 6 Portugese French Spanish Polish Chinese 7 Russian Korean Russian Dutch Portuguese 8 Japanese Italian Portuguese Spanish Swedish 9 German Portuguese Korean Italian Dutch 10 Chinese (wu) Dutch Other Portuguese Korean World population and internet population are gauges of demand. Web content is supplied by both markets and peers. Wikipedia is produced by peers, although the stories behind the community distort the current outcome. LISA.org (Localization Industry Standards Association) is a measure of market production for localization. Wikipedia isn't a perfect gauge of peer supply when markets fail, because it is a community with rich stories of how it evolves. Perhaps over time and at greater scales the rise of the Swedish version would be a signal of bottom-up fulfillment, but today it may very well be preferential attachment spawned by early adoption and there is also a high level of market-based translation effort. The Polish exception may well be the same, but there is an interesting story here. Wikipedia has had [27]two forks in its history, both by language based communities when commercialization was a potential threat. The [28]Polish fork was resolved and re-integrated. This explains why Spanish Wikipedia is low in its ranking relative to online population: [29]Enciclopedia Libre Universal is a Spanish language wiki website, running at the University of Sevilla in Spain. It was started in January 2002 as a fork from the Spanish branch of WikiPedia, EsWikiPedia, apparently after a misunderstanding about WikiPedia founder Jimmy Wales' intentions to use advertising as a means to raise funding for the project. At the fork, the EsWikiPedia contained some 2000 articles and was among the biggest handful of non-English Wikipedias. After the fork, Enciclopedia Libre has grown faster than any non-English Wikipedia branch, and is believed to be the world's 3rd BiggestWiki (as of July 2002). [30]Arle Lommel from [31]LISA was kind enough to gather this data for me (perhaps a benefit of Socialtext's membership), and also provide some analysis which I encouraged to share openly. Beyond the tabled measures of translation in volume, he provides analysis of strategic languages that are off the chart: In contrast are "strategic" languages, i.e., those that represent new market areas with a potential for new revenue streams. In this view, China seems to be the number one language at present (I write this based on a number of LISA presentations and the general "buzz" in the industry). While we don't have any hard data at present on strategic language (for obvious reasons, companies tend to keep strategic information quite close), if we look at those countries where U.S. and European businesses are trying to establish a foot-hold for consumer-oriented products and see new large markets (and where the market can be accessed easily with a single language), you will have a picture of the strategic languages. I suspect that the list would look something like the following: 1. Chinese 2. Japanese 3. Spanish (for U.S.-based companies that see Latin America as a market) While India is rising in importance, it isn't a major localization target yet because (1) it is fairly well served with English, at least for the most affluent sectors, and (2) for those not served by English, the picture is of immense linguistic fragmentation, with hundreds of languages that could be considered part of the localization picture. One generalization is that Wikipedia lags behind all others in Chinese translation because its relatively centralized and censorable. I had coffee with Hong Kong University Researcher Andrew Lih today and I will pass on some of his research on regional language use in Wikipedia in an update later. But he made a significant point that second languages are a primary determinant of development in wikipedia. For example, users in India and the Philippines have such a high rate of English as a second language that their own languages have yet to develop within Wikipedia. But I would end with this thought of the Polish exception. A polish online encyclopedia at the scale of the wikipedia version would not have been developed with market and contractual signals alone. Social signals are driving this production and producing a social good. The story behind it is an exceptional community, but an exception that could very well become the norm as we march towards the End of History. Posted by Ross at 12:52 PM Comments and Trackbacks The example of Rwanda is telling. Rwanda was included in Jared Diamond's recent book, Collapse. He connected the genocide in Rwanda with growing hunger and plummeting living conditions driven by environmental degradation. Open software creates great new abundance, but does not help if people don't have enough to eat. Food and environmental problems are social problems. Wikis, social software and other modern communication technology like telephones can help somewhat, but the big problems are human problems about making decisions. Rich countries like the US conduct in aquifer mining in dry areas, and large scale agriculture practices that strip soil fertility. We need more than wikis to make decisions that will foster abundance in the long term. Posted by [32]Adina Levin on January 6, 2005 06:00 PM | [33]Permalink to Comment "In 1989 Francis Fukuyama wrote the celebrated and controversial book, The End of History, which posited that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a Hegelian triumph of liberal democracy as the last remaining form of government and political philosophy." I think what he was saying was a little more subtle than that. He used not history, but History, in the sense of competing worldviews. Liberal democracy won insofar as nobody really can argue that there is a better system out there. Posted by [34]praktike on January 6, 2005 07:02 PM | [35]Permalink to Comment Yes, its just the end of a philosophical debate, the sky isn't falling. Posted by [36]Ross Mayfield on January 6, 2005 10:41 PM | [37]Permalink to Comment Many Too Many Excerpt: Over at Many-2-Many we have a fascinating post, called Fukuyama's Penguin, speculating on why Chinese isn't better-represented in online contributions. This got me to singing: Many too many have stood where I stand Many more will stand here too, Why... [38]Read the rest... Trackback from Moore's Lore, Jan 7, 2005 10:17 AM References 18. http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html 19. http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2004/11/the_speed_of_la.html 20. http://news.com.com/Se+habla+open+source/2100-7344_3-5159179.html 21. http://www.lisa.org/archive_domain/newsletters/2004/4.2/redlers.html 22. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm 23. http://www.glreach.com/globstats/ 24. http://global-reach.biz/globstats/refs.php3 25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics 26. http://www.lisa.org/blogs/index.php?id=2 27. http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiPediaIsNotTypical 28. http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-March/000302.html 29. http://enciclopedia.us.es/ 30. http://www.lisa.org/blogs/index.php?id=2 31. http://www.lisa.org/ 32. http://www.alevin.com/weblog 33. http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/06/fukuyamas_penguin.php#17194 34. http://www.liberalsagainstterrorism.com/ 35. http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/06/fukuyamas_penguin.php#17198 36. http://ross.typepad.com/ 37. http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/01/06/fukuyamas_penguin.php#17206 38. http://www.corante.com/mooreslore/archives/032122.html From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:11:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:11:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Toronto Star: National Web library do-able, affordable, visionary Message-ID: National Web library do-able, affordable, visionary ------ Forwarded Message From: Michael Geist Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 01:56:55 -0500 To: Subject: Can a country digitize everything it has ever written? Dave, Of possible interest to IP -- my weekly Toronto Star Law Bytes column returns with a new year's resolution -- Canada should become the first country in the world to to create a comprehensive national digital library. The library, which would be fully accessible online, would contain a digitally scanned copy of every book, government report, and legal decision ever published in Canada. The column argues that the most significant barriers to a national digital library do not arise from fiscal challenges but rather from two potential copyright reforms -- an extended licensing system and an extension on the term of copyright -- currently winding their way through the system. Column, posted below, is online at http://geistvirtuallibrary.notlong.com Best, MG National Web library do-able, affordable, visionary Michael Geist Toronto Star In the mid-1990s, Ottawa established a bold new vision for the Internet in Canada. The centrepiece was a commitment to establish national Internet access from coast to coast to coast, supported by a program that would enable the country to quickly become the first in the world to connect every single school, no matter how small or large, to the Internet. Not only did Canada meet its goal, but it completed the program ahead of schedule. As we enter the middle of this decade, the time has come for Industry Minister David Emerson and his colleagues to articulate a new future-oriented vision for the Canadian Internet. While the last decade centred on access to the Internet, the dominant issue this decade is focused on access to the content on the Internet. To address that issue, the federal government should again think big. One opportunity is to greatly expand the National Library of Canada's digital efforts by becoming the first country in the world to create a comprehensive national digital library. The library, which would be fully accessible online, would contain a digitally scanned copy of every book, government report, and legal decision ever published in Canada. A national digital library would provide unparalleled access to Canadian content in English and French along with aboriginal and heritage languages such as Yiddish and Ukrainian. The library would serve as a focal point for the Internet in Canada, providing an invaluable resource to the education system and ensuring that access to knowledge is available to everyone, regardless of economic status or geographic location. From a cultural perspective, the library would establish an exceptional vehicle for promoting Canadian creativity to the world, leading to greater awareness of Canadian literature, science, and history. By extending the library to government documents and court decisions, it would help meet the broader societal goal of providing all Canadians with open access to their laws and government policies. Moreover, since the government holds the copyright associated with its own reports and legal decisions, it is able to grant complete, unrestricted access to all such materials immediately alongside the approximately 100,000 Canadian books that are already part of the public domain. Creating virtual libraries to complement the world's great physical libraries is already underway. Project Gutenberg, an all-volunteer initiative, has succeeded in bringing thousands of public domain texts to the Web. Last summer, the British Library unveiled an ambitious plan to digitize and freely post on the Internet thousands of historical newspapers that are now in the public domain. That plan will bring more than one million pages of history to the Internet, including work from a young Charles Dickens. Last month Google announced that it had reached agreement with several of the world's leading research libraries, including ones at Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford, and the New York Public Library, to scan more than 15 million books into its search archive. Once the Google project is completed, the general public will enjoy complete, full-text access to thousands of books that are now part of the public domain because the term of copyright associated with those books has expired. For books that remain subject to copyright, Google will still scan a copy of the book, but will only grant the general public more modest access to its content, providing users with smaller excerpts of the work - a policy that is consistent with principles of fair use under copyright law. The Google project epitomizes the essence of the copyright balance. The public will benefit from unrestricted access to works in the public domain along with more limited access to other work, all without the need to seek any prior permission. Authors will still enjoy copyright protection in their work and will frequently find that greater access leads to increased commercial success. While digitally scanning more than 10 million Canadian books and documents is a daunting task, the Google project illustrates that it is financially feasible. Reports suggest that it will cost Google approximately $10 to scan each book. Assuming similar costs for a Canadian project and a five-year timeline, the $20 million annual price tag represents a fraction of the total governmental commitment toward Canadian culture and Internet development. In fact, the most significant barriers to a national digital library do not arise from fiscal challenges but rather from two potential copyright reforms currently winding their way through the system. First, the federal government is contemplating reversing the decade-old policy of avoiding Internet licensing by creating a new licensing system for Internet content that would create new restrictions to accessing online content. By proposing a very narrow definition of what can be accessed without compensation, the plan would effectively force millions of Canadian students to pay for access to content that is otherwise publicly available. Despite opposition from the education community, the proposal is marching forward, constituting a significant setback to the goal of encouraging Internet use in Canada. Given the Supreme Court of Canada's recent commitment to copyright balance and robust user rights, it is clear that for most uses no license is needed to provide schools with appropriate access to online content such as a potential national digital library. With this in mind, this proposal should be quickly scrapped. Second, the Canadian Heritage Minister Liza Frulla's Copyright Policy Branch recently announced that this year it plans to launch a public consultation on a proposal to extend the term of copyright in Canada from its current 50 years after the death of the author to at least 70 years after death (authors enjoy exclusive copyright in their work from the moment of creation until 50 years after they die). Extending the copyright term would deal a serious blow to a national digital library because it would instantly remove thousands of works from the public domain. Although the U.S. and European Union have extended their copyright terms by an additional 20 years, the vast majority of the world's population lives in countries that have not. Those countries have recognized that an extension is unsupportable from a policy perspective. It will not foster further creative activity, it is not required under international intellectual property law, and it effectively constitutes a massive transfer of wealth from the public to the heirs of a select group of copyright holders. Given the economic and societal dangers associated with a copyright term extension, even moving forward with a consultation constitutes an embarrassing case of putting the interests of a select few ahead of the public interest. A new year is traditionally a time for bold, new resolutions. As Parliamentarians return to Ottawa, they should be encouraged to seize the opportunity to establish a national vision for the Internet that will again propel Canada into a global leadership position. Supported by appropriate copyright policies, a national digital library comprised of every Canadian book ever published would provide an exceptional resource for Canadians at home as well as advantageously promote the export of Canadian culture abroad. -- ********************************************************************** Professor Michael A. Geist Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law University of Ottawa Law School, Common Law Section 57 Louis Pasteur St., Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5 Tel: 613-562-5800, x3319 Fax: 613-562-5124 mgeist at pobox.com http://www.michaelgeist.ca From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:12:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:12:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Ecnomist: (Posner) American intellectuals: The new phrenology Message-ID: American intellectuals: The new phrenology http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=975532 2.2.7 (note date) Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. By Richard A. Posner. Harvard University Press; 448 pages; $29.95 and ?20.50 "I'M NOT a donkey, and I don't have a field." So scoffed Max Weber, a great German social thinker, when a faculty non-entity criticised him for writing outside his discipline. The academic division of labour has come on apace since Weber's day (he died in 1920), and hardly a year has passed when someone from the cultural-decline crowd did not decry the narrowing of scholarship and bemoan what they took for its consequence: the death of the free-ranging intellectual. This concern is not foolish. Who does not wish that the worlds and sub-worlds of science, public affairs and humanities could better talk to one another? Who does not applaud those valuable souls who can move between these worlds with even a hint of grace or plausibility? Richard Posner, an American federal-appeals judge, law professor and prolific author, puts a new spin on these old anxieties. The trouble with the (mainly American) intellectuals that preoccupy him is not, in his view, that they are dying, but that they are not any good. He starts off by ruling out what most of us would take as archetypal intellectuals: scientists who explain science to lay people (eg, Steven Weinberg), philosophers with an influential vision of society (eg, John Rawls or Robert Nozick) and literary intellectuals of high Bohemia (eg, Susan Sontag). No, his public intellectuals are really pundits: people who opine about issues of the day on television or in newspaper columns. On the theory that if it's real it must be countable, he ranks what he calls the top 100 on the basis of scholarly citations, media mentions and web hits. Though some of his pundits (such as Henry Kissinger) have escaped from government, most are moonlighters from universities or think-tanks. As scholars, he tells us, they know much about little; as media egg-heads, they must talk about almost anything. Naturally, they fall on their faces: their stock-in-trade is prediction and some of their forecasts (he doesn't say what proportion) turn out to be wrong. There are, he adds, too many of them. The supply of commentators outruns demand, and the quality of comment is therefore falling. To improve things, he suggests that public intellectuals should pay more attention to social (particularly economic) realities, spare us their value judgments and post their columns on university websites (where colleagues will supposedly spot and correct their errors). What are we to make of this extraordinary construction, with its artificial-vanilla-flavour assumptions? Mr Posner was a founder of the law-and-economics movement, an influential view of law which, crudely, recommends economic efficiency as the test of fair allocation. Yet since writing a law-and-economics textbook he has wandered ever farther afield. Like Mr Posner himself, "Public Intellectuals" is both brilliant and maddening. His knowledge and interests are wide. He is, in a sense, a classic intellectual. His topic, the health of public debate, matters. A dry, factual take on America's commentariat is--or would have been--welcome. But he is here too partisan, too hurried and too driven by the conclusions he wants to reach. In the end, the only intellectuals he does not scorn, you feel, are those who share his reductive and utilitarian outlook. Being a serious intellectual is harder than it looks. That is Mr Posner's point. But need he have illustrated it with this book? From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:13:40 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:13:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Is It Dutch? Japanese? Why Not Ask the Rat? Message-ID: Is It Dutch? Japanese? Why Not Ask the Rat? NYT January 11, 2005 By NICHOLAS BAKALAR If you talk to a rat, you will not get an answer. But a team of Spanish neuroscientists has shown that a well-trained rat may be able to determine what language you are speaking. Every language has distinctive rhythms and intonations, and awareness of them is an important step in acquiring language. Only humans can learn to speak, but it has been demonstrated that tamarin monkeys, like newborn human infants, can distinguish the unique rhythms of a language even though meaning escapes them. In other words, they know when someone is speaking their language, even though they have no idea what is being said. Researchers have theorized that this ability extends to other mammals as well, but until now no nonprimate has ever demonstrated the capacity. In the new study, led by Juan Toro, a doctoral candidate at the University of Barcelona, researchers found that rats trained in either Dutch or Japanese appeared able to distinguish the two languages. The rats were trained by having them listen to synthesized sentences in the languages. Dutch and Japanese were chosen because of their vastly different rhythms. The sentences had no semantic content, but were intended to reproduce the rhythms of the language without using any real words. This simplified form of language, when spoken in a synthesized voice, leaves only rhythm as a cue, eliminating complicating factors like semantic content or the quality of the voice of a particular speaker. For the Dutch group, the rats were rewarded with food only when they pressed a lever after hearing Dutch sentences. The Japanese group was rewarded only after hearing Japanese sentences. Eventually, both groups learned to press the lever only when hearing a sentence in their own languages. Next, the rats listened to four synthesized sentences in the language they had not learned. When the Dutch mice were presented with Japanese sentences, they showed no recognition; when the Japanese mice were presented with Dutch, they were similarly baffled. But when presented with a sentence in their own languages, even a sentence they had never heard before, the rats recognized the characteristic rhythm and pressed the lever correctly. The researchers said the rats appeared to have generalized some of the rules of their language and, at least in this limited way, were able to understand an entirely new sentence, a distinctive mark of language acquisition. When the researchers played the same sentences with the tape running backward, the rats were unable to understand what language was being spoken - exactly what happens with tamarins and human infants. Rats, of course, have limitations. They had considerably more difficulty in telling one language from another when listening to normal speech, especially when uttered by different speakers, the researchers found. The multiplicity of cues in ordinary conversation - intonation, the speaker's sex, pitch and so on - utterly confused them. Human infants have some difficulty with different voices, too, but they quickly overcome it, learning to recognize their own language no matter who is talking and however varied the pitch and intonation. "What these results suggest," Mr. Toro said in an e-mail interview, "is that we share with other animals the ability to perceive some regularities, such as rhythm, in the speech signal. This is interesting because several studies with human infants have shown that these regularities may open the door to language acquisition." Does this mean rats and monkeys have the potential to understand human speech? No, said Mr. Toro. But he added, "Even though human language is special and does not seem to have parallels in the communicative systems of other species, some basic abilities we use for acquiring it may be present in other animals." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/health/11anim.html From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:14:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:14:34 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Anti-sleeping Pill Might Cut Cocaine Habit Message-ID: Anti-sleeping Pill Might Cut Cocaine Habit http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-01-10-7 Betterhumans Staff 1/10/2005 8:00 PM Treatment option? A new study has found that the narcolepsy drug modafinil helps people overcome cocaine addiction A wake-promoting agent could find a new use as one of the few drugs able to treat cocaine dependence. According to American researchers at the [8]University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, despite years of research there are still no approved drugs for treating [9]cocaine addiction. The wake-promoting drug [10]modafinil ([11]Provigil), however, which is approved for treating [12]narcolepsy, has attracted attention for its ability to blunt cocaine-induced euphoria. [13]Charles Dackis of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues have now reported a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that found modafinil promoted cocaine abstinence in treatment-seeking outpatients. "If confirmed by further investigation, this could be the breakthrough we have been waiting for," says Dackis. Achieving abstinence Conducted between 2002 and 2003, the study involved 62 cocaine-dependent people aged 25 to 63 who were free of significant health conditions. Thirty participants received a single 400 mg dose of modafinil in the morning while 32 were giving matching placebo tablets. Treatment continued for eight weeks along with twice-weekly cognitive behavioral therapy. The researchers measured the treatment's primary effectiveness by cocaine abstinence based on urine toxicity testing. They also measured secondary effects such as the drug's impact on cravings and adverse events. Over the eight-week study, people treated with modafinil provided more cocaine-negative urine samples than those on placebo and were more likely to achieve abstinence. The researchers also found no adverse effects in those receiving modafinil, and no participant failed to complete the study due to side-effects. Three larger studies examining modafinil for cocaine dependence are underway. The research is reported in the journal [14]Neuropsychopharmacology ([15]read abstract). References 8. http://www.med.upenn.edu/ 9. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine 10. http://www.modafinil.com/ 11. http://www.provigil.com/ 12. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy 13. http://www.pennhealth.com/Wagform/MainPage.aspx?config=provider&P=PP&ID=980 14. http://www.nature.com/npp/ 15. http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/npp/journal/v30/n1/abs/1300600a.html From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:16:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:16:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Michio Kaku: Could a hole in space save man from extinction? Message-ID: Could a hole in space save man from extinction? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2005/01/05/ecrspace05.xml&sSheet=/connected/2005/01/05/ixconnrite.html (Filed: 05/01/2005) In the next decade, powerful satellites will help us to understand life, the fate of our universe and the 'theory of everything', says Michio Kaku The great 19th-century biologist Thomas Huxley once wrote that the "question of all questions for humanity... is that of the determination of man's place in Nature and his relation to the Cosmos". Other earthlings: In 2014 the Planet Finder will begin hunting for small, Earth-like planets We might soon be able to provide the answer to this huge riddle as a battery of instruments - including satellites, gravity wave detectors and laser devices - not only begins to give us startling insights into our place in the cosmos, but also forces us to confront the birth and final death of the universe - and even the possible existence of parallel universes. In the next decade, powerful new satellites will find evidence of Earth-like twins orbiting other stars. So far, our instruments are so crude that we can only detect about 130 giant, Jupiter-sized planets, which are probably devoid of life. In 2006, the Kepler satellite will be launched with a mission to analyse 100,000 stars for large planets. But in 2014, the Terrestrial Planet Finder will begin to hunt for small, Earth-like planets in 500 star systems with a telescope designed to screen out the mother stars, whose light otherwise overwhelms the faint radiation from any nearby planets. If these efforts pay off, people will have an existential shock, knowing that, when gazing at these twins in the night sky, there might be someone looking back. The thought of detecting intelligence in the universe is exhilarating to most scientists. However, as science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once cautioned: "There may be intelligent life in space or not. Either thought is frightening." Cosmology, our understanding of the universe, might be revolutionised when the Lisa (Laser Interferometry Space Antenna) is launched in 2011. It will orbit the Sun at the same distance as the Earth, but trailing us by 30 million miles. Consisting of three satellites linked by laser beams, it will form a huge triangle of laser light about three million miles on each side. If a gravity wave from space hits this triangle, it will cause a tiny distortion in the laser beams, which will be detectable by its instruments. (Lisa will detect optical distortions one hundredth the size of an atom.) Lisa should be able to detect cosmic explosions nine billion light years from Earth, which cut across much of the visible universe, as well as colliding black holes and even the shock waves emitted a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, which are still circulating around the universe. Hence it might be capable of resolving the most perplexing and stubborn question facing cosmology: what happened before the instant of Genesis? In the various pre-Big Bang theories that have been proposed, each predicts a different type of shock wave of gravity emitted once the explosion takes place. Lisa, by analysing the precise frequencies and wave-like patterns of the gravity waves emitted at the instant of the Big Bang, should be able to distinguish between them and prove or disprove the theories. So far, the leading theory is called "inflation" and postulates an unbelievably fast, turbo-charged expansion of the early universe after the Big Bang of creation. However, if the inflation process happened once, it can happen again. The latest version of this is called "chaotic inflation", in which big bangs can happen randomly. Like soap bubbles that split and sprout other soap bubbles, universes can bud and create new "baby universes". In this picture, big bangs are happening all the time, even as you read this article. But to understand what caused inflation, physicists have to reach for a theory that can incorporate both gravity and all known forms of radiation - the so-called "theory of everything". The only candidate for this is called string theory, or M-theory, in which universes can float in 11-dimensional hyperspace in a "multiverse" of universes. Imagine two parallel sheets of paper; ants on one sheet would be invisible to ants on the other, yet they are separated by a few inches. Similarly, if a parallel universe hovered a millimetre from ours in another dimension, it would be invisible. As fantastic as these theories are, Lisa might be able to prove or disprove them because each of them leaves behind a different "fingerprint" or pattern of gravity waves when the Big Bang occurs. Ominously, satellites are also giving us a glimpse into the ultimate fate of the universe. Philosophers have wondered if the universe will die in fire or ice. The data overwhelmingly favour the Big Freeze rather than a Big Crunch. The universe, in fact, is not slowing down, but accelerating, careering out of control in runaway mode. A mysterious form of energy, dubbed "dark energy", is acting like an anti-gravity force that is pushing the galaxies apart, causing the universe to accelerate uncontrollably and eventually blowing it apart. Michio Kaku: professor of theoretical physics In the distant future, billions to trillions of years from now, the stars will exhaust their nuclear fuel, the oceans will freeze, the universe will turn dark and temperatures will plunge to almost zero. It appears inevitable that all intelligent life will perish when the universe itself freezes over. This possibility of "unyielding despair" was explored by the mathematician Bertrand Russell, who wrote, in one of the most depressing passages in the English language, that "no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling, can preserve a life beyond the grave... all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins..." Today, we believe that space arks might one day preserve life after the death of the Sun in five billion years. But can you build a space ark to escape the death of the universe itself? The only possible way to avoid the death of the universe is to leave. Perhaps civilisations billions of years ahead of ours will harness enough energy to punch a hole in space and escape, in a hyper-dimensional space ark, to a new universe. Although it seems far-fetched, even preposterous, physicists have seriously considered this possibility using the known laws of physics. Einstein's equations, for example, allow for the possibility of "Einstein-Rosen bridges" connecting two parallel universes. (Imagine two horizontal parallel sheets of paper connected by a thin vertical tube.) The energy necessary to create such a "wormhole" connecting two universes is truly immense - the Planck energy, or 1019 billion electron volts (a quadrillion times the energy of our largest atom smasher). In desperation, an advanced civilisation might create huge banks of laser beams and atom smashers to create the unbelievably intense temperatures, energy and densities necessary to open up holes in space and leave the universe. Calculations show that these gigantic machines must be the size of star systems, but this might be possible for civilisations billions of years ahead of ours. Unfortunately, some preliminary calculations show that the wormhole might only be microscopic in size. If so, an advanced civilisation might resort to shooting molecular-sized robots, called "nanobots", through the wormhole. Once on the other side, these nanobots would then create huge DNA factories to grow clones and replicas of their creators. Since they would contain the entire database of their civilisation, they would use this to resurrect it in another universe. Although the physical bodies of these individuals will die when the universe freezes over, their genetic twins will live on, so that their civilisation, like a Phoenix, may flourish again. As incredible as these scenarios are, they are consistent with the known laws of physics and biology. So, when contemplating the question raised by Huxley in 1863, our true role in the universe might be to spread the precious germ of intelligent life throughout it and, one day, to spread the seed of life by leaving a dying universe for a warmer one. Michio Kaku is professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York. This article is adapted from his forthcoming book, Parallel Worlds (Penguin Books), which is published on February 3. To order for ?16.99 + ?2.25 p&p, please call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222. Dr Kaku will be on tour in Britain at the end of the month: Mon Jan 31, 7.30pm, the ICA event at the London Planetarium, with Prof John Barrow, tel: ICA Box Office 020 7930 3647 Tues Feb 1, 8pm, Borders Bookshop, Cambridge, tel: 01223 306188 Wed Feb 2, 7pm, the Royal Institution, London, tel: 020 7409 2992 Thurs Feb 3, 6pm ThinkTank, Birmingham Science Museum, tel: 0121 202 2222 External links [22]NASA - Terrestrial Planet Finder [23]Terrestrial Planet Finder [24]Michio Kaku References 22. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/exit.jhtml;sessionid=NRI1L0W1QAVBXQFIQMFCM54AVCBQYJVC?exit=http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf_index.html 23. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/exit.jhtml;sessionid=NRI1L0W1QAVBXQFIQMFCM54AVCBQYJVC?exit=http://www.terrestrial-planet-finder.com/ 24. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/exit.jhtml;sessionid=NRI1L0W1QAVBXQFIQMFCM54AVCBQYJVC?exit=http://www.mkaku.org From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:18:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:18:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Engineering Evolution: The Alchemy of Eugenics | Phillip D. Collins Message-ID: Engineering Evolution: The Alchemy of Eugenics | Phillip D. Collins http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Commentary/Evolution.htm - by Phillip D. Collins, Jan. 10th, 2005 In the dark past of human civilization, the ruling class controlled humanity largely through religious institutions and mysticism. However, the turn of the century witnessed the epistemic transformation of the elite's religious power structure into a "scientific dictatorship." The history and background of this "scientific dictatorship" is a conspiracy, created and micro-managed through the historical tide of Darwinism, which has its foundations in Freemasonry. In this article, we shall examine the evolutionary alchemy of eugenics, from Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood to William Sims Bainbridge's Transhumanism. The Alchemical Transformation of Man A common misnomer that has been circulated by academia's anointed historians is that the alchemists of antiquity were attempting to transform lead into gold. In truth, this was a fiction promulgated by the alchemists themselves to conceal their ultimate objectives . . .the transformation of man into a god. Among one of the various occult organizations that aspired to complete this alchemical mission was Freemasonry. Providing a summation of Masonry's supreme goal, Masonic scholar W.L. Wilmshurst writes: "This - the evolution of man into superman [emphasis - ADDED] - was always the purpose of the ancient Mysteries, and the real purpose of modern Masonry is, not the social and charitable purposes to which so much attention is paid, but the expediting of the spiritual evolution of those who aspire to perfect their own nature and transform it into a more god-like quality. And this is a definite science, a royal art, which it is possible for each of us to put into practice; whilst to join the Craft for any other purpose than to study and pursue this science is to misunderstand its meaning." (Wilmshurst, p. 47, 1980) According to this alchemical mandate, humanity is a gradually developing deity requiring scientific assistance in its evolution. In Mystic Masonry, 32nd degree Mason J.D. Buck reiterates this theme of man as a progressively apotheosizing organism: "Humanity, 'in-toto', then, is the only Personal God" (Buck, p. 136, 1990). Of course, the concept of evolution would later be disseminated on the popular level as Darwinism and become the veritable cornerstone of contemporary science. Before its popularization, evolutionary theory was the intellectual property of Masonry. Freemason Erasmus Darwin, Charles' grandfather, "originated almost every important idea that has since appeared in evolutionary theory" (Darlington, p. 62, 1959). It is hardly a coincidence that many of Charles Darwin's chief promoters were Freemasons, not the least of which being T.H. Huxley. It is even less of a coincidence that Charles Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton, would become one of the early expediters of Masonry's alchemical agenda. Eugenics: Alchemically Engineered Apotheosis Sir Francis Galton could be considered an early evolutionary alchemist. His own cousin's theory of evolution was one of his chief inspirations. In Memories of My Life, Galton wrote: "The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science." (Galton, Memories of My Life, p. 287) Viewing evolutionary theory in conjunction with the alchemical mandate for man's consciously engineered apotheosis, one inevitably recognizes a belief system that exhibits all of the characteristics of a religion. This revelation is most clearly illustrated by Galton's statements in Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development: "The chief result of these Inquiries has been to elicit the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution. It suggests an alteration in our mental attitude, and imposes a new moral duty. The new mental attitude is one of a greater sense of moral freedom, responsibility, and opportunity; the new duty which is supposed to be exercised concurrently with, and not in opposition to the old ones upon which the social fabric depends, is an endeavor to further evolution, especially that of the human race." (Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, p. 337, 1883) That Galton recognized the "religious significance of evolution" is no accident. Throughout the years, this Masonically inspired religion of emergent deities has resurfaced under various appellations. Wagar enumerates its numerous manifestations: "Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century thought teems with time-bound emergent deities. Scores of thinkers preached some sort of faith in what is potential in time, in place of the traditional Christian and mystical faith in a power outside of time. Hegel's Weltgeist, Comte's Humanite, Spencer's organismic humanity inevitably improving itself by the laws of evolution, Nietzsche's doctrine of superhumanity, the conception of a finite God given currency by J.S. Mill, Hastings Rashdall, and William James, the vitalism of Bergson and Shaw, the emergent evolutionism of Samuel Alexander and Lloyd Morgan, the theories of divine immanence in the liberal movement in Protestant theology, and du Nouy's telefinalism - all are exhibits in evidence of the influence chiefly of evolutionary thinking, both before and after Darwin, in Western intellectual history. The faith of progress itself - especially the idea of progress as built into the evolutionary scheme of things - is in every way the psychological equivalent of religion." (Wagar, pp. 106 - 7, 1961) This emergent deity, Man (spelled with a capitalized M to denote his purported divinity), would be fully enthroned through the efforts of alchemists themselves. Galton would reintroduce the concept of alchemy under the appellation of eugenics, a term derived from Greek for "well born." The basic precepts of eugenics were delineated in Galton's Hereditary Genius, a racist polemic advocating a system of selective breeding for the purposes of providing "more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing over the less suitable" (Galton, Hereditary Genius, p. 24, 1869). According to Galton, society should be eugenically regimented. The framework of such a society would be a caste system where status was assigned according to genetic superiority. In an article in the January 1873 edition of Fraser's Magazine, Galton stated: "I do not see why any insolence of caste should prevent the gifted class, when they had the power, from treating their [lower caste] compatriots with all kindness, as long as they maintained celibacy. But if these continued to procreate children, inferior in moral, intellectual, and physical qualities, it is easy to believe that the time may come when such persons would be considered as enemies to the State, and to have forfeited all claims to kindness." (qutd. in Chase, pp. 100, 1977) Galton hoped that such societal regimentation would promote "eugenically sound" breeding amongst the citizenry. Summarizing Galton's objectives, Allan Chase explains: "What Galton was talking about here was the power to breed people as we breed pigs" (Chase, p. 101, 1977). Of course, as George Orwell opined in Animal Farm, some pigs are more equal than others. According to Galton's cousin and racialist progenitor, Charles Darwin, the pigs of higher stock were the Anglo-Saxons. This becomes evident in Darwinian Josiah Strong's manifesto, America's Destiny. Quoting Darwin, Strong wrote: "'At the present day,' says Mr. Darwin, 'civilized nations are everywhere supplanting barbarous nations, excepting, where the climate opposes a deadly barrier; and they succeed mainly, though exclusively, through their arts, which are the products of the intellect.' He continues: 'Whether the extinction of inferior races before the advancing Anglo-Saxon seems to the reader sad or otherwise, it certainly appears probable...Is there room for reasonable doubt that this race, unless devitalized by alcohol and tobacco, is destined to dispossess many weaker races, assimilate others, and mold the remainder, until, in a very true and important sense, it has Anglo-Saxonized mankind?'." (Strong, pp. 165 - 80, 1885) Of course, it comes as no real surprise that such thinking underpinned the racialist policies of Nazi Germany, which was a scientific dictatorship edified by Darwinian evolution. It comes as even less a surprise that Leonard Darwin, son of Charles, was vice-president of both the 1912 and 1921 International Eugenics Congresses. The first of these two meetings was the outgrowth of a 1911 gathering of the International Society for Racial Hygiene, a predominantly German organization. That Germany would see the full enactment of eugenical policies is hardly a coincidence. Planned Parenthood: The Racist Legacy of Margaret Sanger Although the Nazis' eugenical Holocaust of WWII constituted an enormous public relations disaster for proponents of eugenics, the movement would later resurface under the banner of population control and radical environmentalism. Researchers Tarpley and Chaitkin document this transmogrification: "The population control or zero population growth movement, which grew rapidly in the late 1960s thanks to free media exposure and foundation grants for a stream of pseudoscientific propaganda about the alleged 'population bomb' and the 'limits to growth,' was a continuation of the old prewar, protofascist eugenics movement, which had been forced to go into temporary eclipse when the world recoiled in horror at the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the name of eugenics. By mid-1960s, the same old crackpot eugenicists had resurrected themselves as the population-control and environmentalist movement. Planned Parenthood was a perfect example of the transmogrification. Now, instead of demanding the sterilization of the inferior races, the newly packaged eugenicists talked about the population bomb, giving the poor 'equal access' to birth control, and 'freedom of choice'." (Tarpley & Chaitkin, p. 203, 1992) Indeed, Planned Parenthood successfully carried the banner of eugenics into the post-WWII era. Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, a virulently racist woman who touted the slogan: "Birth Control: to create a race of thoroughbreds." Her manifesto, entitled The Pivot of Civilization, thoroughly delineates the mission of Planned Parenthood and its allied organizations in the eugenics movement. In this treatise, which featured an introduction written by Freemason and Fabian socialist H.G. Wells, Sanger reveals the true motives underpinning the promotion of birth control: "Birth Control, which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science... as the most constructive and necessary of the means to racial health." (Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, p. 189, 1922) Sanger believed that society's tolerance of "morons," "human weeds," and the "feeble-minded' was encouraging dysgenics. To remedy this purported genetic threat, Sanger unabashedly promoted the implementation of authoritarian measures: "The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period.... we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded." (Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, pp. 101 - 102, 1922) Understand, these are the words of a so-called "proponent of reproductive rights." Moreover, Sanger desired to see the establishment of a gulag system within America for the internment of the "feeble-minded." In an issue of Birth Control Review, she wrote: "To apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted... to apportion farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives.... " (Sanger, "Plan of Peace," Birth Control Review, pp. 107-8, 1932) Although Sanger's gulag system was not formally enacted in the United States, her vision saw horrible fulfillment in Nazi Germany. It comes as little surprise that Planned Parenthood's board of directors included Nazi supporters such as Dr. Lothrop Stoddard, author of a racist tract entitled The Rising Tide of Color Against White Supremacy. In fact, Birth Control Review acted as a conduit for the dissemination of Nazi propaganda in America. In April of 1933, Dr. Ernst Rudin, Hitler's director of genetic sterilization and a founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene, published an article in Birth Control Review. Entitled "Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need," the article presented the following appeal: "The danger to the community of the unsegregated feeble-minded woman is more evident. Most dangerous are the middle and high grades living at large who, despite the fact that their defect is not easily recognizable, should nevertheless be prevented from procreation.... In my view we should act without delay." (Rudin, "Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need," Birth Control Review, pp. 102-4, 1933) Of course, in Rudin's native country, the "feeble-minded" did not remain "unsegregrated" for very long. The same year that Sanger's publication printed Rudin's article, Ernst collaborated with Heinrich Himmler on Germany's 1933 sterilization law. This genocidal edict stipulated the sterilization of all Jews and "colored" German children. Eventually, the "undesirables" were collected, segregated, and systematically murdered. The final result of the Nazi eugenics program was the Holocaust, which claimed six million lives. Yet, how many people would have been segregated for orderly disposal according to Sanger's vision? Upon examination of army statistics, Sanger concluded that: "...nearly half - 47.3 per cent - of the population had the mentality of twelve-year-old children or less - in other words that they are morons." (Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, p. 263, 1922) Sanger expressed dismal hopes for a vast segment of the population, declaring that: "only 13,500,000 will ever show superior intelligence" (Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, p. 264, 1922). Thus, only a meager 13.5% of the population would be permitted to procreate. The rest would be segregated for orderly disposal. Evidently, Sanger's holocaust would have even dwarfed Hitler's Final Solution. In typical Darwinian fashion, Sanger showed little mercy towards the weak. In fact, Margaret expressed a distinct aversion towards the poor. Chapter Five of her book is entitled "The Cruelty of Charity." Reiterating Malthus' proposal to "disclaim the right of the poor to support," she wrote: "Organized charity itself is....the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents." (Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, p. 108, 1922) Sanger particularly loathed: "...a special type of philanthropy or benevolence,....which strikes me as being more insidiously injurious than any other.... to supply gratis medical and nursing facilities to slum mothers." (Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, p. 114, 1922) According to Margaret, such an investment of time, effort, resources, and love represented the height of futility: ".... we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all....." (Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, p. 187, 1922) Planned Parenthood retains an active role in the scientific dictatorship's project of eugenical regimentation today. Despite revelations of Nazi atrocities constituted a public relations disaster for the organization, Planned Parenthood survived and continues to tangibly enact Sanger's vision. In fact, so-called "conservative, pro-life, pro-family, Christian" President George Bush Sr. pledged his whole-hearted support to the group. Researchers Tarpley and Chaitkin explain: "Although Planned Parenthood was forced, during the fascist era and immediately thereafter, to tone down Sanger's racist rhetoric from 'race betterment' to 'family planning' for the benefit of the poor and racial minorities, the organization's basic goal of curbing the population growth rate among 'undesirables' never really changed. Bush publicly asserted that he agreed '1,000 percent' with Planned Parenthood." (Tarpley & Chaitkin, p. 195, 1992) Transhumanism: Techno-Eugenics and the End of Humanity Today, Galton's agenda of biological totalitarianism has resurfaced as the World Transhumanist Association. However, equipped with nanotechnology and genetic engineering, this movement presents a technologically augmented form of eugenics. Richard Hayes, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, elaborates: "Last June at Yale University, the World Transhumanist Association held its first national conference. The Transhumanists have chapters in more than 20 countries and advocate the breeding of 'genetically enriched' forms of 'post-human' beings. Other advocates of the new techno-eugenics, such as Princeton University professor Lee Silver, predict that by the end of this century, 'All aspects of the economy, the media, the entertainment industry, and the knowledge industry [will be] controlled by members of the GenRich class... Naturals [will] work as low-paid service providers or as laborers...'" (Hayes, 2004) Here is the vision of the Transhumanist movement... Huxley's Brave New World where the new class distinction is genetic. Yet, just how long shall the GenRich class tolerate the existence of its biological subordinates? Hayes continues: "What happens then? Here's Dr. Richard Lynn, emeritus professor at the University of Ulster, who, like Silver, supports human genetic modification: 'What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the 'phasing out' of such peoples....Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent'." (Hayes, 2004) This is a frightening proposition indeed. C. Christopher Hook delineates the philosophy underpinning Transhumanism: That we are biological creatures is simply our current status, transhumanists believe, but it is not necessary for defining who we are or who we should be. Bart Kosko, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, puts it more bluntly in his book Heaven in a Chip (2002): "Biology is not destiny. It was never more than tendency. It was just nature's first quick and dirty way to compute with meat. Chips are destiny." British roboticist Kevin Warwick put it this way: "I was born human. But this was an accident of fate-a condition merely of time and place." This sounds startingly reminiscent of what nihilist Frederick Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spake Zarathustra: "I teach you the overman. Man is something to be overcome" (Hook, 2004). Like Nietzsche's overman, the roboman of Warwick and Kosko represents yet another incarnation of Adam Weishaupt's "inner Areopagites: man made perfect as a god-without-God" (Billington, p. 97, 1980). A central feature of Darwinism has been the belief in great extinctions. That belief remains firmly embedded within the crusade of the Transhumanist movement. Hook elaborates: "Katherine Hayles, a professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, says in How We Became Posthuman (1999) that 'in the posthuman, there are no essential differences, or absolute demarcations, between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot technology and human goals.' She concludes her book with a warning: 'Humans can either go gently into that good night, joining the dinosaurs as a species that once ruled the earth but is now obsolete, or hang on for a while longer by becoming machines themselves. In either case ... the age of the human is drawing to a close'." (Hook, 2004) According to the Darwinian doctrine of the Transhumanist movement, mankind is the next species slated for extinction. How does the GenRich class intend to regulate the rest of the "dysgenics" until their ultimate extinction? Transhumanist ideologue and Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems William Sims Bainbridge provides the answer: "Techniques such as genetic engineering, psychoactive drugs and electronic control of the brain make possible a transformation of the species into docile, fully-obedient, 'safe' organisms." (Bainbridge, 1982) In other words, the pharmacological totalitarianism of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Chemically numbed and anesthetized, the "dysgenics" will resign themselves to extinction in the posthuman era. Meanwhile, the eugenical alchemists of the elite continue to write the final chapter of the evolutionary script and they have left no room for humanity in the last pages. Sources Cited * Bainbridge, William Sims, "[11] Religions for a Galactic Civilization," excerpted from Science Fiction and Space Futures, edited by Eugene M. Emme. San Diego: American Astronautical Society, pages 187-201, 1982. * Billington, James H, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, Basic Books, Inc., New York, 1980. * Chase, Allan, The Legacy of Malthus, Knopf: distributed by Random House, 1977. * Darlington, "The Origin of Darwinism," Scientific American, May 1959 * Galton, Francis, Hereditary Genius, Macmillan, London, 1869. * Galton, Francis, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, New York, MacMillan and Co., 1883. * Hayes, Richard, "[12]Selective Science," February 12, 2004. * Hook, C. Christopher, "[13]The Techno Sapiens Are Coming," January 2004. * Huxley, Thomas, Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays, New York: Appleton, 1896. * Rudin, Ernst, "Eugenic Sterilization: An Urgent Need," Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 4, April 1933. * Sagan, Carl, Cosmos, Random House, New York, 1980. * Sanger, Margaret, The Pivot of Civilization, Brentano's Press, NY, 1922. * Sanger, Margaret, "Plan for Peace," Birth Control Review, Volume XVI, Number 4, April 1932. * Strong, Josiah, Our Country, New York, 1885. * Tarpley, Webster & Anton Chaitkin, [14]George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Executive Intelligence Review, Washington D.C., 1992. * Wagar, W. Warren, H.G. Wells and the World State, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1961. * Wilmshurst, W.L., The Meaning of Masonry, Gramercy Books, New York 1980. _________________________________________________________________ About the Author Phillip D. Collins acted as the editor for The Hidden Face of Terrorism. He has an Associate of Arts and Science. Currently, he is studying for a bachelor's degree in Communications at Wright State University. During the course of his seven-year college career, Phillip has studied philosophy, religion, and classic literature. He co-authored the book, The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship: An Examination of Epistemic Autocracy, From the 19th to the 21st Century, is [15]available online here. CSS printer friendly enabled mail to a friend [16]Send this to a friend "The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." William Colby (Former CIA Director) "Language is a field of battle, the media is the artillery, and vocabulary is the ammunition. The NWO has taken the field by storm, and is proceeding with coordinated attacks on several fronts, using all the latest high-tech vocabulary ammunition. They've laid a bed of land mines that cripple us when we try to stand on them: 'liberalism', conservatism', prosperity', 'democracy'." Richard Moore, Doublespeak "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." Thomas Jefferson "I have the greatest admiration for your propaganda. Propaganda in the West is carried out by experts who have had the best training in the world -- in the field of advertizing -- and have mastered the techniques with exceptional proficiency ... Yours are subtle and persuasive; ours are crude and obvious ... I think that the fundamental difference between our worlds, with respect to propaganda, is quite simple. You tend to believe yours ... and we tend to disbelieve ours." Soviet correspondent based five years in the U.S. "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill ... All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." Alexander King, Bertrand Schneider - founder and secretary, respectively, of the Club of Rome - The First Global Revolution, pp.104-105 "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), American editor, critic "This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill." Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. "All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"), Vol. I "Christianity is our foe. If animal rights is to succeed, we must destroy the Judeo-Christian religious tradition." Peter Singer (father of the animal rights movement), The Deweese Report, November 1998 "The owners and managers of the press determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public." Commission On Freedom Of The Press References 11. http://web.archive.org/web/20030219105541/http://users.erols.com/bainbri/dl/relgal.htm 12. http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9937/view/print 13. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/001/1.36.html 14. http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm 15. http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-31164-4 16. http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/sendToFriend.php 17. http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Commentary/Evolution.htm#header 18. http://www.xdevdesign.com/ From checker at panix.com Thu Feb 3 20:20:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:20:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Telegraph: In the beginning . . . Adam walked with dinosaurs Message-ID: In the beginning . . . Adam walked with dinosaurs http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/02/weden02.xml&pos=portal_puff3 Wednesday 12 January 2005 By James Langton in New York (Filed: 02/01/2005) With its towering dinosaurs and a model of the Grand Canyon, America's newest tourist attraction might look like the ideal destination for fans of the film Jurassic Park. The new multi-million-dollar Museum of Creation, which will open this spring in Kentucky, will, however, be aimed not at film buffs, but at the growing ranks of fundamentalist Christians in the United States. It aims to promote the view that man was created in his present shape by God, as the Bible states, rather than by a Darwinian process of evolution, as scientists insist. The centrepiece of the museum is a series of huge model dinosaurs, built by the former head of design at Universal Studios, which are portrayed as existing alongside man, contrary to received scientific opinion that they lived millions of years apart. Other exhibits include images of Adam and Eve, a model of Noah's Ark and a planetarium demonstrating how God made the Earth in six days. The museum, which has cost a mighty $25 million (?13 million) will be the world's first significant natural history collection devoted to creationist theory. It has been set up by Ken Ham, an Australian evangelist, who runs Answers in Genesis, one of America's most prominent creationist organisations. He said that his aim was to use tourism, and the theme park's striking exhibits, to convert more people to the view that the world and its creatures, including dinosaurs, were created by God 6,000 years ago. "We want people to be confronted by the dinosaurs," said Mr Ham. "It's going to be a first class experience. Visitors are going to be hit by the professionalism of this place. It is not going to be done in an amateurish way. We are making a statement." The museum's main building was completed recently, and work on the entrance exhibit starts this week. The first phase of the museum, which lies on a 47-acre site 10 miles from Cincinatti on the border of Kentucky and Ohio, will open in the spring. Market research companies hired by the museum are predicting at least 300,000 visitors in the first year, who will pay $10 (?5.80) each. Among the projects still to be finished is a reconstruction of the Grand Canyon, purportedly formed by the swirling waters of the Great Flood - where visitors will "gape" at the bones of dinosaurs that "hint of a terrible catastrophe", according to the museum's publicity. Mr Ham is particularly proud of a planned reconstruction of the interior of Noah's Ark. "You will hear the water lapping, feel the Ark rocking and perhaps even hear people outside screaming," he said. More controversial exhibits deal with diseases and famine, which are portrayed not as random disasters, but as the result of mankind's sin. Mr Ham's Answers in Genesis movement blames the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, in which two teenagers killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves, on evolutionist teaching, claiming that the perpetrators believed in Darwin's survival of the fittest. Other exhibits in the museum will blame homosexuals for Aids. In a "Bible Authority Room" visitors are warned: "Everyone who rejects his history - including six-day creation and Noah's flood - is `wilfully' ignorant.'' Elsewhere, animated figures will be used to recreate the Garden of Eden, while in another room, visitors will see a tyrannosaurus rex pursuing Adam and Eve after their fall from grace. "That's the real terror that Adam's sin unleashed," visitors will be warned. A display showing ancient Babylon will deal with the Tower of Babel and "unravel the origin of so-called races'', while the final section will show the life of Christ, as an animated angel proclaims the coming of the Saviour and a 3D depiction of the crucifixion. In keeping with modern museum trends, there will also be a cafe with a terrace to "breathe in the fresh air of God's creation'', and a shop "crammed'' with creationist souvenirs, including T-shirts and books such as A is for Adam and Dinky Dinosaur: Creation Days. The museum's opening will reinforce the burgeoning creationist movement and evangelical Christianity in the US, which gained further strength with the re-election of President Bush in November. Followers of creationism have been pushing for their theories to be reintegrated into American schoolroom teaching ever since the celebrated 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial", when US courts upheld the right of a teacher to use textbooks that included evolutionary theory. In 1987, the US Supreme Court reinforced that position by banning the teaching of creationism in public schools on the grounds of laws that separate state and Church. Since then, however, many schools - particularly in America's religious Deep South - have got around the ban by teaching the theory of "intelligent design", which claims that evolutionary ideas alone still leave large gaps in understanding. "Since President Bush's re-election we have been getting more membership applications than we can handle,'' said Mr Ham, who expects not just the devout, but also the curious, to flock through the turnstiles. "The evolutionary elite will be getting a wake-up call." External links [25]Answers in Genesis References 25. http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/exit.jhtml;sessionid=JHA23TWQH3SNBQFIQMGCM54AVCBQUJVC?exit=http://www.answersingenesis.org/ From checker at panix.com Fri Feb 4 14:37:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 09:37:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Harvard Seeks to Advance Opportunities for Women Message-ID: The New York Times > National > Harvard Seeks to Advance Opportunities for Women http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/national/04harvard.html 5.2.4 By SAM DILLON and SARA RIMER Moving to counter widespread criticism of his comments last month on women's science capabilities, the president of Harvard University announced initiatives yesterday to improve the status of women on the faculty, including a commitment to create a senior administrative position to strengthen recruiting. The president, Lawrence H. Summers, appointed two task forces, one on women in the faculty and one on women in science and engineering, and charged them with developing recommendations on how to recruit, support and promote women more effectively. The committees are to complete their work by May 1 so the university can act on their recommendations by the fall term. In an interview, Dr. Summers declined to say how many new women the university might hire as professors in the short term, or how much the initiatives would cost. But in a public statement announcing the measures, he said, "It is time for Harvard to step up and affirm in strong and concrete terms its commitment to the advancement and support of women pursuing academic careers." Dr. Summers's actions yesterday echoed his handling of the outcry that followed his dispute in 2001 with Cornel West, a prominent member of the African-American studies department. At that time, Dr. Summers publicly affirmed his commitment to affirmative action, and Harvard subsequently created several new positions in that department. Barbara Grosz, the dean of science at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, who has long been active on women's issues at Harvard, was named to head the task force on women in science and engineering. She said she had accepted the leadership post only after receiving assurances "that our recommendations were going to be taken seriously." "There is now an opportunity that didn't exist before," Professor Grosz said, "and I am willing to put effort into grabbing that opportunity and doing what I can to see that the changes at Harvard get made." The chairwoman of the other task force, on faculty women, is Evelynn Hammonds, a professor of history of science and of African and African-American studies. Altogether, Dr. Summers named 27 professors and senior administrators - 22 women and 5 men - to participate in the two task forces. Dr. Summers's announcement came as his remarks suggesting that innate sex differences might explain the scarcity of women in math and science careers continued to stir international media coverage and controversy. Scientists, feminists and hundreds of members of his own faculty have criticized Dr. Summers as seeming to ignore years of research showing that societal and cultural obstacles, including discrimination at universities, are the most significant impairment to women's advancement in academic math and science careers. A smaller number of people, including some prominent conservatives, have praised Dr. Summers for what they call his defiance of political correctness. Dr. Summers has apologized repeatedly for his remarks, which were made on Jan. 14 at an academic conference in Cambridge and were intended to be off the record. He has said his remarks were misconstrued, but has declined to release a tape recording of them. Harvard's announcement yesterday referred only obliquely to the outpouring of criticism. "Recent public discussion about women and science has brought renewed attention to longstanding issues concerning the representation of women in the faculty," it said. Prominent female professors in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have been expressing concerns since June over the decline in offers of tenured professorships to women during Dr. Summers's tenure. While Dr. Summers said publicly that he would take steps to remedy the decline, many of the female professors have said they are skeptical of his commitment. At an October meeting, some 50 female professors presented Dr. Summers and William Kirby, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with proposals to improve the number and status of women on the faculty, including the appointment of a dean of faculty diversity for Arts and Sciences. Dr. Summers and Dean Kirby rejected the proposal for the new dean, saying they thought they could help female faculty members better through existing associate deans. "The task force on women faculty will be charged with making recommendations for a series of specific institutional measures - including the creation of a new, senior position at the center of the university - to strengthen the recruitment, support and advancement of outstanding women faculty," yesterday's university statement said. From checker at panix.com Fri Feb 4 14:39:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 09:39:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Tom Wolfe: Several Reviews and Interviews Message-ID: Tom Wolfe: Several Reviews and Interviews Time Magazine November 8, 2004 I am Still Tom Wolfe; At 73, the man in the white suit is back with a new novel about sex and power on campus by Lev Grossman ???In 1952 a promising young pitching prospect out of Washington and Lee University showed up for a tryout with the New York Giants (the baseball Giants, that is--they hadn't yet decamped for San Francisco). The prospect made a decent showing: three innings, three men on base, no runs scored. Good screwball, nice sinker, not much heat. "If somebody had offered me a Class D professional contract," says the prospect--whose name was Tom Wolfe--many decades later, "I would have gladly put off writing for a couple of decades." ???But the Giants cut Wolfe after two days, and he became a giant of another kind. Wolfe is one of the greatest literary stylists and social observers of our much observed postmodern era. With books like The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities, he has built a towering reputation both as a journalist and as a novelist, scoring both literary acclaim and commercial success in the process. He has hung out with Black Panthers and astronauts. He has feuded with John Updike, Norman Mailer and John Irving simultaneously. ???Now, in his new novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 676 pages), Wolfe has set himself the challenge of chronicling youthful hedonism on a college campus. But at 73, can Wolfe party with the frat boys? Or has America finally outrun its most tireless chronicler? ???In uptown Manhattan, perched on a sofa in his sumptuous apartment, with its housekeeper and its blue baby grand and its views of Central Park, Wolfe in person is a sharp contrast to his personality on the page. His prose bristles with italics and exclamation points and repetitions--repetitions!--for emphasis, but Wolfe himself speaks softly, slowly and a little hoarsely, with the ruins of a long-ago Virginia accent. He has always been dapper, but now he is a dapper old man. His appearance is not so much wolfish as avian: his frame is slight, his nose hooked and beaky, his mischievous smile a little snaggle-toothed. His hair is midlength and floppy, a la David Spade. He still wears his trademark white suit, accessorized with some kind of high-gloss old-timey shoes, but it hangs a little loose on him. When he reads small print he dons a pair of white-framed glasses. ???Wolfe's previous novel, A Man in Full, published in 1998, took him 11 long years to finish, and when he was finally through, he wasted no time looking around for fresh territory. He likes to portray himself as a literary opportunist: in his 1989 manifesto "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast," he scolded American novelists for writing minimalist, self-conscious little books when there's so much rich, strange, documentary material out there. "They don't want to see the world," he has said, "they want to suck their thumbs." After A Man in Full, it occurred to Wolfe, who had a daughter at Duke, that the lives of college students were a trove of good stuff--there is, he points out, no really great novel about campus life from the student's point of view. "The whole business of the co-ed dorm fascinated me. What does go on? Because all these children assure their parents, 'It's just the way it was when you were in college.'" ???It was thus that, in his eighth decade, Tom Wolfe swapped his white suit for a less conspicuous blue blazer and set out on a tour of college campuses in search of Charlotte Simmons. "I went to fraternity parties," he recalls. "Very few of the students had any idea who I was. I was so old, and I always wore a necktie--I must have seemed somewhat odd to them." He trekked from Stanford to Ann Arbor, from Chapel Hill to the University of Florida in Gainesville. "The most valuable things were having people tell you about things like sex. I didn't see any," he adds hastily. What he did see was a kind of boot camp where teenagers are initiated into the social matrices of sex and power against the autumnal backdrop of what Wolfe describes as "the gradual--maybe not so gradual--disappearance of conventional morality." ???So who, exactly, is Charlotte Simmons? Wolfe's heroine is a freshman at prestigious, fictional Dupont University in Philadelphia. They don't come much fresher than Charlotte. A native of tiny, remote Sparta, N.C., the brilliant, virginal Charlotte arrives at Dupont full of dewy ambition, expecting to live "a life of the mind." Instead, she encounters charming, predatory frat boys like the handsome Hoyt Thorpe; jock demigods like basketball star Jojo Johanssen; and icy prep-school snobs like her roommate, the bitchy Groton grad Beverly. Instead of an ivory tower, she finds a status-obsessed, intellectually bankrupt sexual romper room. Will she hold to her ideals or be dragged down into the beer-soaked mud? ???I Am Charlotte Simmons isn't like Wolfe's other novels. For one thing, he sticks largely to one setting, the Dupont campus--he's not doing his city-hopping, class-transcending billion-footed-beast act, which is impressive but gave his earlier books a certain overstuffed lumpiness. Charlotte Simmons adheres more to the Aristotelian unities--time, place and action--and thus hangs together more neatly. It's a much more personal novel than the earlier ones. Not unlike Wolfe, Charlotte is a permanent outsider, a lonely observer. Wolfe's books are usually more about setting than character, but Charlotte's delicately drawn highs and lows give the book an unexpectedly tender heart. "I went through a bout of depression myself," he says, "and that's why I felt I knew exactly how she would feel. As I look back on it, there's a lot of me in Charlotte." ???No one can read Charlotte Simmons without picking nits. There was a time when Wolfe was a pioneer, reporting back to straight America from the exotic island of radical youth culture in books like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, but nowadays American culture and youth culture are basically the same thing, and it's Wolfe who looks a little behind the times. He leans heavily on catchphrases from such movies as Swingers ("You're money, baby") to give his dialogue a contemporary vibe. There are missteps: What self- respecting black hoopster would say of a Caucasian opponent, however stalwart, "That white boy's got heart"? And are college kids really still into 90210 and Animal House? They certainly don't have PlayStation3s, as such a machine does not, at press time, exist. Sometimes Wolfe has the air of a benevolent, fastidious Martian, as when he expends several sentences explaining the nature and function of what we humans call a StairMaster. ???But these nits, once picked, should be discarded and forgotten. What remains is a rich, wise, absorbing and irresistible novel. Wolfe does things with words--exhilarating, intoxicating, impossible things--that no other writer can do. Take this example, from the second page of the book, in which frat boy Hoyt stares at himself in the mirror, dead drunk: "A gale was blowing in his head. He liked it. He bared his teeth. He had never seen them quite this way before. So even! So white! They vibrated from perfection. And his square jaw ... that chin with the perfect cleft in it ... his thick, thatchy light brown hair ... those brilliant hazel eyes ... his! Right there in the mirror--him!" To read it is to feel both the dizzy joy of intoxication and the impending hangover, not through anything Wolfe tells us but from the altered, manic rhythms of the prose alone. ???Wolfe does not thunder in I Am Charlotte Simmons. He allows us to be as shocked or as blase as we want to be about the anonymous campus couplings he describes. "In my mind, it's just what's there," he says. "I must say, I pride myself on the fact that I don't think anybody can find a political agenda, a moral agenda. I insist that I am objective." Up to a point, that is--he'll bend the truth for the sake of a good line. "I had a groupie at the end deliver what I thought was a quite cogent remark," he recalls. "'Every girl wants to f___ a star. Every girl.' My daughter said, 'Nobody talks like that, Dad.'" This time his grin is a little lupine. "But I left it in." ???I Am Charlotte Simmons will get attention for the smutty scenes, of which there are a generous but judicious number (he considered and then omitted a scene involving what he nicely terms, in his courtly Virginia accent, a "gang bang"). But Wolfe's interest is not prurient. His real subject is the nature of identity, of the individual soul (Charlotte's in particular), and whether or not it can survive uncorrupted in the acid storm of sex and alcohol and power and peer pressure into which we ritually plunge our young in the name of higher education. The answer he arrives at is not simple. Some get their comeuppance in Charlotte Simmons, and some are redeemed, but Charlotte's fate is a surprise, and not everybody will find it a pleasant one. Wolfe may be getting old, but he 's not getting soft. ???A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS ???For every era, there's a Tom Wolfe book that grabs its essence and splatters it on the page. Here's a decade-by-decade history lesson, Wolfe-style ???'60s ???THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST ???Take the ultimate psychedelic road trip on Ken Kesey's magic bus ???'70s ???THE RIGHT STUFF ???Wolfe's inside look at test pilots and NASA astronauts is also a celebration of American optimism ???'80s ???THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES ???The quintessential warts-and-all portrait of New York City in the decade of greed ???'90s ???A MAN IN FULL ???Irrational exuberance overtakes a high-flying Atlanta real estate magnate. Bad things follow ???"I WENT TO FRATERNITY PARTIES. I WAS SO OLD, AND I ALWAYS WORE A NECKTIE--I MUST HAVE SEEMED SOMEWHAT ODD TO THEM. " ???--TOM WOLFE -------------- Time Out November 17, 2004 THE CAT IN THE HAT; INTERVIEW Tom Wolfe By Gaby Wood ??? The research for his third novel, 'I Am Charlotte Simmons', took dandy provocateur Tom Wolfe on a tour of America's college campuses.What did he find? Lots of sex and not nearly enough hats. ??? I'm the last of the great hat wearers, ' says Tom Wolfe as he takes my coat. I have just entered the novelist's sumptuously decorated apartment on Manhattan 's Upper East Side, a place where almost every wall has some image of a hat on it. ' I remember when you used to go to the races and everyone was wearing hats. Nowit's either baseball caps worn backwards, or nothing!' Today Wolfe is wearing what, presumably, he always wears around the house: a signature cream-coloured suit, with a wide, almost corset-like waistband built into the trousers, over a high-necked, cream and brown striped shirt and dark brown tie. Fanning out of his breast pocket is a cream silk hankie bordered with infinitesimal brown piping. His shoes, custom made to look like they have spats sewn into them, are cream and brown, as are his breathtakingly delicate socks silk, with tiny embroidered polka dots. ??? He ushers me into the lounge. Late afternoon sunlight streams in through white slatted shutters and on to a grand piano. There is a lavish, leisurely feel to it all, a metropolitan home with an overtone of Old South gentility. ??? Wolfe's long-awaited third novel, 'I Am Charlotte Simmons', is like 'American Pie' meets Zola's 'L'Assomoir'. ??? Charlotte, a wide-eyed, small-town virgin from the South, arrives at the fictional university of Dupont, and finds that academia is the least of her worries when there are co-ed dorms, promiscuous roommates, beefy basketball players and frat boys to deal with. Wolfe describes the sex as if he's addressing a convention of surgeons: there are references to the 'ilial crest' and 'pectoral sheath', to 'otorhinolaryngological caverns'. Why did such a distinguished chronicler of the times a man now in his mid-seventies want toturn his attention to undergraduates? ??? 'When I was still working on "A Man in Full", ' Wolfe explains, 'which took me forever, I was so discouraged by that book that I said, "I'm going to drop it." I'd been hearing stories about college life, and nobody was writing about it.' He didn't drop the book, but when it was finished he started going across the country, visiting campuses 'starting at Stanford and working my way east'. ??? He would hang around for a couple of weeks at a time, going to parties and getting a feel for the language. ??? He felt, inevitably, old and 'stupendously overdressed'. 'For the most part theyreally didn't know what to make of me. At the fraternity parties I'm sure they found it very odd that someone my age was there at all, and they knew I was too old to be from the Drug Enforcement Administration. But I always wear a necktie,so it would have been ridiculous for me to try to fit in.' Aside from the six years he devoted to working on 'Charlotte Simmons', Wolfe spent almost a decade at university himself first at Washington and Lee, and then as a doctoral student at Yale in the mid-'50s. The biggest difference between then and now, hesays, is sexual. 'Nobody in anybody's administration is going to say, "Don't do it." They'll say, "Don't harass a girl" if you're a male, and they'll say, "Use condoms", but that's quite different from saying, "You shouldn't be doing this! And you girls you shouldn't just give them your body just because they want it!" And I found this puts a pressure on all undergraduates. At a university with 5,500 students, like Princeton, that's 5,500 beds that anyone can go to.' Wolfe's two children Alexandra and Thomas were both at university while he was conducting his research and read and commented on the manuscript. Though Wolfe concedes he is a 'very old-fashioned' parent, he insists he's not easily shocked as a reporter. 'When I'm trying to report on something, whether it's fiction or non-fiction, I really cease caring about what people are doing. When "The Bonfire of the Vanities" came out and people started saying, "What a bleak picture of New York", I was totally surprised. Because to me these were, in the literal sense of the word, awesome people they created awe and wonder.' Reviews of Wolfe's novel are divided some wonder why no one had thought of this subject sooner, others can't see what's new. There is the question of what an old man is doing in a young girl's skin, and the question of quite how different this scene is from what went on in the '60s, a decade of which Wolfe himself gave many seminal accounts. 'Well, you know, so much began in the '60s, ' he sighs when I ask as if to say, self-parodically perhaps, it's a shame they ever happened. ??? Wolfe has made a professional point of being an outsider. ??? The son of an agronomist, he grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and became a liberalas an undergraduate, because the politics at his university were very conservative. 'Then I got to Yale and everybody was on the left, and I couldn't stand all this lockstep thinking.' When he'd finished his PhD, he got a job on aMassachusetts newspaper, then on the New York Herald Tribune , where he wrote such a scathing attack on the New Yorker magazine that even JD Salinger, the notoriously reclusive author of 'Catcher in the Rye', came out of hiding to condemn it. During the newspaper strike of 1962, he took on a job for Esquire magazine a piece about stock car racing that was to become 'The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby'. Legend has it that, about to miss his deadline, he sent in 49 pages of breathless notes; the editor had planned to getanother writer to put them into shape, but when he saw them he ran them as they were, and 'the New Journalism' was born. It was a genre in which Wolfe famously coined the terms 'radical chic' and 'the Me decade', and successfully offended the artistic, literary and political establishments. ??? Wolfe says now that 'at first the piece was just an exercise, but I will confessthat by the time I'd gotten about ten pages into it I thought: This really isn'tso bad, and by the end I was even beginning to think in a literary way about it'. ??? It was also on this early assignment that he realised undercover reporting was not for him. 'I quickly found out it was madness, because if you're trying to fit in, you can't ask certain very basic questions, ' he explains. 'People were always using this term, the "overhead cam". I had no idea what an overhead cam was, and if you're pretending to fit in, you can't ask. So now I use the man from Mars approach: I don't know a thing about what you're doing, but I'm reallyinterested. For me, that seems to work.' Hence the cream suits. In case you thought he had ever got truly down and dirty with the counterculture, Wolfe tells a story about helping author and psychedelic pioneer Ken Kesey to move a sculpture. The sculpture was covered in wet paint, and Wolfe got some of it on his jacket. He went 'berserk', grabbing a bottle of turpentine and pouring it over his shoulder. ??? Kesey said, 'If you mess around with this shit, some of it's going to rub off onyou.' But how much of it really has? Wolfe recommends to me, in passing, the work of a neurologist he likes a man famous, he says, for standing in a bullring wearing a white smock. Much is always made of Wolfe's dandyism, but is his dress sense something other than that, a way of indicating that he is an observer, a social scientist? Is the cream suit the flbneur's equivalent of a lab coat? ??? You might wonder why the man who gave non-fiction an energy fiction had long lost would want to write novels at all. ??? Wolfe says he was sensitive to the insinuation that 'New Journalism was just a complicated form of writer's block'. ??? Something of a late bloomer (he was 32 when he wrote his first article, 48 when he married his wife, Sheila Berger), Wolfe was in his fifties by the time he thought: 'I didn't want to end my career and look back and say, gee I wonder what would have happened if ' 'Bonfire of the Vanities' came out in 1987, and sold millions of copies. 'A Man in Full' took 11 years to write, and did likewise. And now there is 'Charlotte Simmons'. ??? He still thinks the novel is dying, a thesis he has embraced, much to the rage of the men he calls his 'three stooges' Norman Mailer, John Updike and John Irving since he wrote an essay on the subject in 1989. Though thanks to younger realist writers, he says, things are looking up. Wolfe particularly admires Richard Price (author of 'Clockers') and Jonathan Franzen ('The Corrections'), and thinks the thriller writer Carl Hiaasen has great literary potential. ??? 'No one, ' he once said, 'has ever been injured in a literary fistfight in New York.' Perhaps this was because, by the time he and the three heavyweights came to blows, the worst, for Wolfe, had already passed. In 1996, he underwent a quintuple heart bypass operation. There followed a period of intense activity ( 'hypomania', he now sees), then a spell of depression. Never one to faff about with Freud, Wolfe had some drugs prescribed and was soon able to finish his book. ??? 'Psychoanalysis, ' he informs me, 'was put out of business by Lithium, a very simple dr it's not even a drug at all, it's an element!' ??? On the way out, Wolfe shows me his study. His desk looks all Louis Quinze on thesurface, but is in fact more madcap than that. Wolfe, who still uses a typewriter, has nevertheless designed a whole electrical system to ensure no wires are visible anywhere. His electric pencil sharpener, his ship's clock, histape recorder and his radio (taken from an old Cadillac) are all built in and within arm's reach. Books are neatly stacked; papers are arranged in cream-coloured files and labelled in red calligraphy. ??? All over one wall are drawings referring to or depicting him. There is a New Yorker cartoon ('I'm afraid Tom Wolfe and I have differing views of New York, ' a wealthy woman says to her shopping companion while hailing a cab), a David Levine caricature from the New York Review of Books , and Wolfe's favourite, a mention in an original Marvel comic strip featuring Dr Strange ('Tom! Tom Wolfe! ' Dr Strange cries out. 'I haven't seen you since you were just a Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby!') all of them testaments to hiseccentricity and fame. I ask him how he feels about mortality. 'I don't think much of it, ' he laughs. 'Immortality now that would be good stuff.' 'I Am Charlotte Simmons' is out now, published by Cape. See John O'Connell's review inBooks, p77. ??? TOM WOLFE WHAT YOU NEED TO READ ??? 'The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby' (1965) ??? Wolfe's first collection. 'There Goes (Varoom!Varoom! ) That Kandy Kolored (Thphhhhhh! ) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh! ) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmm . . . . )' is the only essay you'll ever need to read about customised stock cars. ??? 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' (1968) ??? In which Wolfe embraces the fugitive world of scholar, athlete and novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, who trekked across the US in a multicoloured buswreaking psychedelic havoc. ??? The title refers to their beverage of choice: KoolAid laced with LSD. ??? 'Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers' (1970) ??? 'Radical Chic', which gave the world the expression, describes a gathering of hip young things at Leonard Bernstein's Park Avenue duplex in honour of the militant Black Panther Party. ??? The limits of liberalism is also the subject of 'MauMauing '. ??? 'The Right Stuff' (1979) ??? The US space programme, rapturously mythologised. The selection of the Mercury astronauts in 1959 divided the flying community. Wolfe puts you right there , sothat you know how it feels to be sitting in a tin can, far above the world. ??? 'From Bauhaus to Our House' (1981) ??? Hilarious rant about modern architecture, specifically its failure to evoke the might of America's economic power: 'Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicatingmachine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse.' ??? 'A Man In Full' (1998) ??? Long-awaited second novel that melds broadcanvas portraiture with set-pieces like the quail hunt at hero Charlie Croker's 29,000-acre plantation. Indifferently received by critics but there's nothing more compelling than a failed masterpiece. ??? AND ONE TO AVOID ??? 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' (1987) ??? Having decided that all modern novels were rubbish, Wolfe had a bash at writing one himself in full-on Dickensian social realist mode. The result is a yuppy morality tale that, although technically accomplished, hasn't dated well. ??? John O'Connell ---------- Slate Magazine November 17, 2004, Wednesday Correction Appended I Am Charlotte Simmons by Virginia Heffernan and Stephen Metcalf ???The Three Hopeless Flaws of I Am Charlotte Simmons By 11/17/2004 12:56:18 PM ???Virginia! We meet again! There is so much to say about Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons, and the university life this new novel purports to depict, that I'll skip all introductory coughing and dive right in. I Am Charlotte Simmons is a sprawling anatomy of undergraduate life that centers on four main characters: the implausibly naive character of the book's title, and the three male students who, with varying intentions, attempt to woo her: Hoyt Thorpe, a smirking, born-on-third-base frat boy in the George Bush mold; Jojo Johansenn, a hulking power forward for the school's NCAA championship basketball team; and Adam Gellin, a vengeful nerd who writes for the school newspaper. This is an eminently foolish book, by an old man for whom the life of the young has become a grotesque but tantalizing rumor. It is overdrawn, overlong, underconsidered, and filled with at least one forehead-slapping ay caramba per page. (That adds up to 676, by the way. This is the predictable doorstop, perfectly timed for seasonal gifting.) At one point I wrote in its margins, The stupidity here may actually be boundless. And yet... and yet... I kinda liked I Am Charlotte Simmons, ripe for the pyre as it is. I'm glad we have three days here, to help discover how this unsacred monster, with its raft of insecurities and no social graces to speak of, holds some inexplicable power to... well, not charm, exactly. Transfix? ???Going in, there's one thing you can say about Tom Wolfe: At least he's no worse than Tom Wolfe. About Wolfe's preposterous claims regarding the novel as a genre, I'll have more to say in the next couple of days. But his disdain for the overly literary is a real boon to his reviewers. The prose rates a perfect 10 for ease of use; and so, long as this book is, you glide right through it without a hitch. Wolfe will occasionally flash the Nabokovian smile "the shrubbery at Wolfe's made-up Dupont University is euonymus, its cafeteria bathroom emits an egestive funk "but mostly he writes in a fat novel, book-of-the-month style, totally uninfected by modernity (much less post-modernity), and readily adaptable to its every soft-core need: Instead his tongue veered off to the side and worked its way down the gulley from her illial crest down to where her panties began. And finally "and most important "in its unrelenting drive to leave nothing unsaid, I Am Charlotte Simmons relieves its reader of all the burdens of the imagination: He amounted to a male low in the masculine pecking order, Wolfe describes an athletic department tutor, who is angry, deserves to be angry, is dying to show anger, but doesn't dare do so in the face of two alpha males, both of them physically intimidating as well as famous on the Dupont campus. ???OK, even in praising it, I can't hide my overwhelming dislike for this novel "it's put me in an egestive funk "so time to lay out its most obvious deficiencies. Three related and unaccountable choices inform the structure and substance of I Am Charlotte Simmons. The first is the wholly incredible nature of Wolfe's Dupont University. Wolfe is unequivocal: Dupont is an institution mentionable in the same breath only with Harvard. And yet, in Wolfe's depiction, it's more like a land grant school crossed with the Thunderdome. The jock subculture exists nearly everywhere (I went to Wesleyan, of cafeteria pot-smoking and Womynist House fame, and I'm here to tell you: Jock subculture is everywhere) but Wolfe portrays it as the single, utterly dominant fact of campus life and virtually the sole medium for sorting out the status pecking order of the young. Hopeless Structural Flaw No. 1, then, is that Wolfe has somehow run together Harvard with N.C. State, thus producing a complete chimera. ???By his own telling out on the promotion circuit, to research I Am Charlotte Simmons Wolfe toured several American campuses, talking to undergraduates about their experiences. This leads to Hopeless Structural Flaw No. 2. For on his journey through the groves of academe, Wolfe appears to have collected every bit of sexual folklore, no matter how hand-me-down, and bought into it hook, line, and sinker. Dupont is a place where women on a nightly basis cake on makeup and crawl, in an abject drunken stupor, up to lacrosse players, begging them for psychic validation in the form of brutally commitment-free sex. For the credulous Wolfe, even Ivy League college life seems to be one endless cloacal flow, filled only with beer bongs, body-sculpting, and animal rutting. ???And this leads, finally, to Hopeless Structural Flaw No. 3. By imagining college life as so debased, Wolfe must then imagine his heroine as correspondingly pure. Charlotte Simmons is a little mountain girl, a modern-day Walton, who has known in her life only hard study, dutiful but dirt poor parents, and the simple mountain ways of North Carolina. (And the novel hasn't seen such a tediously guarded virginity since Richardson's Pamela.) Well, that's it for starters, Virginia. We'll be revisiting each of these as we go, I suspect. I'll finish with a question and one last observation. First the question: What did you make of all the abs, delts, pecs, and various slabs of muscle, loving descriptions of which are larded "excuse the mixed metaphor "into virtually every chapter? ???And here is the observation: Dutiful Tom Wolfe, the little naiad in his white suit and his notebook, trucking off to university after university to do his research. Compare this to the genesis of the greatest academic satire ever written, the category killer known as Lucky Jim. In 1948, Philip Larkin's old college chum Kingsley Amis visited him at the University College at Leicester, where the young Larkin had recently been appointed librarian. As Amis recalled his visit to the Senior Common Room years later, [I] looked around a couple of times and said to myself: 'Christ, somebody ought to do something with this.' Not that it was awful "well, only a bit; it was strange, and sort of developed, a whole mode of existence no one had got onto, like the SS in 1940, say. I [decided I] would do something with it. That was it: a turn of the head in the Common Room; a few sniggering letters to and from Larkin. But between their four eyes they managed to nail the enterprise, and for all time. But of course, as Wolfe would remind us, it was six eyes: Larkin was a myopic, bespectacled, spectral geek, a weakling who devoted a lifetime to his own self-pity. And besides, what do you think that pays, librarian? ???Steve ???The Wolfe in Rut By 11/17/2004 3:51:23 PM ???Hi, Stephen! Steve-O! Steve-man! The Night of the Skull Fuck! Hillbilly Beaver! Huh! ???Damn, I am already violating my vow not to channel the enchanting voice of Wolfe's frat guys or any of his bozo characters. But you gotta love those particular bonebrains (hey, hey, U.Va.) and also this book is date-raping me. ???I agree there's much to say. In regular Slate pundity sentences, even. But do we have to be the ones to say it? My first response to finishing the book has actually been to savor the silence, since I'm worn out, having been shouted down by that loudmouth Wolfe and his twerpy T.A.s "Jojo, Hoyt, Adam, and yes Charlotte, our Maiden No More. Can't you and I, fresh from the 676-page exhortation to "what? "face facts?, now relish a quiet duller world, the one between Wolfe productions, free of ruttingruttingrutting and fake Ebonics and typographical stunts like::::::STATIC::::: and the grinding of the mons pubis? ???And, with that, my second response: to get to the task of exchanging glances with everyone who's lugging this unmistakable $28.95 hardcover around that says, OK, hi, what is it with 'mons pubis' and 'cleft in the rear declivity' and 'winking navels'? Why does Wolfe introduce these wack expressions as though they 're fresh wit and he hasn't used them a half-dozen times on the facing page? ???I am trying to come up with a glance that can convey this. ???Finally, my third response is to go to you, Steve, and concede first that, all right, the shouting is style, but what about those glitches? This book is made of glitches! Strange mistakes that speak of cognitive irregularities in the maker, to say nothing of an absent editor. I'm not complaining so much as brooding. How do they happen? ???Consider: ???Charlotte looked at the pair with a sinking heart. Crissy and Nicole. On top of everything else, they were both "ey girls. All the cool girls at Dupont, the ones who were with it, were "ey girls "Beverly, Courtney, Wheatley, Kingsley, Tinsley, Avery, and now Crissy. Of course, there was Nicole...and Erica...but thinking of Erica made her sink still farther " ???What in hell? I'm sure you see, but I'll spell it out: First, neither Crissy or Nicole are -ey girls, if "ey girls have names that end in ey. Second, Nicole is Nicole, so why is she an exception to a list that includes Nicole? ???I guess this could seem like a trivial thing, and maybe it's manly to just slop out your prose and leave small-minded fault-finding to the typing pool. But, when they recur, slips like this one "which are now common in literary fiction in our post-book-editor world "addle the critical mind, since they suggest very badly wrought urns. It's especially stupefying when evidence of carelessness capsizes one of Wolfe's pedantic passages, as above; just as he's coining phrases and codifying distinctions most aggressively, he falls off the dais "and we can't trust him. If I had more stamina for deconstruction, I'd try in fact to prove that this passage is the very heart of the matter, the proof that Wolfe's social taxonomies, which are this book's sine qua non, are lazy lies. Moreover, this other me would argue that the text's mischief is to disclose, over and over, the fraudulence of those taxonomies. ???But why bother, really? Shouts, lies, mistakes "who cares? I Am Charlotte Simmons is, as you say, marvelously easy sledding; it's thoroughly disarming, a breeze to read, even thrilling. Yeah, there's a devil's deal in it, but once you make that deal "stop counting the gaffes, stop tracing out The stupidity here may actually be boundless in the margins "this novel's got the enzyme that makes you crave it. Don't you think? It's really working the whole Tom Wolfe soothsayer thing, present in the Geertz-like thick descriptions of things like moving in to a freshman dorm; parents' fearful interaction with your roommate and her parents; the boring and sexual atmosphere of a dormitory Common Room late at night; uncomfortable hours spent with bland, unlikable freshman friends; the fudging of facts and tone involved in letters home; the drudgery and ecstasy of fraternity parties; the appearance of a shared hotel bathroom on a college road trip ???Wolfe reminds me of John Edward of Crossing Over. From a few data points "derived in this case from his fact-finding college tour "he supplies connective material and nuance until he seems, as I live and breathe, to be talking to the dead. You may know just how he does this "gets a page of Cosmo Girl or the liner notes to a Ben Harper CD and spins it into what seems like a narrative miracle amid novels by Iowa-trained senior citizens who never leave their Tidewater farmhouses. But even as I fought to keep my head clear I found myself thinking, on the brink of tears, How does he know this about my college life? It was just like this! (True, I don't really know how John Edward does it, either.) ???I also admire the way some of Wolfe's warhorse effects undergird the nouveau speech act he's evidently interested in here: the Affirmation. I'm not sure, in other words, that "as you say "postmodernism, or its tricks, have passed Wolfe by. When he gets into free-indirect discourse, which is pervasive "later I may remember this as a book narrated by Charlotte Simmons, but of course it's in the third person, with Wolfe visiting several consciousnesses very closely "Wolfe leans on a telling locution. He'll write, But he, Jojo, Jojo Johannsen, of whom they all chanted 'go go, Jojo,' could not be seen doing this! or But he, Hoyt, was the chevalier! or He, Adam, Destiny's Adam Gellin, promised himself that vengeance was his! Wolfe doubles and triples the names "pronoun and proper noun and epithet and etc. "reminding us with his boozy, emphatic, redundant loops that so much of what passes for mental life is just the repetition of one's name. Virginia, OK, you can do this. Or, rather, I am Charlotte Simmons. I like this title. ???I'm sounding awfully close, I realize, to Samuel Richardson's female groupies, who raved that he knew their lady-hearts better than they themselves did. Who knows who, of the aged monster novelists "Bellow, Roth, Updike, whoever "will win, in the end, in the final final Rapture? (Someone has to, though; is that an article of faith with you, too?) For now I'm with Wolfe. ???Wahoowa, ???Virginia ???P.S.: Let's admit you also went to U.Va. As I did. And also "your question. This is a dialogue. The traps, lats, delts "yes, there are many references to them. Personal trainers of America should pay Wolfe for his description of Charlotte's very clinical way to arousal: running her fingers over his wonderful abs and lingering in the crevices between the units. But what doyoumean by calling attention to Wolfe's salaciousness about the college guys? The cover's got I Am Charlotte Simmons in curly letters right over Tom Wolfe's initials. Seems like drag to me. I take it for a big, gay book. Not you? ???Tom Wolfe's Complicity in the Culture of Machismo By 11/18/2004 12:38:12 PM ???Virginia! Ginny! G and T! I was hoping you'd bring up (Wahooo-Wah) our time together at UVA, where you were an undergrad, I a grad student, and both of us were in thrall to the great Richard Rorty. (Did you note the complete absence of the campus maitrepenseur in Wolfe's supposed taxonomy? Wolfe must truly hate intellectuals. His one humanities professor here is a quivering under-mensch named Quat.) I started out saying I kinda liked this book, then proceeded to offer it up to the poleax, so let me revise and extend my remarks. First of all, all of us, hipster, doofus, hipster-doofus, we're all going to converge on one personality type in the end, the incredulous fuddy-duddy for whom the young appear as savages. And so yes, Heff, I think this is a drag show, in which Wolfe dresses up as the improbably spotless Charlotte, the better to make his own censorious way through Gomorrah; and in doing so, he speaks for the Active Liver in all of us. Second, I agree, he gets something dismayingly right here. By presenting a vision so loveless and unchastened by adult perspective, I Am Charlotte Simmons brings you back, uncannily, to what it feels like to be young: overwhelmed, self-pitying, somehow both painfully anonymous and sticking out like a sore thumb. The question I still can't puzzle out is: Are these genuine virtues, or only more flaws in what amounts to an egregious mistake of a novel? Or, put another way: Isn't it Wolfe here who is being shallow? ???It strikes me there are three possible defenses of I Am Charlotte Simmons. The first we can dispense with quickly enough: It is not funny, therefore it is not a satire. The second is that it is a fair piece of reportage from the front lines. And yet Wolfe, whose eye for social distinctions is purported "by Wolfe, at least "to be so keen, gets so much so baldly wrong. You would not believe how important sports are here! Charlotte writes home to her parents. Wrong! Charlotte went to a rural high school, where sports stars are treated as demigods. Her parents would readily understand the mentality. Wolfe has Charlotte's roommate, Beverly, a skeletal boarding school graduate and a four-alarm bitch, be conversant in pop culture, while Walton-mountain Charlotte is a near pop culture illiterate. Wrong! The principal medium of assimilation in America now is television, which is universal among the young. No one doesn't plug in and master its basic argot "with one possible exception: the children of the very privileged, who get tucked away in Groton for four years, to develop some silly argot of their own. (I know: true confession "I'm married to a Charlotte Simmons and was sent to prep school.) Also, Wolfe has virtually zero comprehension of the mechanics of the reverse snobbery now so common in the ranks of the upper meritocracy, going so far as to claim Charlotte envies Beverly for being wellborn, a locution straight out of Thackeray. ???OK, I'm reaching for the poleax again. I'll set it aside and admit that once, while at UVA, a frat boy exiting Daddy's sports car turned to me and said, What are you looking at, whereupon I promptly shrank into my cardigan. I sympathize with a certain horror, and a certain fascination, for the culture of machismo, and increasingly machisma, among the young. But what struck me about this 'roided up book, so imposingly large without being dense or powerful, was how complicit in this culture Wolfe makes himself. I was reminded of a passage in Balzac, one of the social realists Wolfe makes such a great show of admiring, where he describes a certain Celestin Crevel. Crevel suffers from retrospective envy, Balzac tells us and then adds: No one knows how much obvious bad taste this retrospective envy accounts for; and we cannot tell how many wildly foolish actions are due to the secret rivalries that drive men to mirror the type that they have set up as an ideal, to consume their energies in making themselves a moonshine reflection of someone else. ???Now, we know exactly how Balzac feels about this silly Crevel, whose weak personality has been left to forever wriggle upon his nail. You will say: But Wolfe is a modern novelist, whose own attitude can't be so plainly injected into the narrative. But Wolfe everywhere injects himself into his narrative. When weakling Adam demands that Charlotte snap out of her depression, she abruptly stopped crying and stared up at Adam with her mouth slightly open and her tearful eyes shining with respect bordering oddly on pleasure, as women sometimes do when a man claims the high ground and rebukes them. Later, in a similar situation: [T]here was also, unbeknownst to either of them consciously, a woman's thrill! "that's the word for it! "her delicious thrill! "when a man expands his chest and drapes it with the sash of righteousness and takescommand upon the Heights of Abraham. Here, Heffster, I think we can start to make sense of all the abs, pecs, delts, lats. For everywhere in this book, Wolfe combines his powerful distaste for the decadence he has encountered, with an enormous respect for the animal quest for sexual dominance, which he believes is the transcendental fact of human existence. This is why the book is so strangely incoherent, while being so strangely compelling: Wolfe has found among the young habits he finds genuinely repulsive, but they are attached to an honest, almost Nietzschean, acknowledgment of the inner workings of status. Wolfe may be appalled by booze, crunking, and bling bling, but he has an awed (and entirely sexist and entirely homoerotic) respect for the animal powers of young men. ???Heffster "in my big, gay heart, I know Wolfe cannot prevail in his quest for the laurel, against Bellow, Roth, Updike. Tomorrow I will unveil my pet theory! In the meantime: You think he will?? I can't wait to hear you spin this one! ???Soul and the American Imagination By 11/18/2004 4:09:16 PM ???Steve! Ma tre Steve! The Stevedore! " ???On reading that you're married to a Charlotte Simmons, something perhaps ludicrous occurred to me: Do you think it's possible that Charlotte has a shot at joining the real top sorority, the literary answer to the University of Virginia's Thursday Club, that triple-elite girls' drinking club comprised of sorority all-stars from the top three, Kappa, Theta, and Tri-Delt? You know the analog clique I mean "the one with Scarlett O'Hara, Becky Sharp, and Blanche Dubois? ???Is Charlotte, in other words, a character hearty enough to survive being abstracted from her natural habitat, Wolfe's indifferent prose, and turned into a figure in movies, metaphors, television, conversational idiom "exploitation in other media? (That which every virgin fears and seeks?) ???I ask not out of concern for the Charlotte Simmons movie (Scarlett Johansson? Lindsay Lohan?), but because somewhere, maybe 10 years ago, I came across a winning essay arguing that Henry James' characters' shortcoming is that they cannot break out of his symbolic order and live freely in our imaginations; they 're like helpless preemies and unviable without James' thick prose to keep them breathing (and even then, they're hyperventilating). It's true you rarely think, That guy is such a Lambert Strether. The argument was further made "as I recall it "that something about Margaret Mitchell's visual, anticerebral style was bracing to her characters, toughening them up, and allowing them to form real edges. Thus they could be lifted out. And resold. But what is good for characters "the repetition of their names, the physical descriptions, the tedious shorings up of what each one means (male low on the masculine pecking order, etc.) "may not be good for an author's reputation. James gets to be first-rate because his characters are subordinated to his style. Wolfe gets pushed around by critics because he lets his characters take center stage, and thus seems weak. ???I love it, and you're right, that entropy will work on the cafeteria tables, too "that old age often just is the convergence of cool people and losers, brought together in mutual bewilderment over where the time has gone. Getting the most out of life, as I see it, may require resistance to this dangerous cool-mixing, and for that reason I will now confess that some part of me looks forward to starting all over again, with cliques and status and infighting, at an old folks' home one day I hope to go down loftily snubbing someone for the wrong jeans or at least being snubbed. ???But it's time to admit that we, we with our unsullied and merely mimetic relationship to the stuff of this embarrassing and likable novel, are not the only ones talking about it. The reviewers are out in force, and most of them are wrong. A recent Times op-ed about I Am Charlotte Simmons makes much of Charlotte 's moral abandonment at a university where, among other affronts, Professor Victor Ransome Starling (the sublime neuroscience dude, with the Nobel Prize; is he not our ma tre penseur?) can use the word soul only in quotation marks. ???I disagree with the many bad reviews the book has gotten, because I consider this book a glorious beating, but at this defense of it I really gnash my teeth. Granting that the Starling soul moment is significant in Wolfe's novel "and it isn't, since what's actually significant about Starling is that he's religious, anti-atheist, and sympathetic even to Charlotte's wholesale critique of Darwin; Starling also dwells on Darwin's piety as well as his own faith in the self, which at my much more conservative college I was taught was a construct, Q.E.D. "I wonder where the moral utopia is in which soul is used straight. Sports writing? Jewel songs? As you and I know from graduate school, intellectuals perpetually rediscover the soul "a recent MLA panel on the subject was packed "and, furthermore, chastise themselves for their detachment from it. This reformation is, in fact, among everyone's favorites, in the academy and out: it 's like a musical in which the lovers are witty at the top, and then come to Believe in Love and cast off those mean, defensive quotation marks. ???That moral operation, the stripping of quotation marks, which is regularly foisted on us, is mighty pretty "but it's shallow, and it's meant only to be repeated and repeated. Who wants to hear the story after the damn musical? Or, to bring it back around, the denuded soul is very cute "but who wants it? Are the neocon men of letters, the ones who keep foisting the soul on us, prepared, for real, to entertain real questions about the soul "about immortal life and beatitude and purgatory and how we recognize our friends in the hereafter and what happens to the body and are we points of light or whatever? ???No. That stuff is creepy. Let's face it: No one wants to hear a Charlotte Simmons yammer on for one minute after she's remembered Jesus died for our sins; they just want to see her get the irony raped out of her. ???Superficially, in fact, the soul issue reminds me of Wolfe's annoying and commonplace tic, when rendering dialect, of phoneticizing haphazardly. Take everybuddy, which one of Charlotte's dad's Sparta cronies says, near the beginning of the book. Why spell it that way? Everybody says everybuddy! In fact, everybuddy is spelled everybody. Likewise, children of America, no matter what the neo-soulful people try to tell you, nobody uses soul without some kind of quotation marks. (Even if they're there to reprove you for even thinking quotation marks.) Not even in good, wholesome places like Sparta or the exurbs or the places where they know that Kerry was faking his faith. Soul takes quotation marks! Get it right! ???Whew,Virginia ???For Wolfe, Life Is All About Status By 11/19/2004 5:16:45 PM ???Heffenator, ???It pains me to bring my half of this dialogue to a close; it's been such a pleasure. I love your distinction between the stuff we sense that Scarlett O 'Hara and Becky Sharp are made of and the stuff "the indifferent literary prose "that made them. But methinks you may have lighted a Candle in the Wind here: Poor Charlotte will likely never break free of her creator. I see her holy innocence, but where is her unholy desire? She has none of the vinegar (or melancholy) it takes to become even a schlock icon. As to Henry James, he made it a fair fight only once, with Isabel Archer; she battles for her dignity against James' ulterior, and not so ulterior, purposes as much as against Gilbert Osmond, so I'd place her near your trio, if not exactly among them. (As for literary antecedents for Charlotte, the final one I come up with is the Lady from Milton's Comus: thou unblemish't form of Chastity. Zzzzzzz.) And by the by, that'll be me, Virginia, wearing the crappy jeans in the Phase II cafeteria of the Sunset Park Leisure Care Facility "so watch it. ???In all sincerity, here is what I like about Wolfe and this goofy novel. Too often we extrapolate a set of qualities common to the people who still read literary fiction, then hold them as expectations when reading fiction itself. As a result, a lot of awful work "overwritten, overfelt, mincing, and oppressively fine "gets lazily tabbed literature. By being so unapologetically middlebrow, Tom Wolfe isn't middlebrow. (He's may not be great, but at least he's not giving usShopgirl.) Were it left at that, one could respectfully keep one's Ginsu sheathed. But Wolfe has never been content to leave it at that. The best piece on how jealously Wolfe argues for his own pre-eminence is still Jim Windolf's, and I can't pretend to improve on it. But in promoting this latest novel, Wolfe has been repeating his old saw, about how every human consideration is finally a status consideration; and he has picked up a high-profile defender in David Brooks. Now, it's Brooks' job, as the Likable Conservative, to put a friendly face on the indefensible; and in this column he almost succeeds in transferring responsibility for Wolfe's awful novel onto its reviewers. So it's worth explaining why, in addition to being sprawling and fun, I Am Charlotte Simmons is also hateful and small, and in precisely those ways that will deprive Wolfe of the literary reputation he so craves. ???Wolfe chose the contemporary American university as the setting for I Am Charlotte Simmons, but the roiling Orgasmatron he lays before the reader will be familiar to precisely no one. What is a real university in the actual 21st century actually like? It's a research institution; an intergenerational transfer station for high culture; a talent sorting mechanism, and thus a gateway to the professions; and a (give or take) four-year holding pen for the children of the bourgeoisie. Of these, Wolfe chose to highlight the last, add some elements of the first, and suppress to near-invisibility two and three. In sum, Wolfe punched up to phantasmagorical heights everything about a university related to status, crudely understood, while burying everything about a university that has to do with prestige. Why? As Wolfe sees it, status is real: It's rooted in biology and the primitive quest for sexual privilege. Prestige, meanwhile, is artificial, a conspiracy of the overrefined whose only real power is the power to shame and exclude. Wolfe has devoted entire swaths of his career to pointing out how the world of prestige is fraudulent: that modern art is a scam, that The New Yorker is the product of tiny mummies, and that the literary novel has become weak, pale, tabescent. ???Those who would praise Wolfe for being horrified by the bestial reversion of the young fail to see how much of a relief this reversion is to Wolfe. After all, it takes a mammoth effort of willful suppression to depict, over the course of nearly 700 pages, life at a prestigious university as one entirely devoid of warmth, friendship, love, belonging, self-mastery, or meaningful accomplishment "or, for that matter, pleasure of any kind detached from the brute mastery of others. What terrifies Wolfe most, then, isn't debauchery; it's cultural snobbery of the sort that routinely assigns Tom Wolfe to the second or third tier of literary talents. This has become so pathological with Wolfe that he seems to perceive any social arrangement that allows for self-refinement or aesthetic contemplation not merely as a fraud but as an offense against human nature. (Don't believe me? Read I Am Charlotte Simmons, in which there are two kinds of men: cowards and overlords.) The temptation in American life is always to give in to this bleak idea, of an endless death struggle for status, because the basis for American life is Hobbesian individualism. But the basis for a university, and any culture in which meaningful value judgments are still possible, isn't Hobbesian; it's Lawrentian: Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Surely that purpose can't be driving an Escalade or living at 820 Fifth Ave. ???Wolfe, though, in his own person is self-refuting. He himself, in his need for the laurel, for lasting critical esteem, proves that people's desires are wildly variable and idiosyncratic. He has no end to money and status, and yet his craving for something more has proven incorrigible. What an interesting character for a novel! Pity: If only he had learned to navel-gaze a little better. As it is, his work is news that won't stay news. ???An utter delight, Virginia. Be well!Steve ???I [Heart] Charlotte By 11/19/2004 10:41:49 PM ???Steve, ???I know you hear me, but the headline writers, as well as the charmers at the Fray, seem to misunderstand me, and now's my only chance to set the record straight ???So here goes: I like this novel. I like it now, having read it, having talked about it, and having read about it. And I'll keep on liking it. I'll never stop liking it. The people who like it are right. The people who dislike it are wrong. To which I am obliged to add: You are wrong. ???Charlotte is not an allegorical figment out of Comus. She's a vain, redneck distance-runner with a kindly and despotic mountain mother and a jalopy Kaypro computer that her father and brothers fixed up for her because she's also an intellectual, and intellectuals need computers. Have you ever seen a Kaypro? I remember light gray-blue casing, the false impression of portability, and a strange shape; it was as though you had to look down a tunnel, as if into a stereopticon, to see the green figures on the deep-space black background. Any undergraduate at a Harvard-like university who is writing papers now on a Kaypro, especially one rigged by her kinfolk, has a story to tell. That's a story we'd do well "and here I'll risk the David Brooks line, or the Tom Wolfe one "to listen to. ???(Glimpse a Kaypro here.) ???Charlotte is not Chastity. She loses her virginity at 18, which sounds fairly average to me "not devastating either way "and she falls apart, while she does, not because she then embodies Sullied Chastity, but for the worthwhile reasons that college girls usually fall apart: because a guy isn't calling her and because she's let down her mother. ???Dupont University is not a Gomorrah. It is, rather, a place of learning, with "it must be said "intriguing course offerings. (Wolfe heroically rejects the long tradition of tedious David Lodge-style parodic course titles, creating instead Nineteenth-Century Poetry: The Courtly, the Pastoral, and the Symbolist and The Renaissance and the Rise of Nationalism, with which he makes a point worth acknowledging: Wolfe still believes in college.) ???Dupont does not "miracle! "conform to the popular and now 20-year-old clich of a university of passionless PC slackers who are morally dead because sex is no longer the terrifying centerpiece of existence, the way it was for Allan Bloom and Philip Roth and the other men who came of age before early puberty and coeducation and the ultimately very peaceable disbanding of the American branch of the cult of female virginity. Wolfe came of age back then, too, and he's no doubt been amused and even appalled to hear his twentysomething daughter's accounts "the book is dedicated to his children* "of how times have changed. ???But, unlike those other big daddies, Wolfe evidently really listened to those girls when he invented Dupont, wresting from them and his other sources details about bulimic roommates, cell phone use on campus, computer centers, eye makeup, Diesel jeans, new college cuisine, the Kaypro ???Something about the idea of Tom Wolfe doing all that research is endearing; it constitutes the sweetness of the book. Though scorned for being middlebrow, Wolfe is among America's few monster novelists to have gotten a Ph.D. (in American Studies at Yale), which, if it doesn't give him professore status, as it might in Italy, at least it means he deputized himself to greater minds before officially putting pen to paper. ???Why do I find this book so monumentally moving, like a paper by an ingenious and strange undergraduate? Put it this way: Wolfe invented a rapper named Doctor Dis. Doctor Dis! And then he wrote songs for him! ???Let's imagine this. Having listened to Nas or Jay-Z on the kids' recommendation, Tom Wolfe had a daughter help him make out the lyrics. Then he sat down at his own desk, blank page and rhyming dictionary before him, and "forgoing yet another chance to write to his strengths (none of his old subjects are shoehorned into this book, which is also commendable) "he tapped out the meter to a rap. And produced a cop-killing anthem with enjammed rhymes and internal rhymes! ???Is Jojo's transformation not credible? Are Hoyt's and Jojo's and Beverly's overwrought family stories abandoned? Do a half-dozen first-act guns not go off? Are paragraphs here sloppily composed? Are some of the coinages silly? Is the melodrama melodrama? Are there one thousand departures from verisimilitude? ???Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But there are also 1,001 times where the truth is rendered conscientiously, with bravado and lightness. And I did laugh reading this book, and I read it greedily and happily, and my eyes were opened, and I remember the characters. ???I read your entries greedily and happily, too, however! I like your style and being right isn't everything. This has been truly high times. ???Yours,Virginia CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece misstated that Wolfe has two daughters. He, in fact, has a son and a daughter. Return to the corrected sentence. ----------- People November 29, 2004 Old School:At 73, Tom Wolfe goes back to college. The result? Call it Keg Party of the Vanities by Kyle Smith ???The man who gave us The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities and even popularized the phrase "good ol' boy" rarely wears anything but a dazzling tailor-made white suit. But that changed when author Tom Wolfe fell into a deep depression a few months after his 1996 heart-bypass surgery. "It is so hard to get across to anyone who has never been depressed what it's like," Wolfe says. "You feel that you yourself are worthless. I would start dressing in the drabbest clothes. [I thought], 'You don't deserve all these trick clothes. You don't deserve to act charming.'" So what did he wear in his darkest hour? "I have a couple of brown suits that I consider subdued. Of course these clothes were all custom-made. My wife probably didn't even notice." ???Now Wolfe, 73, is back to his usual resplendence and his customary place atop bestseller lists with his latest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, an alternately hilarious and hair-raising look at a prestigious fictional college where everyone majors in sex and booze. "Isn't that amazing?" says his friend Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone publisher who has been printing his work for more than 30 years. "I mean, this guy's in his 70s, right? And he's just produced one of the most authentic works about young people ever written. This is what it is like." But don't take Wenner's word for it. Says Dave Fleming, 26, who met Wolfe when Fleming was a frat brother at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill--one of more than a dozen campuses Wolfe visited--and chaperoned him around the party scene: "He nailed it pretty good." How does he do it? "There's a lot of mojo in that white suit," Wenner theorizes. "There's something about it that makes you feel good and welcome him in. I mean, how kooky can you get?" ???Kooky or not, Wolfe rarely reveals much of himself, but I Am Charlotte Simmons may be his most personal work yet. The title character, a brilliant but poor girl from the mountains of North Carolina who becomes a social outcast at college, spirals into a depression that Wolfe describes as much like his own. "The thing that's so true is the only time she's at peace with herself is when she's riding the bus," he says. "Because there's nothing she can do about her troubles on the bus, there's no one to confront her." When Wolfe battled depression for four months eight years ago, he says, "I was only happy in transit." (Medication helped set him on his feet.) But Wolfe says he also poured some of his other traits into Charlotte. "I shouldn't tell you this about myself, but she's first of all an egotist of a sort you wouldn't necessarily notice," he says. "The big question at the end of the book is, did she really want to have a life of the mind or did she simply want to be a star?" Adds the man who tried out as a pitcher with the then-New York Giants in 1952: "The only thing that saved me from a very poor career as a professional baseball player is the fact that I wasn't good enough." ???He passed along both his athletic genes and his writerly ones. Ensconced in Manhattan with his wife, Sheila, 61, a graphic design consultant for Harper's magazine, Wolfe has a son, Tommy, 19, a sophomore member of Trinity College's champion squash team, and a daughter, Alexandra, 24, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Neither of them helped with the book, though, except to correct some of his slang. If the drunken campus bedhopping he writes about may alarm parents, Wolfe doesn't worry about his own kids. "Maybe I'm kidding myself," he says, "but I really do trust them 100 percent." ???They might think twice before according him the same privilege. While doing his research, Wolfe was once forced to flee a frat party at the University of Michigan at 3 a.m.: "All the lights came on and an officer of the fraternity came rushing through saying, 'Everybody out! They're coming!' I suddenly had a picture of a guy 70 years old running out to escape the law. I never did find out what they were frightened about." ???Writing about youth is bound to win Wolfe new fans, although some will be buying the wrong books. At one sorority party, remembers another former UNC student, Frances Hankins, 25, "this boy went up to him and started talking about Look Homeward, Angel, thinking it was Thomas Wolfe"-- who did indeed write that classic but died in 1938. More important is Wolfe's ability to inspire. "The thing that I got out of Tom is to look into things and try to find the truth," says Fleming, the former fraternity brother. "That's what gets you excited about life." ???By Kyle Smith ??"I suddenly had a picture of a guy 70 years old running out to escape the law." --------------- Bonfire knight http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5051821-99930,00.html The Observer profile America's foremost satirist is sallying forth once more to slay the dragon of his nation's social schizophrenia and hypocrisies. Expect the trumpets to blow, and the swords to be sharpened Tim Adams Sunday October 31, 2004 New novels by Tom Wolfe are not merely published; rather, they arrive in town like stretch limos at the heart of a traffic-stopping motorcade, klaxons blaring, heralded by outriders on Harleys in reflective shades, their embargoed content already the subject of speculation, adulation and protest. The million-plus copies of his latest, third, full-length work of fiction, I Am Charlotte Simmons, will scream into print worldwide with just such a gridlocking fanfare in a fortnight's time. From the two clues to its concerns so far - chapters excerpted in Rolling Stone magazine and Men's Journal - it appears to be business as usual for America's satiriser-in-chief. Wolfe wants to locate his nation's most pumped-up pulse at any given moment, and strap his stylistic tourniquet on to feel its pressure. He works in decades. Following his inspired journalistic chronicles of Sixties Acid Tests, and his coining of Seventies Me Culture, his novels have attempted to put their exclamatory imprimatur on successive eras. What Bonfire of the Vanities did for the Eighties and Wall Street, A Man in Full attempted for the corrupt corporate billionaires of the Nineties Enron-economy. I am Charlotte Simmons takes this zeitgeist-roadshow to the mythical Dupont university in California, breeding ground for the masters of the twenty-first century universe. Wolfe has never lost his hunger for the new new thing. The dapper hack who hung out with California's elite surfers to write The Pump House Gang, almost 40 years ago, still at 73 wants to know exactly what fuels young America. Thus we will see him inveigling his unmissable authorial presence into fraternity houses and sorority parties to come back with the news from the front. You could see this novel simply as the author fulfilling an old promise. Wolfe spent nearly all of his twenties doing a doctorate in American studies at Yale. At the time, academia did not seem to offer enough of real life for him, and he took a job as a reporter in Springfield, Massachusetts. Though he never really stopped doing American studies, he told himself that one day he would go back to college to work, but never has until now. Wolfe's real subject has always been class, that great taboo of egalitarian America, what he once called its statuspheres. His interest is in elites, the glamour and sordidness and comedy of power. This has been a lifelong obsession. At the age of nine he embarked on a biography of Napoleon and a life of Mozart written as a comic strip. 'The reason I liked them was because they were - like me - both small,' he admitted, looking back. I once asked Ken Kesey, hero of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, what it was like to have Tom Wolfe write you into myth. 'What you have to understand,' Kesey said, 'is that Tom Wolfe was never really writing about me, his writing has always mostly been concerned with itself.' Rarely can a writer's style have so enjoyed the red carpet as Wolfe's. Each of his sentences looks like a seductive cheerleader for its author. And he is not shy about revealing his motivation. 'If most writers are honest with themselves, this is the difference they want to make: before they were not noticed, now they are.' Such statements are guaranteed to enrage the higher-minded of Wolfe's peers. One of the things that will no doubt accompany his new novel is another incendiary round in the literary firestorm that followed the publication of the first two. No one else can wind up their fellow Great American Novelists with such ease. For John Updike, writing in the New Yorker, Wolfe's A Man in Full 'was not even literature in a modest aspirant form'. Norman Mailer, meanwhile, in an even more comprehensive kicking, compared reading Wolfe to being 'seduced by a 300lb woman. Once she gets on top it's all over. Fall in love or be asphyxiated'. (Mailer left the reader in no doubt that he was among those gasping for breath.) John Irving was more succinct, saying Wolfe simply 'could not fucking write'. Wolfe responded to these attacks in kind by saying that his critics - The Three Stooges he called them - were envious because they had 'wasted their careers by not engaging in the life around them'. He pointed also to an initial American print run of 1.2 million copies for A Man in Full, a figure they could dream of (and just stopped short of mentioning his $7.5m advance). One of the things Wolfe believes annoys his critics most is that he has never wanted to be one of them. Despite a lavish uptown apartment in Manhattan and his summers in the Hamptons, and his wife, a Jewish New Yorker, who was once art director of Harper's magazine, Wolfe still prides himself on being an outsider in what he calls Cultureberg. His father was an agronomist in the Shenandoah mountains. His grandfather was a Confederate officer in the Civil War. Wolfe never wanted to lose any of his southernness. He made sure he would not be seduced by literary New York early on in his career in an essay viciously satirising its bible, William Shawn's New Yorker magazine, as a home for the living dead. His famous white suit has been one shorthand way of asserting this southern separateness. He uses his uniform as a goad, and it works. When Wolfe's first book came out, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby, this cultural Mason-Dixon line was already beginning to be drawn. Writing in the New York Review of Books the eminent conservative critic Dwight Macdonald derided Wolfe's work as 'para-journalism'. The main charge the critic laid against Wolfe then, in 1965, was that of transience. 'I don't think Wolfe will be read with pleasure or at all years from now, and perhaps not even next year... the subjects will prove of ephemeral interest and the style will not wear well because its eccentricities, while novel, are monotonous; those italics, dots, exclamation points, and expressions like Santa Barranza!... they will not last.' That they did last, that Wolfe's first-person style has been the single most influential voice in all journalism since, had a lot to do with the fact that he was among the first to realise that the clues to modern culture were not necessarily to be found in its politics but in its fashions, in its transience. In his subsequent fascination with the surface of things, in his love-hate for celebrity and the products of American dreams, the scourge of modern art has proved to have had more in common than he would acknowledge with Andy Warhol, that other dandy outsider in the big city. Like Warhol, though a stylistic radical, Wolfe has always been very much a conservative by temperament. 'You never realise how much of your background is sewn into the lining of your clothes,' he says. As a boy in Richmond, Virginia, he would kneel by his bedside each night, close his eyes, place his hands together and solemnly thank the Lord for making him an American. He has never forgotten that. While most liberal readers might have seen Bonfire of the Vanities as a vicious satire on the excesses of the Wall Street bull markets, to Wolfe himself it seems the comedy was more complicated. 'My original idea was to say, "Look at these people! Look at the way they live! Look at what they do! Isn't it just amazing!"' He could have savage fun observing the greed unleashed by Reaganomics, the great haemorrhaging of cash, but he still believed Reagan to be 'one of our greatest Presidents ever'. Wolfe squares that contradiction by being kind of American right winger who enjoys the priapic power of capitalism, and who prefers to laugh at effects than to examine causes. His writing borrows the energy of the individuals shaped by the extremes of those forces (it is no coincidence that his most telling and pyrotechnic book, The Right Stuff, was about the astronauts at Nasa, vicariously rocket-fuelled). By the time he set about to writing novels, this desire to incorporate all of America's energy in his books became overwhelming. In 1995, almost eight years into his work on A Man in Full, he described how every day he watched the events which his book wanted to include overtaking him. As he did not use a computer, each rewrite meant retyping everything. He looked a little like a character in a very American fable, desperately trying to stay one step ahead of his own satire. The effort of this very nearly did for him. In 1996 Wolfe had a heart attack at the gym and a quintuple by-pass, brought on, he believes, by the hubris of staring at a blank page each day and trying to make it reflect America. One of the effects of this brush with death, Wolfe said, was to break the thread he had always felt to his youth. It made him feel vulnerable, pervious, but he responded not with doubt but with redoubled ambition. And for this alone, as even Norman Mailer has conceded, 'one has to applaud his moxie'. As a result, the style that once looked like a wonderful cocksure show of plumage these days reads more like a rage against the dying of the light. Like Anthony Burgess, pressed into frantic action by a realisation of mortality, Wolfe, eight years on from heart surgery, seems only to want to go faster. The 750 pages of A Man in Full will thus be followed by the 680 pages of I am Charlotte Simmons. If his preview chapters about college jocks are anything to go by, his writing has rarely been more charged, more Wolfeian. Like the musculature of the basketball stars it describes, it is 'steroidal, ripped', all the time showboating with similes, hotdogging with vernacular, slam-dunking exclamations. If sentences could be on something then Wolfe's would never have been out of the mandatory doping lab. There is, however, no Viagra for prose. So you marvel that he is still keeping it up. Thomas Kennerly Wolfe DoB: 2 March 1931 Education: Washington and Lee University; Yale University (PhD, 1957) Publications: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby; The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; The Right Stuff; Bonfire of the Vanities; A Man in Full ... From checker at panix.com Fri Feb 4 14:40:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 09:40:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: 'Zero intelligence' trading closely mimics stock market Message-ID: 'Zero intelligence' trading closely mimics stock market http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6948&print=true * 11:59 01 February 2005 * Katharine Davis A model that assumes stock market traders have zero intelligence has been found to mimic the behaviour of the London Stock Exchange very closely. However, the surprising result does not mean traders are actually just buying and selling at random, say researchers. Instead, it suggests that the movement of markets depend less on the strategic behaviour of traders and more on the structure and constraints of the trading system itself. The research, led by J Doyne Farmer and his colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, US, say the finding could be used to identify ways to lower volatility in the stock markets and reduce transaction costs, both of which would benefit small investors and perhaps bigger investors too. A spokesperson for the London Stock Exchange says: "It's an interesting bit of work that mirrors things we're looking at ourselves." Most models of financial markets start with the assumption that traders act rationally and have access to all the information they need. The models are then tweaked to take into account that these assumptions are not always entirely true. But Farmer and his colleagues took a different approach. "We begin with random agents," he says. "The model was idealised, but nonetheless we still thought it might match some of the properties of real markets." Buying and selling In the model, agents with zero intelligence place random orders to buy and sell stocks at a given price. If an order to sell is lower than the highest buy price in the system, the transaction will take place and the order will be removed - a market order. If the sell order is higher than the highest buy price, it will stay in the system until a matching buy order is found - a limit order. For example, if the highest order to buy a stock is $10, limit orders to sell will be above $10 and market orders to sell will be below $10. The team used the model to examine two important characteristics of financial markets. These were the spread - the price difference between the best buy and sell limit orders - and the price diffusion rate - a standard measure of risk that looks at how quickly the price changes and by how much. The model was tested against London Stock Exchange data on 11 real stocks collected over 21 months - 6 million buy and sell orders. It predicted 96% of the spread variance and 76% of the variance in the price diffusion rate. The model also showed that increasing the number of market orders increased price volatility because there are then fewer limit orders to match up with each other. Incentives and charges The observation could be useful in the real financial markets. "If it is considered socially desirable to lower volatility, this can be done by giving incentives for people who place limit orders, and charging the people who place market orders," Farmer says. Some amount of volatility is important, because prices should reflect any new information, but many observers believe there is more volatility than there should be. "On one day the prices of US stock dropped 20% on no apparent news," says Farmer. "High volatility makes people jittery and sours the investment climate." It also creates a high spread, which can make it more expensive to trade in shares. The London Stock Exchange already has a charging structure in place that encourages limit orders. "Limit orders are a good way for smaller investors to trade on the order book," says a spokesperson. Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0409157102) Related Articles * [12]Virtual brokers forecast real stocks * 25 September 2004 * [13]It's the economy, stupid * 10 April 2004 * [14]Will physics crack the market? * 07 December 2002 Weblinks * [15]J Doyne Farmer, Santa Fe Institute * [16]London Stock Exchange * [17]Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences References 12. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18324662.100 13. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18224425.200 14. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg17623721.100 15. http://www.santafe.edu/~jdf/ 16. http://www.londonstockexchange.com/en-gb/ 17. http://www.pnas.org/ From checker at panix.com Fri Feb 4 14:41:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2005 09:41:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Waiter You Stiffed Has Not Forgotten Message-ID: The New York Times > Dining & Wine > The Waiter You Stiffed Has Not Forgotten http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/dining/02wait.html 5.2.2 By JULIA MOSKIN WHAT evil lurks in the hearts of waiters? Now you can find out. But can you stomach the results? An anonymous New York waiter wrote online recently: "In my fantasy, I become Darth Vader the next time a customer asks about the wines by the glass, then says, 'Merlot! Waiter, haven't you seen the movie "Sideways"?' Then I will slice off his head with my light saber." Grievances, including friction between kitchen and dining room staff, rapacious management and near-universal bitterness over tipping, are being revealed with gusto on the Internet by restaurant staff members. As a customer, to read Web sites like [1]www.bitterwaitress.com, [2]www.waiterrant.blogspot.com and [3]www.webfoodpros.com is to wonder nervously, "Could they be talking about me?" Each month, [4]www.stainedapron.com publishes a new extreme example of customer obnoxiousness. (One forum is titled "Keep Your Brats at Home!") On [5]bitterwaitress.com, the most popular page is an annotated database of people who give bad tips (defined on the site as "any gratuity under 17 percent for service which one's peers would judge as adequate or better"). Anyone can add a name to the database, along with the location, restaurant, amount of the check, amount of the tip and any details, most of which cannot be printed in a family newspaper. (A disclaimer reads: "We are not responsible for submissions. Uh-uh, no way, not in the least.") There are almost 700 entries. "That stuff is childish," said Timothy Banning, a California chef who often posts to [6]www.ontherail.com, a San Francisco-based site for chefs. "And it makes the industry lo