The Chronicle of Higher Education The Neoconservative-Conspiracy Theory: Pure Myth

"The ruins of Saddam Hussein's shattered tyranny may provide additional evidence of chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, but one poisonous by-product has already begun to seep from under the rubble. It is a conspiracy theory purporting to explain how the foreign policy of the world's greatest power, the United States, has been captured by a sinister and hitherto little-known cabal."

"Ultimately, the neocon-conspiracy theory misinterprets as a policy coup a reasoned shift in grand strategy that the Bush administration has adopted in responding to an ominous form of external threat. Whether that strategy and its component parts prove to be as robust and effective as containment of hostile Middle Eastern states linked to terrorism remains to be seen. But to characterize it in conspiratorial terms is not only a failure to weigh policy choices on their merits, but represents a detour into the fever swamps of political demagoguery."

Counterpunch Battling for the Soul of the American Republic

"But what the neocons seek is not just a political transformation of the Middle East. Their end game is to bring about "the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam." These ideologues are fundamentally confrontational in nature. They recognize that American military intervention in the Middle East will provoke terrorist attacks on Americans, both at home and abroad. They would welcome such an attack, since the terrorists would provide the U.S. with the pretext for even stronger military intervention. Neocons believe that the U.S. will emerge triumphant in the end, provided that it shows the will to fight the war against militant Islam to a successful conclusion, and provided too, that it has "the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated parties." All of these policies suggest that the neocons believe they have liberated the U.S. from the constraints of history in a post-9/11 world."

redux [04.07.03]
Policy Review Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint

"Iraq forces the imperial question. In the aftermath of an Iraqi war, it may suffice to install a friendly autocracy, withdraw the bulk of our forces, and exert our influence from afar. Yet some have called for more. From voices within the administration like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, to policy intellectuals like Richard Perle, to esteemed scholars like Bernard Lewis, many have argued that only a democratic transformation of Iraq, and eventually of the larger Arab world, can provide long-term security against terrorism and nuclear attack.

In an important address in February, George W. Bush lent his voice to this chorus."

"Could such a venture in democratic imperialism be harmonized with our liberal principles? Even if so, would it work? Is it possible to bring liberalism to a society so long at odds with the values of the West?"

JSOnline Neoconservative clout seen in U.S. Iraq policy

"Led by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, the neoconservatives have offered a sweeping new vision for U.S. foreign policy: to restructure the Middle East and supplant dictators around the world, using pre-emptive attacks when necessary against any countries seen as potential threats. Traditional conservatives, such as Heritage Foundation fellow John C. Hulsman, suggest that this will lead to "endless war," while Jessica Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has charged that "announcing a global crusade on behalf of democracy is arrogant."

Whether Bush ends up sticking with the neoconservative playbook remains to be seen, but a wide range of observers suggest it is a key part of his current game plan."

Project for the New American Century Power & Duty: U.S. Action is Crucial to Maintaining World Order

"The unavoidable reality is that the exercise of American power is key to maintaining what peace and order there is in the world today. Imagine a world in which the U.S. didn't exercise this power. Who would handle a nuclear-armed North Korea? Who would prevent the one-party state of China from acting on its pledge to gather democratic Taiwan into its fold? Who would be left to hunt down Islamic terrorists increasingly interested in getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction? Who could have contained, let alone defeated, a tyrant like Hussein, preventing him from becoming the dominant power in the Middle East? Who can prevent the Balkans from slipping back into chaos? Who is going to confront regimes like those of Iran, Syria and Libya as they rush to get their own weapons of mass destruction? Given how little most of our allies and critics spend on defense, certainly not them."

"Like the townsfolk in "High Noon," this naturally makes many in the world anxious. Change always brings risk and instability. But the danger in doing nothing -- of pretending that the volatile Middle East mix of failing regimes, rogue states, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism can be contained safely if we only let it alone -- is far greater."

Washington Monthly Practice to Deceive

"To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.

In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future.""

Guardian Unlimited A fearful war to remember

"We have all misunderstood the past 20 years, the transition from Cold War to the 'new world disorder'. The time when the United States really dominated the world was then, not now. It was before the fall of the Soviet empire that American authority was unchallenged across most of the globe. But now the Cold War disciplines have gone. America finds the world uncontrollable, flinging down one challenge after another. American military power is colossal and still growing. But the political purpose that made it effective has been lost. Before 1989, America's role in the world was obvious: the containment and reduction of Communism. Today, the lonely superpower stands baffled, uncertain how to use its strength, defied by men with box-cutters, backstreet snipers and tens of millions of young demonstrators.

This is why the 'Project for a New American Century' arose. This neo-conservative programme, hatched during Clinton's presidency by a group that included Rumsfeld, Wolfovitz and many others now guiding Bush, at least tried to provide American military supremacy with a clear political aim to replace anti-Communism. The trouble is that the Project, expressed in the new defence doctrine of pre-emptive war against states fancied to offer a threat to American security, cannot work in the twenty-first century world."

The Globe and Mail Don't brush aside the analysts when cleaning up the Street

"Only the most simple-minded of investors would believe that the Street's problems were solved yesterday when two disgraced analysts had their heads served up on a platter."

"Life is just a bit more complex than this."

Forbes For Wall Street, Fines Are A Day's Pay

"First, the fines, while large in absolute terms, are tiny compared to the big banks' revenue. Merrill Lynch, for instance, will pay $200 million. But last year, the company reported revenue of $28 billion (down from $45 billion in 2000). That works out to $112 million a day, not counting weekends. So the total fine, only half of which is a penalty, represents 1.8 days of Merrill's revenue. Since the conduct Merrill and the others are accused of took place over at least four years, it's fair to say that Merrill is paying less than a day's pay for its transgression."

redux [05.21.02]
Salon Lock up the analysts and throw away the key

"But will individual analysts take a fall? History suggests they won't. White-collar criminals almost never pay out of pocket or go to jail. The reasons go deeper than just the ability of analysts to hire the best lawyers. According to experts, American capitalism at the turn of the 20th century does a great job of encouraging entrepreneurship and risk taking but lacks an effective mechanism for punishing those who go too far. The two predominant legal responses -- the criminal prosecution and civil class-action suit -- continually fail to do the job."

The Street Stock Analysts' Dirty Little Secret

"The real skinny is that virtually no one who matters in the investment industry -- which is to say, portfolio managers at large pension, mutual and hedge funds -- ever took nine-tenths of research reports seriously. Only the public did. As I explained in my book Online Investing, analysts at the major brokerages for years have been looked down upon by institutional investors as sales support staff, a pack of kids with fancy college degrees who provided little more than PR material for the retail brokerage and investment banking teams. If they were called "promoters" rather than "analysts," the public would have had a better idea of their role in the retail investment ecosystem. The funds have their own, unbiased, independent staff analysts."

redux [04.19.02]
The Motley Fool How Do Analysts Sleep?

"It should have been the "big-freaking-surprise" story of the year, and yet we still find ourselves shocked at the cynicism and self-interest of Wall Street's equity analysts. We have known, and yet not known, that analysts commanded enormous salaries based in no small part on their ability to drive investment banking business to their companies. After the Attorney General of New York's inquiry, we know for sure, and the truth is as bad as we imagined."

redux [04.10.02]
The Washington Post Analysts Accused Of Touting Tech 'Junk' To Boost Profits

"At the height of the technology bubble, Henry Blodget and other Internet analysts at Merrill Lynch & Co. issued glowing reports about companies that would later crash, while privately deriding the stocks to one another in salty, dismissive language.

One company given a top rating by analysts was described in-house as "a piece of junk." Another was called "such a piece of crap," even though analysts in Merrill's Internet group told investors to buy more of it for their portfolios. One analyst worried that regular investors "are losing their retirement" because of the misleading advice."

redux [08.21.01]
The Standard Days of Reckoning

"There is something a bit disingenuous about this legal assault, which is, after all, mainly about people who lost money speculating in the stock market. Some are suing because they couldn't get shares in initial public offerings at the offering price; others are suing because they got the shares and lost money on them. Federal regulators and politicians are suddenly shocked - shocked! - to discover that conflicts of interest are rampant on Wall Street.

Still, with $3.3 trillion up in smoke since the Nasdaq hit its peak in March 2000, it's hardly surprising that the people and institutions that helped engineer the epic Internet bubble are being called to account. And for the technology finance industry - which was transformed by the Nasdaq's boom from a relatively obscure West Coast offshoot of Wall Street into a major source of growth and profits for top-tier firms such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston and Merrill Lynch - it's going to be a painful reckoning indeed."

redux [07.19.01]
The New York Times Opinion Page Cleaning Up Stock Market Research
[requires 'free' registration]

"Investment banks, whose analysts were touting stocks with overwhelming zeal even as the stock market started crashing, are now trying to rehabilitate their images. Last week Merrill Lynch , by some measures the world's biggest investment bank, declared that except under strictly monitored circumstances, its analysts would be prohibited from holding shares in the companies they research. The goal is to remove any incentive for them to boost a stock to ensure their own enrichment. But this novel policy will not entirely prevent conflicts of interest from arising. It should be regarded as a springboard to a more complete revamping of the relationship between publicly available research and investment banking."

redux [06.27.01]
News.Com Will Wall Street analysts turn apologetic?

"Wall Street analysts are known for a lot of things--being too optimistic, failing to warn investors about the dot-com crash, and being the latest target for Congress--but they usually aren't known for their apologies."

"Morgan Stanley analyst Jeffrey Camp cut Exodus to a "neutral" from "strong buy" and gave his clients an apology.

"There are few moments in my career that rival this one in its difficulty and unpleasantness. Elbert Hubbard said, 'The line between failure and success is so fine, we scarcely know when we pass it.' But passed it I have, and it is time to own up," Camp said."

redux [06.11.01]
News.Com Did so many get it so wrong?

"As pundits rush to explain what happened on Wall Street, fingers point to the thought leaders. We read exposes on Mary Meeker and Frank Quattrone--once dubbed geniuses--and wonder how they could have sponsored initial public offerings for the nth online grocer or women's portal. Or we ask ourselves how stock analysts could ride a stock all the way down from $150 to $3, all the while touting it as a "strong buy.""

"These are people who were supposed to be making smart decisions. How did they get it so wrong? The answer is, they didn't. "

redux [05.10.02]
Business2.0 Who's to Blame for the Dotcom Insanity?

"And yet, as compared with previous bubbles -- say, junk bonds in the '80s -- the dotcom fiasco owed relatively less to Wall Street's lack of ethics and relatively more to willing contagion by the public itself. "The market wanted these stocks," Blodget observed to CNBC, and Blodget was right. By the millennium's waning months, it was common, for example, to see engineers in Silicon Valley with CNBC in one pop-up window on their computer screens and their brokerage accounts in another, and they would -- or so I'm told -- trade all day and scarcely attend to their jobs.

Of course, the financial press -- CNBC in particular -- fanned the flames, but faulting it or any other group misses the epidemic nature of the contagion, which naturally infected the whole of society without distinction."

redux [03.13.01]
The Washington Post Who Blew the Dot-Com Bubble?

"Henry Blodget, Wall Street's loudest cheerleader for Internet stocks, made it to the front page of the New York Times last week. And thereby hangs a tale about the media and the bubble."

"For it was the mainstream media -- which now take such delight in scolding those involved in the dot-com mania -- that helped push the idea that anyone could get rich by playing the market.

"The media invented Blodget," says Christopher Byron, a columnist for Bloomberg News and MSNBC. "In a bull market everyone loves to cheer, and Henry Blodget was everyone's first phone call. . . . Where were they when companies were trading for 150 times revenues? They were repeating the words of these guys. It's disgusting."

Guardian Unlimited AP Panel Says Embedding Reporters Worked

"Embedding reporters with fighting military units during the Iraq war offered unprecedented access to the battlefield and was generally a success, a panel of journalists told the annual meeting of The Associated Press on Monday.

But "we still have to work hard"' for bits of information that help bring the story of the war to readers, listeners and viewers, said Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor."

redux [04.11.03]
Editor & Publisher Military Retirees, Journalists Praise 'Embedding'

"Veteran military leaders and journalists agreed that the embedding of reporters with U.S. military forces in Iraq had been a success during a panel discussion at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference here. But they offered mixed opinions on specific elements of the war coverage and differed over how the press had handled some sensitive issues.

The panel, which included two veteran Washington journalists and two retired U.S. generals, offered mostly praise for the embedding process, which had more than 600 reporters, photographers, and broadcast media traveling with coalition troops."

redux [03.28.03]
dw-world.de War Coverage Draws Skepticism in Europe

"The Pentagon and U.S. media are very pleased with the way "embedded" correspondents are covering the war. In Europe, the media community is more skeptical."

"Today, openness is the priority. "Here's why embedding is important to me," Col. Rick Thomas, chief of U.S. military public affairs in Kuwait, told the British newspaper the Financial Times. "As the public affairs officer, I have a deep and abiding obligation to tell the families of our servicemembers what they are doing. ... My objective is that through the journalists' eyes and through their words and images, mothers and fathers will understand the courage, dedication and sacrifices of their sons and daughters.""

abs-cbnNEWS.com Beware 'embedded' sources of reports

"Just as the Pentagon has developed increasingly sophisticated munitions for the battlefield abroad, it has perfected propaganda to secure public opinion at home.

n that battle, American citizens need critical, independent journalists if they are to get the information necessary to participate meaningfully in the formation of policy. Never has that been more crucial, as the United States unleashes an attack on Iraq that signals a new era of the use of force. Unfortunately in the first few days of the conflict, and the months leading to war, American journalism has largely failed, on several counts."

Editor & Publisher 15 Stories They've Already Bungled

"The problem, I suggested, is that most of the TV commentators on the home front appear to be just as "embedded" with the military as the far braver reporters now in the Iraqi desert.

Surely this is a bipartisan issue. While many on the antiwar side complain about the media's alleged "pro-war bias," those who support the war, and the Bush administration itself, have also been ill served by overly-positive coverage that now has millions of Americans reeling from diminished expectations."

Counterpunch Onward Embedded Soldiers

"Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting assigned itself the near impossible task of tracking a Niagara of media untruths. On March 25, the beleaguered FAIR watchdogs reported on broadcast lies by network household names about Iraqi use of Scud missiles -- disinformation that the media made up all by themselves."

"The military later announced "that U.S. forces searching airfields in the far western desert of Iraq have uncovered no missiles or launchers." In fact, the Iraqis had not launched any Scuds since the beginning of the invasion."

Washington Post U.S. Military Expels Journalist for Pinpoint Reporting

"Smucker, who was traveling with the 1st Division but was not part of the Pentagon's embedding program, talked about the unit's location and approach to Baghdad in interviews Wednesday with CNN and National Public Radio."

"Judging from a transcript of the CNN interview, "it does not appear to us that he disclosed anything that wasn't already widely available in maps and in U.S. and British radio, newspaper, and television reports on that same news cycle," Van Slambrouck said. "Of course, the Pentagon has the final say in the field about any threat the information reported might pose.""

redux [03.12.03]
Editor & Publisher Some Journalists Will Go It Alone in Iraq

"Ask Jeffrey Fleishman of the Los Angeles Times if he wishes that he were among the hundreds of reporters embedded with U.S. military troops and the veteran scribe doesn't mince words. "I'm glad I'm not," he said during a satellite-phone interview from northern Iraq, where he's been assigned for two months. "I like the freedom of movement and the choice to see the story from the middle."

Fleishman's comments echoed those of many nonembedded correspondents assigned to the Middle East in preparation for a possible U.S. invasion."

redux [02.26.03]
Editor & Publisher War Correspondent's Advice: Stay Off the Press Bus

"The Pentagon's new "embedding" policy, while less restrictive than a press pool, prohibits journalists from having their own vehicles. To Hedges, who says the first thing he would do if he were covering this war is get a jeep, the limitations are significant. "I'm not saying people shouldn't be embedded," he insists, "but they're not going to get an accurate picture unless people are allowed to do their job. When you're embedded in a unit, you rely on the military for transportation: they will decide where you go, what you see, and what you report. They're not going to drive the press vehicle to sites if things go terribly wrong."

He cites what happened early in the Gulf War in Al-Khafji, where he witnessed Saudi soldiers fleeing in panic from Iraqi soldiers. U.S. Marines were called in to push back the Iraqis. But back in Riyadh and Dhahran, "the press put out that the Saudis were defending their homeland. When the military has a war to win, everything gets sacrificed before that objective, including the truth.""

Palm Beach Post How does the hi-tech press file from a foxhole?

"The idea of embedding journalists with units was tossed around. But field commanders wanted those journalists to have at least the basics of basic training. Thus the media boot camp."

"If conversations between media and military at the base saloon on the last night were any indication, all but a very few gained much perspective if not renewed respect for the soldiers, sailors and Marines who will do the fighting.

After the Marines thanked us for coming, a young photographer stood and said: "We've learned a lot, and thank you. We learned again something we've always known, but see now in a different light: We carry cameras and notebooks. You guys carry something we don't -- the guns. And we will not forget that."

redux [02.14.03]
Editor & Publisher U.S. Military Document Outlines War Coverage

"The U.S. military plans to take extraordinary steps to provide the media access to combat zones in Iraq, but only after making reporters agree to a series of strict prohibitions, according to a lengthy document sent by a press officer for a major U.S. military base to a news organization that will be "embedding" reporters with American forces preparing for an attack on Iraq.

The document offers the first detailed glimpse into Pentagon planning for media coverage of the campaign."

Associated Press Dan Rather Mulls Reporters' Place in War

"CBS News anchor Dan Rather says he hopes that embedding journalists among U.S. troops if there's a war with Iraq will help coverage, but he has doubts."

""There's a pretty fine line between being embedded and being emtombed," Rather said Thursday at a news conference where CBS outlined war preparation plans."

Guardian Unlimited News Organizations Get Iraq War Slots

"Bob Steele, director of the ethics program for the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said the good intentions of the Pentagon and journalists give him hope, with some caution.

``There's no doubt there will still be tensions between the goals of the military and goals of journalists,'' he said."

Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV networks prepare for war

"While the rhetorical and diplomatic wrangling over Iraq continues, it is worth noting that the global TV network war has already begun. The American Cable News Channel, CNN, made its reputation during the first Gulf war, but its got stiff competition this time around -- not just from the traditional networks, but from newcomer, Fox. Now if you think this is a trivial point, consider the budgets that these media giants are getting ready to commit. According to one account, CNN alone is planning on spending $60 million to cover the war in Iraq. But what will we see for all this money? Anything more than network anchors standing against a backdrop of Kuwait city and commenting on the latest official account of the battle from American generals? That's about it, according to distinguished journalist Phillip Knightley. The former 'Sunday Times' investigative reporter is also the author of what's considered a classic history of war reporting -- 'The First Casualty'. In it, he documents the decline of independent war reporting and the attitude of the military. It's best summed up by the American government censor, who at the height of World War II said, in relation to the press, "tell them nothing till it's over and then tell them who won.""

Wired Magazine High Score Education

"The fact is, when kids play videogames they can experience a much more powerful form of learning than when they're in the classroom. Learning isn't about memorizing isolated facts. It's about connecting and manipulating them. Doubt it? Just ask anyone who's beaten Legend of Zelda or solved Morrowind.

The phenomenon of the videogame as an agent of mental training is largely unstudied; more often, games are denigrated for being violent or they're just plain ignored. They shouldn't be. Young gamers today aren't training to be gun-toting carjackers. They're learning how to learn."

redux [01.16.01]
The Globe and Mail Why kids are smarter than you

"In a culture of couch potatoes where TV quiz shows pass for brain teasers and how-to books "for dummies" fly off the shelves, it can be hard to reconcile the notion that the human species is smarter than ever.

But if IQ tests are any measure -- and even critics say they have some value -- then there is evidence people are making mental gains. For the past two decades, researchers have collected information showing that IQs around the world rose steadily over the past century.

The rise has been too swift for genetics or evolution to explain. And researchers cannot precisely say what's driving the phenomenon. But many suspect that the very same TV-watching, video-game-playing cultural trappings we blame for "dumbing us down" may also be partly responsible for raising our IQs."

redux [07.23.02]
Netfuture Does Television Cause Violent Behavior? Wrong Question.

""The news will stimulate little change, but should be mentioned anyway. A seventeen-year study of 707 individuals, published in Science magazine (March 29, 2002), concluded that

"There was a significant association between the amount of time spent watching television during adolescence and early adulthood and the likelihood of subsequent aggressive acts against others."

"Anderson and Bushman also point out that the weight of the evidence from all the available studies is not trivial. The effects "are larger than the effects of calcium intake on bone mass or of lead exposure on IQ in children". Moreover, "recent work demonstrates similar-sized effects of violent video games on aggression"."

Forbes Internet radio takes off bit by bit

"Internet radio has found a niche. Lots of them, in fact."

"More than 100 million listeners have tried Web radio and the number of regular monthly listeners has tripled in the last three years, according to rating agency Arbitron (http://www.arbitron.com)."

""What consumers go online to listen to and what works best is content they can't listen to through traditional sources," says Bill Rose, general manager of Arbitron Internet Broadcast Services."

redux [11.20.02]
New Media Great surge in online radio listening

"A recent MeasureCast study shows that time spent listening to online radio has jumped 159 percent since last year.

Blame it on the demise of Napster, which means one less centralized location to download free music. Or chalk it up to improved broadband technology that makes streaming music sound almost like its traditional radio cousin. Whatever the reason, it's good news for some of the world's largest channels."

redux [10.01.02]
Salon Radio killed the radio star

"Radio execs share an almost palpable tenet that holds that radio is bulletproof. They see the medium as we see cockroaches and Twinkies: indestructible.

Jim Boyle, a Wall Street analyst for Wachovia Securities, moderated the panel at which Reese spoke. He comes from a family that's been in the radio business for 45 years, and he summed up this particular philosophy nicely when he told me: "Radio is 82 years young. It has survived a lot of new media, survived a lot of different options inside the car space: you've had CB radios, you've had cassettes, you've had eight-track cartridges, you've had six- and now 10-CD changers in the trunk. You've had satellite radio that's shown up ... so it does seem to be a situation where 10 years from now, 20 years from now, there's still gonna be radio."

In their "experiments," radio execs have starved their stations of manpower and research and music testing and polluted them with extra commercials and digital disc jockeys. They're betting it will all work out just fine."

PC World Tech Companies Embrace Earth Day

"Earth Day, which is observed on April 22, began in 1970 as a way to promote conservation. That message has made its way to the tech community, with everyone from PC makers to cell phone vendors getting into the environmentalist spirit this week.

Many companies are using Earth Day to announce and promote programs that encourage recycling of their products--as well as those of their competitors."

Houston Chronicle Corporations co-opt Earth Day

"From Houston to Hong Kong, companies are seeking to polish their green image by sponsoring Earth Day events, which grass-roots groups and cities struggle to fund."

""Waste Management sponsoring Earth Day is similar to Enron sponsoring a seminar on corporate responsibility," said John Stauber, author of Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, which examined how companies disguised poor environmental records beneath glitzy green advertising and marketing."

redux [11.13.02]
Salon Silicon hogs

"If we all had to lug around the true environmental weights of the microchips in our iPods, cellphones or laptops, most of those portable gadgets would never make it off their docking stations, much less out the front door.

It takes 3.7 pounds of fossil fuels and other chemicals and 70.5 pounds of water to produce a single two-gram microchip, according to a forthcoming study in the Dec. 15 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society."

redux [05.22.02]
Wired News Tech Toxics' Tarnished Legacy

"California high-tech manufacturing companies are degrading the environment in developing countries, a new research report confirms.

Case studies done in Taiwan, Malaysia, India, Thailand, and Costa Rica by the California Global Corporate Accountability Project document water pollution and inadquate waste management resulting from component production."

redux [04.22.00]
Grist Earth Day Turns Thirty

"We have among us die-hard optimists who will berate me for not reporting the good news since the last Earth Day. There is plenty of it, but it is mostly measured in human terms, not Earth terms.

Earth Day is beginning to remind me of Mother's Day, a commercial occasion upon which you buy flowers for the person who, every other day of the year, cleans up after you. Guilt-assuaging. Trivializing. Actually dangerous. All mothers have their breaking points. Mother Earth does not soften hers with patience or forgiveness or sentimentality. "

Salon Living in shimmering disequilibrium

"But the worst-case scenario is that by the end of the century we would be living in a still changing and increasingly hostile physical environment. We would have an impoverished world with great inequities remaining in quality of life and an enormous opportunity cost for what we've done in the 21st century.

The truth of the matter is that all the changes we make render the planet less suitable, not more suitable, for human beings. It's a fundamental distinction to be made between scientific environmentalism on the one hand and nonscientific, ideological- or religious-based anti-environmentalism or indifference on the other. This is what arguments about the environment -- as they are still with us at this Earth Day -- basically consist of.""

Reason Earth Day, Then and Now

"Three decades later, of course, the world hasn't come to an end; if anything, the planet's ecological future has never looked so promising. With half a billion people suiting up around the globe for Earth Day 2000, now is a good time to look back on the predictions made at the first Earth Day and see how they've held up and what we can learn from them. The short answer: The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong.

More important, many contemporary environmental alarmists are similarly mistaken when they continue to insist that the Earth's future remains an eco-tragedy that has already entered its final act. Such doomsters not only fail to appreciate the huge environmental gains made over the past 30 years, they ignore the simple fact that increased wealth, population, and technological innovation don't degrade and destroy the environment. Rather, such developments preserve and enrich the environment. If it is impossible to predict fully the future, it is nonetheless possible to learn from the past. And the best lesson we can learn from revisiting the discourse surrounding the very first Earth Day is that passionate concern, however sincere, is no substitute for rational analysis."

CNN Money Apple readies online music service

"Music executives who have seen Apple's upcoming service said it is simple to use, offers single songs from a deep catalog and -- unlike Kazaa and the other pirate services that have picked up where the now-defunct Napster left off -- it pays royalties to the troubled record industry."

""It's exactly the system that should have existed five years ago," said one record industry executive."

Mercury News Hollywood role could be right for Jobs

"The next piece of Silicon Valley's knife dance with Hollywood might be choreographed by Steve Jobs, an executive whose unique influence in both spheres gives him rare potential to shape the way the two industries evolve."

"Whatever happens, Jobs has Hollywood's attention."

Business2.0 Could Apple Pull Off the Universal Music Purchase?

"That, dear readers, is at the heart of the gamble Apple faces. Could it persuade enough customers to sign up for its digital music service in a short enough time that the sheer number of users would force the other labels to play ball and adopt Apple's tactics? It's a tantalizing scenario for sure. Even if the purchase doesn't come to pass in this round, the possibilities it portends have people thinking about a radical reshaping of the music world. "In a few years," Sinnreich predicts, "I wouldn't be surprised to see all the major labels owned by other parent companies -- companies like Apple, Yahoo (YHOO), or Microsoft." The music industry seems incapable of capitalizing on digital music. Could Apple do it better?"

redux [03.18.02]
Matt Haughey The future of music

"Everyone with a computer I know uses them, rips them from their CDs, and shares them with others. Napster (and later on, Kazaa) built massive worldwide networks based on the sharing of these files, spreading terabytes of files to millions of users. And yet, you can't walk into a store anywhere in America and buy a physical form of media embedded with mp3s."

"Given the ubiquity of mp3s among consumers, the continued rise in popularity of the format despite anything that's been put in place to stop them, and the millions of dollars being spent on mp3 encoding/decoding software and hardware, I no longer think the RIAA operates solely on fear. At this point, they're simply running on stupidity."

redux [05.02.00]
Infoworld Napster sends a message to music industry: 'Your customers aren't happy'

""The Recording Industry Association of America wants to educate consumers with the message, "Artists deserve to be compensated -- artists won't make music if they can't make money." I can only imagine the public service announcements with multimillionaire artists pleading for their right to a seventh Porsche in the driveway.

There's no rationalization for piracy; it is what it is. However, rampant music piracy online indicates that the music industry's distribution and pricing model is out of whack with what people want. The problem isn't the piracy; the problem is unhappy customers.

And the music industry had better do something about it. This is a dinosaur moment -- with the big rock looming overhead -- where the music industry needs to ask itself how it will adapt."

The New York Times Magazine 'Good Kills'
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""Things are going well," he said. "Really well."

When Colonel McCoy told you that things were going well, it meant his marines were killing Iraqi fighters. That's what was happening as we exchanged pleasantries at the bridge. His armored Humvee was parked 30 yards from the bridge. If one of the Republican Guard soldiers on the other side of the bridge had wanted to shout an insult across the river, he would have been heard -- were it not for the fact that Colonel McCoy's battalion was at that moment lobbing so many bullets and mortars and artillery shells across the waterway that a shout could never have been heard, and in any event the Iraqis had no time for insults before dying. The only sound was the roar of death.

"Lordy," McCoy said. "Heck of a day. Good kills.""

The Chronicle of Higher Education When Teaching the Ethics of War Is Not Academic

"In the spring semester following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the start of President Bush's "war on terror," I gave an unusual assignment to my students. I asked them to write essays detailing exactly why they are different from terrorists. The midshipmen were to spell out as clearly as possible how the roles they intended to fill as future Navy and Marine Corps officers are distinct in morally relevant ways from that of, say, an Al Qaeda operative. They dubbed the assignment "creepy," but gamely agreed to do it. After they had read their efforts aloud, I gave the project a twist. I had them exchange papers, and told them each to write a critical response to their classmate's paper, from the point of view of a terrorist. Then I had them read those responses aloud.

The midshipmen found the entire exercise very disturbing because it forced them to reflect on that thin but critical line that separates warriors from murderers."

Wired Magazine Inside the Soul of the Web

"Mankind's questions unscroll day and night on a computer screen in an office hallway in Mountain View, California.

Workers here at Google were once fascinated to watch the queries climb up and off the screen, two per second, 173,000 per day. But they rarely stop to glance anymore. Most Google employees long ago lost interest in the words and the astonishing numbers they represent: Each of these questions, culled randomly from six giant server farms scattered around the world, represents 1,500 inquiries, totaling 260 million Web searches per day."

redux [12.27.02]
News.Com Hot links, cool trends on the Web

"Schatz said search terms also are reflecting the increased Web activity of teenage girls. Anything related to the prom or a young, male actor is on the rise, he said. "It's really amazing how many searches those heart-throbby actors get," said Schatz, who lists "Hulk" star Eric Bana and high-school basketball star LeBron James as hot commodities for the coming year."

"One interesting year-end finding came from AltaVista, which unlike most other search sites does not filter out generic terms. According to the site, the word "sex"--always a top search term on the Web--posted the biggest decline among surfers during the holiday season."

Ananova Internet searchers 'stuck in the nineties'

"The UK's internet users are stuck in the nineties, according to a new survey."

"One interesting year-end finding came from AltaVista, which unlike most other search sites does not filter out generic terms. According to the site, the word "sex"--always a top search term on the Web--posted the biggest decline among surfers during the holiday season."

redux [12.08.02]
The New York Times Postcards From Planet Google
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"Google is taking snapshots of its users' minds and aggregating them. Like a flipbook that emerges when successive images are strung together, the logged data tell a story."

"Despite its geographic and ethnic diversity, the world is spending much of its time thinking about the same things. Country to country, region to region, day to day and even minute to minute, the same topic areas bubble to the top: celebrities, current events, products and computer downloads."

The New York Times Magazine Approximating Life
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"Wallace had hit upon a theory that makes educated, intelligent people squirm: Maybe conversation simply isn't that complicated. Maybe we just say the same few thousand things to one another, over and over and over again. If Wallace was right, then artificial intelligence didn't need to be particularly intelligent in order to be convincingly lifelike. A.I. researchers had been focused on self-learning ''neural nets'' and mapping out grammar in ''natural language'' programs, but Wallace argued that the reason they had never mastered human conversation wasn't because humans are too complex, but because they are so simple."

Washington Post Homeland Security Dept. Fills Privacy Post

"The former privacy officer of Internet advertising giant DoubleClick will be the Department of Homeland Security's first privacy czar, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced today."

"The "Total Information Awareness" program would have created a database of consumer financial transactions combined with other publicly available data. Congress said it will suspend funding for the Defense Department project unless the administration can demonstrate that it will not violate constitutional privacy rights. The White House's report is due next month."

GovExec Homeland privacy officer to review passenger-screening system

"Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Wednesday told a congressional panel that the government will not implement a pilot version of a controversial program for screening airline passengers until a privacy expert examines it.

"It is my intention to have this be [examined] by the privacy officer," Ridge said, responding to a question by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on why CAPPS appeared scheduled to be implemented before a privacy officer has been named."

redux [03.17.03]
NPR: All Things Considered Passenger Screening Software Would ID Terrorists

"Federal officials commission a new air-passenger screening system to identify people linked to terrorism. The Transportation Security Administration says commercial databases will be used to check the authenticity of passengers' names. Privacy advocates worry about the extent of the data search. NPR's John McChesney reports."

redux [06.06.02]
BusinessWeek Privacy vs. Security: A Bogus Debate?

"Let me emphasize again: Without some privacy, we couldn't stay human. But we'll be better equipped to defend a core of essential privacy if our overall civilization is open enough to let us catch the Peeping Toms and power abusers.

Better, more intrusive technology is going to limit our [ability to stay anonymous]. In 5 or 10 years, you'll have eyeglasses that scan any face on the street, look it up on the Internet, and provide captions as you walk by. This will be a return to the village of our ancestors, where they recognized everyone they saw. No one will be a total stranger."

redux [06.28.00]
The Standard Consumers Fight Back, Anonymously

"It's unlikely that in the future everyone will choose total online anonymity. But the new privacy technologies have implications that go beyond the short-term questions of law enforcement and marketing.

"The real dimension here isn't the choice between privacy and disclosure," says Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. "The real story is the impact it has on our sense of identity. The fact that we can selectively disclose things on the Internet is changing the nature of social interactions. If you can change your persona at will in cyberspace, that begins affecting what you think of your own identity and who you think you are.""

redux [04.30.00]
The New York Times Magazine The Eroded Self
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"A liberal state should respect the distinction between public and private speech because it recognizes that the ability to expose in some contexts aspects of our identity that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to freedom, friendship, even love. Friendship and romantic love can't be achieved without intimacy, and intimacy, in turn, depends upon the selective and voluntary disclosure of personal information that we don't share with everyone else. Moreover...privacy is also necessary for the development of human individuality. Any writer will understand the importance of reflective solitude in refining arguments and making unexpected connections: in an odd but widely shared experience, many of us seem to have our best ideas when we are in the shower. Indeed, studies of creativity show that it's during periods of daydreaming and seclusion that the most creative thought takes place, as individuals allow ideas and impressions to run freely through their minds without fear that their untested thoughts will be exposed and taken out of context."

"We are trained in this country to think of all concealment as a form of hypocrisy. But perhaps we are about to learn how much may be lost in a culture of transparency -- the capacity for creativity and eccentricity, for the development of self and soul, for understanding, friendship and even love. There is nothing inevitable about the erosion of privacy in cyberspace, just as there is nothing inevitable about its reconstruction. We have the ability to rebuild some of the private spaces we have lost. What we need now is the will."

Salon Twilight of the crypto-geeks

"Neal Stephenson, a writer with a cultlike following among the technologically minded and author of the classic "Snowcrash," has given an over-long, hugely digressive -- and brilliant -- speech. After many, many turns and a deep stack of points and stories, Stephenson gets around to saying that the best defense for one's privacy and personal integrity turns out to be not cryptography but, what do you know, "social structures." He is not explicit about the exact nature of these structures, but from the slides that follow, we get a sense of every sort of social relationship from neighborly friendliness to political parties. The slides show drawings of small circles representing areas of social trust. The circles widen and merge, to create a field of autonomy, a trusted space.

Stephenson is making a point about code: Without a sociopolitical context, cryptography is not going to protect you. He singles out PGP for criticism, saying that relying on the encryption scheme is like trying to protect your house with a fence consisting of a single, very tall picket. A slide shows the lone picket rising into the sky, a bird considering it with bulging eyes."

redux [02.15.01]
The Atlantic Online The Reinvention of Privacy

"The debate over these questions illustrates one irreducible truth: privacy is not so much a legal or technical concept as a social one. "The dominant feature of the current privacy debate," Fred Cate told me when I asked him to try to sum things up, "is its irrationality. The drivers are emotional." I think he's right. The crucial question about privacy today is the same it has always been?namely, whom should you trust?

A lot of people instinctively don't trust technology, especially in the hands of businesses, to protect privacy. But, as Robert Ellis Smith and others have pointed out, contemporary notions of privacy have in many cases evolved not despite new technology but because of it. "Privacy," the influential journalist and editor E. L. Godkin famously wrote, in Scribner's magazine in 1890, "is a distinctly modern product, one of the luxuries of civilization." Phil Agre made a related point to me, a bit more bluntly. "The idea that technology and privacy are intrinsically opposed," he said, "is false.""

Guardian Unlimited The battle for American science

"As prescient observers of the events north of Atlanta last year realised, these aren't the old wars of science versus religion. The new assaults on the conventional wisdom frame themselves, without exception, as scientific theories, no less deserving of a hearing than any other. Proponents of [ Intelligent Design ] - using a strategy previously unheard of among anti-Darwinists - grant almost all the premises of evolution (the idea that species develop; that the world wasn't necessarily created in seven days) in order to better attack it.

"It's not that I don't think Darwinian evolution can't explain anything," says Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, the movement's foremost academic advocate, when asked how he accounts for the very visible evolution of, say, viruses. "It's just that I don't think it can explain everything. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example, is one of the things it can explain.""

The Daily Times Creationism vs. evolution central debate behind rejection of textbooks

"Treadway said he had reservations about the approach to the theory of evolution in the three texts. He said he does not want people to believe he is against evolution, but wants it to be taught as a theory along with creationism.

"With the overwhelming references to evolution, I don't feel comfortable with (adopting these texts),'' Treadway said."

The Univeristy of Southern Mississippi: The Student Printz - Opinion Evolution: Put up or Shut up!

"Kent Hovind, a creation scientist from Pensacola, Fla. is coming to the Polymer Science building room 101 April 3 from 6 to 9 p.m. to speak about creation, evolution, and dinosaurs. There might be a debate, but probably not. I mean, who would want to defend the idea that we came from a rock? After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session.

This is not religion versus science. They must both be accepted by faith. Although they are both only theories, one is right and the other is wrong. While you must decide for yourself which view is correct, you should first learn what the creationist worldview is, before passing judgment."

redux [06.27.02]
Scientific American 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

"When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy."

redux [04.13.02]
The New York Times 'Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics'
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"Before we get to the scientific arguments of the neo-creos, a word should be said about their motivation. Just what do they have against Darwinism? Unlike the old-fashioned creationists, they are not especially worried about evolution conflicting with a literal reading of Genesis. Then why can't they join with the mainstream religions, which have made their peace with Darwinism? In 1996, for example, Pope John Paul II said that the theory of evolution had been ''proved true'' and asserted its consistency with Roman Catholic doctrine. Stephen Jay Gould, though agnostic himself, salutes the wisdom of this papal pronouncement, arguing that science and religion are ''nonoverlapping magisteria.'' But the neo-creos aren't buying this. They think that belief in Darwinism and belief in God are fundamentally incompatible. Here, ironically, they are in agreement with their more radical Darwinian opponents. Both extremes concur that evolution is, in the words of Phillip Johnson, ''a purposeless and undirected process that produced mankind accidentally'' and, as such, must be at odds with the idea of a purposeful Creator."

redux [09.23.01]
The New York Review of Books Saving Us from Darwin

"Intelligent design awkwardly embraces two clashing deities - one a glutton for praise and a dispenser of wrath, absolution, and grace, the other a curiously inept cobbler of species that need to be periodically revised and that keep getting snuffed out by the very conditions he provided for them. Why, we must wonder, would the shaper of the universe have frittered away thirteen billion years, turning out quadrillions of useless stars, before getting around to the one thing he really cared about, seeing to it that a minuscule minority of earthling vertebrates are washed clean of sin and guaranteed an eternal place in his company? And should the God of love and mercy be given credit for the anopheles mosquito, the schistosomiasis parasite, anthrax, smallpox, bubonic plague...? By purporting to detect the divine signature on every molecule while nevertheless conceding that natural selection does account for variations, the champions of intelligent design have made a conceptual mess that leaves the ancient dilemmas of theodicy harder than ever to resolve."

redux [02.05.00]
Slate Is Natural Selection the Result of Design?

Steven Pinker: "Warm rooms are a goal of thermostats, thermostats a goal of people, people a goal of their genes. Darwin, and then Dawkins, made it scientifically respectable to talk about genes as having goals, because natural selection makes them act as if they do. But natural selection itself, being a product not of a teleological process but of the physics and mathematics of replicating systems, has no right to have a goal in the way that genes or people or thermostats do."

Robert Wright: " A system can be entirely mechanical, complying with the laws of physics and mathematics, yet be teleological, designed to realize a purpose. In fact, that seems to be true of all teleological systems I know of, including genes and people and thermostats."

redux [09.05.01]
The Third Culture Science and the Psychology of Beliefs

"The one thing we've learned from the last three decades of research is that science is socially and culturally embedded and thus biased. Still, it's the best system we have for understanding causality in all realms, in all fields. So despite the fact that it's loaded with biases, there is a real world out there that we can know and the best way to know it is through science. The reason for that is because there's at least a method, an attempt to corroborate one's own subjective perceptions. There's a way to find out if you and I are seeing the same colors when we see red. There's actually a way to test these things, or at least try to get at them. That's what separates science from everything else."

redux [09.13.00]
Scientific American A New Paradigm for Thomas Kuhn

"Kuhn wrote: "The very existence of science depends upon vesting the power to choose between paradigms in the members of a special kind of community." Fuller has confidence in the intelligent good sense of ordinary folks and properly calls for "the right to be wrong." But do statements such as "the universe is light-years wide," "t