tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39708947585675512482024-02-20T23:50:29.604-05:00Information is not knowledgeboredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-31216052398755759382010-01-08T17:06:00.004-05:002010-01-08T17:39:20.834-05:00African American History Update<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/01/QueenVHSCover.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 280px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/01/QueenVHSCover.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />Today we finished the movie <i>Queen, The Story of an American Fami<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">ly </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; font-family:sans-serif, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">the life story of a young slave girl named Queen. The movie illustrates the problems faced by bi-racial slaves in America. I hope that everyone understood howe Queen struggles to fit into the two cultures of her heritage, and is at times shunned by both. Below is a link for to a very good site that gives a summary of the movie, scene-by-scene, in case you were absent. </span></span></i><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:sans-serif, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; font-family:sans-serif, serif;"><a href="http://pjsandamovie.blogspot.com/2009/02/halle-berry-reigns-as-alex-haleys-queen.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">http://pjsandamovie.blogspot.com/2009/02/halle-berry-reigns-as-alex-haleys-queen.html</span></a></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-style: normal; line-height: 19px; font-family:sans-serif, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></i><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:sans-serif, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:sans-serif, serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px;font-size:13px;"><br /></span></span></div></div></div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-45767253287675734102010-01-08T17:04:00.003-05:002010-01-08T17:06:36.640-05:00I'm sorryI am sincerely sorry for the long layoff. I tend to update the blog at school but recently the school district deemed the site 'suspicious,' and therefore blocked me from the site. I am in the processed of getting this matter fixed.boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-81788170637556056652009-07-07T21:57:00.002-04:002009-07-07T22:08:03.168-04:00Israel Eyes Cyberwar Attack on Iran by Reuters<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzOxEQhhzFeeS5IFANCikLuqdk3RrADgzuzF54wu5JSpNfNJ1nGWRK9hNVaL62fbsHXpzD-8nOMj95p7bWZClOeYSDUeRuFVIX_aGVvpH1ka_xCj1iDPyF4M6nqw64KcBMUWGW4NvEcE/s1600/cyberterrorism_deception.jpg"></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:12px;"><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">RAMAT HASHARON, Israel, - In the late 1990s, a computer specialist from Israel's Shin Bet internal security service hacked into the mainframe of the Pi Glilot fuel depot north of Tel Aviv.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">It was meant to be a routine test of safeguards at the strategic site. But it also tipped off the Israelis to the potential such hi-tech infiltrations offered for real sabotage.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">"Once inside the Pi Glilot system, we suddenly realised that, aside from accessing secret data, we could also set off deliberate explosions, just by programming a re-route of the pipelines," said a veteran of the Shin Bet drill.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">So began a cyberwarfare project which, a decade on, is seen by independent experts as the likely new vanguard of Israel's efforts to foil the nuclear ambitions of its arch-foe Iran.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">The appeal of cyber attacks was boosted, Israeli sources say, by the limited feasibility of conventional air strikes on the distant and fortified Iranian atomic facilities, and by U.S. reluctance to countenance another open war in the Middle East. "We came to the conclusion that, for our purposes, a key Iranian vulnerability is in its on-line information," said one recently retired Israeli security cabinet member, using a generic term for digital networks. "We have acted accordingly."</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">Cyberwarfare teams nestle deep within Israel's spy agencies, which have rich experience in traditional sabotage techniques and are cloaked in official secrecy and censorship.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">They can draw on the know-how of Israeli commercial firms that are among the world's hi-tech leaders and whose staff are often veterans of elite military intelligence computer units.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">"To judge by my interaction with Israeli experts in various international forums, Israel can definitely be assumed to have advanced cyber-attack capabilities," said Scott Borg, director of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, which advises various Washington agencies on cyber security.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">Technolytics Institute, an American consultancy, last year rated Israel the sixth-biggest "cyber warfare threat", after China, Russia, Iran, France and "extremist/terrorist groups".</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">The United States is in the process of setting up a "Cyber Command" to oversee Pentagon operations, though officials have described its mandate as protective, rather than offensive.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">CORRUPT, CRASH</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">Asked to speculate about how Israel might target Iran, Borg said malware -- a commonly used abbreviation for "malicious software" -- could be inserted to corrupt, commandeer or crash the controls of sensitive sites like uranium enrichment plants.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">Such attacks could be immediate, he said. Or they might be latent, with the malware loitering unseen and awaiting an external trigger, or pre-set to strike automatically when the infected facility reaches a more critical level of activity. As Iran's nuclear assets would probably be isolated from outside computers, hackers would be unable to access them directly, Borg said. Israeli agents would have to conceal the malware in software used by the Iranians or discreetly plant it on portable hardware brought in, unknowingly, by technicians.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">"A contaminated USB stick would be enough," Borg said.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">Ali Ashtari, an Iranian businessman executed as an Israeli spy last year, was convicted of supplying tainted communications equipment for one of Iran's secret military projects.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">Iranian media quoted a security official as saying that Ashtari's actions "led to the defeat of the project with irreversible damage". Israel declined all comment on the case.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">"Cyberwar has the advantage of being clandestine and deniable," Borg said, noting Israel's considerations in the face of an Iranian nuclear programme that Tehran insists is peaceful.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">"But its effectiveness is hard to gauge, because the targeted network can often conceal the extent of damage or even fake the symptoms of damage. Military strikes, by contrast, have an instantly quantifiable physical effect."</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">Israel may be open to a more overt strain of cyberwarfare. Tony Skinner of Jane's Defence Weekly cited Israeli sources as saying that Israel's 2007 bombing of an alleged atomic reactor in Syria was preceded by a cyber attack which neutralised ground radars and anti-aircraft batteries.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">"State of War," a 2006 book by New York Times reporter James Risen, recounted a short-lived plan by the CIA and its Israeli counterpart Mossad to fry the power lines of an Iranian nuclear facility using a smuggled electromagnetic-pulse (EMP) device.</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; ">A massive, nation-wide EMP attack on Iran could be effected by detonating a nuclear device at atmospheric height. But while Israel is assumed to have the region's only atomic arms, most experts believe they would be used only in a war of last resort</p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "><br /></p><p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuzOxEQhhzFeeS5IFANCikLuqdk3RrADgzuzF54wu5JSpNfNJ1nGWRK9hNVaL62fbsHXpzD-8nOMj95p7bWZClOeYSDUeRuFVIX_aGVvpH1ka_xCj1iDPyF4M6nqw64KcBMUWGW4NvEcE/s1600/cyberterrorism_deception.jpg" border="0" alt="" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 557px; height: 588px; " /></span></p></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-87911638462446337692009-07-07T13:34:00.002-04:002009-07-07T13:35:40.085-04:00How Many Nukes Does It Take To Defend America? by Brian Palmer<a href="http://skeptically.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/graph-nuclear-weapons-us-costs.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 366px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 340px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://skeptically.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/graph-nuclear-weapons-us-costs.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>President Obama, in Russia this week, announced an agreement to <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/FACT-SHEET-The-Joint-Understanding-for-the-START-Follow-on-Treaty/" target="_blank">reduce American and Russian nuclear warhead stockpiles</a> to a range between 1,500 and 1,675 for each country. How did negotiators arrive at these numbers?<br />By counting up potential targets for a nuclear strike and then negotiating around that number. U.S. military planners dream up a variety of hypothetical conflicts with other nuclear powers and determine how many warheads would be required to destroy all the most important targets in each scenario. The estimate is periodically adjusted downward, as planners eliminate targets to accommodate the president's desire to reduce stockpiles and their own changing views about how much deterrence is truly required. The president then consults allies—like Japan and South Korea—under the U.S. protective nuclear umbrella before entering into negotiations with Russia. Recent treaties have specified <a href="http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/sort/sort.htm" target="_blank">acceptable ranges</a> for warhead stockpiles, with the United States tending to stick around the upper limit and Russia the lower limit. (U.S. military planners are more conservative than their Russian counterparts, in part because more countries rely on American protection.)<br />The first stage in planning for a reduction of the nuclear arsenal takes the form of the <a href="http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/dod/95_npr.htm" target="_blank">Nuclear Posture Review</a>, a periodic policy analysis conducted by the Department of Defense and several other agencies. This report informs the president of the current status and needs of the nuclear program. The president then issues vague guidelines to the secretary of defense about the purpose of the nuclear weapon program, such as whether a pre-emptive strike might ever be employed. Finally, the Pentagon issues a confidential set of strike options detailing how we might be willing to use our nukes.<br />Next, the strike options go over to the <a href="http://www.stratcom.mil/" target="_blank">U.S. Strategic Command</a>, where military planners apply them to hypothetical conflicts with six different adversaries: Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and a nonstate actor resembling al-Qaida. Within each simulation, the planners count up potential targets in four categories: 1) military forces; 2) weapons of mass destruction infrastructure, like launch bases and storage facilities; 3) military and national leadership; and 4) war-supporting infrastructure, such as factories, rail lines, and power plants. The number of warheads necessary to destroy or cripple these targets is calculated, taking into account the possibility of mechanical failure. (Planners assume that 15 percent of the nuclear weapons will turn out to be duds.) The calculations also take stock of the need for redundancy, so there will be enough nukes for an attack even in the aftermath of a disabling first strike by an opponent.<br />While the plans do not envision simultaneous nuclear conflict with all six adversaries, the military does plan for the possibility that one nuclear power might take advantage of the conflict between two others, either through blackmail or an actual strike.<br />Under the <a href="http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/sort/sort.htm" target="_blank">2002 </a><a href="http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/sort/sort.htm" target="_blank">SORT </a><a href="http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/sort/sort.htm" target="_blank">treaty</a>, the last bilateral agreement, the United States and Russia were limited to between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed strategic warheads apiece. This limitation refers only to warheads currently mounted on ICBMs, in submarines, or waiting to be loaded onto long-range bombers. Not included are strategic warhead reserves (many of which can be put into action within a few days) or the smaller, tactical nukes that can be delivered by cruise missiles or fighter jets. Currently, the United States possesses about 500 tactical nuclear weapons, compared with roughly 3,000 for the Russians.</div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-20183431003044686452009-07-03T10:49:00.003-04:002009-07-03T10:51:05.229-04:00When Our Brains Short-Circuit by Nicholas Kristof<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://wilderdom.com/images/RiskSharpEdgesSign.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 444px; height: 410px;" src="http://wilderdom.com/images/RiskSharpEdgesSign.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:13px;"><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">If you come across a garter snake, nearly all of your brain will light up with activity as you process the “threat.” Yet if somebody tells you that carbon emissions will eventually destroy Earth as we know it, only the small part of the brain that focuses on the future — a portion of the prefrontal cortex — will glimmer.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">“We humans do strange things, perhaps because vestiges of our ancient brain still guide us in the modern world,” notes <a href="http://www.decisionresearch.org/people/slovic/" title="His nonprofit research organization" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102); ">Paul Slovic</a>, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and author of a book on how our minds assess risks.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Consider America’s political response to these two recent challenges:</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">1. President Obama proposes moving some inmates from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to supermax prisons from which no one has ever escaped. This is the “enemy with club” threat that we have evolved to be alert to, so Democrats and Republicans alike erupt in outrage and kill the plan.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">2. The climate warms, ice sheets melt and seas rise. The House scrounges a narrow majority to pass a feeble cap-and-trade system, but Senate passage is uncertain. The issue is complex, full of trade-offs and more cerebral than visceral — and so it doesn’t activate our warning systems.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">“What’s important is the threats that were dominant in our evolutionary history,” notes <a href="http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/gilbert.htm" title="His page" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102); ">Daniel Gilbert</a>, a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In contrast, he says, the kinds of dangers that are most serious today — such as climate change — sneak in under the brain’s radar.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Professor Gilbert argues that the threats that get our attention tend to have four features. First, they are personalized and intentional. The human brain is highly evolved for social behavior (“that’s why we see faces in clouds, not clouds in faces,” says Mr. Gilbert), and, like gazelles, we are instinctively and obsessively on the lookout for predators and enemies.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Second, we respond to threats that we deem disgusting or immoral — characteristics more associated with sex, betrayal or spoiled food than with atmospheric chemistry.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">“That’s why people are incensed about flag burning, or about what kind of sex people have in private, even though that doesn’t really affect the rest of us,” Professor Gilbert said. “Yet where we have a real threat to our well-being, like global warming, it doesn’t ring alarm bells.”</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Third, threats get our attention when they are imminent, while our brain circuitry is often cavalier about the future. That’s why we are so bad at saving for retirement. Economists tear their hair out at a puzzlingly irrational behavior called hyperbolic discounting: people’s preference for money now rather than much larger payments later.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">For example, in studies, most Americans prefer $50 now to $100 in six months, even though that represents a 100 percent return.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Fourth, we’re far more sensitive to changes that are instantaneous than those that are gradual. We yawn at a slow melting of the glaciers, while if they shrank overnight we might take to the streets.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">At the University of Virginia, <a href="http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/" title="His personal home page" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102); ">Professor Jonathan Haidt</a> shows his Psychology 101 students how evolution has prepared us to fear some things: He asks how many students would be afraid to stand within 10 feet of a friend carrying a pet boa constrictor. Many hands go up, although almost none of the students have been bitten by a snake.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">“The objects of our phobias, and the things that are actually dangerous to us, are almost unrelated in the modern world, but they were related in our ancient environment,” Mr. Haidt said. “We have no ‘preparedness’ to fear a gradual rise in the Earth’s temperature.”</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists. We’re just lucky we don’t have a cabinet-level Department of Snake Extermination.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Still, all is not lost, particularly if we understand and acknowledge our neurological shortcomings — and try to compensate with rational analysis. When we work at it, we are indeed capable of foresight: If we can floss today to prevent tooth decay in later years, then perhaps we can also drive less to save the planet.</p></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-75382449814261789662009-07-03T10:24:00.002-04:002009-07-03T10:27:28.225-04:00Nuclear Bomb Tests Behind Ivory Dating by Julian Rush<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_03/elephant5DM_468x312.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 468px; height: 312px;" src="http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_03/elephant5DM_468x312.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:Verdana;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: 0.75em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; ">Selling ivory is not illegal, providing it is from an elephant that died before 1947. But until now, proving the age of an item was notoriously difficult, relying on expert opinion.<br /><br />Around the world, forgers have become adept at faking modern carvings to make them look old. Conservationists argued that sales on auction sites like eBay created a market that encouraged the forgers - and the poachers who kill elephants to meet the demand.<br /><br />But now a sophisticated forensic scientific technique has been used for the first time in a court case of a woman accused of illegally offering carved ivory items for sale on eBay.<br /><br />Following a tip-off from the National Wildlife Crime Unit, Hampshire Police raided the home of a woman from Aldershot in April 2007 and found 34 items. She was found not guilty at Winchester Crown Court last week.<br /><br />The technique - radio carbon dating - is set to become an important weapon in the international fight against the illegal trade in animal parts and products that some suggest is worth billions of pounds a year.<br /><br />For this case, Hampshire police called in the TRACE Wildlife Forensics Network who put them in touch with scientists in Scotland who specialise in radio carbon dating. It is usually used to date bones for archaeologists or rocks for geologists and uses the radioactive decay of carbon-14. <br /><br />Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of normal carbon and it occurs naturally in small quantities. It's taken up into the tissue and bones of every living plant and animal on Earth during life. At death, the carbon-14 starts to decay at a known rate, so by measuring the ratio of carbon-14 to normal carbon (which doesn't decay), scientists can determine the age of the sample.<br /><br />That's fine for dating Neanderthal bones or an Egyptian mummy</p><h2 style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.315em; font-weight: bold; font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">Every Mushroom Cloud Has A Silver Lining</h2><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; font-size: 0.75em; margin-bottom: 0.8em; line-height: 1.5em; ">But in the 1950s and 60s, the fall-out from atmospheric nuclear bomb tests suddenly added extra carbon-14 to the atmosphere. All of us now have elevated levels of carbon-14 in our bodies as a result. And so too does every elephant, rhinoceros or walrus that's been alive since 1950. <br /><br />"If we find that the level of carbon-14 is enriched, then we know that elephant was alive in the nuclear era and therefore the ivory is illegal." Professor Gordon Cook, of the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, who dated the ivory in this case, told Channel 4 News.<br /><br />The spike is so high and so clear they can identify any organism that was alive after 1950.<br /><br />Which, by chance, coincides almost exactly with the date for the age of ivory that can be legally sold. <br /><br />Though the woman was not convicted, TRACE, an international collaboration of campaigners, enforcement agencies and forensic scientists set up in 2006, believes the technique can be used successfully in future against the illegal wildlife trade like that in tiger body parts, rhino horn and scrimshaw. <br /><br />"We're now able to fully enforce the wildlife trade legislation. It opens the door for police to go after people trading illegally in ivory." said Dr. Ross McEwing of TRACE.<br /><br />Professor Gordon Cook says the "nuclear bomb test" has wider uses. "It has huge potential. We've also looked at human teeth and we think we can tie down the year of birth by measuring the carbon-14. That, for something like mass graves, could be very important."<br /><br />In January 2009, after a global campaign by environmentalists, eBay finally banned all sale of ivory.</p></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-87855451234989354862009-07-02T20:58:00.002-04:002009-07-02T21:02:46.848-04:00The Triumph of the Random by Leonard Mlodinow<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/summer41_joe_dimaggio.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 302px; height: 425px;" src="http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/summer41_joe_dimaggio.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:200%"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 10px; font-family:Arial;font-size:10px;"></span></p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">It was the summer of 1945, and World War II had ended. Former soldiers, including famous baseball stars, streamed back into America and into American life. Yankee slugger Joe DiMaggio was trying to be Yankee fan Joe DiMaggio, sneaking into a mezzanine seat with his 4-year-old son, Joe Jr., before rejoining his team. A fan noticed him, then another. Soon throughout the stadium people were chanting “Joe, Joe, Joe DiMaggio!” DiMaggio, moved, gazed down to see if his son had noticed the tribute. He had. “See, Daddy,” said the little DiMaggio, “everybody knows me!”</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">We all interpret the events around us according to our own worldview. By adulthood we’ve either gotten beyond the me-me-me context of 4-year-olds, or gone into politics. But drawing conclusions about data we encounter in sports, business, medicine and even our personal lives, we often make errors as significant as that of Joe Jr.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">This holiday weekend—the Fourth of July—kicks off the home stretch of a two-month period that made Joe DiMaggio Sr. an icon of American culture. In 1941, a few months before Joe Jr. was born, and sandwiched between the day Hitler’s insane deputy Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland on an unauthorized peace mission and the day a secret British report concluded that the Allies could complete an atomic bomb ahead of Germany, there was a period of 56 successive Yankee games in which Joltin’ Joe had at least one hit.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">DiMaggio’s hitting streak was an inspiration in troubled times. The pursuit of any record comes with pressure—Roger Maris lost some of his hair during his attempt to break Babe Ruth’s home-run record in 1961—but most records forgive you an off day as long as you compensate at other times. Not so with a streak, which demands unwavering performance. And so DiMaggio’s streak has been interpreted as a feat of mythic proportion, seen as a heroic, even miraculous, spurt of unrivaled effort and concentration.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">But was it? Or was this epic moment simply a fluke?</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">Recent academic studies have questioned whether DiMaggio’s streak is unambiguous evidence of a spurt of ability that exceeded his everyday talent, rather than an anomaly to be expected from some highly talented player, in some year, by chance, something like the occasional 150-yard drive in golf that culminates in a hole in one. No one is saying that talent doesn’t matter. They are just asking whether a similar streak would have happened sometime in the history of baseball even if each player hit with the unheroic and unmiraculous—but steady—ability of an emotionless robot.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">That randomness naturally leads to streaks contradicts people’s intuition. If we were to picture randomness, we might think of a graph that looks jerky, not smooth like a straight line. But random processes do display periods of order. In a toss of 100 coins, for example, the chances are more than 75% that you will see a streak of six or more heads or tails, and almost 10% that you’ll produce a streak of 10 or more. As a result a streak can look quite impressive even if it is due to nothing more than chance.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">A few years ago Bill Miller of the Legg Mason Value Trust Fund was the most celebrated fund manager on Wall Street because his fund outperformed the broad market for 15 years straight. It was a feat compared regularly to DiMaggio’s, but if all the comparable fund managers over the past 40 years had been doing nothing but flipping coins, the chances are 75% that one of them would have matched or exceeded Mr. Miller’s streak. If Mr. Miller was really merely the goddess of Fortune’s lucky beneficiary, then one would expect that once the streak ended there would be no carryover of his apparent golden touch. In that expectation Mr. Miller did not disappoint: in recent years his fund has significantly lagged the market as he bet on duds like AIG, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Freddie Mac.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">Of course a 10- or 15-game streak is a far cry from one of 56 games. This is where DiMaggio’s great ability plays a role, for if we are to compare DiMaggio’s performance to a coin, it must be a weighted coin. With a lifetime batting average of .325, DiMaggio had a better-than-75% chance of getting a hit in a game, while a balanced coin has but a 50% chance of success. Moreover, each year for over a century, hundreds of players have sought to achieve a streak such as DiMaggio’s. All those factors increase the odds that such a streak could have occurred by chance alone.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">It’s not just the statisticians who wonder whether our heroes achieve records more often than coins. Psychologists, and, increasingly, economists, also puzzle over the seemingly discrete worlds of chance and perception. The fusion of those worlds was sanctified when half of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to psychologist Daniel Kahneman “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty.”</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">Research into why people misinterpret streaks dates to 1985, and a paper co-authored by Mr. Kahneman’s regular collaborator, the late Amos Tversky, in the journal Cognitive Psychology. (No one doubts that, had he lived, Mr. Tversky would have shared in the prize). The paper was titled “The hot hand in basketball: On the misperception of random sequences.” Everyone who has ever played basketball knows the feeling of being “in the zone.” Your hand is on fire. You can’t miss. But are you feeling a true increase in ability, or is your mind inferring it because you just took a bunch of shots that, for whatever reason, went in?</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">If a person tossing a coin weighted to land on heads 80% of the time produces a streak of 10 heads in a row, few people would see that as a sign of increased skill. Yet when an 80% free throw shooter in the NBA has that level of success people have a hard time accepting that it isn’t. The Cognitive Psychology paper, and the many that followed, showed that despite appearances, the “hot hand” is a mirage. Such hot and cold streaks are identical to those you would obtain from a properly weighted coin.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">Why do people have a hard time accepting the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune? One reason is that we expect the outcomes of a process to reflect the underlying qualities of the process itself. For example, if an initiative has a 60% chance of success, we expect that six out of every 10 times such an initiative is undertaken, it will succeed. That, however, is false. In order to warrant confidence that results reflect a deeper truth, you need many more trials than 10. In fact, one of the most counterintuitive features of randomness is that for a small number of trials, the results of a random process typically do not reflect the underlying probabilities.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">For example, suppose we undertake an analysis of the resources, effort and ability of all the companies in the Fortune 500 and determine that every company has the same 60% chance of success in any given year. If we observe all the companies over a period of five years and the underlying probability of success were reflected in each company’s results, then over the five-year period every company would have three good years.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">The mathematics of chance indeed dictate that in this situation the odds of a company having zero, one, two, four or five good years are lower than the odds of having three. Nevertheless it is not likely that a company will have three out of five good years—because there are so many of those misleading outcomes, their combined odds add up to twice the odds of having exactly three. That means that of the 500 companies, two-thirds will experience results that belie their underlying potential. In fact, according to the rules of randomness, nearly 50 of the companies will have a streak of either five good years, or five bad years, even if their corporate capacities were no better or worse than their counterparts’. And so if you judged the companies by their five-year results alone, you would probably over- or underestimate their true value.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">In sports, the championship contenders are usually pretty evenly matched. But in baseball, even if one assumes that the better team has a lopsided 55/45 edge over the inferior one, the lesser team will win the seven-game World Series 40% of the time. That might seem counterintuitive, but you can look at it as follows. If you play a best-of-one game series, then, by our assumption, the lesser team will win 45% of the time. Playing a longer series will cut down that probability. The problem is that playing a seven-game series only cuts it down to 40%, which isn’t cutting it down by much. What if you demand that the lesser team win no more than 5% of the time—a constraint called statistical significance? The World Series would have to be the best of 269 games, and probably draw an audience the size of that for Olympic curling. Swap baseball for marketing, and you find a mistake often made by marketing departments: assuming that the results of small focus groups reflect a trend in the general population.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">We find false meaning in the patterns of randomness for good reason: we are animals built to do just that. Suppose, for example, that you sit a subject in front of a light which flashes red twice as often as green, but otherwise without pattern. After the subject watches for a while, you offer the subject a reward for each future flash correctly predicted. What is the best strategy?</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">A nonhuman animal in this situation will always guess red, the more frequent color. A different strategy is to match your proportion of red and green guesses to the proportion you observed in the past, that is, two reds for every green. If the colors come in some pattern that you can figure out, this strategy will enable you to be right every time. But if the colors come without pattern you will do worse. Most humans try to guess the pattern, and in the process allow themselves to be outsmarted by a rat. (Those trying to time the market lately might wish they had let the rat take charge.) Looking for order in patterns has allowed us to understand the patterns of the universe, and hence to create modern physics and technology; but it also sometimes compels us to submit bids on eBay because we see the face of Jesus in a slice of toast.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">Another reason we reject the power of randomness is our need for control. DiMaggio’s streak affects us because we all appreciate struggle and effort, triumphing despite huge odds. The notion that we might not have control over our environment, on the other hand, causes us to shudder.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">Many studies illustrate how this basic aspect of human nature translates to a misperception of chance. For example, a group of Yale students were asked to predict the result of a series of coin tosses. The tosses were secretly rigged so that each student would have some success initially, but end up with a 50% success rate. The students were obviously aware of the random nature of their task. Yet when asked whether their performance would be hampered by distraction, and whether it would improve with practice, a significant number indicated that it would. Their deep-seated need for control trumped their intellectual understanding of the situation.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">What about DiMaggio’s streak? There are many subtleties in randomness. For example, do you model a player as having a fixed batting average—that is, probability of a hit—or do you allow for the average to vary within the season, or even game to game? How do you treat the variation in at-bats, walks, etc.? The analyses can get long and the number of data needed unwieldy, so the jury is still out, but one of the studies, by Samuel Arbesman and Stephen H. Strogatz of Cornell University, attacked the problem by having a computer generate a mock version of each year in baseball from 1871 to 2005, based on the players’ actual statistics from that year. The scientists had the computer repeat the process 10,000 times, generating in essence 10,000 parallel histories of the sport.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">The researchers found that 42% of the simulated histories had a streak of DiMaggio’s length or longer. The longest record streak was 109 games, the shortest, 39. In those 10,000 universes, many other players held the record more often than DiMaggio. Ty Cobb, for example, held it nearly 300 times.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">DiMaggio’s streak, for better or worse, defined his life. Decades later, constantly hounded by autograph seekers, he wrote “If I thought this would be taking place due to the streak, I would have stopped hitting at 40 games.” He died just 10 years ago, at age 84. Joe Jr., who had trouble coping with his father’s fame, fell to a history of drug and alcohol abuse. He died five months after his father.</p><p style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; display: block; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; font-size: 1.4em; line-height: 1.4em; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; ">People are remembered—and often rewarded—not for their usual level of talent or hard work, but for their singular achievements, the ones that stand out in memory. It does no harm to view those achievements as heroic. But it does harm us to make investments or other decisions on a basis of misunderstanding. And it can be sad or even tragic when we interpret as failures plans or people simply because they did not succeed. Extraordinary events, both good and bad, can happen without extraordinary causes, and so it is best to always remember the other factor that is always present—the factor of chance.</p><p></p> <!--EndFragment-->boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-50686760186277864752009-06-27T23:05:00.002-04:002009-06-27T23:09:09.376-04:00Internet Groans Under Weight of Michael Jackson Traffic by Jacqui Cheng<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/michael_jackson_in_motion.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 425px; height: 518px;" src="http://www.crunchgear.com/wp-content/uploads/michael_jackson_in_motion.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 18px; font-family:Arial;font-size:13px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">The news of pop icon Michael Jackson's collapse and subsequent death sent ripples across the Web on Thursday afternoon, affecting numerous services and sparking yet another spam campaign. Twitter, Google, Facebook, various news sites, and even iTunes were practically crushed under the weight of the sudden spike in Internet traffic. The phenomenon may not be new on an individual level, but combined across services, it was truly one of the most significant in recent memory.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">When news first broke that the Jackson had collapsed in his home, Twitter was immediately abuzz. There were several points when the Ars staff observed between 6,000 and 13,000 new tweets per minute mentioning Michael Jackson before Twitter began to melt down—all before anyone other than TMZ.com was reporting his death. Of course, most of us are intimately familiar with the famed Fail Whale at this point, though Twitter's meltdown was mostly reflected in a major slowing of the service and the inability to send new tweets.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">In fact, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone told the <em><a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/06/huge-spike-in-michael-jackson-traffic-strains-web-sites.html" style="color: rgb(255, 91, 0); text-decoration: none; ">L.A. Times</a></em> that the news of Jackson's passing caused the biggest spike in tweets per second since the US Presidential Election. (Similarly, Facebook—also known as Wannabe Twitter—saw a spike in status updates that was apparently three times more than average for the site, though a spokesperson said the site remained free of performance issues.)</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">Google, on the other hand, began receiving so many searches for news about Jackson that it caused the search engine to believe it was under attack. The site went into self-protection mode, throwing up CAPTCHAs and malware alerts to users trying to find news. A Google spokesperson <a href="http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-315684.html" style="color: rgb(255, 91, 0); text-decoration: none; ">described</a> the incident as "volcanic" compared to other major news events, confirming that there was a service slowdown for some time.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">The spammers have come out in droves as well (never assume that someone isn't working on a way to instantaneously exploit the death of a major celebrity). Security researchers at Sophos put up a <a href="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/sophoslabs//?p=5035" style="color: rgb(255, 91, 0); text-decoration: none; ">warning</a> this morning saying that the first wave of spam messages has gone out claiming to have "vital information" regarding Jackson's death. There doesn't appear to be any call to action or URL, but is meant as a way to harvest e-mail addresses if recipients make the mistake of replying. We're sure this trend will continue in the coming days, not just about Michael Jackson, but also actress Farrah Fawcett (who also passed earlier in the day on Thursday), and former Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">Finally, Apple's iTunes Store appeared to experience some slowdowns upon the confirmation of Jackson's passing, though the service has been running smoothly since. Users, however, are paying (literally) tribute to MJ, as several of Jackson's hit singles are climbing into the iTunes Top 10, including "Man In the Mirror," "Thriller," and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough." This is pretty impressive considering that he has made the list with three songs in less than 24 hours, competing with the likes of Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow" (which has been close to the top of the iTunes Top 10 for what seems like three millennia—seriously, please quit buying it so it goes away).</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; ">Coupled with news that fans have been gathering in cities across the US to perform the renowned (if not a bit morbid, all things considered) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb4aukGlXYo" style="color: rgb(255, 91, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Thriller zombie dance</a>, we can't help but feel as if the user-driven age of the Internet will keep his memory alive in ways that past music icons have not had. (Only a couple of Ars staffers—we're looking at you Bangeman and Timmer—are old enough to remember the passing of Elvis Presley in 1977, which dominated newspapers and TV for days afterwards.) YouTube even has a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/browse?s=rf" style="color: rgb(255, 91, 0); text-decoration: none; ">Michael Jackson spotlight</a> on its front page right now, so if you're feeling nostalgic, head on over and check out MJ's smooth moves from the days of yore. R.I.P., King of Pop.</p></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-7861250271011643812009-06-23T19:55:00.002-04:002009-06-23T20:01:01.134-04:00The Ins and Outs of Borderline Tennis Calls by Alan Schwarz<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0e4A5s49RK5aN/340x.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 340px; height: 431px;" src="http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0e4A5s49RK5aN/340x.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:13px;"><p style=" line-height: 24px; font-size:medium;color:black;">When a line judge at Wimbledon rules on a hair-splittingly close call and says the ball is out, the inevitably disgruntled player should not only consider challenging the call for <span class="nytd_selection_button" id="nytd_selection_button" title="Lookup Word" style="margin-top: -20px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: -20px; position: absolute; background-image: url(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/global/word_reference/ref_bubble.png); background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background- width: 25px; height: 29px; cursor: pointer; background-position: initial initial; color:initial;"></span>review by digital replay system.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">He should consult a recent issue of Current Biology.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">A vast majority of near-the-line shots called incorrectly by Wimbledon line judges have come on balls ruled out that were actually in, according to <a href="http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2652013" title="The study on perceptual mislocalization at Wimbledon" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102); ">a study published in October</a> by researchers at the University of California-Davis. To the vision scientist, the finding added to the growing knowledge of how the human eye and brain misperceive high-speed objects. To the tennis player, it strongly suggests which calls are worth challenging and which are best left alone.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The researchers identified 83 missed calls during the 2007 Wimbledon tournament. (Some were challenged by players and overruled, and others were later identified as unquestionably wrong through frame-by-frame video.) Seventy of those 83 calls, or 84 percent, were on balls ruled out — essentially, shots that line judges believed had traveled farther than they actually did.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Called perceptual mislocalization by vision scientists, this subconscious bias is known less formally to Wimbledon fans as “You cannot be serious!” — <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_mcenroe/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about John McEnroe." style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102); ">John McEnroe</a>’s infamous dissent when, yes, a 1981 shot was ruled out. Now that players can resort to a more evolved appeal procedure, the researchers’ discovery suggests that players should generally use their limited number of challenges on questionable out calls rather those that are called in, because such out calls have a far better chance of being discovered as mistaken on review, then overturned.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">“What we’re really interested in is how visual information is processed, and how it can be used to a player’s advantage,” said David Whitney, an associate professor at U.C.-Davis’s Center for Mind and Brain and the paper’s lead author. “There is a delay of roughly 80 to 150 milliseconds from the first moment of perception to our processing it, and that’s a long time. That’s one reason why it’s so hard to catch a fly — the fly’s ability to dance around is faster than our ability to determine where it is.”</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">This is the third Wimbledon in which players can challenge questionable calls for review by the Hawk-Eye system, which uses high-speed video cameras to record balls’ flight. (About 25 percent of all challenges result in overturned calls.) There is no cost to the player when a call is proved correct, but after three such episodes in a set a player may not challenge again. Whether through strategy or residual tennis etiquette, most players leave many challenges unused.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Theoretically, line judges should be equally prone to call an out ball in as they are an in ball out. But when objects travel faster than humans’ eyes and brains can precisely track them — for example, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/andy_roddick/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about Andy Roddick." style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102); ">Andy Roddick</a>’s 150-mile-per-hour serves — they are left having to fill in the gaps in their perception. In doing so they tend to overshoot the object’s actual location and think it traveled slightly farther than it truly did.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Both successful challenge calls as well as the overlooked mistakes that the researchers later identified were several times more likely to come on “long” calls than “in” calls. (The same pattern existed at Wimbledon last year, Whitney said, although the paper did not present that data.) So players are better off using as many challenges as possible on balls called out, because those are the calls most likely to be wrong; if a player thinks an “in” call was wrong, chances are his own eyes were as fooled as line judges’ sometimes are.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Without knowing it, tennis officials are already told to try to compensate for this mislocalization effect. Published instructions for United States Tennis Association line judges tell them to “focus your eyes on the portion of the line where the ball will land,” rather than attempt to track the ball in flight. “Get to the spot well before the ball arrives,” they are advised.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Rich Kaufman, the association’s director of officials and a linesman and chair umpire from 1976 to 1997, said that of all things “one of the hardest things to teach new linesmen is to take their eye off the ball.”</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">“I once asked an eye doctor, then what am I seeing on a bounce?” Kaufman said. “The doctor said that’s your brain working — you think you see the initial point of impact but it’s the blur of the entry and exit of the ball.”</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">A player using his knowledge of this effect in challenging calls could see a benefit of about one or two overturned points per match, Whitney said, plus any psychological boost from feeling vindicated rather than robbed. But Whitney added that understanding how the brain misperceives visual stimuli can help in more real-life matters, like the design and placement of high-speed safety equipment, automobile brake lights and warning signs of all types.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">As for Wimbledon, it appears as if the new information can only help players, not the judges who vex them. Kaufman said: “You have to call what you see. Or what you think you see.”</p></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-10098372497947023082009-06-22T10:07:00.003-04:002009-06-22T10:11:47.992-04:00Why the Eyes Have it by Christopher Chabris<a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3031/2427285660_927c4d39a7.jpg?v=0"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 500px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 375px" alt="" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3031/2427285660_927c4d39a7.jpg?v=0" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Why are we ­humans so good at seeing in color? Why do we have eyes on the front of our heads rather than on the sides, like horses? And how is it that we find it so easy to read when written language didn’t even exist until a few thousand years ago—a virtual millisecond in evolutionary time?<br />Most of us, understandably, have never given much thought to questions like these. What is surprising is that most cognitive scientists ­haven’t either. People who study the brain generally ask how it works the way it does, not why. But Mark Changizi, a professor at Rensselaer ­Polytechnic Institute and the author of “The Vision ­Revolution,” is indeed a man who asks why, and lucky for us: His ideas about the brain and mind are fascinating, and his explanations for our habits of seeing are, for the most part, persuasive.<br />Mr. Changizi takes care not to call himself a practitioner of evolutionary psychology. This is the one discipline of the mind sciences that focuses on why questions, but it often answers them by telling just-so stories that cannot be ­disproved. (Why do men have better spatial ability than women? Because a long time ago, in Africa, men needed spatial skills to track prey and to kill at a distance—a plausible theory but one that is difficult to test with experiments.) Instead Mr. Changizi calls ­himself a “theoretical neuroscientist,” seeking explanations for the design of the mind that are based on mathematical and physical analysis. He has his own stories, it is true, but they are grounded solidly in neuroscience, and they are backed up by data about a surprising range of human activities, from ­the colors found in historical ­costumes to the ­correspondence between the shapes found in written letters and the shapes found in ­nature.<br />Let’s start with the question of color. It is such a natural part of our visual experience that we don’t stop to wonder why we can see it at all. ­Without color television there would have been no “Miami Vice,” of course, but were we really missing out on so much when we had only black and white? The consensus explanation for our superior ability to perceive color is that primates evolved it to see fruit—you can’t order dinner if you can’t read the menu.<br />Mr. Changizi thinks otherwise. He proposes that color vision is useful for distinguishing the changes in other ­people’s skin color—changes that are caused by shifts in the volume and oxygenation levels of the blood. Such shifts, like blushing, often signal emotional states. The ability to see them is adaptive because it helps an observer to “read” states of mind and states of health in others, information that is in turn useful for predicting their behavior.<br />Our brains evolved in a time when people lived their entire lives without ever seeing someone with a skin color different from their own. Thus the skin color we grow up seeing, Mr. Changizi says, is “neutral” to us: It serves as a kind of baseline from which we notice even minor deviations in tint or hue. Almost every language has distinct words for some 11 basic colors, but none of them aptly describe the look of skin, which seems colorless (except in our recent multicultural societies, where skin color is newly prominent). As one might expect, primates without color vision tend to have furry faces and hands and thus less need to perceive skin color; ­primates with color vision are more “naked” in this respect, humans most of all.<br />James Steinberg<br />Conventional wisdom may be similarly misleading when it comes to binocular vision. It is said that we have two forward-facing eyes, which send our brains two separate images of almost everything in our field of view so that the brain can compare those images to estimate the distance of objects—a generally useful thing to know. But people who are blind in one eye, Mr. Changizi notes, can perform tasks like driving a car by using other cues that help them to judge distance. He offers a different explanation: that two eyes give us a sort of X-ray vision, allowing us to see “through” nearby objects to what is beyond.<br />You can experience this ability yourself by closing one eye and holding your forefinger near your face: It will appear in your field of vision, of course, and it will block what lies beyond or behind it. If you open both eyes, though, you will suddenly perceive your finger as transparent—that is, you will see it and see, ­unblocked, the full scene in front of you. Mr. Changizi observes that an animal in a leafy environment, with such an ability, gains an advantage: It can lurk in tall grass and still see what is “outside” its hiding place. He correlates the distance between the eyes and the density of vegetation in the habitats of animals and finds that animals with closer-set eyes do tend to live in ­forests rather than on plains.<br />As for reading, Mr. Changizi stops to observe how remarkable this ability is and how useful, giving us access to the minds of dead people (i.e., deceased writers) and permitting us to take in words much faster than we can by merely listening to them. He claims that we learn to read so easily because the symbols in our written alphabets have evolved, over many generations, to resemble the building blocks of natural scenes—­exactly what previous millennia of evolution adapted the brain to perceive quickly. A “T,” for example, appears in nature when one object overlaps ­another, like a stone lying on top of a stick. With statistical analysis, Mr. Changizi finds that the contour patterns most common in nature are also most common in letter shapes.<br />Mr. Changizi has more to say about our visual experience—about optical illusions, for instance, which he sees as artifacts of a trick the brain uses to cope with the one-tenth of a second it takes to process the light that hits our eyes and to determine what is actually in front of us. He calls for a new academic discipline of “visual linguistics,” and he tells us why there are no ­species with just one eye.<br />What does all this add up to? Provocative hypotheses but not settled truth—at least not yet. As a theoretician, Mr. Changizi leaves it to others to design experiments that might render a decisive ­verdict. Someone else will have to study how accurately people can perceive mental states from shifting skin tones, and someone else will have to ­determine whether, in most cases, looking at another ­person’s skin adds any useful information to what is easily known from facial expression, tone of voice and body ­language.<br />Still, the novel ideas that Mr. Changizi outlines in “The Vision Revolution”—together with the evidence he does present—may have a big effect on our understanding of the human brain. Their implication is that the environments we evolved in shaped the design of our visual system according to a set of deep principles. Our challenge now is to see them clearly.</div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-81595023483263435562009-06-18T19:38:00.002-04:002009-06-18T19:42:12.481-04:00I never thought I'd be rooting for Iran by Bradley Burston<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://roolily.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/iran_protests-afghanistan.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 317px; height: 480px;" src="http://roolily.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/iran_protests-afghanistan.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold;font-family:Arial;font-size:19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: normal; font-size:13px;">I never thought I'd be rooting for Iran <br /><br />I am in awe of the courage of the people of Iran They are giving the world hope. They are teaching a shocking lesson about truth. They embody freedom. And, perhaps hardest to grasp, for those of us who live in the Middle East, they are putting their very lives on the line not for the sake of some ferociously sectarian End of Days, but for the most profoundly radical notion of all - a better life. <br /><br />Every person who has taken to the streets to demand what their government promised them, free and fair elections, did so knowing that police or secret police could arrest them, act to cripple their careers, or outright gun them down</span><br /></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-39892634239819635782009-06-16T11:33:00.002-04:002009-06-16T11:36:46.124-04:00Don't Call What Happened in Iran Last Week an Election by Christopher Hitchens<a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3402/3567001852_1e2bfd0002.jpg?v=0"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 500px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 333px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3402/3567001852_1e2bfd0002.jpg?v=0" border="0" /></a><br /><div>For a flavor of the political atmosphere in Tehran, Iran, last week, I quote from a young Iranian comrade who furnishes me with regular updates:<br />I went to the last major Ahmadinejad rally and got the whiff of what I imagine fascism to have been all about. Lots of splotchy boys who can't get a date are given guns and told they're special.<br />It's hard to better this, either as an evocation of the rancid sexual repression that lies at the nasty core of the "Islamic republic" or as a description of the reserve strength that the Iranian para-state, or state within a state, can bring to bear if it ever feels itself even slightly challenged. There is a theoretical reason why the events of the last month in Iran (I am sorry, but I resolutely decline to refer to them as elections) were a crudely stage-managed insult to those who took part in them and those who observed them. And then there is a practical reason. The theoretical reason, though less immediately dramatic and exciting, is the much more interesting and important one.<br />Iran and its citizens are considered by the Shiite theocracy to be the private property of the anointed mullahs. This totalitarian idea was originally based on a piece of religious quackery promulgated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and known as velayat-e faqui. Under the terms of this edict—which originally placed the clerics in charge of the lives and property of orphans, the indigent, and the insane—the entire population is now declared to be a childlike ward of the black-robed state. Thus any voting exercise is, by definition, over before it has begun, because the all-powerful Islamic Guardian Council determines well in advance who may or may not "run." Any newspaper referring to the subsequent proceedings as an election, sometimes complete with rallies, polls, counts, and all the rest of it, is the cause of helpless laughter among the ayatollahs. ("They fell for it? But it's too easy!") Shame on all those media outlets that have been complicit in this dirty lie all last week. And shame also on our pathetic secretary of state, who said that she hoped that "the genuine will and desire" of the people of Iran would be reflected in the outcome. Surely she knows that any such contingency was deliberately forestalled to begin with.<br />In theory, the first choice of the ayatollahs might not actually "win," and there could even be divisions among the Islamic Guardian Council as to who constitutes the best nominee. Secondary as that is, it can still lead to rancor. After all, corrupt systems are still subject to fraud. This, like hypocrisy, is the compliment that vice pays to virtue. With near-incredible brutishness and cruelty, then, the guardians moved to cut off cell-phone and text-message networks that might give even an impression of fairness and announced though their storm-troop "revolutionary guards" that only one form of voting had divine sanction. ("The miraculous hand of God," announced Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had been present in the polling places and had announced a result before many people had even finished voting. He says that sort of thing all the time.)<br />The obvious evidence of fixing, fraud, and force to one side, there is another reason to doubt that an illiterate fundamentalist like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have increased even a state-sponsored plebiscite-type majority. Everywhere else in the Muslim world, in every election in the last two years, the tendency has been the other way. In Morocco in 2007, the much-ballyhooed <a href="http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/cp93_hamzawy_pjd_final.pdf" target="_blank">Justice and Development Party</a> wound up with 14 percent of the vote. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the predictions of increased market share for the pro-Sharia parties were likewise falsified. In Iraq this last January, the local elections penalized the clerical parties that had been making life a misery in cities like Basra. In neighboring Kuwait last month, the Islamist forces did poorly, and four women—including the striking figure of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rola_Dashti" target="_blank">Rola Dashti</a>, who refuses to wear any headgear—were elected to the 50-member parliament. Most important of all, perhaps, Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah was convincingly and unexpectedly defeated last week in Lebanon after an open and vigorous election, the results of which were not challenged by any party. And, from all I hear, if the Palestinians were to vote again this year—as they were at one point supposed to do—it would be highly improbable that Hamas would emerge the victor.<br />Yet somehow a senile and fanatical religious clique that has failed even to condition the vote in a country like Lebanon, where it has proxy and surrogate parties under arms, is able to reward itself by increasing its "majority" in a festeringly bankrupt state where it controls the media and enjoys a monopoly of violence. I think we should deny it any official recognition of this consolation. (I recommend a reading of "<a href="http://www.iranrights.org/english/document-604.php" target="_blank">Neither Free Nor Fair: Elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran</a>" and other productions of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation. This shows that past penalties for not pleasing the Islamic Guardian Council have included more than mere disqualification and have extended to imprisonment and torture and death, sometimes in that order. A new movie by Cyrus Nowrasteh, <a href="http://www.thestoning.com/" target="_blank">The Stoning of Soraya M.</a>, will soon show what happens to those who dare to dissent in other ways and are dealt with by Ahmadinejad's "grass roots" fanatics.)<br />Mention of the Lebanese elections impels me to pass on what I saw with my own eyes at a recent Hezbollah rally in south Beirut, Lebanon. In a large hall that featured the official attendance of a delegation from the Iranian Embassy, the most luridly displayed poster of the pro-Iranian party was a nuclear mushroom cloud! Underneath this telling symbol was a caption warning the "Zionists" of what lay in store. We sometimes forget that Iran still officially denies any intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet Ahmadinejad recently hailed an Iranian missile launch as a counterpart to Iran's success with nuclear centrifuges, and Hezbollah has certainly been allowed to form the idea that the Iranian reactors may have nonpeaceful applications. This means, among other things, that the vicious manipulation by which the mullahs control Iran can no longer be considered their "internal affair." Fascism at home sooner or later means fascism abroad. Face it now or fight it later. Meanwhile, give it its right name. </div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-56147790803745904612009-06-15T18:06:00.002-04:002009-06-15T18:08:57.642-04:00Will the Recession Make Europe's Militaries Weaker? by Thomas Valasek<a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/80/238597515_e307de1e0f.jpg?v=0"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 500px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 333px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/80/238597515_e307de1e0f.jpg?v=0" border="0" /></a><br /><div>The economic crisis has wracked government budgets across Europe, as revenues have fallen and spending on stimulus and bailouts has soared. Already, there are signs that defense spending across the continent will suffer. Finance ministers will be looking for ways to reduce deficit and debt, and military budgets are a tempting target.<br />Such budget cuts will have some salutary effects: Defense establishments, with their resistance to civilian oversight and emphasis on continuity, tend to get bloated in times of relative plenty. It often takes a crisis to force meaningful reforms. But cuts also threaten to sap the effectiveness of European fighting forces and leave parts of the world exposed to insecurity.<br />The easiest portion of the budget to cut is operations. But it's also the most important portion. Withdrawing soldiers from faraway places plays well at home and requires no layoffs, but it means fewer troops in some of the world's most imperiled regions. Poland announced in April that it would withdraw from all U.N. peacekeeping operations. While the Poles may be no less safe, fragile countries such as Chad and Lebanon still need foreign troops to keep the peace.<br />Rather than withdrawing from conflict zones, European countries and agencies should stop sending overlapping missions to the same trouble spots. Both the EU and NATO sent missions to Sudan in 2007, and three different forces are currently fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia. Better to roll those operations into one; the current duplication wastes taxpayer money.<br />As defense ministries slash their budgets, their instinct will be to cut multinational weapons programs and make any purchases domestically so as to protect jobs at home. But that carries risks. Many truly necessary systems, such as transport airplanes, are so expensive and complex that they are best funded and shared between countries.<br />Granted, many past collaborative programs have been disastrous, such as the seven-nation plan to develop the A400M military transport aircraft. A modern-day Spruce Goose, the plane cannot fly because its engines, made by a four-nation European consortium, lack the proper certification; the plane is also said to be too heavy.<br />But the trouble with the A400M lies not in the collaborative nature of the program. The plane is a failure because its designers have been more concerned with securing production jobs than with obtaining a good product. In return for investing in the aircraft, they have demanded that a commensurate number of production jobs go to their country. As a result, bits of the plane are being built all over Europe -- and not necessarily in the countries most qualified to do the job.<br />European governments must be smarter. They should accept that it makes more sense to order the needed parts from the plant with the most relevant technical expertise. The governments also need to be more ready to buy off-the-shelf components, rather than try to generate jobs by manufacturing parts from scratch.<br />The impact of the budget cuts -- particularly the reductions in personnel and equipment -- also threaten to turn some European militaries into showcase forces, incapable of deploying abroad and thus irrelevant to most EU and NATO operations. It makes little sense, for example, for all but very few allies to keep tanks unless they are upgraded to be able to operate in faraway places such as Afghanistan and unless the governments have access to aircraft big enough to transport the tanks. As an excellent new study commissioned by the Nordic governments concluded, "small and medium-sized countries lose their ability to maintain a credible defence" when certain units shrink too much.<br />There are two ways to avoid such outcomes while cutting budgets. Some of the key equipment that makes modern warfare possible -- such as planes providing air-to-ground surveillance or military transport -- needs to be jointly owned. NATO operates a common fleet of aircraft that coordinates air traffic, and the alliance plans to buy transport airplanes for its members to use. This arrangement allows militaries of smaller and poorer European states, like the new allies in Eastern Europe, to take part in complex operations in distant places.<br />But that alone will not generate enough savings. Indeed, the time has come for European governments to consider abandoning parts of their national forces and infrastructure and to form joint units with their neighbors. Modern militaries do virtually all their fighting abroad and in coalition with others. If they lack the money to equip and deploy their soldiers overseas, they need to consider radical cost-saving measures. More governments should do as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg did -- they merged parts of their air forces -- or emulate the Nordic countries, which are considering joining their amphibious units.<br />Most European governments have, in the past, found it too difficult to part with the cherished symbol of national sovereignty that is a proper army or an air force. But the practical value of such military services in Europe is often negligible. As the recession deepens, defense ministers across Europe should see the crisis as an opportunity to combine certain units and programs across countries. This will save money, which could be put to use properly training and equipping forces for EU and NATO operations</div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-92169914003253693122009-06-15T16:22:00.001-04:002009-06-15T16:24:10.198-04:00The Underworked American by the Economist<a href="http://www.economist.com/images/20090613/D2409US0.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 360px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 296px" alt="" src="http://www.economist.com/images/20090613/D2409US0.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>AMERICANS like to think of themselves as martyrs to work. They delight in telling stories about their punishing hours, snatched holidays and ever-intrusive BlackBerrys. At this time of the year they marvel at the laziness of their European cousins, particularly the French. Did you know that the French take the whole of August off to recover from their 35-hour work weeks? Have you heard that they are so addicted to their holidays that they leave the sick to die and the dead to moulder?<br />There is an element of exaggeration in this, of course, and not just about French burial habits; studies show that Americans are less Stakhanovite than they think. Still, the average American gets only four weeks of paid leave a year compared with seven for the French and eight for the Germans. In Paris many shops simply close down for August; in Washington, where the weather is sweltering, they remain open, some for 24 hours a day.<br />But when it comes to the young the situation is reversed. American children have it easier than most other children in the world, including the supposedly lazy Europeans. They have one of the shortest school years anywhere, a mere 180 days compared with an average of 195 for OECD countries and more than 200 for East Asian countries. German children spend 20 more days in school than American ones, and South Koreans over a month more. Over 12 years, a 15-day deficit means American children lose out on 180 days of school, equivalent to an entire year.<br />American children also have one of the shortest school days, six-and-a-half hours, adding up to 32 hours a week. By contrast, the school week is 37 hours in Luxembourg, 44 in Belgium, 53 in Denmark and 60 in Sweden. On top of that, American children do only about an hour’s-worth of homework a day, a figure that stuns the Japanese and Chinese.<br />Americans also divide up their school time oddly. They cram the school day into the morning and early afternoon, and close their schools for three months in the summer. The country that tut-tuts at Europe’s mega-holidays thinks nothing of giving its children such a lazy summer. But the long summer vacation acts like a mental eraser, with the average child reportedly forgetting about a month’s-worth of instruction in many subjects and almost three times that in mathematics. American academics have even invented a term for this phenomenon, “summer learning loss”. This pedagogical understretch is exacerbating social inequalities. Poorer children frequently have no one to look after them in the long hours between the end of the school day and the end of the average working day. They are also particularly prone to learning loss. They fall behind by an average of over two months in their reading. Richer children actually improve their performance.<br />The understretch is also leaving American children ill-equipped to compete. They usually perform poorly in international educational tests, coming behind Asian countries that spend less on education but work their children harder. California’s state universities have to send over a third of their entering class to take remedial courses in English and maths. At least a third of successful PhD students come from abroad.<br />A growing number of politicians from both sides of the aisle are waking up to the problem. Barack Obama has urged school administrators to “rethink the school day”, arguing that “we can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home ploughing the land at the end of each day.” Newt Gingrich has trumpeted a documentary arguing that Chinese and Indian children are much more academic than American ones.<br />These politicians have no shortage of evidence that America’s poor educational performance is weakening its economy. A recent report from McKinsey, a management consultancy, argues that the lagging performance of the country’s school pupils, particularly its poor and minority children, has wreaked more devastation on the economy than the current recession.<br /><a name="learning_the_lesson">Learning the lesson</a><br />A growing number of schools are already doing what Mr Obama urges, and experimenting with lengthening the school day. About 1,000 of the country’s 90,000 schools have broken the shackles of the regular school day. In particular, charter schools in the Knowledge is Power Programme (KIPP) start the school day at 7.30am and end at 5pm, hold classes on some Saturdays and teach for a couple of weeks in the summer. All in all, KIPP students get about 60% more class time than their peers and routinely score better in tests.<br />Still, American schoolchildren are unlikely to end up working as hard as the French, let alone the South Koreans, any time soon. There are institutional reasons for this. The federal government has only a limited influence over the school system. Powerful interest groups, most notably the teachers’ unions, but also the summer-camp industry, have a vested interest in the status quo. But reformers are also up against powerful cultural forces.<br />One is sentimentality; the archetypical American child is Huckleberry Finn, who had little taste for formal education. Another is complacency. American parents have led grass-root protests against attempts to extend the school year into August or July, or to increase the amount of homework their little darlings have to do. They still find it hard to believe that all those Chinese students, beavering away at their books, will steal their children’s jobs. But Huckleberry Finn was published in 1884. And brain work is going the way of manual work, to whoever will provide the best value for money. The next time Americans make a joke about the Europeans and their taste for la dolce vita, they ought to take a look a bit closer to home. </div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-7513751608787782922009-06-09T17:07:00.000-04:002009-06-09T17:08:12.119-04:00Baseball Injuries<a href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/08/health/0609-sci-BALLSTATS.gif"><img style="WIDTH: 450px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 670px" alt="" src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/08/health/0609-sci-BALLSTATS.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-64474415611712917842009-06-08T11:01:00.002-04:002009-06-08T11:06:14.409-04:00Rising Above I.Q by Nicholas D. KristofIn the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks — and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us.<br />Asian-Americans are renowned — or notorious — for ruining grade curves in schools across the land, and as a result they constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College.<br />As for Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole.<br />West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher.<br />These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories. In the debate over nature and nurture, they suggest the importance of improved nurture — which, from a public policy perspective, means a focus on education. Their success may also offer some lessons for you, me, our children — and for the broader effort to chip away at poverty in this country.<br />Richard Nisbett cites each of these groups in his superb recent book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” Dr. Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, argues that what we think of as intelligence is quite malleable and owes little or nothing to genetics.<br />“I think the evidence is very good that there is no genetic contribution to the black-white difference on I.Q.,” he said, adding that there also seems to be no genetic difference in intelligence between whites and Asians. As for Jews, some not-very-rigorous studies have found modestly above-average I.Q. for Ashkenazi Jews, though not for Sephardic Jews. Dr. Nisbett is somewhat skeptical, noting that these results emerge from samples that may not be representative.<br />In any case, he says, the evidence is overwhelming that what is distinctive about these three groups is not innate advantage but rather a tendency to get the most out of the firepower they have.<br />One large study followed a group of Chinese-Americans who initially did slightly worse on the verbal portion of I.Q. tests than other Americans and the same on math portions. But beginning in grade school, the Chinese outperformed their peers, apparently because they worked harder.<br />The Chinese-Americans were only half as likely as other children to repeat a grade in school, and by high school they were doing much better than European-Americans with the same I.Q.<br />As adults, 55 percent of the Chinese-American sample entered high-status occupations, compared with one-third of whites. To succeed in a profession or as managers, whites needed an average I.Q. of about 100, while Chinese-Americans needed an I.Q. of just 93. In short, Chinese-Americans managed to achieve more than whites who on paper had the same intellect.<br />A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive. Jews and Chinese have a particularly strong tradition of respect for scholarship, with Jews said to have achieved complete adult male literacy — the better to read the Talmud — some 1,700 years before any other group.<br />The parallel force in China was Confucianism and its reverence for education. You can still sometimes see in rural China the remains of a monument to a villager who triumphed in the imperial exams. In contrast, if an American town has someone who earns a Ph.D., the impulse is not to build a monument but to pass a hat.<br />Among West Indians, the crucial factors for success seem twofold: the classic diligence and hard work associated with immigrants, and intact families. The upshot is higher family incomes and fathers more involved in child-rearing.<br />What’s the policy lesson from these three success stories?<br />It’s that the most decisive weapons in the war on poverty aren’t transfer payments but education, education, education. For at-risk households, that starts with social workers making visits to encourage such basic practices as talking to children. One study found that a child of professionals (disproportionately white) has heard about 30 million words spoken by age 3; a black child raised on welfare has heard only 10 million words, leaving that child at a disadvantage in school.<br />The next step is intensive early childhood programs, followed by improved elementary and high schools, and programs to defray college costs.<br />Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-29676212933904646442009-06-07T04:21:00.002-04:002009-06-07T04:22:52.115-04:00Cage Match by Dahlia Lithwick<a href="http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123087/2208015/2219585/090605_Juris_prisonsTN.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 310px" alt="" src="http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123087/2208015/2219585/090605_Juris_prisonsTN.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>The public-opinion two-step on the wisdom of closing the prison camp at Guantanamo is fascinating, and not just because Americans are now inclined to keep the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-06-01-gitmo_N.htm" target="_blank">detention facility there open forever</a>. The current legal meltdown about what to do with prisoners still at Guantanamo shows that contrary to popular belief, Americans care a good deal about prisons, prisoners, and prison reform, but only when the inmates threaten to tumble out into their backyards.<br />But there's the rub: We already have a prison problem, and it's already in our backyards. That's what Sen. James Webb, D-Va., wants us to understand as he launches an <a href="http://webb.senate.gov/email/criminaljusticereform.html" target="_blank">ambitious new effort</a> to reform U.S. prisons nationwide. It's not quite as dramatic as the prospect of Abu Zubaydah escaping from the Supermax prison in Colorado and rampaging through the Rockies, but the U.S. prison crisis gets worse every year, and nobody seems to mind. Webb has decided to try to reignite the subject of prison reform, because he's convinced that when it comes to the prison problem, Americans need only know how to count.<br /><a href="http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/FactSheeti.pdf" target="_blank">Here are the facts</a> about America's prisons, according to Webb:<br />The United States, with 5 percent of the world's population, houses nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners. As Webb has explained it, "Either we're the most evil people on earth, or we're doing something wrong." We incarcerate 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, nearly five times the world average. At this point, approximately one in every 31 adults in the United States is in prison, jail, or on supervised release. Local, state, and federal spending on corrections now amounts to about $70 billion per year and has increased 40 percent over the past 20 years.<br />Webb has no problem locking up the serious baddies. In fact, he wants to reform the justice system in part so that we can incapacitate the worst of the worst. But Webb wants us to recognize that warehousing the nation's mentally ill and drug addicts in crowded correctional facilities tends to create a mass of meaner, more violent, less employable people at the exits. And unlike Guantanamo, there are always going to be exits.<br />The Justice Department estimates that 16 percent of the adult inmates in American prisons—more than 350,000 of those incarcerated—suffer from mental illness; the percentage among juveniles is even higher. And 2007 Justice statistics showed that nearly 60 percent of the state prisoners serving time for a drug offense had no history of violence and four out of five drug arrests were for drug possession, not sales. Webb also reminds us that while drug use varies little by ethnic group in the United States, African-Americans—estimated at 14 percent of regular drug users—make up 56 percent of those in state prison for drug crimes. We know all of this. The question is how long we want to avoid dealing with it.<br />Why does the senator from one of the country's most rabid lock-'em-up states believe that with two wars raging, an economy collapsing, and America's Next Top Model beckoning seductively, Americans are truly ready to grapple with his new legislation—the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009—which establishes a blue-ribbon commission to review the nation's entire prison system?<br />Fear-based policies only get you so far, and when it comes to <a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080" target="_blank">drugs</a> and prisons, it's time to start thinking about reality. Webb says he <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801728_2.html" target="_blank">looks forward to the challenge</a> of <a href="http://www.parade.com/news/2009/03/why-we-must-fix-our-prisons.html" target="_blank">communicating the problem to Americans</a> and working together to solve it. He suspects that if Americans actually have the reality-based conversation about our disastrous prison policies, we'll understand that the trends all move in very dangerous directions: We lock up more people for less violent crime at ever greater expense, ultimately breeding more dangerous criminals and ignoring the worst.<br />The Guantanamo problem we've finally started to grapple with in a pragmatic, rather than symbolic, way—it's a dangerous place with some dangerous people—is a mere speck in the eye of America's larger prison program. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5420292/Montana-town-bids-to-be-the-new-Guantanamo-Bay.html" target="_blank">An AP story last week</a> described a small Montana town that was more than willing to take all of the Guantanamo prisoners and incarcerate them because, ultimately, a jail is a jail and prisoners are prisoners. If we are so worried about locking up a few terrorists for life in maximum-security U.S. jails, shouldn't we be giving at least some thought to the folks already there? As Dennis Jett observed recently in <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/inbox/story/1071962.html" target="_blank">the Miami Herald</a>, "even if everyone at Guantánamo were transferred to a U.S. prison it would amount to an increase of less than one hundredth of one percent in the total number incarcerated in this country."<br />Compared with the powder keg of our domestic prison system, Guantanamo actually starts to look pretty benign. And if we are going to have a huge national panic attack about detaining dangerous individuals after 9/11, let's be honest that the dangers of a handful of Guantanamo prisoners "rejoining the battlefield" or escaping from maximum-security prisons is far more remote than the crisis now festering in our own jails and prisons. Americans who claim to be worried about allowing alleged terrorists into their own backyards would be well advised to recognize what's already happening in their own backyards. The U.S. prison system as it now exists makes even less sense than the prison camp at Guantanamo. And unlike Guantanamo, no matter what we may wish, it won't be contained, ignored, or walled off forever.</div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-28544251645540758042009-06-05T23:09:00.003-04:002009-06-06T12:32:49.560-04:00When Organized Crime Meets Terrorism by Robert Haddick<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bitterqueen.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8342adfcf53ef011570a2f7db970b-800wi"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 475px; height: 258px;" src="http://bitterqueen.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8342adfcf53ef011570a2f7db970b-800wi" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 16px; font-family:Verdana;font-size:12px;"><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">On June 3, the <em>Washington Times</em> took note of an al Qaeda recruiting video. The video, which first aired in February on Al Jazeera, boasted that an al Qaeda foot soldier could <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/03/al-qaeda-eyes-bio-attack-via-mexico-border" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(8, 45, 91); ">infiltrate the United States through a tunnel from Mexico</a> and deliver anthrax spores among the population.<br /></p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">There is no evidence that any al Qaeda affiliate has made any progress with this scheme or any other plan involving infiltration from Mexico into the United States. One wonders whether al Qaeda signed up any recruits with this infomercial or whether it just made itself look foolish.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">But the scenario itself may not be that far-fetched. For an al Qaeda group to succeed with such a plot it would very likely require the assistance of some Mexican criminal cartel or gang. After all, what organizations know more about clandestine entry into the United States? The al Qaeda video also suggested that Islamic terrorists might hook up with white supremecist groups within the United States.<br /></p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">What these plans illustrate - even if they have not yet come to fruition -- is the potential for alliances between political insurgencies and criminal commercial organizations. When a political insurgency lacks certain skills, it may turn to a non-political criminal enterprise for that expertise. And as <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4732" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(8, 45, 91); ">I discussed in an earlier edition</a>, criminal commercial organizations sometimes need to become overtly political in order to maintain the support they need to survive.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">In an essay for <em>Small Wars Journal,</em> <strong>John P. Sullivan</strong>, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and a senior research fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism, <a href="http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/05/future-conflict-criminal-insur" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(8, 45, 91); ">provides a taxonomy</a> of what he terms "criminal insurgencies."</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">According to Sullivan, criminal cartels are evolving through three distinct generations. The first generation, exemplified by <strong>Pablo Escobar</strong> and his Medellin-based cocaine smuggling business, is entrepreneurial and achieves economies of scale through ruthless violence against competitors. As Escobar demonstrated, first-generation cartels can become a threat to the state through unrestrained use of violence. However, a centralized hierarchy makes first-generation cartels vulnerable to decapitation, as Escobar found out too late.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Second-generation cartesl, developed in Cali after Escobar's demise, build security through dispersion: a network structure, a lower profile, more bribery, and less violence.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Should legitimate legal authorities manage to infiltrate a second-generation cartel network, Sullivan foresees a third-generation cartel, which has yet to appear. This generation would threaten the nation-state by gaining <em>de facto</em> control over a neighboring territory.. Sullivan points to the porous Paraguay/Argentina/Brazil border region as an emerging hub for many global criminal operations. He also points to the current struggle for authority inside Mexico which may end with warlords presiding over cartel enclaves.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">It does not automatically follow that third-generation cartel enclaves will result in increased transnational terrorism. But the risks from the breakdown of legitimate central authority are very real, and coping with the consequences of criminal insurgencies may be even more frustrating and costly than dealing with the political kind.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; "><strong>Does it take a network to beat a network?</strong></p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">On June 5 <a href="http://www.jfcom.mil/" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(8, 45, 91); ">United States Joint Forces Command</a> (USJFCOM) wraps up <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=54557" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(8, 45, 91); ">a week-long war game</a> designed to test the Pentagon's vision of warfare in the future. The war game looks ahead to the year 2020 and examines how U.S. and allied military forces -- along with civilian government, non-government, and international institutions -- cope with a failing state, a globally networked terrorist organization, and a peer competitor. The results of the war game are supposed to influence the conclusions of this year's <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/2009/0509_qdr" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(8, 45, 91); ">Quadrennial Defense Review</a>, an in-depth review of the Pentagon's strategies.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Officials at USJFCOM won't discuss the results of the war game until at least July; many of the most interesting conclusions may remain classified. But the commander of USJFCOM, General <a href="http://www.jfcom.mil/about/mattis.htm" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(8, 45, 91); "><strong>James Mattis</strong></a> of the Marine Corps, <a href="http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_events/task,view/id,2054" style="text-decoration: underline; color: rgb(8, 45, 91); ">described his vision of the future</a> while delivering a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Mattis discussed how today's adversaries have adapted to U.S. conventional military superiority by forming disaggregated networks of small irregular teams that hide among indigenous populations. United States military forces, by contrast, have only come under greater central control. According to Mattis, this shift is due to evolutions in intelligence-gathering and communications technologies. Call it the new iron law of military bureaucracies: when commanders gain the technical ability to micromanage, they will micromanage.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Mattis, a four-star general at the top of command pyramid, sdeplores the trend. First, he asserts that the U.S. military command and control system is the most vulnerable such system in the world. Second, Mattis observes that throughout history and regardless of the type of conflict, military forces that centralized control and suppressed initiative at lower echelons have invariably been defeated.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Mattis believes that in order to defeat modern decentralized networks, U.S. forces will have to become decentralized themselves. This will entail giving autonomy to and requiring initiative from the youngest junior leaders in the Army and Marine Corps. High-performance small infantry units, "a national imperative" according to Mattis, will need to operate independent from higher control, finding their own solutions to local problems as they implement broader policy guidance.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">For this approach to succeed, the recruiting, selection, and training of soldiers will have to fundamentally change. Mattis has created a "small unit center of excellence" at USJFCOM to improve the performance of lower-echelon combat units and their leaders. The focus of the center is on the human factors of success since U.S. infantrymen should not expect to enjoy any technological advantages over future enemy infantrymen.</p><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">Perhaps the most interesting question raised by Mattis's speeech is not whether the youngest soldiers can rise to the new demands that would be placed on them, but whether the colonels and generals -- and their civilian masters above -- will be able to relinquish the tight control technology has given them and to which they have become so accustomed. Will they ever acquire the courage necessary to trust a decentralized and distributed force of independent small units to find its own way of achieving the goals of a campaign? Mattis believes that this is the only path to success against tomorrow's enemies. What general or politician will have the nerve to take it?</p></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-64303096912261012992009-06-05T20:41:00.002-04:002009-06-05T20:49:18.786-04:00Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://marcvallee.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/100208_marcvallee_anti_scientology_protest_blog1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 500px; height: 333px;" src="http://marcvallee.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/100208_marcvallee_anti_scientology_protest_blog1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 17px;font-family:verdana;font-size:12px;">The faded little downtown area of Clearwater, Florida, has a beauty salon, a pizza parlor and one or two run-down bars, as well as a bunch of withered bungalows and some old storefronts that look as if they haven't seen customers in years. There are few cars and almost no pedestrians. There are, however, buses — a fleet of gleaming white and blue ones that slowly crawl through town, stopping at regular intervals to discharge a small army of tightly organized, young, almost exclusively white men and women, all clad in uniform preppy attire: khaki, black or navy-blue trousers and crisp white, blue or yellow dress shirts. Some wear pagers on their belts; others carry briefcases. The men have short hair, and the women keep theirs pulled back or tucked under headbands that match their outfits. No one crosses against the light, and everybody calls everybody else "sir" — even when the "sir" is a woman. They move throughout the center of Clearwater in tight clusters, from corner to corner, building to building.<p>This regimented mass represents the "Sea Organization," the most dedicated and elite members of the Church of Scientology. For the past thirty years, Scientology has made the city of Clearwater its worldwide spiritual headquarters — its Mecca, or its Temple Square. There are 8,300 or so Scientologists living and working in Clearwater — more than in any other city in the world outside of Los Angeles. Scientologists own more than 200 businesses in Clearwater. Members of the church run schools and private tutoring programs, day-care centers and a drug-rehab clinic. They sit on the boards of the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the Boy Scouts.</p><p>In July 2004, <em>The St. Petersburg Times</em> dubbed Clearwater, a community of 108,000 people, "Scientology's Town." On the newspaper's front page was a photograph of Scientology's newest building, a vast, white, Mediterranean Revival-style edifice known within Scientology circles as the "Super Power" building. Occupying a full square block of downtown, this structure, which has been under construction since 1998, is billed as the single largest Scientology church in the world. When it is finally completed — presumably in late 2006, at an estimated final cost of $50 million — it will have 889 rooms on six floors, an indoor sculpture garden and a large Scientology museum. The crowning touch will be a two-story, illuminated Scientology cross that, perched atop the building's highest tower, will shine over the city of Clearwater like a beacon.</p><p>* * * *</p><p>Scientology — the term means "the study of truth," in the words of its founder and spiritual messiah, the late science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard — calls itself "the world's fastest-growing religion." Born in 1954, the group now claims 10 million members in 159 countries and more than 6,000 Scientology churches, missions and outreach groups across the globe. Its holdings, which include real estate on several continents, are widely assumed to value in the billions of dollars. Its missionaries — known as "volunteer ministers" — take part in "cavalcades" throughout the developing world and have been found, en masse, at the site of disasters ranging from 9/11 to the Asian tsunami to Hurricane Katrina. Within the field of comparative religions, some academics see Scientology as one of the most significant new religious movements of the past century.</p><p>Scientology is also America's most controversial religion: widely derided, but little understood. It is rooted in elements of Buddhism, Hinduism and a number of Western philosophies, including aspects of Christianity. The French sociologist Regis Dericquebourg, an expert in comparative religions, explains Scientology's belief system as one of "regressive utopia," in which man seeks to return to a once-perfect state through a variety of meticulous, and rigorous, processes intended to put him in touch with his primordial spirit. These processes are highly controlled, and, at the advanced levels, highly secretive. Critics of the church point out that Scientology, unique among religions, withholds key aspects of its central theology from all but its most exalted followers. To those in the mainstream, this would be akin to the Catholic Church refusing to tell all but a select number of the faithful that Jesus Christ died for their sins.</p><p>In June of last year, I set out to discover Scientology, an undertaking that would take nearly nine months. A closed faith that has often been hostile to journalistic inquiry, the church initially offered no help on this story; most of my research was done without its assistance and involved dozens of interviews with both current and former Scientologists, as well as academic researchers who have studied the group. Ultimately, however, the church decided to cooperate and gave me unprecedented access to its officials, social programs and key religious headquarters. What I found was a faith that is at once mainstream and marginal — a religious community known for its Hollywood members but run by a uniformed sect of believers who rarely, if ever, appear in the public eye. It is an insular society — one that exists, to a large degree, as something of a parallel universe to the secular world, with its own nomenclature and ethical code, and, most daunting to those who break its rules, its own rigorously enforced justice system.</p><p>Scientologists, much like Mormons or Christian evangelicals, consider themselves to be on a mission. They frequently speak of "helping people," and this mission is stressed in a number of church testaments. "Scientologists see themselves as possessors of doctrines and skills that can save the world, if not the galaxy," says Stephen Kent, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, in Canada, who has extensively studied the group.</p><p>Church officials boast that Scientology has grown more in the past five years than in the previous fifty. Some evidence, however, suggests otherwise. In 2001, a survey conducted by the City University of New York found only 55,000 people in the United States who claimed to be Scientologists. Worldwide, some observers believe a reasonable estimate of Scientology's core practicing membership ranges between 100,000 and 200,000, mostly in the U.S., Europe, South Africa and Australia. According to the church's own course-completion lists — many of which are available in a church publication and on the Internet — only 6,126 people signed up for religious services at the Clearwater organization in 2004, down from a peak of 11,210 in 1989. According to Kristi Wachter, a San Francisco activist who maintains an online database devoted to Scientology's numbers, this pattern is replicated at nearly all of Scientology's key organizations and churches. To some observers, this suggests that Scientology may, in fact, be shrinking.</p><p>But discerning what is true about the Church of Scientology is no easy task. Tax-exempt since 1993 (status granted by the IRS after a long legal battle), Scientology releases no information about its membership or its finances. Nor does it welcome analysis of its writings or practices. The church has a storied reputation for squelching its critics through litigation, and according to some reports, intimidation (a trait that may explain why the creators of <em>South Park</em> jokingly attributed every credit on its November 2005 sendup of Scientology to the fictional John and Jane Smith; Paramount, reportedly under pressure, has agreed not to rerun the episode here or to air it in England). Nevertheless, Scientology's critics comprise a sizable network of ex-members (or "apostates," in church parlance), academics and independent free-speech and human-rights activists like Wachter, who have declared war on the group by posting a significant amount of previously unknown information on the Internet. This includes scans of controversial memos, photographs and legal briefs, as well as testimonials from disillusioned former members, including some high-ranking members of its Sea Organization. All paint the church in a negative, even abusive, light.</p><p>When asked what, if anything, posted by the apostates is true, Mike Rinder, the fifty-year-old director of the Church of Scientology International's legal and public-relations wing, known as the Office of Special Affairs, says bluntly, "It's all bullshit, pretty much."</p><p>But he admits that Scientology has been on a campaign to raise its public profile. More than 23 million people visited the Scientology Web site last year, says Rinder, one of the highest-ranking officials in the church. In addition, the church claims that Scientology received 289,000 minutes of radio and TV coverage in 2005, many of them devoted to the actions of Tom Cruise, the most famous Scientologist in the world, who spent much of the spring and summer of 2005 promoting Scientology and its beliefs to interviewers ranging from Oprah Winfrey to Matt Lauer.</p><p>Shortly after <em>Rolling Stone</em> decided to embark on this story, Cruise called our offices to say that he would not participate. Several weeks later, the magazine was visited by Cruise's sister, Lee Anne DeVette, an upper-level Scientologist who until recently also served as Cruise's publicist, along with Mike Rinder. Both expressed their dissatisfaction with previous coverage of Scientology by major media outlets, and they warned against what they perceived to be the unreliability of the faith's critics — "the wackos," as Rinder described them. He then invited <em>Rolling Stone</em> to Los Angeles to show us "the real Scientology" — a trip that took five months to set up.</p><p>A number of people who have spoken for the purposes of this article have done so for the very first time. Several, in speaking of their lives spent in the church, requested that their identities be protected through the change of names and other characteristics. Others insisted that not even a gender be attached to their comments.</p><p>There will always be schisms in any religious group, as well as people who, upon leaving their faith, decide to "purge" themselves of their experiences. This is particularly true in the case of members of so-called new religions, which often demand total commitment from their members. Scientology is one of these religions. "We're not playing some minor game in Scientology," Hubbard wrote in a policy paper titled "Keeping Scientology Working," which is required reading for every member. "The whole agonized future of this planet, every man, woman and child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology. This is a deadly serious activity."</p><p>* * * *</p><p>It is impossible to go anywhere in downtown Clearwater without being watched by security cameras. There are about 100 of them, set up on all of Scientology's properties, which include several hotels, a former bank and a number of administrative buildings. Cameras face in, toward the buildings themselves, as well as out at the street.</p><p>While some might find this disconcerting, Natalie Walet, 17, thinks it's normal. "It's just a point of security," she says over coffee one evening at the downtown Starbucks. She notes that Scientology's buildings have been marred with graffiti and are routinely picketed, which she sees as a sign of religious bigotry. "You have a church that a lot of people don't like, and some people are assholes," she says. That said, Natalie adds, most people in Clearwater have "very high standards and morals — they're ethical people."</p><p>A pretty girl with a long black ponytail, Natalie was born and raised in Scientology. Both of her parents and her grandmother are church members, and her involvement in Scientology centers around Clearwater. But the church has other far-flung hubs, including the organizational headquarters in Los Angeles, home to the powerful Church of Scientology International; and <em>Freewinds</em>, the 440-foot cruise ship that docks in Curacao and is used as a training facility, meeting hall and vacation destination for elite Scientologists, including Cruise and John Travolta. There is also "Gold Base," the exclusive desert compound housing the Religious Technology Center, or RTC, the financial hub of the church, located about eighty miles southeast of Los Angeles, home to David Miscavige, the charismatic forty-five-year-old who heads up the international church.</p><p>Natalie's everyday reality is one of total immersion in all things Hubbard. Scientology kids are raised in a very different manner than mainstream kids. Most of them, like Natalie, have been educated by special tutors, and enrolled, as Natalie was when she was younger, in private schools run by Scientologists that use a Hubbard-approved study technique. Most kids are also put "on course" — enrolled in classes at the church that teach both children and adults self-control, focus and communication skills. Natalie was put on course, upon her own insistence, when she was seven or eight years old. Between school and church, life was "kind of a bubble," she says.</p><p>It is a steamy night, and Natalie is dressed in a sleeveless black Empire-waist blouse and tight jeans; her short, bitten nails are painted red. She lights a Marlboro Menthol. Smoking is Natalie's only vice. She neither drinks nor takes drugs of any sort — "once in a grand while I'll take a Tylenol," she says. "But only if my headache is really bad." She admits this with embarrassment because Scientologists consider many illnesses to be psychosomatic and don't believe in treating them with medicine, even aspirin.</p><p>Like all Scientologists, Natalie considers her body to be simply a temporary vessel. She thinks of herself as an immortal being, or "thetan," which means that she has lived trillions of years, and will continue to be reborn, again and again. Many Eastern religions have similar beliefs, and Natalie is quick to note that Scientology is "actually a very basic religion. It has a lot of the same moral beliefs as others." What's special about Scientology, Natalie says, is that it "bears a workable applied technology that you can use in your everyday life."</p><p>"Technology," or "tech," is what Scientologists call the theories, methods and principles espoused by L. Ron Hubbard — "LRH," as Natalie calls him. To the devout, he is part prophet, part teacher, part savior — some Scientologists rank Hubbard's importance as greater than Christ's — and Hubbard's word is considered <em>the word</em>. Hubbard was a prolific writer all his life; there are millions of words credited to him, roughly a quarter-million of them contained within <em>Dianetics</em>, the best-selling quasiscientific self-help book that is the most famous Scientology text.</p><p>Published in 1950, <em>Dianetics</em> maintained that the source of mental and physical illness could be traced back to psychic scars called "engrams" that were rooted in early, even prenatal, experiences, and remained locked in a person's subconscious, or "reactive mind." To rid oneself of the reactive mind, a process known as going "Clear," Dianetics, and later Scientology, preached a regressive-therapy technique called auditing, which involves re-experiencing incidents in one's past life in order to erase their engrams.</p><p>Natalie is a fan of auditing, something she's been doing since she was a small child. Most auditing is done with a device called the electropsychometer, or E-meter. Often compared to lie detectors, E-meters measure the changes in small electrical currents in the body, in response to questions posed by an auditor. Scientologists believe the meter registers thoughts of the reactive mind and can root out unconscious lies. As Natalie explains it, the E-meter is "like a guide that helps the auditor to know what questions to ask." Sometimes, she says, you might not remember certain events, and you might not know what is causing your problems. "But they'll just dig it up until you go, 'Holy shit, was <em>that</em> what was going on?'" She smiles. "And afterward, you feel so much better."</p><p>Natalie has just begun her path to Scientology enlightenment, known as the Bridge to Total Freedom. There are specific stages, or "grades," of the Bridge, and the key to progressing "upward" is auditing: hundreds, if not thousands, of sessions that Scientologists believe can not only help them resolve their problems but also fix their ethical breaches, much as Catholics might do in confessing their sins. The ultimate goal in every auditing session is to have a "win," or moment of revelation, which can take a few minutes, hours or even weeks — Scientologists are not allowed to leave an auditing session until their auditor is satisfied.</p><p>So far, Natalie has gotten much of her auditing for free, through her parents, who have both worked for the church. But many Scientologists pay dearly for the service. Unique among religious faiths, Scientology charges for virtually all of its religious services. Auditing is purchased in 12.5-hour blocks, known as "intensives." Each intensive can cost anywhere from $750 for introductory sessions to between $8,000 and $9,000 for advanced sessions. When asked about money, church officials can become defensive. "Do you want to know the real answer? If we could offer everything for free, we would do it," says Rinder. Another official offers, "We don't have 2,000 years of acquired wealth to fall back on." But Scientology isn't alone, church leaders insist. Mormons, for example, expect members to tithe a tenth of their earnings.</p><p>Still, religious scholars note that this is an untraditional approach. "Among the things that have made this movement so controversial," says S. Scott Bartchy, director of the Center for the Study of Religion at UCLA, "are its claims that its forms of therapy are 'scientific' and that the 'truth' will only be revealed to those who have the money to purchase advancement to the various levels leading to 'being clear.' It is this unvarnished demand for money that has led many observers to opine that the entire operation looks more like a business than a religion." Clearing the stages along the Bridge to Total Freedom is a process that can take years and cost tens and often hundreds of thousands of dollars — one veteran Scientologist told me she "donated" $250,000 in a twenty-year period. Other Scientologists can wind up spending family inheritances and mortgaging homes to pay the fees. Many, like Natalie's parents, work for their local church so they can receive auditing and courses for free.</p><p>Both of Natalie's parents are Clear, she says. Her grandmother is what's called an "Operating Thetan," or "OT." So is Tom Cruise, who is near the top of Scientology's Bridge, at a level known as OT VII. OTs are Scientology's elite — enlightened beings who are said to have total "control" over themselves and their environment. OTs can allegedly move inanimate objects with their minds, leave their bodies at will and telepathically communicate with, and control the behavior of, both animals and human beings. At the highest levels, they are allegedly liberated from the physical universe, to the point where they can psychically control what Scientologists call MEST: Matter, Energy, Space and Time.</p><p>* * * *</p><p>The most important, and highly anticipated, of the eight "OT levels" is OT III, also known as the Wall of Fire. It is here that Scientologists are told the secrets of the universe, and, some believe, the creation story behind the entire religion. It is knowledge so dangerous, they are told, any Scientologist learning this material before he is ready could die. When I ask Mike Rinder about this, he casts the warning in less-dire terms, explaining that, before he reached OT III — he is now OT V — he was told that looking at the material early was "spiritually not good for you." But Hubbard, who told followers that he discovered these secrets while on a trip to North Africa in 1967, was more dramatic. "Somehow or other I brought it off, and obtained the material and was able to live through it," he wrote. "I am very sure that I was the first one that ever did live through any attempt to attain that material."</p><p>Scientologists must be "invited" to do OT III. Beforehand, they are put through an intensive auditing process to verify that they are ready. They sign a waiver promising never to reveal the secrets of OT III, nor to hold Scientology responsible for any trauma or damage one might endure at this stage of auditing. Finally, they are given a manila folder, which they must read in a private, locked room.</p><p>These materials, which the Church of Scientology has long struggled to keep secret, were published online by a former member in 1995 and have been widely circulated in the mainstream media, ranging from <em>The New York Times</em> to last year's <em>South Park</em> episode. They assert that 75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this corner of the galaxy, each of which was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and "implanted" with a number of false ideas — including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists later learn that many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day, creating not just the root of all of our emotional and physical problems but the root of all problems of the modern world.</p><p>"Hubbard thought it was important to have a story about how things got going, similar to the way both Jews and Christians did in the early chapters of Genesis," says UCLA's Bartchy. "All religion lives from the sense either that something in life is terribly wrong or is profoundly missing. For the most part, Christianity has claimed that people have rebelled against God with the result that they are 'sinners' in need of restoration and that the world is a very unjust place in need of healing. What Hubbard seems to be saying is that human beings are really something else — thetans trapped in bodies in the material world — and that Scientology can both wake them up and save them from this bad situation."</p><p>The church considers OT III confidential material. But there are numerous science-fiction references in Scientology texts available to members of all levels. The official "Glossary for Scientology and Dianetics" includes an entry for "space opera," a sci-fi genre that the glossary says "is not fiction and concerns actual incidents." Scientology's "Technical Dictionary" makes reference to a number of extraterrestrial "invader forces," including one, the "Marcab Confederacy," explained as a vast, interplanetary civilization more than 200,000 years old that "looks almost exact duplicate [sic] but is worse off than the current U.S. civilization." Indeed, as even Rinder himself points out, Hubbard presented a rough outline of the Xenu story to his followers in a 1967 taped lecture, "RJ 67," in which he noted that 75 million years ago a cataclysmic event happened in this sector of the galaxy that has caused negative effects for everyone since. This material is available to lower-level Scientologists. But the details of the story remain secret within Scientology.</p><p>Rinder has fielded questions on Scientology's beliefs for years. When I ask him whether there is any validity to the Xenu story, he gets red-faced, almost going into a tirade. "It is not a <em>story</em>, it is an auditing level," he says, neither confirming nor denying that this theology exists. He says that OT material — and specifically the material on OT III — comprises "a small percent" of what Scientology is all about. But it is carefully guarded. Scientologists on the OT levels often carry their materials in locked briefcases and are told to store them in special secure locations in their homes. They are also strictly forbidden from discussing any facet of the materials, even with their families. "I'm not explaining it to you, and I <em>could not</em> explain it to you," says Rinder heatedly. "You don't have a hope of understanding it."</p><p>Those who have experienced OT III report that getting through it can be a harrowing experience. Tory Christman, a former high-ranking Scientologist who during her tenure in the faith reached the near-pinnacle of enlightenment, OT VII, says it took more than ten years before she was finally invited onto OT III. Once there, Christman was shocked. "You've jumped through all these hoops just to get to it, and then you open that packet, and the first thing you think is, '<em>Come on</em>,'" she says. "You're surrounded by all these people who're going, 'Wow, isn't it amazing, just getting the data? I can tell it's really changed you.' After a while, enough people say it and you're like, 'Wow. You know, I really feel it.'"</p><p>Natalie has a long way to go before she reaches OT III. Although virtually everything about the OT levels is available on the Internet, "I don't look at that stuff," Natalie says. She believes it is mostly "entheta," which are lies, or negative information about Scientology meant to undermine the faith. "You know, sometimes in school, kids would hear I'm a Scientologist and be like, 'No way — are you an alien?'" Natalie says. "I don't get mad about it. I just go, 'OK, let me tell you what it really is.'"</p><p>Natalie's view of Scientology is the one church officials promote: that it is not a religion about "space aliens" but simply a set of beliefs that can help a person live a better life. And Natalie appears to be the poster child for Scientology as a formula for a well-adjusted adolescence. Articulate and poised, she is close to her family, has a wide circle of Scientologist and non-Scientologist friends and graduated from high school last spring as a straight-A student. "I'm not saying that everybody must be a Scientologist," she says. "But what I am saying is that I see it work. I've learned so much about myself. LRH says, 'What is true for you is what you observe to be true.' So I'm not here to tell you that Scientology is the way, or that these are the answers. <em>You</em> decide what is true."</p><p>* * * *</p><p>Truth is a relative concept when discussing the life of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. He was born in 1911, and, according to his legend, lived a life of heroic acts and great scientific and spiritual accomplishment until his death, in 1986. Photos of Hubbard in robust middle age — often wearing an ascot — hang in every Scientology center. You can read Hubbard's official biography on the Scientology Web site, which portrays the man Scientologists call the "Founder" as a great thinker, teacher, scientist, adventurer, ethnographer, photographer, sailor and war hero.</p><p>The reality of Hubbard's life is less exhilarating but in many ways more interesting. The son of a U.S. naval officer, he was by all accounts an unremarkable youth from Tilden, Nebraska, who flunked out of George Washington University after his sophomore year and later found moderate success as a penny-a-word writer of pulp fiction, publishing hundreds of stories in fantasy magazines like <em>Astounding Science Fiction</em>. As a lieutenant in the Navy, Hubbard served, briefly, in World War II, but never saw combat and was relieved of his command. He spent the last months of the war as an outpatient at a naval hospital in Oakland, California, where he received treatment for ulcers. Years later, Hubbard would claim to have been "crippled and blinded" in battle, and that, over a year or so of intense "scientific research," he'd cured himself using techniques that would later become part of Dianetics.</p><p>After the war, Hubbard made his way to Pasadena, California, a scientific boomtown of the 1940s, where he met John Whiteside Parsons, a society figure and a founder of CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A sci-fi buff, Parsons was also a follower of the English occultist Aleister Crowley. Parsons befriended Hubbard and invited him to move onto his estate. In one of the stranger chapters in Hubbard's life, recorded in detail by several biographers, the soon-to-be founder of Dianetics became Parsons' assistant — helping him with a variety of black-magic and sex rituals, including one in which Parsons attempted to conjure a literal "whore of Babalon [sic]," with Hubbard serving as apprentice.</p><p>Charming and charismatic, Hubbard succeeded in wooing away Parsons' mistress, Sara Northrup, whom he would later marry. Soon afterward, he fell out with Parsons over a business venture. But having absorbed lessons learned at Parsons' "lodge," Hubbard set out to figure his next step. In his 1983 autobiography, <em>Over My Shoulder: Reflections on a Science Fiction Era</em>, the sci-fi writer Lloyd Eshbach describes meeting Hubbard in the late 1940s. "I'd like to start a religion," Eshbach recalls Hubbard saying. "That's where the money is."</p><p><em>Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health</em> was published in May 1950, and it soon became a runaway hit. Written as sort of a practical pop-psychology book, <em>Dianetics</em> promised that by practicing certain techniques, some of which seemed almost hypnotic, one could be free of sickness, anxiety, aggression and anti-social tendencies, and develop perfect memory and astounding intelligence. Hailed by the newspaper columnist Walter Winchell as a "new science" that "from all indications will prove to be as revolutionary for humanity as the first caveman's discovery and utilization of fire,"<em>Dianetics</em> remained on the <em>New York Times</em> best-seller list for twenty-eight consecutive weeks.</p><p>But a number of factors, including condemnation from the American Psychological Association, hurt book sales. Public support for Dianetics took a downturn, and by the end of 1952, Hubbard was facing financial ruin.</p><p>Rather than admit defeat, Hubbard "improved" Dianetics and unveiled what he claimed was an even more sophisticated path to enlightenment: Scientology. This new technique was designed to restore, or enhance, the abilities of the individual, as opposed to simply getting rid of the reactive mind. In 1954, the first Church of Scientology was born, in Los Angeles. L. Ron Hubbard was now the founder of his own religion.</p><p>From there, Hubbard set about spreading Scientology around the world, opening churches in England, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. In 1955, a policy known as "Project Celebrity" was launched with the aim of recruiting stars in the arts, sports, business and government — those dubbed "Prime Communicators" — who could help disseminate the message. As incentive, these celebrities were given free courses; those who did outstanding work could be "awarded" an OT level, in honor of their service to the organization. Special churches — known as "celebrity centres" — were set up, allowing its members to practice Scientology away from the public eye. The most lavish of these is the neo-Gothic Celebrity Centre International, which is housed in a former chateau on Franklin Avenue, at the foot of the Hollywood Hills.</p><p>Among the high-profile types who dabbled in Scientology was the writer William S. Burroughs, who would later attack the organizational structure as suppressive of independent thought. But other artists were less critical. John Travolta became a Scientologist in 1975 after reading <em>Dianetics</em>. "My career immediately took off," he states in a personal "success story" published in the book <em>What Is Scientology</em>? "I landed a leading role on the TV show <em>Welcome Back, Kotter</em> and had a string of successful films." Indeed, Travolta says, "Scientology put me into the big time."</p><p>In addition to Travolta, Scientology attracted musicians Chick Corea and Isaac Hayes, actresses Mimi Rogers and Kirstie Alley, and the influential acting coach Milton Katselas, who brought in a number of others, including actresses Anne Archer and Kelly Preston, who later became Travolta's wife. And those celebrities begat others, including Tom Cruise, who was introduced by his then-wife, Rogers, and Jenna Elfman, introduced by her husband, actor Bodhi Elfman. Others, such as Juliette Lewis, Erika Christensen and Beck, were born into Scientology.</p><p>But as Scientology raised its profile, so too did it find itself under increased scrutiny by the U.S. government, which raided Scientology's offices a number of times in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1963, the Food and Drug Administration confiscated hundreds of E-meters from Scientology's Washington, D.C., offices (the FDA accused the church of making false claims about its healing powers). Soon afterward, Hubbard moved his base of operation from the U.S. to England, but continued to face condemnation from a variety of Western governments. To avoid such scrutiny, Hubbard purchased a small fleet of ships in 1967, and, dubbing himself "Commodore," headed for the high seas, which would serve as Scientology's official home and, some maintain, tax shelter until the mid-1970s.</p><p>Serving Hubbard at sea were a small group of devoted followers who comprised a private navy of sorts. They were known, collectively, as the "Sea Organization," and dressed in full naval uniforms. Mike Rinder, who joined the Sea Org when he was eighteen, served on Hubbard's lead ship, the <em>Apollo</em>, as a deckhand. He arrived in 1973, having endured years of discrimination in his native Australia (southeastern Australia banned Scientology from 1965 to 1982). "You couldn't own Scientology books," he says. "If you did, you had to hide them because if the police came and found them, they'd take them away."</p><p>On the <em>Apollo</em>, Rinder found Hubbard, a reputed recluse, to be totally accessible. He hosted weekly movie nights and often strolled across the ship talking with the crew. "What was most incredible about being with him was that he made you feel that you were important," Rinder recalls. "He didn't in any way promote himself or his own self-importance. He was very, very loving and had the widest range of knowledge and experience that you could possibly imagine — he'd studied everything." Rinder marvels at Hubbard's abilities: He knew how to cultivate plants, fix cars, shoot movies, mix music, fly an airplane, sail ships.</p><p>At sea, Hubbard, who had officially resigned his post as the head of the Church of Scientology (leaving the day-to-day management of the church to lesser officials), worked on his writings and "discoveries." Hubbard also began to obsess over the forces he saw opposing him, including journalists, whom Hubbard long distrusted and even banned from ever becoming Scientologists. Worse still were psychiatrists, a group that, coupled with the pharmaceutical-drug industry — in Hubbard's words, a "front group" — operated "straight out of the terrorist textbooks," as he wrote in a 1969 essay titled "Today's Terrorism." He accused psychiatrists of kidnapping, torturing and murdering with impunity. "A psychiatrist," he wrote, "kills a young girl for sexual kicks, murders a dozen patients with an ice pick, castrates a hundred men."</p><p>To attack his enemies, Hubbard issued a policy known as "Fair Game," which maintained that all who opposed Scientology could be "tricked, sued or lied to and destroyed." This policy was enforced by Scientology's quasisecret police force, known as the Guardian's Office. By the 1970s, among its tasks was "Operation Snow White," a series of covert activities that included bugging the Justice Department and stealing documents from the IRS. (Scientology officials say Fair Game was canceled decades ago.)</p><p>The plan was discovered in FBI raids on Scientology's Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., offices in 1977, which yielded wiretap equipment, burglary tools and about 90,000 pages of documents. Eleven Scientology officials, including Hubbard's third wife, Mary Sue, went to federal prison for their role in the plot, which led to a 1982 "sweep" of the church's upper management.</p><p>By then, Hubbard, who was cited as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in Operation Snow White, had vanished from the public eye. For the next several years, rumors of his whereabouts circulated freely — he was at sea; he was on an island. In fact, Hubbard was on his isolated ranch, Whispering Wind, near the town of Creston, in the California desert. He was attended by a small number of Scientology officials, and his physician, Dr. Eugene Denk, who treated him for a number of conditions, including chronic pancreatitis. On January 17th, 1986, Hubbard suffered a crippling stroke. A week later, he died, in a 1982 Blue Bird motor home on his property. He was seventy-four years old.</p><p>Upon Hubbard's death, his ambitious twenty-five-year-old aide, David Miscavige, who would soon succeed him as leader of the church, announced that Scientology's founder had willingly "dropped" his healthy body and moved on to another dimension. In keeping with Hubbard's wishes, his body was cremated within twenty-four hours. There was no autopsy. But the coroner's report described the father of Scientology as in a state of decrepitude: unshaven, with long, thinning whitish-red hair and unkempt fingernails and toenails. In Hubbard's system was the anti-anxiety drug hydroxyzine (Vistaril), which several of his assistants would later attest was only one of many psychiatric and pain medications Hubbard ingested over the years.</p><p>These secrets were kept under wraps by Scientology officials. The church would later be named Hubbard's successor in accordance with his will, which had been amended and signed just a day before his death. In it, Hubbard ceded the copyrights to all of his works, as well as a significant portion of his estate, making Scientology, not Hubbard's wife and five children, his primary heir.</p><p>Today, every church or Scientology organization has an office reserved for Hubbard. Usually found on the church's ground floor, it is carefully maintained with books, desk, chair, pens, notepads, desk ornaments and other accouterments, as if the Founder might walk in at any moment.</p><p>* * * *</p><p>The imposing limestone-and-granite Church of Scientology in midtown Manhattan calls itself the "New York Org." A stately building on West 46th Street, northwest of Times Square, it is here that I come, on a hot July afternoon, to experience Scientology for myself.</p><p>The first Scientologist I meet here is a kid named Emmett: a clear-eyed and enthusiastic young man in his early twenties whose job is to be a "body-router," which means someone who brings people into the church. "Hi!" he says, accosting me as I stand near the center's entrance. "Do you have a minute?" He waves a postcard-size flier in my face. "We're showing a fifteen-minute film inside," he says. "It's about Dianetics. Ever heard of it?"</p><p>He ushers me through a set of glass doors and into the church's lobby, a glossy-marble space with the kind of lighting that bathes everything in a pinkish-golden glow. It is set up as a sort of museum, with a number of video-display panels, one of which offers an earnest testimonial by Tom Cruise. "The Aims of Scientology," a document written by Hubbard, also hangs in the lobby, and it declares Scientology's goals as "simple, but great," including "a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war; where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights."</p><p>The New York Org claims to receive more than 500 phone calls per day, and nearly as many visitors in a week. But aside from its staff, I find the place to be almost entirely empty. Seated alone in a small auditorium, I watch the film, which turns out to be an infomercial featuring a cast of "real" people talking about how Dianetics changed their lives, curing them of ailments ranging from cancer to depression. Scientology is not mentioned once in the film. Nor is Hubbard. And neither are mentioned afterward, during an hour or so conversation I have with a motherly woman in her early fifties named Laurie. She is what is known as a "greeter," and her role is to keep me in the church long enough for me to feel encouraged that, maybe, all of this is worth my time.</p><p>Self-betterment is a powerful concept to use as a sales technique, and Laurie begins her pitch in the gentlest of ways. "Tell me about yourself," she says. "What made you interested in Scientology?"</p><p>"I guess I was just curious," I tell Laurie.</p><p>"Good!" she says with a smile. "We like curious!"</p><p>In the next hour or so, Laurie asks me a number of questions: Am I married? Am I happy? What are my goals? Do I feel that I'm living up to my potential?</p><p>A failure to live up to potential is one of the things known in Scientology as one's "ruin." In trying to get at mine, Laurie is warm and nonaggressive. And, to my amazement, I begin to open up to her. While we chat, she delivers a soft sell for Scientology's "introductory package": a four-hour seminar and twelve hours of Dianetics auditing, which is done without the E-meter. The cost: just fifty dollars. "You don't have to do it," Laurie says. "It's just something I get the feeling might help you." She pats my arm, squeezes it warmly.</p><p>Then she gets down to business and presents me with the $100 Dianetics "starter" kit, which includes a large-type copy of Hubbard's tome, a few CDs and some workbooks to practice the stuff at home. "It's really such a good thing you came in," Laurie adds reassuringly. "You'll see."</p><p>On my next visit to the church, the following day, I see Laurie again. She spots me as soon as I walk in and rushes to greet me. "You're back!" She gives me a hug. "I am so glad you decided to give this a try." She then introduces me to a preppy-looking guy in his early thirties named Rurik, who, wasting no time on small talk, leads me to the church's second floor and installs me in a room for my introductory seminar. As with the previous day's film, I'm the only one there. Rurik starts his lecture with the claim that the mind really isn't in the brain. "Close your eyes and think of a picture of a cat," he tells me. I do. "Now, open your eyes and point to where you saw that picture."</p><p>I point to my eyes.</p><p>Rurik grins. "See? When you're asked to use your mind, you don't point to the brain."</p><p>The brain, Rurik says, has absolutely no bearing on our thoughts or feelings. Nor, he adds, does the mind — its chief function is to serve as a memory bank of all we've experienced in trillions of years of lifetimes. Indeed, Scientology holds that the entire field of neurological and mental-health research — from Freud to the study of brain chemistry — is pseudoscience. In Scientology's overview text, <em>What Is Scientology</em>?, psychiatry is described as a "hodgepodge of unproven theories that have never produced any result — except an ability to make the unmanageable and mutinous more docile and quiet, and turn the troubled into apathetic souls beyond the point of caring."</p><p>Most of the dedicated Scientologists I meet echo this opinion, including Kirstie Alley, who has been a Scientologist for more than twenty years and is the international spokesperson for Narconon, the church-supported anti-drug program. In an interview with Alley several weeks later, she calls Scientology the "anti-therapy." "Therapy is based on some guy analyzing you, and what he thinks is going on with you," she says. "And when he can't quite figure it out, he makes up a disease and gets a drug for that. If that doesn't work, he shocks you. And then surgery . . ." Scientology employs a holistic detoxification program known as the "purification rundown," which involves heavy doses of vitamin supplements, primarily niacin, used in conjunction with exercise and long hours in a sauna. Though many doctors point out that none of this has ever been scientifically proven, and, indeed, might be harmful, Scientology claims that the "purif" cleanses the body of impurities. "I can get someone off heroin a hell of a lot faster than I can get somebody off a psych drug," says Alley. "The guy on heroin's not being told daily, 'This is what you need for your disease, and you're gonna have to take this the rest of your life.'"</p><p>A few days later I arrive for my free Dianetics auditing sessions. I am put in a large, glass-enclosed room with a student auditor named David, who asks me to "relive" a moment of physical pain. "Don't choose something that's <em>too</em> stressful," David suggests.</p><p>Try as I might, I cannot relive much of anything — indeed, I can barely focus, given that I am surrounded in the room by a number of other pairs who are all being asked to do the same thing. After fifteen minutes, I give up.</p><p>Jane, the registrar who is now handling my "case," then whisks me away and, taking a look at my Oxford Capacity Analysis — a 200-item questionnaire that I filled out on my first day — tells me that she thinks I need something more personal. "I really want you to have a win," she says.</p><p>What Jane recommends is called Life Repair, basic Scientology counseling that she explains will "get to the root of what's inhibiting you." It is conducted in a private room, and involves one, but most likely two, 12.5-hour auditing "intensives," using the E-meter, which will cost around $2,000. Coupled with the purif, which is recommended to anyone starting in Scientology, the total cost will be around $4,000. "And then you'll be on the Bridge," Jane says enthusiastically. "You'll see. It'll change your life."</p><p>At the intake level, Scientology comes across as good, practical self-help. Rather than playing on themes that might distance a potential member — the concept that I am a "thetan," for example — members hit on topics that have universal appeal. Instead of claiming some heightened degree of enlightenment, they come across as fellow travelers: people who smoke too much, who have had bad marriages, who have had addictions they couldn't handle but have somehow managed to land on their feet. Scientology, they explain, has been a form of "recovery." As one woman I meet puts it, "Scientology <em>works</em>."</p><p>There are, however, a few things that seem jarring. Like the cost: $4,000 is a lot to spend for what Jane suggests are "basic" sessions. But perhaps even more alarming is the keen interest they take in my boyfriend. While Laurie inquired sympathetically about the dynamic of our relationship, Jane is suspicious, concerned with his views of the church and his attitude toward my being here. "If he's not open," she says, "that could be a problem."</p><p>And then there are Scientology's rules. A fiercely doctrinaire religion, Scientology follows Hubbard's edicts to the letter. Dissent or opposition to any of Hubbard's views isn't tolerated. Nor is debating certain church tenets — a practice Scientologists view as "counterintentioned." Comporting oneself in any way that could be seen as contrary to church goals is considered subversive and is known as a "suppressive act." One text that sheds enlightenment on both the mind-set of the founder and the inner workings of the church is <em>Introduction to Scientology Ethics</em>, which every Scientologist owns. In this book, the list of suppressive acts is six pages long and includes crimes ranging from murder to "squirreling," or altering Hubbard's teachings.</p><p>Jane hands me a form and asks me to sign. The document absolves Scientology of liability if I am not wholly satisfied with its services, and also requires me to pledge that neither I nor my family has ever sued, attacked or publicly criticized Scientology. It also asks me to pledge that I will never sue the church myself.</p><p>For the next several months, Jane and various other registrars call my cell phone, asking me to come back to the church and have a "win." I never do.</p><p>* * * *</p><p>Somewhere in the vast California scrubland east of Los Angeles, west of Palm Springs and near the town of Hemet, is Gold Base, the heart of the Scientology empire. It has been described in some news reports as a "top-secret" facility, monitored by security cameras and protected by electric fences. Most Scientologists have never been to Gold. Within church circles, it is often spoken of in whispers: as INT Base, Scientology's management headquarters and hangout for the likes of Tom Cruise and David Miscavige.</p><p>Gold, a former resort, was purchased by the church in the mid-Eighties and sits at the foot of the San Jacinto Mountains. A simple metal gate announces its presence, behind which is a long driveway and, beyond that, a golf course. The 500-acre grounds include grassy meadows and a small lake where swans and ducks roam at will. There are no visible security cameras. But there are electric fences. "<em>Of course</em> we have fences," says Tommy Davis, a senior church official who, with Rinder, accompanies me on a tour of the compound. "We have $60 million worth of equipment here."</p><p>Gold is the central dissemination facility for the church. It is best known as the home of Golden Era Productions, Scientology's film, video and sound facilities. Scientology produces myriad promotional and training films here, teaching parishioners everything from auditing techniques to what goes on during a marriage-counseling session. It also makes CDs, produces events and prints its own packaging. Even its E-meters are made here, in a building where Scientologists work on a sort of corporate assembly line, producing roughly 200 of the devices per week.</p><p>There is a Disney-esque quality to Gold Base. The focal point of the complex is a beige estate house, known as the Castle, which houses the film wing. The Tavern, a nearby stone carriage-house building, is used for visiting VIPs and is decorated in a King Arthur motif, complete with a sizable round table. There are winding paths and walkways made out of what appears to be fake flagstone. All of the buildings, save the Castle, are white, with blue-tiled roofs.</p><p>Breaking up the uniformity is a startling sight: a three-mast rudderless clipper ship, the <em>Star of California</em>, built into a hill overlooking the campus. Some former Scientologists say this structure was built for Hubbard — though he'd "dropped his body" before it was finished — but Rinder explains it as just "an idea someone had to build a ship" as a place to house restrooms and a snack bar near the pool. It has a broad wooden deck, mermaid figurines and, at its gangplank, a fishing net adorned with plastic crabs.</p><p>Despite these colorful landmarks, Gold is essentially an office park. Its buildings are furnished like a series of corporate suites, complete with bland gray or blue rugs. There's virtually no artwork save a few Scientology posters inscribed with the words of L. Ron Hubbard, and, in the sound studio, framed headshots of various Scientologist celebrities, including Tommy Davis' mother, Anne Archer.</p><p>Davis, 33, helps run the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood and is the scion of one of California's real estate dynasties. He freely admits to being a Hollywood rich kid. He dresses in Italian suits, drives a BMW and is addicted to his Blackberry. "I have enough money to never work a day in my life," he says.</p><p>But Davis, who calls L. Ron Hubbard "the coolest guy ever," works for the church as a nonuniformed member of the Sea Organization, the Church of Scientology's most powerful entity. Sea Org members staff all of the senior ecclesiastic positions in the church hierarchy, and the top members have exclusive authority over Scientology's funds. In a nod to the group's nautical beginnings, Sea Org members were required to wear naval-style uniforms, complete with epaulets for "officers," until several years ago. Today, for all but those who serve on the <em>Freewinds</em>, the epaulets have been retired. At Gold, whose entire population, save the actors and directors of Scientology films, are Sea Org members, men and women dress in the style of deckhands: short-sleeve dress shirts over dark T-shirts and chinos.</p><p>The church describes the Sea Org as a fraternal order — not a legal entity — requiring lifelong commitment. It is, in fact, an eternal commitment: Sea Org members sign contracts pledging 1 billion years of service to the church. Scientology's publicity materials portray the Sea Org as similar to the U.S. Marines: "The toughest, most dedicated team this planet has ever known," according to one recruiting brochure. "Against such a powerful team the opposition hasn't got a chance."</p><p>Kim Fries, who works in Gold's audiovisual editing department, has been in the Sea Org since she was fifteen. Now thirty-two, Fries says she couldn't imagine living any other way. "What else are you going to do with your life?" she says, with a flick of her dark, wavy hair.</p><p>The Sea Org has often been portrayed as isolated, almost monastic; members are rarely allowed to see films, watch TV or read mainstream magazines. "Are we devoted? Yes. Sequestered? No," says Fries, who married a fellow Sea Org member. "I go out into the world, I talk to people out in the world, I definitely live a very full life. This isn't a priesthood. I mean, if it were a priesthood, do you think I'd work here? It would just be so unhip."</p><p>Gold is seen as the place "every Sea Org member aspires to work," says Rinder. There are expansive grounds to wander, a crystal-blue pool in which to swim; the dining hall is large and features low-fat and vegetarian entrees. A tiny shop sells cigarettes, juice, soft drinks and junk food.</p><p>In my ten or so hours at Gold, I am aware of being taken on an elaborately orchestrated junket, in which every step of my day has been plotted and planned. I don't blame the group for wanting to present its best face; at least half of my conversations with Rinder and Davis pertain in one way or another to what Scientology perceives as a smear campaign on the part of the mainstream media. A chief complaint is that reporters, eager for a story, take the words of lapsed members as gospel. Davis says Scientology gets little credit for the success of its social-betterment programs, which include Narconon and also literacy and educational programs. "Look around," says Davis. "People are out here busting their butt every day to make a difference. And one guy who leaves because he wants to go to the movies gets to characterize the whole organization? That sucks."</p><p>Scientologists do not look kindly on critics, particularly those who were once devout. Apostasy, which in Scientology means speaking out against the church in any public forum, is considered to be the highest form of treason. This is one of the most serious "suppressive acts," and those who apostatize are immediately branded as "Suppressive Persons," or SPs. Scientologists are taught that SPs are evil — Hitler was an SP, says Rinder. Indeed, Hubbard believed that a full 2.5 percent of the population was "suppressive." As he wrote in the <em>Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary</em>, a suppressive person is someone who "goofs up or vilifies any effort to help anybody and particularly knife with violence anything calculated to make human beings more powerful or more intelligent."</p><p>Given this viewpoint, I wonder why anyone with connections to Scientology would critique them publicly. "Makes them famous," Rinder says. "They do it for their fifteen minutes."</p><p>Scientology has been extremely effective at attacking its defectors, often destroying their credibility entirely, a policy that observers call "dead agenting." Some of the church's highest-profile critics say they have been on the receiving end of this policy. In the past six years, Tory Christman claims, the church has spread lies about her on the Internet, filed suit against her for violating an injunction for picketing on church property and attempted to get her fired from her job. Rinder dismisses Christman as a "wacko" and says her allegations are "absolute bullshit."</p><p>When Christman split from the church, her husband and most of her friends — all of them Scientologists — refused to talk to her again. Apostates are not just discredited from the church; they are also excommunicated, isolated from their loved ones who, under Scientology rules, must sever or "disconnect" from them. Scientology defines those associated with Suppressive People as "Potential Trouble Sources," or PTS.</p><p>Rinder says disconnection is a policy of last resort. "The first step is always to try to <em>handle</em> the situation," he says. A "handling" generally refers to persuading a wayward member to return to the church in order to maintain contact with his family. The parent of someone who's apostatized might call his child and ask him to "handle" a problem by essentially recanting. "They'll ask them to make some amends, show they can be trusted . . . something to make up the damage," says Davis. Those amends might range from volunteering in a literacy program to taking a public advocacy role — campaigning against psychiatry, for example.</p><p>But some people, the officials admit, refuse to be handled. What happens to them? "Then I guess not believing in Scientology means more to them than not seeing their family," Davis says.</p><p>Excommunication is nothing new in organized religion. A number of sects have similar policies to Scientology's: the Amish, the Mormon Fundamentalists, the Jehovah's Witnesses. All have a rationale. Scientology's rationale is very simple: "We are protecting the good of the religion and all the parishioners," says Rinder.</p><p>"It's for the good of the group," says Davis.</p><p>"How are you going to judge what is and isn't the worst tenets and violations of the Church of Scientology?" Rinder asks. "<em>You</em> aren't a Scientologist." Complaints about these policies, he adds, "come from people who aren't Scientologists [anymore]. What do they give a shit for anymore? They left!"</p><p>I spend a lot of time talking about the question of apostasy with Rinder and Davis. Both feel the church has been miscast. "Somewhere there is a concept that we hold strings over all these people and control them," says Rinder. But provided you don't denounce Scientology, it's perfectly fine to leave the church, he says. "Whatever. What's true for you is true for you." Nothing will happen to those who lose their faith, he says, unless they "tell bald-faced lies to malign and libel the organization — unless they make it seem like something it isn't."</p><p>* * * *</p><p>Paul James is not this twenty-two-year-old man's real name. He is the son of established Scientologists, blond and blue-eyed, with the easy smile and chiseled good looks of a young Matt Damon. He has had no contact with the church since he was seventeen. "I honestly don't know how people can live psychotically happy all the time," Paul tells me over coffee one afternoon at his small, tidy house outside Los Angeles. "Or <em>thinking</em> that they're happy," he adds with a grin. "I'm talking about that fake-happiness thing that people make themselves believe."</p><p>Like Natalie, Paul was educated by Scientology tutors, sent to Scientologist-run private schools and put "on course" at his church. Unlike her, he hated it. "I never found anything in Scientology that had to do with spiritual enlightenment," he says. "As soon as common sense started hitting me" — around the age of ten — "it creeped me out."</p><p>Though there are a significant number of second-generation Scientologists who, like Natalie, are devoted to the church, there are also kids like Paul. This, says the University of Alberta's Stephen Kent, is to be expected. One "unanticipated consequence" of the widespread conversions of young people to sects like Scientology in the 1960s and 1970s, Kent says, has been a "wave" of defections of these members' adult children.</p><p>A fundamental element of Scientology is that children are often regarded as small adults — "big thetans in little bodies," as some parents call them. Paul's parents worked eighteen-hour days for the church, he says, and generally left him and his older brother to their own devices. "My brother was baby-sitting me by himself when he was eleven years old," Paul says. When his brother went off with his friends, "I'd get home from school and be wandering around the [apartment] complex."</p><p>Paul's school was no more structured, he says. Students were encouraged to work at their own pace on subjects of their choosing, and, according to Paul, received little guidance from teachers, who are called "supervisors." I found this to be true at the Delphi Academy in Lake View Terrace, California, part of a network of elite schools that use Hubbard's study technology. Maggie Reinhart, Delphi's director, says that this technique forces a student to take an active role in his education. A number of Scientology kids have thrived in this environment. Others, like Paul, felt lost. "I just kind of roamed from classroom to classroom and nobody cared," he says. At Delphi, I saw teachers assisting certain students, but there was no generalized "teaching," no class discussions.</p><p>Discussion, as some academics like Kent note, isn't encouraged in Scientology, nor in Scientology-oriented schools. It is seen as running counter to the teachings of Scientology, which are absolute. Thus, debate is relegated to those in the world of "Wogs" — what Scientologists call non-Scientologists. Or, as Hubbard described them, "common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, garden-variety humanoid[s]."</p><p>Paul met very few Wogs growing up, and those he did know often didn't understand him. Scientology has its own unique lexicon. "It's kind of like being a French Canadian," Paul explains. "You speak one thing out in the world and another thing at home."</p><p>Many kids who've grown up in Scientology describe it as Natalie did: "a bubble" that exists in tandem with the mainstream world. "It's impossible to understand it unless you've lived it," says Paul.</p><p>Even when you've lived it, as one young woman notes, it's hard to fully understand. This twenty-two-year-old, whom we'll call Sara, left Scientology in high school. After leaving, she and a friend who quit with her sat down with a dictionary. "We looked up all the words we used [because] we didn't know if we were speaking English or not," she says.</p><p>Hubbard created Scientology's language to be unique to its members. It includes words that are interpretations, or variations, of standard terms: "isness," for example, which Scientology's glossaries say, in essence, means "reality." But there are also words that are wholly made up, such as "obnosis," which means "observation of the obvious."</p><p>The chaotic world, as one might call it in the mainstream, is, in Scientology, "enturbulated," which means "agitated and disturbed." To correct, or solve, personal or societal problems requires the proper application of "ethics," which in Scientology refers to one's moral choices, as well as to a distinct moral system. Those who conduct themselves correctly have their ethics "in." Those who misbehave are "out-ethics." A person's harmful or negative acts are known as "overts." Covering them up is known as a "withhold."</p><p>All of these terms, and many more, are contained in a number of Scientology dictionaries, all written by Hubbard. Scientologists consider word comprehension and vocabulary skills to be essential parts of their faith.</p><p>The Hubbard Study Technology is administered in schools through an organization called "Applied Scholastics"; it emphasizes looking up any unknown or "misunderstood" word in a dictionary, and never skipping past a word you don't understand. This same study method is used in church, where adults of all ages and levels of advancement spend hours poring over dictionaries and course manuals.</p><p>One key word is "gradient," which is defined in the official Scientology and Dianetics glossary as "a gradual approach to something, taken step by step, level by level, each step or level being, of itself, easily surmountable so that, finally, quite complicated and difficult activities or high states of being can be achieved with relative ease." This principle, the glossary notes, "is applied to both Scientology processing and training."</p><p>Another key belief is "communication." One of Scientology's basic courses is "Success Through Communication," taught to young people and adults. It involves a series of drills, known as "training routines," or "TRs." One drill asks students to close their eyes and simply sit, sometimes for hours. Another asks them to stare at a partner, immobile. A third requires students to mock, joke with or otherwise verbally engage their partner. The partner must passively receive these comments without moving or saying a word.</p><p>These drills, Scientologists say, help improve what they call their "confront," which in Scientology's lexicon means "the ability to be there comfortably and perceive." A fourth drill requires students to pose a series of questions to one another, such as "Do fish swim?" Their partner may respond in any way they like, with the question being asked repeatedly until the partner answers correctly. Sara's favorite drill involved an ashtray: "You tell it to stand up, sit down, and you 'move' the ashtray for hours. You're supposed to be beaming your intention into the ashtray, and the supervisor is going to tell you if you're intent enough."</p><p>At Delphi, students take a course called "Improving Conditions." "Conditions" refers to key Hubbard principles. Charted on a scale, they relate to one's relationship to oneself and to those within one's organization, school or "group." A Scientologist's goal, it's often noted, is to "improve conditions."</p><p>From highest to lowest, the Conditions are: Power, Power Change, Affluence, Normal, Emergency, Danger, Non-Existence, Liability, Doubt, Enemy, Treason and Confusion. Together, these conditions form the spine of the practical application of Scientology "ethics," which is, many say, the true heart of the faith. "Ethics," as a Scientological term, is defined as "rationality toward the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics," as well as "reason and the contemplation of optimum survival."</p><p>To survive, Scientology applies its philosophy, or "ethics tech," across a broad social and societal scale. They do good works — indeed, as Rinder notes, "Scientologists are driven by a real concern for the well-being of others. They see the world around them and want to do something about it."</p><p>But the church's drug-treatment and literacy programs and anti-psychiatry campaigns do more than just evangelize through charity; in fact, they exist largely to help prepare people to become Scientologists. Once a person is drug-free, psychiatrist-free and literate, he is qualified for auditing. And auditing is the centerpiece of Scientology. "It's all about going up the Bridge," says Paul.</p><p>Paul began auditing when he was four. Rebellious by nature, he says it did very little for him. By the age of eleven or twelve, he says, "I was so out of control, my parents had no idea what to do with me."</p><p>Scientologists run a number of boarding schools around the country, including the prestigious Delphian School, in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, which counts Earthlink founder Sky Dayton among its graduates. Scientologists' kids who caused trouble, or otherwise displeased their parents, have been sent to more restrictive private boarding schools. Paul was sent to Mace-Kingsley Ranch, located on 2,000 acres in New Mexico, which was closed in 2002.</p><p>Paul arrived at Mace-Kingsley when he was thirteen, and stayed for three and a half years. As he tells it, he underwent what sounds like a typical "boot camp" experience, complete with hard labor, bad food, tough supervision — all with a high price tag, roughly $30,000 per year. The school enforced a rigid Scientology focus that many former students now say served as both a mechanism of control and a form of religious indoctrination.</p><p>The process began for all new students with an IQ test and the Purification Rundown, which Paul says was given to kids as young as eight or nine years old. Then they were administered the Oxford Capacity Analysis, created by Scientologists in 1953. The test was designed to find out the student's "tone," or emotional state, in preparation for auditing. Students were audited daily at the ranch. By the age of sixteen, Paul says, he'd grown so used to the process, he'd figured out how to "trick" the E-meter: By remaining calm enough for no electrical charge to register, he was often able to hide most of his inner feelings from his auditors and his "case supervisor," who oversaw his progress.</p><p>But not always. "There are things they wanted to know, and they'd just keep asking until you finally told them," he says. "They'd get me to tell them about lies, or things that were bad, right down to my thoughts — some of which were overts." So were some of his deeds. Masturbation is an overt — strictly forbidden in Scientology, as Hubbard believed that it can slow one's process to enlightenment. "It's not evil, just out-ethics," says Paul. "They'll dig it up in session and tell you to stop because it's slowing you down."</p><p>Another overt is homosexuality, which Hubbard believed was a form of sexual "deviance" best treated by therapy, or institutionalization. This view was espoused by many psychiatrists of Hubbard's generation. Mainstream psychiatry has changed its view since the 1950s. Scientology as an institution takes no formal position on issues like gay marriage, but homosexuality, sexual promiscuity or any other form of "perversion" ranks low on Scientology's "tone scale," a register of human behavior Hubbard described in his 1951 book <em>Science of Survival: Prediction of Human Behavior</em>.</p><p>This book, according to Mike Rinder, is perhaps the most important Scientology text after <em>Dianetics</em>. In it, Hubbard denounced virtually every sexual practice that doesn't directly relate to marriage and children. "Such people should be taken from the society as rapidly as possible . . . for here is the level of the contagion of immortality and the destruction of ethics," he wrote of homosexuals. "No social order will survive which does not remove these people from its midst."</p><p>In auditing, Scientologists are frequently asked about their sexual thoughts or practices, particularly in the special auditing sessions called "security checks." This process requires a church member to write down any break with the ethical code. Security checks are administered to every Scientologist on the Bridge, and particularly to all OTs, who must be checked every six months "to make sure they're using the tech correctly," as church officials explain. In September, I received, through a source, a faxed copy of the standard security-check sheet for adults. Its questions include "Have you ever been involved in an abortion?" "Have you ever practiced sex with animals?" "Have you ever practiced sodomy?" "Have you ever slept with a member of a race of another color?" as well as "Have you ever had any unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?"</p><p>Paul resisted his security checks — he says he sometimes fell asleep during the sessions. But Sara, who says she went through months of "sec checks" after deciding, at age fifteen, that she didn't want to be a Scientologist any longer, says she was highly disturbed by the process. At first, she says, counselors at her church tried to "clear" her. She was forced to repeatedly look up words in the dictionary to make sure she misunderstood nothing about Scientology. Then they gave her a security check. "For months I'm going to the church every night after school, and I'm in this fucking basement for four hours a night, on the E-meter," she says. "They're asking me questions about sex — every personal question known to man." If she tried to leave, Sara adds, the auditors would physically block her path and force her back in her chair. Officials say this forced auditing is for the subjects' own good, as it might be harmful if they were to leave a session before they were ready.</p><p>"Scientology has a plausible explanation for everything they do — that's the genius of it," says Sara. "But make no mistakes: Scientology is brainwashing."</p><p>* * * *</p><p>Jeffrey Aylor was thirteen when he joined the sea Organization. Raised in a Scientology family in Los Angeles, he was at church one day when a Sea Org recruiter approached him. "What are you doing with your life?" he asked the teen.</p><p>Jeffrey had no idea what to say. "I'm thirteen, I'm not doing anything with my life," Jeffrey said. The recruiter asked him if he wanted to "help" people. Jeffrey said, "Sure. What kid doesn't want to help people?"</p><p>Thus began Jeffrey's immersion into the tightly wound world of the Sea Org, where he would spend the next seven years of his life. In that time, he would see fewer than ten movies, would rarely listen to music and never had sex. Though theoretically reading newspapers and magazines was allowed — <em>USA Today</em> is sold openly on Gold Base — in practice it was discouraged, along with surfing the Internet and watching TV. Indeed, all contact with the world at large was "entheta." "I never considered myself a Scientologist until I joined the Sea Org," Jeffrey says.</p><p>Jeffrey's indoctrination began with a boot camp known as the "Estates Project Force," or EPF. There, he learned to march, salute and perform manual labor. Physical work is a key training technique for new recruits. Jeffrey's sister, for instance, went through the EPF when she was twelve and was forced to crawl through ducts that were roach- and rat-infested. Like the TRs, this kind of work, Jeffrey explains, is meant to raise a person's "confront," enabling them to be more in control of their environment.</p><p>After the EPF, Jeffrey was given a blue shirt, blue tie and dark-blue trousers, and sent to work as a receptionist at the American Saint Hill Organization for spiritual training, on Scientology's expansive Hollywood campus. He was paid fifty dollars per week and worked an average of fifteen hours per day, including an hour or two of auditing and other training. Home was a large barracks-style room in a building where Jeffrey lived with about twenty other boys and men. In seven years, Jeffrey says, he saw his family just a handful of times. His only free time was the few hours he received on Sunday mornings to do his laundry. Hubbard believed strongly in productivity, which he saw as highly ethical behavior. "We reward production and up-statistics and penalize nonproduction and down-statistics," he wrote in <em>Introduction to Scientology Ethics</em>.</p><p>Eventually, Jeffrey found himself on "PTS watch," monitoring Sea Org members who wanted to leave the order. According to church officials, Sea Org members can leave anytime they want. But in practice, the attitude is "the only reason you'd want to leave is because you've done something wrong," says Jeffrey. This would call for a round of "sec checks," which would continue throughout the "route out" process, which can take up to a year. During that time, former Sea Org members have asserted, they are subjected to so much pressure they often decide not to leave after all.</p><p>To make sure no one would leave before their route-out was complete, Jeffrey would shadow them: "I've been assigned to go and sleep outside somebody's door — all night, for as many nights as it takes — on the floor, against the door, so I could feel if they opened it. If they went to the bathroom, someone would stand right outside. Someone is always there."</p><p>Some wayward members have "disappeared" for long periods of time, sent to special Scientology facilities known as the "Rehabilitation Project Force." Created by Hubbard in 1974, the RPF is described by the church as a voluntary rehabilitation program offering a "second chance" to Sea Org members who have become unproductive or have strayed from the church's codes. It involves intensive physical labor (at church facilities) and auditing and study sessions to address the individual's personal problems. The process is given a positive spin in church writings. "Personnel 'burnout' is not new to organizations," a post on Scientology's official Web site reads, in relation to the RPF, "but the concept of complete rehabilitation is."</p><p>Former Sea Org members who've been through the program charge that it is a form of re-indoctrination, in which hard physical labor and intense ideological study are used to break a subject's will. Chuck Beatty, a former Sea Org member, spent seven years in the RPF facilities in Southern California, from 1996 to 2003, after expressing a desire to speak out against the church. For this, he was accused of "disloyalty," a condition calling for rehabilitation. "My idea was to go to the RPF for six or eight months and then route out," says Beatty. "I thought that was the honorable thing to do." In the RPF he was given a "twin," or auditing partner, who was responsible for making sure he didn't escape. "It's a prison system," he says, explaining that all RPFers are watched twenty-four hours per day and prevented from having contact with the outside world. "It's a mind-bending situation where you feel like you're betraying the group if you try to leave."</p><p>Quiet and disciplined by nature, Jeffrey never minded the regimentation and order of the Sea Org. "I was wrapped up in work," he says. "And that's what I liked doing. And I thought I was helping people." But when he became ill, his perspective radically changed. For the first six years of his Sea Org service, Jeffrey had kept his asthma and other health issues in check. In the spring of 2004, he began to develop severe chest pains. By the summer, he was unable to work. By fall, he could barely get out of bed.</p><p>Scientologists believe that most illnesses are products of a person's own psychic traumas — they are brought upon themselves. Sea Org members are promised medical care for any illness, but Jeffrey says that he received little medical attention or money with which to seek outside medical care. Instead, he was sent to Ethics counseling. When that didn't cure him, it was suggested he return to the EPF to repeat his training.</p><p>Even while bedridden, "if I wasn't there pushing somebody to take me to a doctor . . . it didn't happen," he says. Lying in bed one night, Jeffrey listened to a taped lecture given by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he made his famous statement "If it isn't true for you, it isn't true." For Jeffrey, this began a questioning process that would eventually lead to his leaving Scientology altogether. "Nobody can force Scientology upon you, but that is exactly what was happening to me," he says.</p><p>And so, one day last February, he asked for some time off to see a doctor. Then he called his mother and asked her to come get him. When she arrived the next morning, Jeffrey left his keys and his Sea Organization ID card behind on his bed. Then, taking only his clothes, he left.</p><p>Now twenty-three, Jeffrey lives in a small mountain town more than four hours from Los Angeles. Since his "escape," as he calls it, from the Sea Org, he has not returned to the church. He has never spoken out about his experiences, which he still insists "weren't all that bad." But because he left the Sea Org without permission, he has been declared suppressive. Soon, he believes, his family still in the church will have nothing more to do with him.</p><p>The order of disconnection, called a "declare," is issued on a piece of gold-colored parchment known as a "goldenrod." This document proclaims the suppressive person's name, as well as his or her "crime." According to one friend of Jeffrey's mother who has read his declare, Jeffrey's crimes are vague, but every Scientologist who sees it will understand its point.</p><p>"This declare is a warning to Jeffrey's friends in the Sea Org," this woman, who is still a member of the church, explains. "It's saying to them, 'See this kid, he left without permission. This is what happened to him. Don't you make the same mistake.'"</p><p>* * * *</p><p>During the time I was researching this piece, I received a number of e-mails from several of the Scientologists I had interviewed. Most were still technically members of the church in good standing; privately they had grown disillusioned and have spoken about their feelings for the first time in this article. All of the young people mentioned in this story, save Natalie, are considered by the church hierarchy to be Potential Trouble Sources. But many have begun to worry they will be declared Suppressive Persons.</p><p>Their e-mails expressed their second thoughts and their fears.</p><p>"PLEASE, let me know what you will be writing in the story," wrote one young woman. "I just want to make sure that people won't be able to read it and figure out who I am. I know my mom will be reading."</p><p>"The church is a big, scary deal," wrote another. "My [initial] attitude was if this information could save just one person the money, heartache and mind-bending control, then all would be worth it. [But] I'm frightened of what could happen."</p><p>"I'm about two seconds away from losing my whole family, and if that story comes out with my stuff in it, I will," wrote a third. "I'm terrified. Please, please, please . . . if it's not too late . . . help me keep my family."</p><p>One particularly frantic e-mail arrived shortly before this story was published. It came from a young Scientologist with whom I had corresponded several times in the course of three or four months. When we first met, she spoke passionately and angrily about the impact of the church on herself and those close to her.</p><p>"Please forgive me," she wrote. "The huge majority of things I told you were lies. Perhaps I don't like Scientology. True. But what I do know is that I was born with the family I was born with, and I love them. Don't ask me to tear down the foundation of their lives." Like almost every young person mentioned in this piece, this woman was given a pseudonym to protect her identity, and her family's. But it wasn't enough, she decided. "This is my life . . . Accept what I tell you now for fact: I will not corroborate or back up a single thing I said.</p><p>"I'm so sorry," she concluded. "I hope you understand that everyone I love is terribly important to me, and I am willing to look beyond their beliefs in order to keep them around. I will explain in further detail, perhaps, some other day."</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-59029124196089545272009-06-05T08:37:00.002-04:002009-06-05T08:40:24.643-04:00The Potential Gayonomics and the Marriage Debate by Rachel F. Elson<a href="http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/simpsons-gay-marriage.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 306px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px" alt="" src="http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/simpsons-gay-marriage.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br /><p>The phones started ringing at the Timberholm Inn in Stowe, Vt., in April, as soon as lawmakers voted to override a gubernatorial veto and allow same-sex marriage in the state. "It doesn't go into effect till Sept. 1, but people are thinking ahead," says the inn's co-owner, Susan Barnes. "We've got two same-sex weddings booked for October." Those bookings are good news for Barnes, who says the gay-friendly inn takes in a "couple of thousand" dollars with every wedding it hosts. And they are part of the reason some same-sex-wedding advocates are now pointing out a new legalization angle: the economic payoff.</p><br /><p>In the five years since legalizing same-sex marriage, Massachusetts has gained $111 million in spending from gay weddings, according to a new study published by UCLA's Williams Institute, which studies sexual-orientation law and public policy. "That's money buying flowers, hotels, caterers, hiring a band—all the things that go into a wedding," explains M. V. Lee Badgett, a coauthor of the study.</p><br /><p>Typically, same-sex couples spent about $7,400 per wedding, says Badgett, an economist who is also director of UMass Amherst's Center for Public Policy & Administration, and one in 10 couples spent more than $20,000. And then there were the wedding guests: "We estimated that each same-sex couple was associated with $1,600 in hotel-occupancy tax revenue," she says.</p><br /><p>Promises of a gay-wedding payoff are hardly new: back in 2004, a U.S. Congressional Budget Office analysis predicted that the federal government would benefit by nearly $1 billion in increased tax revenue each year if same-sex marriages were legalized in all 50 states and recognized by the federal government. </p><br /><p>Still, some economists urge caution in looking for same-sex wedding profits—in particular citing a kind of "first-mover advantage" that benefits states with early gay-marriage laws. (After similar laws were passed in neighboring states Vermont and Maine, New Hampshire became the latest state <a class="external-link" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31090983/" target="_blank">to legalize same-sex marriage on Wednesday</a>, but the state might not gain as much as did Massachusetts, which has become a destination for gay couples from other states.)</p><br /><p>"If you're the 50th state to allow [same-sex] weddings, you're not going to get as much of a bump as the first state," says Michael Steinberger, an assistant professor of economics at Pomona College who worked with the Williams Institute on the Massachusetts study. "There's going to be a bump, but it cannot be as big."</p><br /><p>San Francisco's experience with same-sex weddings dates back five years, to early 2004, when Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed (and performed) gay weddings for about a month, until a state Supreme Court ruling put the kibosh on the nuptials. According to city budget documents, revenues from San Francisco's hotel tax spiked more than 15 percent in the 2003-04 fiscal year, the second-biggest jump in 19 years and well above the projected 5 percent increase.</p><br /><p>Ted Egan, chief economist with the San Francisco controller's office, warns against attributing the entire jump to just one month of same-sex weddings. Still, he says, "It obviously had a positive impact."</p><br /><p>Last year, Egan adds, the controller's office published an analysis estimating that same-sex weddings, officially legalized in California in June 2008, would bring in almost $20 million in spending over two years, and $1.7 million in additional taxes and fees. That revenue stream came to a halt in November, after California voters approved Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.</p><br /><p>Opponents of gay marriage argue that the financial analysis misses the mark. "I think it's irrelevant," says the Rev. Jason McGuire, legislative director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, a lobbying group that represents evangelical churches and Christian organizations and is fighting same-sex marriage legislation. "Marriage is more than just financial benefits," adds McGuire. "We shouldn't cheapen it by looking at it just as a financial commodity."</p><br /><p>Still, during hard times, economic arguments seem to be gaining traction. Vermont innkeeper Barnes says she contacted her state representative, Republican Heidi Scheuermann, to ask her to support the bill. "She was initially going to vote against it," Barnes says. "I sent her an e-mail saying, 'First, it's the right thing to do, and No. 2, think of your constituents and how this will affect the economy in Stowe'."</p><br /><p>Scheuermann voted yes on the bill both before and after the governor's veto. </p><!-- Omniture --><br /><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"><br /> <!-- var nw_page_name = "nw - article - 200365 - Gay-onomics and the Marriage Debate"; var nw_section = "tech and business"; var nw_subsection = "tech and business - business"; var nw_content_type = "article"; var nw_source = "newsweek.com"; var nw_search_result_count = "0"; var nw_content_id = "200365"; var nw_headline = "Gay-onomics and the Marriage Debate"; var nw_author = "rachel f. elson"; var nw_page_num = "print format"; var nw_application = "gutenberg"; var nw_hierarchy = "tech and businessbusinessarticles"; --><br /> </script></div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-18389414556347808142009-06-04T07:07:00.000-04:002009-06-04T07:08:03.358-04:00Speech Addressing Muslim World by Barak Obama<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; "><nyt_text><div id="articleBody"><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. Together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress. I am grateful for your hospitality, and the hospitality of the people of Egypt. I am also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: assalaamu alaykum.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">We meet at a time of tension between the United States and Muslims around the world – tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, and who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. This cycle of suspicion and discord must end.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I do so recognizing that change cannot happen overnight. No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." That is what I will try to do – to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I am a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam – at places like Al-Azhar University – that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's Renaissance and Enlightenment. It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra; our magnetic compass and tools of navigation; our mastery of pens and printing; our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America's story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, "The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims." And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers – Thomas Jefferson – kept in his personal library.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">But that same principle must apply to Muslim perceptions of America. Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire. The United States has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known. We were born out of revolution against an empire. We were founded upon the ideal that all are created equal, and we have shed blood and struggled for centuries to give meaning to those words – within our borders, and around the world. We are shaped by every culture, drawn from every end of the Earth, and dedicated to a simple concept: E pluribus unum: "Out of many, one."</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Much has been made of the fact that an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected President. But my personal story is not so unique. The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores – that includes nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today who enjoy incomes and education that are higher than average.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">So let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America. And I believe that America holds within her the truth that regardless of race, religion, or station in life, all of us share common aspirations – to live in peace and security; to get an education and to work with dignity; to love our families, our communities, and our God. These things we share. This is the hope of all humanity.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Of course, recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task. Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to meet them will hurt us all.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">For we have learned from recent experience that when a financial system weakens in one country, prosperity is hurt everywhere. When a new flu infects one human being, all are at risk. When one nation pursues a nuclear weapon, the risk of nuclear attack rises for all nations. When violent extremists operate in one stretch of mountains, people are endangered across an ocean. And when innocents in Bosnia and Darfur are slaughtered, that is a stain on our collective conscience. That is what it means to share this world in the 21st century. That is the responsibility we have to one another as human beings.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">This is a difficult responsibility to embrace. For human history has often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes are self-defeating. Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past, we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership; progress must be shared.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">That does not mean we should ignore sources of tension. Indeed, it suggests the opposite: we must face these tensions squarely. And so in that spirit, let me speak as clearly and plainly as I can about some specific issues that I believe we must finally confront together.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">In Ankara, I made clear that America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The situation in Afghanistan demonstrates America's goals, and our need to work together. Over seven years ago, the United States pursued al Qaeda and the Taliban with broad international support. We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet Al Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">That's why we're partnering with a coalition of forty-six countries. And despite the costs involved, America's commitment will not weaken. Indeed, none of us should tolerate these extremists. They have killed in many countries. They have killed people of different faiths – more than any other, they have killed Muslims. Their actions are irreconcilable with the rights of human beings, the progress of nations, and with Islam. The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">We also know that military power alone is not going to solve the problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why we plan to invest $1.5 billion each year over the next five years to partner with Pakistanis to build schools and hospitals, roads and businesses, and hundreds of millions to help those who have been displaced. And that is why we are providing more than $2.8 billion to help Afghans develop their economy and deliver services that people depend upon.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Today, America has a dual responsibility: to help Iraq forge a better future – and to leave Iraq to Iraqis. I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq's sovereignty is its own. That is why I ordered the removal of our combat brigades by next August. That is why we will honor our agreement with Iraq's democratically-elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, and to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012. We will help Iraq train its Security Forces and develop its economy. But we will support a secure and united Iraq as a partner, and never as a patron.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter our principles. 9/11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals. We are taking concrete actions to change course. I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">So America will defend itself respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews – is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers – for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">That is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest, and the world's interest. That is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience that the task requires. The obligations that the parties have agreed to under the Road Map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them – and all of us – to live up to our responsibilities.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Israel must also live up to its obligations to ensure that Palestinians can live, and work, and develop their society. And just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security; neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Finally, the Arab States must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel's legitimacy; and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. We cannot impose peace. But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Too many tears have flowed. Too much blood has been shed. All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The third source of tension is our shared interest in the rights and responsibilities of nations on nuclear weapons.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">This issue has been a source of tension between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I have made it clear to Iran's leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The question, now, is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">It will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude and resolve. There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect. But it is clear to all concerned that when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point. This is not simply about America's interests. It is about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons. That is why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. And any nation – including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the Treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I am hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The fourth issue that I will address is democracy.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq. So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">There is no straight line to realize this promise. But this much is clear: governments that protect these rights are ultimately more stable, successful and secure. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments – provided they govern with respect for all their people.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they are out of power; once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others. No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The fifth issue that we must address together is religious freedom.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition. I saw it firsthand as a child in Indonesia, where devout Christians worshiped freely in an overwhelmingly Muslim country. That is the spirit we need today. People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind, heart, and soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Among some Muslims, there is a disturbing tendency to measure one's own faith by the rejection of another's. The richness of religious diversity must be upheld – whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt. And fault lines must be closed among Muslims as well, as the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence, particularly in Iraq.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit – for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Indeed, faith should bring us together. That is why we are forging service projects in America that bring together Christians, Muslims, and Jews. That is why we welcome efforts like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah's Interfaith dialogue and Turkey's leadership in the Alliance of Civilizations. Around the world, we can turn dialogue into Interfaith service, so bridges between peoples lead to action – whether it is combating malaria in Africa, or providing relief after a natural disaster.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The sixth issue that I want to address is women's rights.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I know there is debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Now let me be clear: issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity – men and women – to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. That is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">Finally, I want to discuss economic development and opportunity.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I know that for many, the face of globalization is contradictory. The Internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and changing communities. In all nations – including my own – this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we will lose of control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities – those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">But I also know that human progress cannot be denied. There need not be contradiction between development and tradition. Countries like Japan and South Korea grew their economies while maintaining distinct cultures. The same is true for the astonishing progress within Muslim-majority countries from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai. In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">This is important because no development strategy can be based only upon what comes out of the ground, nor can it be sustained while young people are out of work. Many Gulf States have enjoyed great wealth as a consequence of oil, and some are beginning to focus it on broader development. But all of us must recognize that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century, and in too many Muslim communities there remains underinvestment in these areas. I am emphasizing such investments within my country. And while America in the past has focused on oil and gas in this part of the world, we now seek a broader engagement.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">On education, we will expand exchange programs, and increase scholarships, like the one that brought my father to America, while encouraging more Americans to study in Muslim communities. And we will match promising Muslim students with internships in America; invest in on-line learning for teachers and children around the world; and create a new online network, so a teenager in Kansas can communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">On economic development, we will create a new corps of business volunteers to partner with counterparts in Muslim-majority countries. And I will host a Summit on Entrepreneurship this year to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">On science and technology, we will launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries, and to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create jobs. We will open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and appoint new Science Envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new crops. And today I am announcing a new global effort with the Organization of the Islamic Conference to eradicate polio. And we will also expand partnerships with Muslim communities to promote child and maternal health.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">All these things must be done in partnership. Americans are ready to join with citizens and governments; community organizations, religious leaders, and businesses in Muslim communities around the world to help our people pursue a better life.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The issues that I have described will not be easy to address. But we have a responsibility to join together on behalf of the world we seek – a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God's children are respected. Those are mutual interests. That is the world we seek. But we can only achieve it together.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">I know there are many – Muslim and non-Muslim – who question whether we can forge this new beginning. Some are eager to stoke the flames of division, and to stand in the way of progress. Some suggest that it isn't worth the effort – that we are fated to disagree, and civilizations are doomed to clash. Many more are simply skeptical that real change can occur. There is so much fear, so much mistrust. But if we choose to be bound by the past, we will never move forward. And I want to particularly say this to young people of every faith, in every country – you, more than anyone, have the ability to remake this world.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn't new; that isn't black or white or brown; that isn't Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It's a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It's a faith in other people, and it's what brought me here today.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."</p><p style="color: black; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px; ">The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now, that must be our work here on Earth. Thank you. And may God's peace be upon you.</p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></div><nyt_update_bottom></nyt_update_bottom></div></nyt_text></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-41385625551119443432009-06-04T00:30:00.002-04:002009-06-04T00:35:15.820-04:00Green Shoots, Red Ink, Black Holes by Eliot Spitzer<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; "><p> have an unfortunate sense that the "green shoots" in the economy that everyone is talking about are nothing but dandelions. Sure, forcing $1 trillion of taxpayer money—in direct capital, guarantees, and diminished cost of borrowing—into the banking sector has permitted the major banks to claim solvency for the moment. Yet we should not forget that this solvency has come not through a much needed deleveraging of the banking sector but rather from a massive transfer of the obligations of private banks to the public, with the debt accruing to future generations. And overall loan quality at U.S. banks is still the worst in 25 years and deteriorating at the fastest pace ever.</p><p>It's a terrible mistake to confuse the momentary solvency of the financial sector and the long-term health of our economy.</p><p>While we have addressed the credit collapse, we have not begun to tackle the far more daunting, and more significant, structural problems in the economy. Instead of focusing on the green shoots, let's examine the macro data that will determine our national prosperity in the next generation. These data are terrifying.</p><p>Start with the job front. Long term, nothing is more fundamental than good jobs to creating the middle-class wealth that must drive the economy. The creation of true middle-class jobs was the great success of our economy from 1950s through the mid-1990s. Consider the job data, in aggregate and by sector, from the past decade. (All data are from the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.)</p><p></p><table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1" border="0"><tbody><tr align="center" bgcolor="#f5f5f5"><td colspan="7" rowspan="1"><strong>Unemployment Rate by Industry</strong></td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Year</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Unemployment rate</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Manufacturing Jobs <br />(in millions)</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Serv. Jobs</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Gov't. Jobs</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Total Jobs</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Population</strong></td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">1999</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">4.3</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">18.48</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">102.23</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">20.09</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">133</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">272</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">2004</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">5.6</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">14.3</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">108.64</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">21.5</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">138.38</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">292</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">2009</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">8.9</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">12.4</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">113.82</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">22.54</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">141.57</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">305</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>One-third of our manufacturing jobs have disappeared in a decade! And while population grew 12.1 percent over the decade, jobs grew by only 6.4 percent. The unemployment number, moreover, doesn't count those who are "marginally attached to the labor force," because even though they want to work and are available to do so, they have not sought a job in the past four weeks. In raw numbers, the total number of individuals counted as currently unemployed and those who are marginally attached is a staggering 15.8 million. That is an enormous mountain of job creation to climb.</p><p>This transition away from actual goods production is not merely a consequence of the current economic cataclysm. The trend line has been clear for years and is reflected in the overall escalation in the trade deficits we have incurred:</p><p></p><table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1" border="0"><tbody><tr align="center" bgcolor="#f5f5f5"><td colspan="4" rowspan="1"><strong>Aggregate Deficit/Goods/Services</strong></td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Year</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Aggregate Deficit <br />(in millions of dollars )<br /></strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Goods</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Services</strong></td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">1994</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-98,493</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-165,831</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">67,338</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">1999</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-265,090</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-347,819</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">82,729</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">2004</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-607,730</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-669,578</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">61,848</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">2008</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-681,130</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-820,825</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">139,695</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>The actual deficit in goods has multiplied fivefold in 15 years. The notion that service exports will somehow balance our increasing goods deficit has not been borne out and is increasingly less likely to be in the future, given that certain service sectors, such as financial services, are in sharp decline domestically. Moreover, the services we had expected to export are increasingly becoming sources of growth overseas. It is hard to believe that China will want or need to import U.S. investment banking services a decade (or a month) from now.</p><p>Even more dramatic than the growth of the trade deficit, of course, is the escalation of the federal budget deficit.</p><p></p><table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1" bgcolor="#ffffff" border="0"><tbody><tr align="center" bordercolor="#ffffff" bgcolor="#f5f5f5"><td colspan="5" rowspan="1"><strong>Annual Deficit/Aggregate Federal Debt</strong></td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Year</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Annual Deficit <br />(in millions of dollars)</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>As Percent of GDP</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Aggregate Federal Debt <br />(in trillions of dollars)</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>As Percent of GDP</strong></td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">1994</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-203,186</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-2.9</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">4.692</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">66.35</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">1999</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">125,610</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">1.4</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">5.656</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">61.03</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">2004</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-412,727</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-3.6</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">7.379</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">63.14</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><p>2009 [est]</p></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-1,845,000</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">-13.1</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">11.305</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">82</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>The argument until now has been that the virtually unlimited appetite for American T-bills would permit us to issue this increasing debt without interest rates accelerating and the dollar suffering. Recent events have cast serious doubt on this assumption. The spread between two-year Treasury notes and 10-year notes is wider than it's ever been. And the Chinese government seems less and less enthusiastic about purchasing an unlimited supply of T-bills. (Has anyone wondered why we have said not a word about Chinese human rights abuses during this economic crisis and why Treasury Secretary Geithner has withdrawn the well-founded assertion that the Chinese have been manipulating the value of their currency?)</p><p>Now all of this might have been acceptable had we seen a remarkable increase in per capita income. We have not. Indeed, we have seen just the opposite: stagnation.</p><p></p><table cellspacing="2" cellpadding="1" border="0"><tbody><tr align="center" bgcolor="#f5f5f5"><td colspan="2" rowspan="1"><strong>Median Household Income in Constant Dollars</strong></td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Year</strong></td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1"><strong>Median Household Income in Constant Dollars</strong></td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">1999</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">50,641</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">2004</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">48,665</td></tr><tr align="center"><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">2007 [most recent avail.]</td><td colspan="1" rowspan="1">50,233</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>So, despite trillions in public spending, we are short millions of jobs, are rapidly sliding further into debt, are losing our capacity to borrow at a manageable cost, and are producing fewer of the goods that will generate real wealth.</p><p>The remarkable payments to the financial services sector and the auto industry—a quarter-trillion-dollar investment in AIG and GM alone—have produced no structural change at all. We are rebuilding the same edifice—fragile as before.</p><p>Where does this leave us? We have had a fundamentally misguided industrial policy over the past decade. Yes, <em>industrial policy</em> is a dirty phrase to many, some of whom would argue that we haven't had one, and indeed shouldn't. But the truth is we did have one: to leverage up and guarantee the bets of a financial services sector that has now collapsed and left nothing of value in its wake.</p><p>What would be a better approach? A policy to support those sectors that actually create goods and value. Investment in transformational technology and infrastructure are core national needs. So why not start with a government order for 500,000 electric cars, subject to an RFP two years from now, by which time a true electric car prototype will have been developed? It should be open to <em>any</em> manufacturer, as long as 75 percent of the value of the car is domestically produced. I don't care if the name on the plate is GM or Toyota, as long as the value added is here. (I prefer a "Toyota" produced in Tennessee to a "GM" produced in China. Why struggle to save the shell of a company—GM—that intends to ship jobs overseas anyway?) Guaranteeing an order of 500,000 will give manufacturers the needed scale to generate profits and reassure private customers that service and support will be around for the long haul. And the federal government could also issue an RFP for recharging stations, to be built by private companies, along the interstate highway system, wherever there is a traditional filling station, so that recharging will be possible.</p><p>Second, why not take an amount equal to the AIG bailout (more than $180 billion) and invest in a product that would be truly worthwhile: high-speed rail along our major economic corridors? If we transform the L.A.-San Francisco corridor with high-speed rail, and D.C.-Boston similarly, the savings and technological advances would be enormous. The $8 billion dedicated to high-speed rail in the stimulus package will accomplish little.</p><p>Wouldn't these be dollars better spent than those dedicated to propping up GM and AIG? The longer we fight the creative destruction of the marketplace by resuscitating dying companies, the slower our ability to shift capital to truly creative sectors in the economy will be.</p></span>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-2357563143410743142009-06-02T16:51:00.000-04:002009-06-02T16:52:32.308-04:00Change We Can't Believe in by James SurowieckiAs you walk into the Retiro train station in downtown Buenos Aires these days, you pass a long line of people snaking their way from the station’s entrance to a single window. At first glance, this is unsurprising: what’s more common than a queue in a train station? But there is something distinctive about this line: it ends at a window bearing a sign that reads “Coins.” The people standing patiently in line are not, it turns out, waiting to buy train tickets. Instead, they’re waiting to do something that’s become very difficult in Buenos Aires: make change.<br />The Retiro queue is a sign of the most peculiar economic crisis in recent memory: the great Buenos Aires coin shortage. For well over a year now, small change has been hard to come by there. Stores hang “No Coins” signs in their windows, and offer candies instead of change. Taxi-drivers round up—or down—to avoid giving up precious coins, while smaller merchants sometimes turn away business if you have only bills to offer them. The government has fined banks thousands of pesos for refusing to hand over coins, and, in October, the city’s subways became temporarily free when the booths ran short of change. For the average Bonaerense, everyday transactions now entail a complicated calculation of where coins can be acquired and when they will be needed.<br />That’s especially true because most people need change to get around Buenos Aires: the city’s buses accept only coins. This has made them an obvious culprit in the shortage, as they take in millions of pesos in coins but, unlike other businesses, don’t hand any out. If the bus companies hold onto the coins rather than depositing them in a bank, they can make a significant dent in the amount of change in circulation. And they did have an incentive to do this: before the government cracked down on them, they were reselling coins to businesses at a hefty markup.<br />But the buses alone can’t be responsible for the shortage: they’ve been coin-operated for many years, while the coin famine is a recent phenomenon. So two other theories of the origin of the crisis are regularly floated in the city. The first is that the left-wing government of Argentina is conspiring to make the right-wing government of Buenos Aires look bad, before coming to the rescue itself. And, indeed, the national government is supposedly implementing a plan for electronic bus cards, though it’s now well behind schedule. The second, and more common, explanation is that people are hoarding coins because inflation is making the metal in them more valuable than their face value.<br />Hoarding of this sort, and the resulting coin shortages, was once a recurring economic problem, one that the Italian economic historian Carlo Cipolla dubbed “the big problem of small change.” But these shortages were thought to be a feature of premodern times, when coins were made out of precious metal, and people literally brought silver to the mint to have it turned into coins. If the value of silver rose beyond the face value of coins, hoarding silver was a natural response. Today, coins are government-issued tokens, and their value is theoretically unconnected to the metal they contain.<br /><a href="http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sid=67839&did=4&sitetype=1&affiliate=ny-randomcart" target="_blank"></a><br /><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/humor/issuecartoons">from the issue</a><br /><a href="http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sid=67839&did=4&sitetype=1&affiliate=ny-randomcart" target="_new">cartoon bank</a><br /><a onclick="cartoon.setEmailOverride();" href="http://www.newyorker.com/contact/emailFriend?referringPage=http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sid=67839&did=4&sitetype=1&affiliate=ny-randomcart">e-mail this</a><br />This isn’t to say that the material worth of a coin’s metal can’t still exceed its face value; the rising value of zinc, for instance, meant that, last year, every new penny issued cost the U.S. Mint about 1.7 cents. But hoarding no longer makes sense unless it’s done on a large scale, and most people in Buenos Aires are not melting down their coins into hunks of copper. Yet, even if they’re not, the anxiety that others might be hoarding coins and melting them down seems to have been enough to start a panic. Hoarding causes shortages, but shortages also promote more hoarding.<br />It’s no coincidence that this kind of panic has taken hold in Argentina: the country’s history of financial crises has made people there profoundly skeptical of the way markets work. The sharp spike in inflation in the past couple of years, for instance, was almost certainly exacerbated by Argentina’s previous experience with hyperinflation. Businesses that have gone through an episode of hyperinflation become understandably alert to the threat of it: at the first hint of inflation, they’re likely to increase prices, since they’ve learned that if they don’t, and inflation hits, their businesses will be wrecked. In the same way, when it comes to holding onto coins, people hoard first and ask questions later.<br />You could, then, dismiss the Buenos Aires coin shortage as an anomaly. But the Argentine experience actually underscores the degree to which all modern financial systems depend on confidence, and the problems that erupt when that confidence disappears. In the U.S., after all, the chaos of last year both led to and has been exacerbated by a shortage of its own: credit. As people became worried about the health of the system, they took money out of any investment that smacked of risk and put it into cash (bank deposits have soared in the past six months) or government bonds. That, in turn, made others more anxious: less willing to lend and more interested in holding onto their money. Fear bred a credit crunch, which, in turn, bred more fear. And if fear has left the Argentines with too few coins, it has left us, paradoxically, with too much cash (and too little credit). This isn’t to say that financial crises are all in our head; certainly our own was sparked by problems that were very real. But there is an irreducible psychological dimension to both crises and recoveries. And if it’s hard for people in Buenos Aires to give up their pennies, think how much harder it will be for Americans to start taking risks againboredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-89556476036866853112009-06-02T16:07:00.001-04:002009-06-02T16:10:50.266-04:00How GM Lost its Way by Paul Ingrassia<a href="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AJ588_ingras_G_20090601153249.jpg"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 553px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 369px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AJ588_ingras_G_20090601153249.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Decades of dumb decisions helped send General Motors to a bankruptcy court yesterday, but one stands out.<br />The year was 1998, and the United Auto Workers was striking at two factories in Flint, Mich., that made components critical to every GM assembly plant in the country. The union was defending production quotas that workers could fill in five or six hours, after which they would get overtime pay or just, you know, go home.<br />Most strikes are forbidden during the life of a labor contract, so to provide legal cover the union started filing grievances. GM lawyers contended the walkouts violated the contract anyway and drafted a lawsuit -- the first by the company against the UAW in more than 60 years. But GM's labor-relations department freaked out because the lawsuit would antagonize the union.<br /><a class="" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124389995447074461.html"></a>Chad Crowe<br />Just think about that. The union had shut down virtually all of GM, costing the company and its shareholders billions of dollars, and yet the company's labor negotiators were afraid of giving offense. After heated internal arguments, the suit was filed and GM seemed on the verge of winning. But the company settled just before the judge ruled.<br />UAW members marched victoriously through downtown Flint. GM executives who advocated a tougher stand got pushed out of the company.<br />The picture of a heedless union and a feckless management says a lot about what went wrong at GM. There were many more mistakes, of course -- look-alike cars, lapses in quality, misguided acquisitions, and betting on big SUVs just before gas prices soared. They were all born of a uniquely insular corporate culture.<br />The GM bailout probably will cost close to $100 billion, counting money from the governments of the U.S., Canada and Germany. On paper, the new company should emerge from Chapter 11 fully able to compete in the brutally competitive auto industry. Whether it will actually prosper is far less certain, but some things are beyond dispute. Bankruptcy didn't have to happen and the fact that it did happen is incredibly sad given GM's many contributions to American society and culture.<br />General Motors invented the modern corporation by developing the concept of giving operating executives power and responsibility to run far-flung operations subject to central financial control. While Henry Ford invented mass manufacturing, GM's long-time president and chairman of the board, Alfred P. Sloan Jr., developed mass marketing: a "car for every purse and purpose," as he put it in the company's 1924 annual report. This meant a hierarchy of brands ranging from practical Chevrolets to prestigious Cadillacs. GM's industrial might helped win a world war and made America rich in its aftermath.<br />For half a century, between the 1920s and the 1970s, GM seemed to have an instinctive feel for what Americans wanted before consumers themselves even knew it. Chrome, tail fins, muscle cars and even the first catalytic converters that let cars run on lead-free gasoline were developed at GM.<br />But the company signed generous labor deals during the 1970s, including the right to retire after 30 years with full pension and benefits, partly because it believed the contracts would cripple its smaller competitors, Ford and Chrysler. Then along came Honda, Nissan and Toyota, which didn't have to deal with labor contracts at all. That was the beginning of the agonizing decline.<br />This fate could have been avoided with better foresight and less hubris, but by 18 months ago bankruptcy was inevitable. GM's U.S. market share had declined to 22% from 52% in the early 1960s. There were too many brands, too much debt, a cumbersome union contract as big as a phone book, and an enormous dealer network built for the glory years of yesterday instead of the market share of today.<br />The question for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama was whether to stand by and watch, or instead to use the public purse to shape the bankruptcies of both Chrysler and GM to mitigate the damage to a shaky U.S. economy. They intervened, which was the unpleasant but correct decision.<br />By and large, Mr. Obama's automotive task force has done its job pretty well, forcing the companies and the UAW to make difficult decisions that they should have made themselves long ago. GM will shed four of its eight U.S. brands -- Saab, Saturn, Pontiac and Hummer -- thousands of dealers, 11 factories, and much of its debt. It is no small irony that a Democratic administration brought in a bunch of private-equity types to impose rational management on big business.<br />That said, a couple of aspects of the GM and Chrysler bailouts could come back to haunt U.S. taxpayers and the Obama administration.<br />The company that controls Chrysler, Italy's Fiat, is getting a special government incentive -- a potential increase in its Chrysler ownership stake -- to build a small car in America that will get 40 miles per gallon. General Motors made a similar decision to build a high-mileage small car in the U.S. of its own accord, but certainly with an eye toward current political "realities."<br />Both moves fit the green agenda of Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats. They're also egregious examples of mission creep. GM and Chrysler should get just one marching order from the government: Earn enough money so taxpayers will recover as much as their investment as possible. If the new small cars flop because gas prices drop, the result will be more losses and, potentially, Bailout II.<br />The other questionable call is the government's big ownership stake in both companies -- 60% of General Motors and a much smaller share of Chrysler. The rationale is reasonable. The government is providing the $50 billion of financing needed to restructure GM so taxpayers might as well get something for their money. But this relegates unsecured lenders to the back of the line behind the government and the union. More worrisome, it invokes the question famously asked before the U.S. invasion of Iraq: You can go in, but can you get out?<br />The answer will depend on the success of GM, which in turn will hinge on whether the new company can cast off the culture of the old one. One encouraging sign is that, thanks to the labor contract amendments imposed by the Treasury's task force, UAW members will be required to work 40 hours a week before getting overtime pay. Less encouraging is that workers still will be allowed six unexcused absences before being fired. It doesn't take that many at a Honda plant.<br />As for management, not long ago a group of executives was reviewing a prototype new Buick model, about the size of a BMW 3 Series, at GM's design studios. The sporty styling had been developed in China for sale both there and in the U.S. But the company's cautious product planners suggested conducting customer clinics to gauge reaction to the design and possibly changing both the front and back end. It would have delayed the project and cost tens of millions of dollars.<br />CEO Fritz Henderson wisely said no. But the very next day the product planners were charging ahead with their clinic plans anyway, just in case the boss wanted to see the results of their research. Maybe the new Buick should be named the CYA. Neither billions in losses nor the brink of bankruptcy, it seems, have been enough to change many traditional ways of doing things at GM.<br />Heaven only knows what will be enough. But a company with a cautious, slow-moving management and a union committed to defending ridiculous work rules won't have a chance of succeeding. Perhaps everyone remaining at the new GM will realize that. The rest of us can only hope for the best.</div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3970894758567551248.post-11809101484521480152009-06-02T09:24:00.002-04:002009-06-02T09:27:40.591-04:00Reagan Did It by Paul Krugman<a href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/69/218314485_ae72f5564b.jpg?v=0"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 385px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 500px" alt="" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/69/218314485_ae72f5564b.jpg?v=0" border="0" /></a><br /><div>This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. ... All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.” So declared Ronald Reagan in 1982, as he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act.<br />He was, as it happened, wrong about solving the problems of the thrifts. On the contrary, the bill turned the modest-sized troubles of savings-and-loan institutions into an utter catastrophe. But he was right about the legislation’s significance. And as for that jackpot — well, it finally came more than 25 years later, in the form of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.<br />For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.<br />Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.<br />On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.<br />The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.<br />The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.<br />But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.<br />These restrictions were put in place in the 1930s by political leaders who had just experienced a terrible financial crisis, and were trying to prevent another. But by 1980 the memory of the Depression had faded. Government, declared Reagan, is the problem, not the solution; the magic of the marketplace must be set free. And so the precautionary rules were scrapped.<br />Together with looser lending standards for other kinds of consumer credit, this led to a radical change in American behavior.<br />We weren’t always a nation of big debts and low savings: in the 1970s Americans saved almost 10 percent of their income, slightly more than in the 1960s. It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life, culminating in the near-zero savings rate that prevailed on the eve of the great crisis. Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.<br />All this, we were assured, was a good thing: sure, Americans were piling up debt, and they weren’t putting aside any of their income, but their finances looked fine once you took into account the rising values of their houses and their stock portfolios. Oops.<br />Now, the proximate causes of today’s economic crisis lie in events that took place long after Reagan left office — in the global savings glut created by surpluses in China and elsewhere, and in the giant housing bubble that savings glut helped inflate.<br />But it was the explosion of debt over the previous quarter-century that made the U.S. economy so vulnerable. Overstretched borrowers were bound to start defaulting in large numbers once the housing bubble burst and unemployment began to rise.<br />These defaults in turn wreaked havoc with a financial system that — also mainly thanks to Reagan-era deregulation — took on too much risk with too little capital.<br />There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it. </div>boredatworkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10957190432404843148noreply@blogger.com0