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The MPG Illusion -- Needing Math?

Now that gas is almost $5.00 per gallon many people seem to be more than a little worried, if not about global warming than simply about the price of gas. Of course some lobbyists and commentators continue their efforts to preserve status quo, whole hog energy use that exacerbates global warming. These efforts ultimately undermine independence from foreign oil and adaptation of measures that would stem to pace of global warming. In "Communicating Climate Change", last year I wrote:

"If we've moved beyond the climate change "debate", however, as I argue we have, we've only entered another stage. I'm not sure what to call it, but it if we appropriated something like the familiar five stages of dealing with catastrophe- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, then maybe people have moved on to some sort of denial/bargaining phase. People get ideas about how we can buy our way out, with some carbon credits, some alternative energy, or some prizes. Again, this is procrastination. If buying our way out doesn't work, at least we've bought some time."

Science published an article the other day in their Policy Forum section from a couple of Duke business professors. "The MPG Illusion" (June 20th) argued that people misunderstand the miles per gallon (mpg) standard. The authors ask the question, if you had a choice of upgrading one of two cars with a car with a better MPG rating which would you replace? Unlike Europe, where the mileage standard is expressed in liters per 100 kilometer, in the US, miles per gallon (mpg) refers to the distance a gallon of gas will achieve in a vehicle: 1000 gallons per 10,000 miles equals 10mpg. Not very many people understand that, according to their poll.

Increases in mileage are calculated so that 30% better gas mileage means 23% less gas used. 30% greater "mpg" means greater distance per gallon of gas, instead of traveling 100 miles you would now be able to travel 130 miles, so 100%/1.3 = 76.9, 23% less fuel. Most people assume the relationship between miles driven and gas consumed is linear, but its actually curvilinear. From there, the authors argue that small upgrades, say from a "10 mpg" rated car to a "20 mpg" car, may save the consumer more on gas than upgrading from 25mpg to 50mpg.

Their goal was to see whether people ranked choices in mathematically correct ways and so they structured their question carefully. But if their point is to illustrate that the standard is deceiving, as they say in the video, why do they need to publish an article in Science, and perambulate through all the math and graphs?

Promoting a clearer standard isn't their only goal. They open their Science piece criticizing a NYT columnist who questioned the sense of giving an IRS hybrid car tax break to people who buy "a hybrid Dodge Durango that gets 14 miles per gallon instead of 12 thanks to its second, electric power source."

But doesn't the NYT author have a point? Why would the government offer a credit? The authors acknowledge this: "The basic argument is correct: The environment would benefit most if all consumers purchased highly efficient cars that get 40 MPG, not 14, and incentives should be tied to achieving such efficiency." This hat tip to clear thinking is only 27 words of their Science article, versus 1708 words explaining calculations that in effect justify why upgrading from a 1978 Cadillac or your grandpa's farm tractor to an SUV is a choice that consumers should feel good about. While the question is carefully constructed around consumer choices about two cars driven equally and yields a conclusion showing that consumers don't understand mpg math, why this question?

In effect, the authors' piece would be brilliant in a Dodge Durango or Ford ad to boost those double digit sales drops. But back to the New York Times article. Why wouldn't a person upgrade from a 10mpg car to a 50mpg car? A 10 mpg car would use 1000 gallons per 10,000 miles, and a 50mpg would use 200 gallons per 10,000 miles. 800 fewer gallons of gas. That much less pollution. $5,000 of gas, versus $1,000. Why can't we shoot for that?

Consumers are making exactly these choices. Ford sold 55% fewer SUV's last month, and 40% fewer pick-ups then in the previous year. In our last post we quoted from the NYT article, America, Asleep at the Spigot", in which Senator Dingell (R-MI), told the NYT" "He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe". It seems that "He" is changing "His" mind about "Big" and "Safe", when faced with $150 per fill-up. "He" is choosing a Prius instead of a pick-up.

Global Warming: Too Much Evidence

There's a direct correlation between energy cost and use, just as there's a direct correlation between increased cigarette taxes, and decreased smoking. Lobbyists routinely argue the opposite in order to justify low taxes and minimal regulation. But the fact that car owners are switching to more efficient cars is a market coup for global warming as well as free-market advocates. This should please all of us who support liberal economic policies, as well as "let the market" commentators. But paradoxically, some of columnists are still stuck with in their delusional refrains from 2005.

A Wall Street Journal blogger now claims there's too much evidence on global warming, so much that it's not believable (WSJ July 1, 2008, "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis"). "What isn't evidence of global warming?" he asks. My favorite! For years it was, "there is not enough evidence". And now, simply invert the sentence to arrive at your next phase of denial. Last year when you pulled his string he said "Not Enough Evidence!!!" and alarms rang -- Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! This year they retooled, so yank the cord to hear, "Too Much Evidence!!! Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! American Girl could immortalize his likeness as the Denier Doll from the historical series "When Carbon was King" or "When the Air was Breathable". Of course next he instructs: "[s]o let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole". He will no doubt shuffle around in these arguments until the water's licking up around his ankles.

He insists that global warming is either a socialist, religious, or psychological affront to our way of life by those who believe that prosperity is corrupt. Last year we wrote in "Climate Change: Fueling the "Debate", "if you're crazy-dizzy snapping your head around to follow first the one side, than the other, simply follow the money for the truth." Perhaps our columnist hasn't invested in any emerging energy markets.

Sanity and Samsø

As last year and the year before, available at our fingertips, along with the woulda-coulda-shoulda crowd and the bloviators, is the full range of serious and interesting discussions. Consumers are making changes around global warming not only by buying Priuses, but by using alternative energy sources or cutting back their energy use.

In the New Yorker this month, Elizabeth Kobert wrote a great article called "The Island in The Wind". The first part of the article was about the residents of Samsø an island in Denmark that progressed from consuming enough oil and electricity to provide energy for 4,300 people, to generating enough renewable energy through wind turbines and other sources to produce energy for the whole island and sell some back to the grid. The island accomplished this with a combination of initiative, work, leadership and community investment, but with no initial motivating monetary reward.

While generating their own energy however, the islanders didn't reduce their consumption. For that part of the story Kolbert goes to Switzerland, where the 2,000-Watt Society aims to motivate people to reduce energy consumption to 2,000 Watts per person with only 500 Watts consumed from non-renewable sources. Scandinavians consume 6,000 Watts per year per person, and US citizens consume ~15,000 Watts per year per person, so the 2,000 Watt goal gives some populations room to grow while others should strive to cut back on energy use.

When we wrote "Sea Change or Littoral Disaster" in 2006 it seemed like we'd never turn a corner. We wrote "We need no more evidence. We have decades of studies indicating that our lives will change, but its easier to wait for another headline and hope a miracle intervenes, if nothing else than in the guise of government action." Times are decidedly more optimistic. Of course there the same gradient of action, inaction, denial, and procrastination, but when I reflect on the general attitudes of the past couple of years I'm amazed at all the change happening in 2008.

For years it seems, people have heard reports like the recent one by the Justice Department inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility, which found the Department of Justice hiring practices had discriminated against lawyers who were "leftist", identified by those who were members of Greenpeace, the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, or the American Constitutional Society. Others have felt helpless in the face of leadership on science, democracy, and the environment. Like when the Bush Administration refused to comply with the Supreme Court's order that the EPA must act to regulate emissions. And today the bad news continued on this matter when the D.C. Circuit Court refused to set a deadline for the EPA that the states had petitioned the court for -- leading us to wonder -- are the two connected?

With some end in sight perhaps, a few citizens are making it their mission to strike back, albeit symbolically (and perhaps emboldened by the imminent term end). There's the Bush Legacy Bus -- I'm sure you've heard -- which is touring 150 cities this summer, first stop yesterday in Dayton, Ohio. The group promises not to let memories of the presidency fade into the twilight of his last term and hopes to influence the outcome of the elections. Less bombastically, and no doubt by mistake, The New York Review of Books advertising arm has sent out a leaflet for "$80 SAVINGS" off the price of a year's subscription, and a "FREE GIFT", the book "The Consequences to Come: American Power After Busch"[sic].

As well, a San Francisco group launched a petition drive to put an initiative on the ballot that would rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. Some find it fitting, but not everyone thinks it's funny. Howard Epstein, chair of the San Francisco Republican Party promised to do everything in his power to stop the measure from going through, calling it "loony bin direct democracy." The spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission was also not too keen on the idea, because the the plant is highly efficient and award-winning: "If you are looking for a place to make a negative statement about the Bush administration's impact on the environment, this would be the last place to do it", he said.

Barack Obama has wide appeal. Democrats, Republicans, commentators, opponents, they find themselves tagging along, like he's the new cool kid on the block. Sometimes the support is overt. John Edwards endorses him, as does Senator Byrd, Congressman Henry Waxman, and the United Steelworkers. But sometimes an endorsement is more subtle.

When Barack pulled ahead of other Democrat contenders under the banner "Change You Can Believe In", Hillary Clinton decided to adapt his slogan as her own, calling hers "Change and Experience". Clinton promised voters that "change" would happen on "Day One". Same, same, but different.

After springing into "change" mode though, Hillary began leaving audiences around the world spinning with her own image defying change. She morphed from one character to the next, leaving people gasping in her wake. What accent? Southern y'all? Gravely, standing on a flatbed truck? What new activity?

When she was swilling beer and flipping back shots with some Pennsylvanians, she reminded Bill Moyers of Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again, specifically the song "Go see what the boys in the back room will have, and them I'll have the same." As time went on Clinton began to remind more people of more movie characters.

Hillary's Change

Hillary herself decided her image resembled the determined boxer in the movie "Rocky", but others had different ideas. To some, she was the Black Knight in Monty Python. To Scranton, Pennsylvania voters, she was the home girl, and then in West Virginia she was a West Virginia girl. But she's no coal miner's daughter, her victory speech in West Virginia reminded one reporter of the character played by Warren Beatty in Reds cheering for a revolution.

I found this tendency to compare Clinton to various movie characters fascinating, since for months I had found myself thinking she was a bit Reese Witherspoon in Election. Over time, I wondered whether she might be more like Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton. While mine were contemporary, human, female characters, however, other depictions were less flattering. Dana Milbank in the Washington Post recently compared the ongoing debate over Clinton's electability to the fate of the parrot in the movie "Monty Python's Flying Circus".

Customer: "That parrot is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it being tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk."

Pet-shop owner: "Well, he's, he's, ah, probably pining for the fiords."

Customer: (Takes parrot from cage, bangs its head on counter, lets it drop to floor.) "Now, that's what I call a dead parrot."

Pet-shop owner: "No, he's stunned! . . . You stunned him, just as he was wakin' up! Norwegian blues stun easily, Major."

Customer: "He's not pining! He's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! He's expired and gone to meet his maker! He's a stiff! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! . . . His metabolic processes are now history! He's off the twig! He's kicked the bucket, he's shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"

Why do so many of us compare Hillary to movie characters? Is it that we're so unaccustomed to a strong woman in the President role that we have no real comparisons we can make? She's not many female politicians we know, Margaret Thatcher or Nancy Pelosi for instance...Unlike countries where female presidents or prime ministers are the norm, we have few figures to cast from (aside from The West Wing). This is not the first time people have looked to the movies to reflect a reality they can't fathom. People exclaimed that being in lower Manhattan when the terrorists flew into the World Trade Towers was "like being a movie".

Baking Cookies, Making Tea, That's Just Not Me

Some people, like Boll Moyers, welcome the Clinton change, say she's found her voice. Clinton recently spoke on behalf of her gun-owning church-going supporters when Obama "insulted" her working class compadres.

But mere months ago she was hanging out with Bill in the country diner all homey and copacetic wondering idly about Chelsea's whereabouts. Journey's 1981 "Don't Stop Believing" hummed nostalgically in the background, which sounded very much like Fleetwood Mac's, "Don't Stop", which Bill's theme song. While the Clintons awkwardly but quaintly attempted to build edge-of-your chair suspense at the diner over her campaign theme, Celine Dion's "You and I", their spoof of the Sopranos seemed one drive-in away from On Golden Pond.

After declaring her new change theme, every day forward left quaint 'ole Hillary-and-Bill-at-the-jutebox a little farther in the dust. Perhaps Hillary has found her voice. Male working class voters are warming to strong women, and maybe women wouldn't be as indignant as they were when she mused back in 1992 on Nightline "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession". This prompted William Safire to offer: "You do not defend yourself from a conflict-of-interest charge by insulting a large segment of the voting public." He advised Clinton that her remarks were: "elitism in action". 16 years later You can't say she hasn't absorbed the lesson. Hillary went on to leap past her 'elitist gaffe' and has since been appeasing voters left and right.

But when she took the Obama change challenge last fall was her intent to prove herself more adept at corralling the "white non-college educated vote"? Is that what Democrats aspire to? Has the change helped her break through a glass ceiling? While some argue yes, other voters and superdelegates have veered over to Obama's side, and he's pulled ahead.

The question remains, why does Clinton remind everyone of fictional movie characters, while Obama reminds everyone of male presidents like John F. Kennedy, or Ronald Reagan (not in ideology, they quickly say), or George H.W. Bush? Hillary may have changed, from moseying through oldies with hubbie to being one tough bitch who'll obliterate anything in her way. But have we?

Star power

All the while Clinton strode defiantly, talked stridently, slagged Obama, and sank still lower with her the traveling hillbilly act, Obama coolly brushed it off. He refreshingly acts like he's being himself. An article in the New York Times yesterday quoted a publisher who said Obama's feat was to make millions writing autobiographies..."two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one's life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it's a stunning fact."

Perhaps Hillary could have taken away another Safire nugget before hiking up her pantsuits with such abandon to wade into the rhetorical swamp. Safire's advice to the Clinton's in 1992 for what he gratingly labeled "The Hillary Problem", was a six step solution: "1. Hillary: Stop defining yourself by what you're not." Who is she?

Just as Safire raked Clinton across the coals in 1992, Maureen Dowd recently eviscerated Obama for making comments about arugula and bitterness which made him, in her eyes, a "charter member of the elite". However a lot of working class people I know know arugula quite well. So remind me what is the working class cred of New York Times columnists to finger-wag at candidates about elitism? Aren't they the ones whose capital is hobnobbing with the ruling class in fine restaurants ? If Clinton has progressed to a more modern time, then perhaps media has not.

Republicans' Me-Too Change

As he accumulates endorsements and attracts 75,000 people to his stump speech in Portland, at times he even seems to have the Republican party skipping along after him acting for all intents and purposes like Democrats. The Republicans just launched their new slogan "Change You Deserve" -- hat tip to Obama's "Change We Can Believe In". [update: And an Effexor commercial apparently]

They're out to remind us to keep YOU in Republican, I guess. Do you see a "we" in Republican? Certainly not. If too many Republicans started saying "we", who knows the trouble it would cause? The whole country might slip into socialism. Or worse. Would everyone's voice be important, would all votes count? That Obama "we believe" phrasing sounds like the U.S. is a team, like there's no decider in charge. Republicans can't have that.

Republicans may have deduced from polling that people feel like they "deserve" change. But which slogan would you bet on? People may feel like they "deserve" change after the last eight years but McCain will continue the tax breaks and war so what are the Republicans talking about? You know they don't mean "deserve" as in entitlement -- they're virulently opposed to Social Security, safety nets and all that. So then what does "deserve mean? Anything? And looking at Hillary's record, will the Republicans lose themselves like she did by trying to emulate Barack Obama?

Not if some people can help it. David Brooks suggests that Obama is actually co-opting Republican politics. Brooks grilled Barack Obama after George Bush described the candidate's foreign policy statements regarding Hezbollah as "appeasement." Not grilled as in Chris Matthews and Mark Green, on Crossfire, mind you, but as in conservative NYT columnist grilled. Brooks writes in "Obama Admires Bush" that he wondered whether Obama would really consider approaching Hezbollah diplomatically as George W. Bush implied last week. If so, the pundit said, affably of course, "[h]e's off in Noam Chompskyland".

No, when they spoke, Obama "reaffirmed" for him that Hezbollah is "not a legitimate political party", but a "destabilizing organization...", supported by "Iran and Syria". Brooks goes on to explain some details of Obama's foreign policy before concluding (seemingly approvingly) that it reminds him of George G.W. Bush's approach to foreign relations.

So which brand will win? Will Barack Obama prevail by being "himself" as the Republicans dance around chanting "me-too" change? Or will the Republicans win by making it look like they have all the ideas?

There's an interesting side note in the credit fallout, with its subprime mortage scandal, Bear Stearns debacle, and complex financial instruments that no one, not even the experts understand. The nervous economists desperately try to whistle past a recession, and people talk and write endlessly about pros and cons of regulation, then in the midst of all these problems, some prominent financiers are suddenly pushing for financial education of the public. Experts like Donald Trump, (an exemplar of financial responsibility), are speaking out and establishing programs to teach finance in high schools, colleges, and communities.

The Economist quotes Niall Ferguson, a historian at Harvard University, who says that no one understands finance and that even MBA students don't know "'the difference between the nominal and real interest rate."'

Blackstone CEO Peter G. Peterson is among the crowd bent on relaying a message of fiscal prudence. Part of his goal for retirement is founding and leading organizations like the Concord Coalition, whose mission is educating the public on financial responsibility, for instance by producing learning modules to sell to high schools and colleges.

Peterson is also organizing "grassroot" movements around financial education, and buying films that teach young people about responsible finance. He's especially intent on warning people about the pending disaster of entitlements, particularly social security.

Peterson's first film is scheduled for release in September and he's optimistic about its box office prospects. He told Charlie Rose the other night he's been "energized by what Al Gore's experience was" with the "Inconvenient Truth". However he added, "...I wish we had polar bears, I wish we had ice caps" to "dramatize" the story.

Ahh...but then he'd have the real problem of global warming to worry about.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernacke, in the midst of financial meltdowns, struggles with federal monetary policy, or as bloomberg.com put it "Plays `Whac-A-Mole' With Turmoil in Markets". Meanwhile his predecessor Alan Greenspan pens oft-quoted editorials offering policy hints and cryptic foretelling of the economy's prospects. Today he looked in his crystal ball and wrote in the Financial Times the future looked "most wrenching".

Greenspan seemed dismayed: "Those of us who look to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder equity have to be in a state of shocked disbelief." Shocked, shocked shocked. Greenspan's own "self-interest", is as an adviser to Deutsche Bank, Pimco, and Paulson & Co, a hedge fund company that has "posted stratospheric gains" by betting on credit crises.

Throughout his tenure, as indicated by this speech back in 2005, Greenspan advocated deregulation, along with "innovation and structural change in the financial services industry", which were critical to "providing expanded access to credit". As he concluded in his 2005 speech: "this fact underscores the importance of our roles as policymakers, researchers, bankers, and consumer advocates in fostering constructive innovation."

Greenspan didn't shy from acknowledging his influence then, but now in 2008, he pops up with sage words but quickly scuttles away from responsibility. Using this tactic he also blamed the federal debt and the housing crises on aberrant circumstances. In today's editorial titled: "We Will Never Have a Perfect Model of Risk", Greenspan abdicates responsibility and lets "the model" take the blow. Once he accomplishes that neat abstraction, he rallies for more of the same, warning against regulatory changes in the market that would "inhibit our most reliable and effective safeguards against cumulative economic failure: market flexibility and open competition."

Krugman, writing in today's article "The B Word", doesn't buy it. "Between 2002 and 2007, false beliefs in the private sector -- the belief that home prices only go up, that financial innovation had made risk go away, that a triple-A rating really meant that an investment was safe -- led to an epidemic of bad lending. Meanwhile, false beliefs in the political arena -- the belief of Alan Greenspan and his friends in the Bush administration that the market is always right and regulation always a bad thing -- led Washington to ignore the warning signs." Krugman thinks a bailout is inevitable.

Art Tries to Imitate Science Tries to Imitate Art Tries to Imitates Science.....

Last year, Acronym Required wrote about the American Film Institute's Catalyst Workshop, which recruits scientists to train them in scriptwriting. "Science's Silver Bullet -- The Silver Screen?" described a Pentagon sponsored workshop that recruited "hard-core", "lab-certified scientists" to write scripts and portray "appealing" science protagonists.

The rational behind recruiting scientists? Back in 2005, the New York Times published a story on the Catalyst Workshop that explained Hollywood's demand for scientists: "They're compensated very minimally, they're going on blind faith that what they're searching for is going to pay off. And film making is exactly the same way". ("Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts", 08/04/05). An unflinching assessment indeed. We venture that "blind faith" is a slur to most scientists, no doubt filmmakers as well. As for the pay, true enough, most "lab-certified" scientists get paid pitifully. When we published the story we could only guess how scriptwriters fared.

Now with the writers strike, we have more information. According to the New York Times, some writers get paid significantly more than your average "lab-certified scientist". A recent article said that the "typical TV series writer may get $30,000 an episode, plus residuals". Movie scriptwriters get a million dollars in advance payment, according to studio executives. ("In Hollywood, a Sacred Cow Lands on the Contract Table", August 5, 2007 ). Of course sometimes the truth is found by reading between words, so we'll take that for the propaganda that it is.

While the top of the pay scale for Hollywood writers does seem like a brighter star than what scientists have to wish for, we know that only a few lucky writers get a stab at these choice positions. The rest of the labor force traipses gig to gig for what many consider menial pay: "More water sir?"

Sure, wink, wink, the writers are gouging the poor executives by asking them for residuals on digital works. The obvious question is: If the projected digital profits are such pittance, than why is the executive side of the contract table so apoplectic?

Is it "Over"?

In the case of the writer's strike, despite weekend rumors originating with a Fox News executive, claiming that the strike is over, we're waiting for the writers to make the call. We know that announcements like "it's over" are sometimes craftily used by those in charge of crisises to make the media go away.

Over or not, there's happy news from an unexpected source. Nature offers a proposal to the strikers. (Nature is a science journal.) The editors tell scientists to "saunter down to your local picket line, gather up a couple of film and television writers, and introduce them to the fascinations of the scientific life..." They add that plying them with drinks might help. ("A Quantum of Solace", Jan. 31, 2008). Who knows how the Hollywood writers will receive the offer, but I can't help thinking of the Anthony Burgess quote: "We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation."

Anyway, until we can truly cheer for the writers, we'll marvel at how the tables have turned. Last year, Hollywood sought out scientist scriptwriters, this year scientists seek out Hollywood scriptwriters.

I've just finished reading a fun book that I got at a book swap called How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Bottom. I liked it of course, although other reviewers who are more opinionated about incorporating Proust in a book title found it alternatively "clever"- "witty..funny..tonic" or "superficial..contrived..patronising".

Happily, I can stay in theme by reading a couple of new releases that not only include Proust but science too. In Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer writes about artists who, ensconced in their writing or cooking or painting, conceived of some aspect of sensory science ahead of the scientists. In Proust and The Squid, Maryanne Wolf writes about human development and reading.

On Proust's place in neuroscience, I didn't bring Proust along to fill in the empty moments between my neurobiology experiments as Lehrer did, and have yet to finish "In Search of Lost Time" -- I may not be the best judge. While Proust inspired books divert my attention, Proust stares down from the spines of seven unfinished volumes shelved up by the ceiling, mocking my frenzied schedule. Although some reviewers make it seem unique or iconically 21st century to mix literature and science, I contend that the pairing is natural. Scientists have always been a cultured lot to my mind, especially neuroscientists, and artists forever inquisitive about the natural world. Whatever the circumstances or pretenses Proust so often finds himself as muse, these two new books promise interesting reading.

"Art is What You Can Get Away With." -- Andy Warhol

Scienceblogs', scientist, PZ Myers of Pharyngula, one of the first and most entertaining science bloggers, was recently sued 15 million dollars by Stuart Pivar for Myers' critical review of his book. Myer's 2005 review of the book is here, and an updated review from last month is here. Lawyer Peter Irons wrote a response to Pivar here. Pivar dropped the suit, but until then feverish speculation and analysis prevailed on some blogs. 'It will be dismissed' some said. 'It's groundless' everyone agreed. But there was also unexpected and deafening silences from other corners, as if a cold wind had blown through some warm cozy blogospheric goodness. Some just had no comment. But others asked, what if people start suing individual bloggers?

What if? Would all bloggers just be quiet?? Tell me it's not so. If it weren't Seed, and a famous blogger, would there be any point of a suit? We were left to ponder what the suit was really all about.

When I first tried to search for "Pivar" and "science" it was slim pickings. Did I mean "Pixar", as in Pixar Entertainment? "Picar"? "Piper"? My search terms were wrong, and as it turns out "science" was throwing off the results. Well-known in art and New York Society circles, Pivar's name is often associated with famous people, sometimes deceased -- Andy Warhol, Diana Vreeland, and recently Stephen Jay Gould. He has been featured in popular magazines, in the New York Times "Public Lives" section, and in New York tabloids' "celebrities" sections for over 30 years.

His media coverage has always been impressive. In 1975 Newsweek profiled Pivar curating a show on "Schlock Art" (not an insult in art, apparently). In 1979 he was featured in Time magazine's profile on artists. Then he paid $223,250 for a rare sabre-tooth tiger skull to add to his collection of skeletons and bones. He spent oodles of time and money delving into the provenance of a life sized statue called "Roman Bronze Boy" that may have been fake.

Pivar is often the highest bidder, as the Boston Globe reported from one elephant art auction in 2000: "'This is an excellent painting,'" Pivar exclaimed. "'It's what we call a W.C.M. - a world-class masterpiece.'" (Boston Globe, March 22). He referred to art painted by elephants and a foundation that teaches Asian elephants to paint and sells the proceeds, thereby extending the boundaries of art. The foundation also develops "an affordable line of non-toxic quality paints for use by elephants and caretakers as well as underprivileged children in developing countries".

Writing for the New York Times Claudia Steinberg once interviewed Pivar about his home, his decorating, and collecting (September 9, 2004). '''You need 300 objects to furnish an apartment, just for the record'", Pivar said. Steinberg noted his "'grand tone"', reminiscent of a friend who had "'taught him the effectiveness of pontification.'" He continued the pontification:

"'Every time I see an example of something that is better than what I own, I buy it... otherwise for the rest of my life I have to live with the knowledge that someplace in the world something is floating around that is better than mine, and that's intolerable.'''

Pivar frequently targets various parties to sue and was once called "'an institutional stalker"', by the president of the New York Academy of Art. (The New York Post, June 20, 1998). He's apparently not afraid of provoking a scene. After suing the Academy (which he had founded), one night he showed up at their "Take Home a Nude fundraiser", which the Post explained was "where flesh-filled works donated by students and supportive artists are auctioned off." Unwelcome because of his lawsuit, he was "barred at the door, then thrown down into a puddle", according to the Post article. "'Ass over teakettle'", he said, and his effort landed him in the New York Post. He slapped the Academy with another suit for assault. Then he dropped the suit.

Your 15 Minutes? Again?

Perhaps the decorum he's accustomed to in New York art society differs from that on the internet among scientists? Somehow PZ and Pharyngula figured into Pivar's marketing plan, but beyond trying to attain some vague name recognition, Pivar's efforts are confusing. For someone who pursues fame so relentlessly, who has so many well-connected friends, can't he simply get himself listed on Wikipedia? It seems that this sort of internet play, while surely a low ball bid, might have been easier.

Did he not understand the internet? He certainly must not have looked too closely at the articulate, analytical, opinionated and more than occasionally biting Pharyngula blog. I would certainly think twice before submitting a book for review there. But that's just gauging the landscape. Knowing that Pivar lives with "wallcovering of rose-gold silk brocade", and hundreds of art objects ( NYT, September 9, 2004), I wouldn't solicit his opinion about certain things either; like the design-sense of my blog or my attitudes towards pursuing fame, for starters.

But then again perhaps he was coveting a more cordial reception, like the one Pharyngula gave to Lynn Margulis when Myers hosted her earlier this year. True, Margulis is renowned for cell biology she did 15, 20, 30 or so years ago on endosymbiotic theory. She's earned plenty of street cred -- of the science type, both for her science and writing. But she's also well-known for putting forth "non-traditional" ideas like this:

"In the nerve cell, the axons and the dendrites that make the physical connections that allow us to communicate are latter-day spirochetes. Nerve cells, having long ago discarded the rest of the spirochete body, use the fundamental motility system of spirochetes. Think of the nerve as coming from what had formerly been a bacterium, 'trying' but unable to rotate and swim. Thought involves motility and communication, the connection between remnant spirochetes. All I ask is that we compare human consciousness with spirochete ecology."

You can imagine a simple schematic that suggests the relationship.

"Don't Worry What They Write About You...."

Of course all fame, whether it's in science, art or blogging, demands selective use of charm. When granted the opportunity by Pharyngula for an on-line chat forum, Margulis gamely mastered the medium, tutoring the likes of a participants with handles like "Hairhead" on her theories. But at the same time, being that she's so well-established and somewhat revered, Margulis didn't hesitate to use the opportunity to put forward her harebrained and definitely controversial ideas.

With PZ Myer's moderation, Margulis reiterated her idea that HIV virus doesn't cause AIDS, citing in the comments during her online exchange at Pharyngula that a convincing case against HIV viral causality of AIDS was given in a thoroughly refuted and completely infuriating article that Harper's published last year. This article was roundly dismissed by scientists, public health and policy experts, as well as AIDS patients and activists around the world.

If HIV virus did cause AIDS, Margulis persists, than why didn't the CDC respond to her written demand for proof? This feigned helplessness from someone whose tenacity and research skills led her to unearth useful obscure microbiology references from 19th century Russian publications and to question prevailing theories of evolution year after year as she pursued acceptance of her symbiosis theory. This assertion despite CDC's explanation of HIV virus causing AIDS here, and NIH's explanation here.

Reading the Margulis' post on the Myers blog, as well as the chat he hosted, it's hard to tell what would or wouldn't have gotten axed under PZ's "no-trolling" rule. These forums tend to go sideways, especially after a hundred or so comments, and not just because of trolls. With such a wide audience, some people don't know the basic background science, while others get distracted. Following both the thread of comments and the on-line forum transcript sometimes reminded me of trying to watch a parade while a posse of kids fights over some gumdrops that rolled on the ground in front of me. That being the level of the enterprise, Margulis got off lightly on her anti-science AIDS ideas.

It all seemed boring, with a civility that bordered on intellectual stupor. While the subject was promising, Margulis ably chose what she presented and answered. It was certainly not the kind of place where an open exchange could take place, but it was a place where she could get coverage for her particular ideas. Margulis is savvy and used PZ Myers forum well. Pivar, obviously, played his unique hand with Myers differently, with different results.

....Just Measure it in Inches." -- Warhol

Scientists employ well established rules of engagement in academia. There is an old adage that the feuds are intense in academia because the stakes are low, which is only partially true. We generally don't sue fellow scientists -- historically it just didn't make sense because there was nothing to gain -- "I'll confiscate all your test tubes!" It's about intelligence or at the very least creating that image. Equally powerful tools are words, wit, aplomb, and most of all, renown from previous accomplishments -- all of which Margulis employs with rigor.

On balance Margulis seems to relish controversy and certainly slings mud far better than most, a well-honed and essential skill. Years ago she would malign molecular biologists for (generally but not excluded to) being reductionist. Margulis has criticized evolutionary biologists for ignoring chemistry and microbiology in evolution, and chided developmental biologists for not understanding important components of evolution like geology. She refused to talk to journalists because she said they 'always misrepresent' her ideas. Nowadays she decries online sources which she says always distort her theories. Despite her formidable offense skills, she forever portrays herself as someone who has been pushed in a mud puddle.

Scientists' methods of acquiring prestige are not to be underestimated as they can make or break careers and hold scientists and lay audiences in hypnotized sway. Clearly Pivar's background hasn't given him the chance to cultivate these unique science combat skills, I mean if you make a living by being the highest bidder on modern art, and promote art made by elephants with their trunks with a cute acronym like "W.C.M.", for "world class masterpiece", if your highest publicity bid takes the form of a lawsuit, well there's a very different recipe for fame in the science world.

Eccentricity however, is one trait that seems to be leveraged both by art world and the science world. Once you accept how common eccentricity is, cranks and crackpots are just one step removed. When scientists mutter poetry or mismatch socks it merely adds to their aura of mystique. Eccentric? Or crank? Einstein was famously "eccentric". Margulis herself observes how "'it's easy to be dismissed as a "crank" or "on the fringe"'.

Yet unlike the artist who is new to the party, her past publications give her the leeway to remind us of this fact all the time, and so the ghost of Thomas Kuhn lingers in the background, throwing an inkling of doubt on all our rock solid reality-based paradigms. The technique of reminding people how often paradigms are shattered to reveal new truths seems especially effective when used by someone of the slimmest fame like Margulis on non-scientists.

"It may not be Raining. They may be Spitting on Us." -- attributed to Warhol

So if one is a lay-person, how should one tell if the famous scientist knows what they're speaking of? It's tricky. Obviously, if the person doesn't have an established biography in science, it's easy to doubt their credibility. If you're a scientist, should you call out scientists who are more famous than you on tenuous or disproved theories? How does one deal with cranks? PZ might say the Margulis exchange was an open forum, and indeed some people asked very pointed questions. But does the rather warm reception send a mixed message to those who don't know, those who swoon before fame rather than examining each new proposal anew, with equal analysis or skepticism?

It used to be that scientists rarely entered the public forum. They didn't blog, and if they were very famous they only occasionally emerged into the light of day from their labs, personas confused with public awe. In 2000, James Glanz of the New York Times wrote "Geniuses, Crackpots and a Grand Unified Theory", which recounts the rare interactions between scientists and the public, generally when well meaning fans contact scientists to insist that their wacky ideas are worth a Nobel hearing. Margulis herself contends that new-age Gaia people usually misinterpret the science behind her's and Lovelock's ideas.

The NYT article details some funny incidences of "nimble circumlocutions on the parts of legitimate scientists". Some scientists are diplomatic, hoping to encourage people to like science, others tend to be wary, for good reason. There was no internet forum at the time, so most of these interactions took place in person. One former physicist told of a "frightening experience"...

...a man claimed that he had invented bulletproof paint. Sitting in Dr. Moyer's office and clutching a paper bag, the man said ominously that the paint was also resistant to intercontinental ballistic missiles and suggested that Dr. Moyer would want to arrange a test.

The awkward exchanges the author depicts range from dealing with "cosmic theorizers", to engaging "superannuated, formerly fine scientists who late in their careers get bored doing bread-and-butter stuff". The scientists uniformly treated these people with kid gloves:

Once, as [Moyer] was discussing crackpot theorizing with a fellow physicist in his office, his colleague took out a file marked "public relations" that was filled with letters on off-the-wall theories. When Dr. Moyer asked why in the world the folder was so labeled, his colleague explained that the writers sometimes turned up in his office, "and they get really upset if you take out a folder marked 'crackpots.' "

But science bloggers now have unique challenges. They need to do credible publishable science, maintain labs, and teach. Furthermore, we're in a political climate when fear dominates politics, driving people to faith and speculative pie in the sky theories. Don't bloggers have to be somewhat "blunt", just to get an audience? A good many science bloggers want to expose readers to solid science and give them some sort of arsenal to distinguish good from bad. But yet to attract an audience, the medium demands that the blog be frequently entertaining.

Conflict is entertaining, as those who seek fame know. Margulis has mastered this. Pivar also seems to cultivate a combative image in the art world. And certainly PZ is skilled at the use of rhetorical obliteration. It's essentially PZ's PR talk show, therefore, using measures of entertainment value and popular appeal, it all makes perfect sense. Naturally Pharyngula invites Lynn Margulis, a famous scientist who has been more or less spent her career trailed by diaphanous veil of conflict, and he allows questions but warns no "trolls". And Pharyngula agrees to review the self-published book of Stuart Pivar, a famous art collector, and does so in a frank and comedic way. Blog readers will certainly get some bang for their buck.

Voting Machines Hackable

Electronic voting machines are famous for their susceptibility to hacking, as shown by several groups, including Ed Felten and his team at Princeton, who write the Freedom to Tinker blog. The group has repeatedly shown various problems with electronic voting machines. Last fall they published a widely read paper on multiple problems with the Diebold Accuvote-TS, which they also demonstrated in this short video posted at Google.

Last week, following more research on voting machine fallibilities, California's Secretary of State Bowen decertified several voting machines in use in the state and imposed new conditions on the machines based on the findings.

There has been some mixed press about Bowen's move. Most of the press seems positive, however a few reporters focused on the "high costs" of implementing the system. Of course "cost" arguments always cause public hesitation but in the end catch up with us.

Bridges Fallible

"Bridge Disaster Could Mean Gas - Tax Hike", the New York Times warns today, noting that the catastrophe "could tip the scales in favor of billions of dollars in higher gasoline taxes for repairs coast to coast". It probably sent shivers down the backs of politicians and citizens alike, from coast to coast.

Of course, inspectors had warned about the structural integrity of the Minnesota bridge for years. But fortunately the warnings were quieted by an outside bridge review in 2001, under Mr. Elwyn Tinklenberg, former Governor Jesse Ventura's transportation commissioner. Current Governor Tim Pawlenty and the transportation commissioner Helen Molnau, (known as "Ma"), say they "relied on experts" to certify the bridge. They have steadfastly resisted tax increases that would have paid for road improvement.

As levees sink and pipes burst, U.S. infrastructure grades fall to C's and D's. Environmental waste clean up "costs", as does implementation of carbon regulation or taking the bus. Education costs are exorbitant too.

And Democracy's Costs So Malleable

But interestingly driving an SUV -- this site we previously linked to guesstimates that about 30% of the cars in NYC are SUVs -- doesn't "cost" too much even though gas is $3.00-4.00 per gallon. Almost any city budget can accommodate a new baseball stadium, lobbying groups spare no cost in attaining 30 second spots promoting their measures, and politicians spare no cost at getting elected.

But it seems like venturing down a dark path to suggest that a certifiably honest and accurate voting system costs too much. Doesn't this cheapen our vote, or even suggest perhaps, with twisted logic, that our votes can be bought?

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Acronym Required posts regularly on government spending dilemmas, especially with regard to the federal role in oversight (for instance with health issues), and less frequently public infrastructure.

Flying Tedium

Sometimes you forget about the tedium of modern day air travel because the destination turns out to be so educational, enlightening, adventuresome, or fun. Your meetings, regardless of their purpose or outcome -- obligatory, joyful, fruitful, or entertaining -- redeem your travel efforts. But there's no denying that air travel can be tedious.

In previous eras travel at least required attention to your surroundings. Compared to a trek through the Amazon in the early 1900's, the riverboat tour today promising a piranha supper is no doubt cozier, but today's Homo sapiens vigor pales next to our swashbuckling, nature enduring ancestors. The intellectual or physical engagement once necessary for travel has been commercially scrubbed from most of today's mind numbing excursions.

U.S. airline travel offers the ultimate somnolent experience, with all the industrial efficiency required to fly 30,000 commercial flights a day in the US. Save the occasional blunder, air travel has been reduced from exotic to a mundane necessary evil. Sure, you don't want your flying experience to be "exciting". But we've been systematically trivialized to mindless beings who welcome the airline's beverage service with saucer eyed eagerness.

We put Pavlov's drooling dogs to shame with our anticipation of that one-ounce packet of salty peanuts doled out on a precise timetable; barring of course, the unforeseen "water landing" that would ultimately illuminate the utility or futility of grasping for our seats-cum-flotation-devices while the plane plummets towards the water at unfathomable speeds.

It's like being anesthetized during an operation -- you generally wake up alive, although there's a palpable risk that you may die -- but in that case you'll most likely succumb without too much of a fuss. Once we're sufficiently numbed for the flight, with all good fortune the plane will eventually bump us out of our induced coma by landing on the runway, whereupon everyone will finally breath in one deep, enlivening breath of recirculated oxygen.

No matter how much entertainment one arms oneself with, airline travel can bore you silly. My last flight was delayed for two hours before take off. The captain's associate wisely allowed the passengers to disembark and mill about "close to the gate", and so two hundred passengers promptly lined up at a nearby concession stand. A single employee tore his hair out trying to fill the espresso and lemonade orders of agitated passengers, one drop at a time. So those of us at the end of the line, unable to discern any progress at such a distance, abandoned our quest to quench our thirst and whiled away the hours on the plane devouring our scarce reading materials.

After take-off, non-advantageous wind patterns delayed our flight further. The Linux in-flight entertainment system crashed and the self-appointed IT guru/flight attendant stared, forever, plaintively, at the system console, not daring to reboot it for fear of irking those who were watching the movie. Time wasters like collaborative trivial pursuit were therefore out of the question and so eight hours into my flight, you might see how fighting off malaria and wild animals in the Amazon seemed preferable.

This may all have been an elaborate airline ruse to get passengers to purchase absurd items from SkyMall magazine (the link is to the amusing song, not the catalog), but instead I decided to dissect the contents of my eagerly awaited "snack pack". That offered, if not nourishment, an introduction to that mysterious subject of food science.

Snack Packs

Remember when airlines tried to "...distinguish themselves from other competitors and entice passengers with their in-flight cuisine"? I don't. I wasn't around when airplanes meandered to their destinations at a leisurely 100mph, when "pilots handed out boxed lunches to passengers as they boarded", or when airlines were so hard pressed for business they vied for customers with "sophisticated menus and elaborate meal service programs." But I've dabbled in the more recent meals of the last decade, the veal parmigiana barely identifiable from the chicken Provencale or the lasagna, all gray slabs of something with tomato sauce. These offerings, long a dependable topic for water cooler griping, are now also history, relative luxuries purged in recent airline budget cuts and operational restructuring.

The least promising part of the snack pack I was assigned was the "Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread Havarti-type Flavor" in the .75 oz plastic container. This is a substance from unknown sources that has the texture and look of condensed milk. It in no way resembles Havarti, even though they don't set the bar too high since Havarti itself, that semi-soft cheese developed on a 19th century "experimental farm", has few notable characteristics. These so-called "pasteurized process cheese spreads" generally consist of about 10-20 ingredients including various milk products like whey and skim milk, along with a smorgasbord of preservatives, and are usually of undefined nutritional value or detriment. A related product, "Tuscan" cheese spread, suggests that if you wish to know the nutritional content you can snail mail a company called "Lactoprot", in Blue Mounds, WI, for the information -- hope your not anxious for the news. In the meantime, go ahead, you adventure seekers, dip your crackers into the effluent if you dare.

The accompanying crackers in .5 oz plastic wrappers offer nowhere near the entertainment value of the runny, unspreadable spread, but do contain a miserly 60-80 calories. All of these plastic wrapped items are arranged in a square plastic container that is wrapped in yet another layer of plastic, along with a plastic bottle holding 8.5 ounces of water. A tiny box of 30 or so raisins is included on special days.

Airlines realize that although passengers may complain, they're excruciatingly bored, buckled in shoulder to shoulder in those knee binding seats. Therefore they'll alight with glee on any old plastic snack pack and gobble it down with the voracious enthusiasm of a squirrel eating an acorn on a telephone wire. Look down a row and you can see the line of passengers bent covetously over their snack packs, ripping into the plastic wrap, bits of plastic falling to the left and right of the meal tray. They dismantle layer after layer of plastic, eager prying fingers searching for a tiny little morsel of cracker buried in the plastic wrap. Then they quickly move on, deftly unearthing the next plastic encased scrap of processed food. When the passengers are done with the plastic unwrapping entertainment, the cabin crew circulates with plastic bags collecting the plastic wrappers and the plastic bottles.

Meal service used to require enduring the appetite arresting slurping and slobbering of tens of surrounding passengers. Now it sounds more like the packing area of a UPS mail room. The American Plastics Council has certainly captured the hearts and minds of the airline industry.

Airline Recycling

If you've flown recently you were no doubt concerned about the environmental impact of your flight. To eschew your guilt perhaps you offset your flight's carbon emissions, after all you can't go too far on the internet without bumping into an opportunity to do so. Less appreciated is the plastic waste we generate staving off hunger and boredom by gobbling up the 200-300 calorie snack pack. A tiny source of nutrients for a heap of plastic waste.

In December, 2006, the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC), released a report "Trash Landings: How Airlines and Airports Can Clean Up Their Recycling Programs", which documented the waste generated at airports and from flights. Did you know?

The airline industry threw out 9,000 tons of plastic in 2004, and enough newspapers and magazines to bury a football field more than 230 feet deep. Nationwide, U.S. airports generated 425,000 tons of waste in 2004 -- a figure expected to increase nearly 45 percent by 2015. Each passenger today leaves behind 1.3 pounds of trash, the researchers found. Seventy five percent of this waste is recyclable or compostable. Yet the industry-wide recycling rate is 20 percent or less -- one third less than the U.S. average as a whole.

The NRDC report suggests ways to revamp the recycling and waste programs of airlines and airports. You yourself can decline the snack pack. Trust me, this particular "Havarti-type" spread doesn't capture the very ordinary essence of the Havarti you may love, either the original flavor, or the cumin, dill, cranberry, garlic, jalapeno types valiantly introduced by flavor advocates. You would look so noble declining the snack pack. What if half the passengers on every flight declined the snack pack? How easy would that be?

Iraq: Media Spin

The Bill Moyers Journal premiered on PBS on Wednesday April 25, 2006, with the show "Buying the War", also available online in its entirety. Moyer's makes his thesis clear in one of the first shots. As Bush enters the briefing room for a press conference the White House press corps is standing. The press corps then sits down and as they're filmed from one side it looks like their taking one long, collective, sweeping bow. "Buying the War" then shows parts of scripted press conference, where everyone knows who will be called on, what they'll ask, and what Bush's answer will be, but they all play along with the charade.

Documentaries and books have already thoroughly analyzed the Bush Administration's sale of the Iraq war to U.S. citizens. "Buying the War" focused on the media's sometimes eager complicity in this goal. For many reasons, reporters from outlets like the New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, as well as major TV networks, supported the Bush Administration's march to war.

A Frontline show earlier this the year also focused on the role of the media in a four part series. That show portrayed a media diminished from its post-Watergate heyday to its present *beleaguered* state. The Moyer's show, in my opinion, provided a slightly more optimistic view (with a less ominous soundtrack). Moyer's focus was the ennoble, under appreciated role of reporting accurate news during the tense pre-Iraq atmosphere. At the time, there was intense pressure to dutifully report the Bush administrations' claims, and beneath the sheen of patriotism in the ranks of media, sycophancy and spin ruled the day. "Buying the War" featured a few reporters in the lead-up to the Iraq war who tenaciously (and correctly) reported evidence that contradicted the Bush administration's themes for invading attack.

Needless to say, the reporters who didn't find Bush's evidence compelling weren't the loud majority. Among others, Moyers interviewed Charles Hanley, and Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel from Knight Ridder (now McClatchy). Before the invasion the two Knight Ridder reporters churned out dozens of skeptical reports, based on research and information from sources within and beyond the upper echelons of the administration.

As Landay relayed in "Buying the War", the defectors who were providing "evidence" against Saddam weren't making sense. They gave questionable and conflicting accounts. Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a Kurd, divulged Saddam's weapons caches to the CIA. Why would a sworn enemy of Hussein, a Kurd, Landay asked, "be allowed into to Sadam's top military facilities"? He continued;

"and....the idea that Saddam Hussein would put a biological weapons facility under his residence. I mean, would you put a biological weapons lab under your living room? I don't think so."

The reporters who got the facts relied on concerned Administration officials, unclassified documents, and scientists. Bob Simon of CBS News, talked to scientists who provided details about the aluminum tubes.

BILL MOYERS: "When you said a moment ago when we started talking to people who knew about aluminum tubes. What people-who were you talking to?"
BOB SIMON: "We were talking to people - to scientists - to scientists and to researchers and to people who had been investigating Iraq from the start."
BILL MOYERS: "Would these people have been available to any reporter who called or were they exclusive sources for 60 minutes?"
BOB SIMON: "No, I think that many of them would have been available to any reporter who called."
BILL MOYERS: And you just picked up the phone?
BOB SIMON: Just picked up the phone.
BILL MOYERS: Talked to them?
BOB SIMON: Talked to them and then went down with the cameras.

As it turned out, Saddam Hussein didn't possess nuclear weapons or biological weapons, had not acquired uranium ore from Africa, and was not sponsoring Al-Qaida in Iraq.

Iraq and the Facts, Tardy but Hardy

Those who supported the administration's push for war, and who also appeared on Moyer's show (many didn't), admitted they were mistaken. Some were contrite and almost all were apologists. They said they were under the gun from their corporations, and that large media had its insatiable political "needs". The reporters and anchors said they feared for their careers. Their patriotism was heightened after 9-11 they said. Some squirmed visibly under Moyer's pointed questions and elder gaze -- or was it a glare? Others seemed to light up under the challenge...books to sell maybe.

Many of those reporters fervently sold Bush's appeals to halt Al-Qaida in Iraq are now at plum reporting positions where they continue to hold forth as experts in their fields, despite the inaccuracy of their predictions of democracy, easy victory and flower leis.

The McClatchy's reporters note in via Q&A sometime after the show that their employers supported them. Other reporters who publicly expressed doubt were relegated to the back pages, or taken off the air (Phil Donahue). What are reporters supposed to do it their employer edits their stories, forbids them to report ideas ideologically out of sync with business or the administration, or fires them? How would they explain that to their mortgage lender and children? The illiberal face of liberalism lurks about, and no doubt reporters face tough decisions.

Bill Moyers noted in a speech to the "National Conference on Media Reform", some time after he left NOW....

"One reason I’m in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn’t play by the conventional rules of beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if, instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news...

Faced with relentless spin, it's easy to see how counterspin might be the only answer. But in this example the facts prevailed because of the scientists, reporters, and administrative officials. The facts were resilient.

Bill Moyers new show is regularly scheduled Fridays on PBS.

Many scientists have an intimate relationship with deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). They analyze DNA extensively and see meaning in inscrutable patterns of As, Cs, Gs and Ts. They study the nucleic acid structure of gene sequences that code proteins and determine the organism's development. They manipulate code to understand the mechanisms by which DNA replicates, self repairs, and occasionally goes awry. They've cleverly devised DNA computing and nanotechnology and have discovered things like "Zinc-finger protein-targeted gene regulation: Genomewide single-gene specificity". But scientists might still be baffled by this:

"Remixed here by "cutting edge names" such as Planningtorock and Rex The Dog, the song's DNA is spliced crudely into four mutated clones that warp the spectral waltz of the original into demented disco".¹

That's because while scientists toiled away in their labs, night after day, the rest of the world moved on to synthesize its own DNA. We may know deoxyribonucleic acid, but everyone else is defining modern DNA. True, other terms attained fame outside the lab. "Symbiosis" and "chimera" and the most annoying "meme", all served multidisciplinary roles and fits of popularity, but the use of "DNA" has spiraled out of control.

Deoxyribonucleic acid was always exciting to scientists, but the rest of the world largely left deoxyribonucleic acid to labs and lurid murder trials. For years it was pressed between glass plates and painstakingly sequenced in one organism after another. Then one day deoxyribonucleic acid became DNA, that sexy, mysterious be-all-end-all, ubiquitous highfalutin cool stuff. Beyond biology, people suddenly began to use the term in ways that had nothing at all to do with deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA became central to everything and now when you see the acronym it may mean anything or nothing.

Reporters revel in the idea that DNA is the central component of life. They even manage to elevate its importance. Here's one reporter's take on deoxyribonucleic acid:

"Bulbs in spring epitomize the season. They are kernels of DNA-- collective memory -- sprouting into plants we already know but, always slightly different..."²;

As one reporter elevates DNA to a prima donna role in glorious springtime, another cavalierly plunges DNA to impossibly mundane lows:

"There's a reason no one ever waxes rhapsodic over "that new fridge smell." You open the doors and you're hit square in the nose with a hideous, DNA-perverting carcinogenic stink."³

From those off-hand nature/nurture interpretations of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA can become much, much more in the hands of an able reporter, author, or marketing guru. Even in national and international politics deoxyribonucleic acid becomes a sort of anthropological bureaucratic key, a way to understand official decisions:

• "The attachment to Washington is embedded too deeply in the DNA of Britain's political establishment for a new prime minister to risk an open breach..."⁴
• "This wording stemmed from the commission's core DNA, which prompts it to act on behalf of consumers by embracing competition, localism and diversity deemed to be "in the public interest"....Now, after XM and Sirius have fought ferociously for 10 years, they come on bended knee before policymakers..."⁵

Deoxyribonucleic acid adds panache to corporate name, especially for creative or design companies like PixelDNA or DNA Creative. The latter espouses that "the function of DNA is to define the genetic information that forms your Corporate Identity".

There are probably fewer books about DNA in the "Science" section of Amazon then in "Business and Investing". There are books devoted to every sort of "DNA" imaginable popularized with DNA laden titles: Financial DNA, investing DNA, entrepreneurial DNA, trader DNA, organizational DNA, decision DNA, the DNA Selling Method, the DNA of Leadership,the DNA of Marketing....

Marketing, especially, has discovered this most ubiquitous, malleable acronym. As DNA encodes the genetics of sea urchins but also elephants, so marketing teams press it into diverse roles, from defining multinational banks to health food company philosophy.

• '"..It was part of our DNA and a great foundation,'' said Catherine P. Bessant, who introduced the ''Higher Standards'' tagline four years ago when she served as Bank of America's chief marketing officer."⁶
• "Wild Oats employees are in for an entirely new kind of CEO....parts of Mackey's bio are practically shared DNA in the natural foods industry - a philosophy major who dropped out of college, attire that includes Tevas...."⁷

You probably thought motor vehicles were all about metal and plastic and oil and new car smell and just in time manufacturing -- how wrong.

• "With the balance of rear-wheel drive and the availability of V-8 power, the G8 represents another step in Pontiac 's commitment to its performance DNA."⁸
• ".."The all-new Lancer GS will crush all the myths about compact sedans with its inherited Evo DNA."⁹
• ''Our competitor is really on a strategy of re-branding Daewoo, but we're consistent on the Ford DNA of great driving dynamics.¹⁰
• "...tempt[ing] the buying public by unveiling a prototype street motorcycle inspired by the spirit of Flat Track racing and the XR 750. This XR 1200 prototype, they claim, comes from DNA from the XR line"¹¹

Moving on to the world of entertainment, the acronym's truly twisted meaning becomes even more incongruous. Music, you know, is all about DNA, and in this context it defines a certain je ne sais quois....

• "The six-track collection of slicker-than-your-average-indie boasts hooks as chiseled as the band's jaw lines. It's glam-infused pop-rock that shares melodic DNA with the likes of Placebo and Bowie."¹²
• "But many watching the Chicks fall from country grace were not surprised by the backlash. Country music has conservatism in its DNA, right?"¹³
• "The songs contained on (`Meet the Beatles!')," he says, "are part of the collective DNA of the Smithereens."¹⁴

Even a diamond isn't what you think it is, a rock chipped out of a cave, without deoxyribonucleic acid: "the Montblanc logo, with a sprinkling of diamonds, takes centre stage in the design DNA... the intricacies..the complexity of the Montblanc Star diamond..."¹⁵

Scientists have been through the whole one gene coded one protein thing and and back again, but the media has internalized some central dogma about DNA. As one reporter put it in an article titled, "The Essence of Being¹⁶":

"Our tastes, styles, values and choices in careers, relationships, homes, cars, music, books, TV, movies, hobbies, loves, hates and interests all reflect our archetypes. We may have been unconscious of the fact that our archetypal DNA was making these decisions, but they do[sic] influence every moment. Becoming conscious of this information is transformational".

I confess, though always impressed by the powers of DNA, I underestimated its omnipotence. I missed that my "holistic" "archetypal DNA" was making these decisions on my behalf. How shocking -- am I transformed?

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1.) "Bad Jamie's rumor mill" The Boston Herald February 23, 2007 2.) "This Week" The San Francisco Chronicle, February 18, 2007 3.) "Modern fridges, explained - somewhat" Minneapolis Star, Tribune MN, February 23, 2007 4.) "The affair is over as history leaves Bush and Blair behind" Financial Times, February 23, 2007 5.) Reject their request, USA Today February 23, 2007 6.) "Bank of America Tagline Has Run Its Course" The New York Times February 20, 2007 7.) "Whole Foods CEO doesn't back down" Rocky Mountain News February 23, 2007 8.) "Pontiac and Saturn will add new models developed overseas" The Oregonian February 17, 2007 9.) "The Evolution of Mitsubishi" The Toronto Sun February 18, 2007, 10.) "Mondeo firms for a return" The Courier Mail, February 17, 2007 11.) "The shape of things to come" The Irish Times January 24, 2007 12.) "The Guide: music" The Guardian (London) February 24, 2007 13.) "When country went right: Country music wasn't always married to conservative politics. It happened in the Nixon era." (American Prospect) in Chicago Sun Times February 23, 2007 Friday 14.) Love them do: Frontman Pat Dinizio is psyched about the smithereens' new beatles project Chicago Sun Times January 7, 2007 15.) Power jewelery; Montblanc and Roberto Coin have launched their jewelery collections in Singapore recently. The Business Times (Singapore) February 24, 2007 16.) Sunday Mail (South Australia) February 18, 2007

Colleges Ban Wikipedia

The New York Times published the story this week about colleges encouraging students to use sources other than Wikipedia as references for academic work. A professor in Middlebury College's history department initiated the policy after several students wrote on an exam that "the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan". The professor noted that there were few Jesuits in Japan at the time and they were "in 'no position to aid a revolution'". Middlebury College is not the first to forbid references to Wikipedia¹, it's a growing trend.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, said he didn't consider Middlebury's decision "negative". Of course the definition of "encyclopedia" (or -"paedia"), is "course of general education" not, as some would have it -- 'a collection of definitive answers to all questions'. Others point out that Wikipedia is a tertiary source, not a secondary or primary source suitable for college essays.

The New York Times writes that the problem with Wikipedia is accuracy, however others aren't as critical, for instance the courts. Another New York Times article found that, "100 judicial rulings have relied on Wikipedia, beginning in 2004, including 13 from circuit courts of appeal, one step below the Supreme Court". Several studies have concluded that Wikipedia's information is comparable to other sources like Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Nature devised one of the studies, an "expert-led investigation" of 50 entries about scientists and scientific concepts. ("Internet encyclopaedias go head to head", December, 2005. Nature 438, 900-901). The journal appointed experts who deemed 42 of 50 articles surveyed "usable". The unusable articles included four each from Britannica and Wikipedia, which contained inaccuracies like "misinterpretations of important concepts". The review also found articles with "factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively".

Internet Time vs. Britannica Time

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, responded to the results, telling Nature he wanted to recruit more "experts" to write the articles. One reviewer said people would find it "shocking" to know how many errors were in Britannica. Britannica, lifeblood apparently draining, wrote a charged rebuttal (.pdf) to Nature's study. It began: "Everything about the journal's investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading." Over the next 20 pages it vilified the report as "poorly carried out", "error-laden", "without merit", and "without value". Britannica published the defense on its website three months after Nature's original story and took out an ad in a London paper demanding a retraction.

By the time Britannica got around to it's rebuttal people in and out of the media had digested Nature's results. A few questioned them, for instance one New York Times writer asked one of Nature's experts why he had flagged a fact in an article as inaccurate when his own book contained the same fact. ("The Nitpicking of the Masses vs. the Authority of the Experts". January 3, 2006). Other reporters distilled the results less analytically under titles like this: "'Nature': Wikipedia is accurate" (USA Today Dec. 12, 2005).

Nature wholeheartedly defended its methods and conclusions and refused to retract its article. For whatever reason, the journal was in the middle of an encyclopedia war -- and strangely -- on the open access side. Its article helped convince people that Wikipedia was more than just World Wide Web whimsy.

For its part, Britannica fought the perception that it was seeing its life flash before its eyes like a door in the face of an encyclopedia salesman. The Wall Street Journal (September 12, 2006) hosted an email forum between Mr. Wales of Wikipedia, and Dale Hoiberg, senior vice president and editor in chief of Britannica. Wales cited some links to articles critical of Britannica data. Hoiberg replied that there was ample criticism of Wikipedia too, but he didn't have it handy. Wales emailed back a Wikipedia.com link containing the entire body of criticism on Wikipedia, and took the opportunity to pedantically explain the joys accessing information instantaneously. Hoiberg cited Britannica's "trained editors and fact-checkers" and "more than 4,000 experts", processes, and strict editorial control. Wales taunted that those words were "fitting for an epitaph".

How do we Know?

Is it important that so called tertiary sources are squaring off about who's more accurate, or that colleges are urging students to use primary and secondary sources? Some commentators virtually shrugged. But important questions about how people verify information, what information is trusted, who can publish information and who controls information are at the heart of these debates. When bloggers began producing content, newspapers ranted on and on about how worthless blogs were. Many still do, although they also incorporate blogs into their online content. The PLoS publishing model motivated scientific publishers to hire PR firms who coined deceptive one line: slogans like"Public 'access equals government censorship'; 'Scientific journals preserve the quality/pedigree of science'; and 'government seeking to nationalize science and be a publisher'"

Wikipedia claims that anyone can publish information (with some limits). Many people criticize this model. The New York Times published a piece last month, titled "Anonymous Source Is Not the Same as Open Source". In it, the author said that employing "secondary epistemic criteria" is necessary to verify sources. "Once upon a time, Encyclopaedia Britannica recruited Einstein, Freud, Curie, Mencken and even Houdini as contributors.The names helped the encyclopedia bolster its credibility." The author's quote speaks well, if inadvertently, to the inherent problem. Who's an authority? Houdini may be a font of information but should he be plunked so close to Einstein? Should Freud be slipped next to Curie -- with only a comma separating them? The author continued: "The egalitarian nature of a system that accords equal votes to everyone in the ''community'' -- middle-school student and Nobel laureate alike -- has difficulty resolving intellectual disagreements." To the author perhaps Houdini is an authority to reference. To some he may be an authority on magic tricks of yore but nothing else. But Houdini may also had some insight up his sleeve on some other subject that would be a very valuable addition to Wikipedia. Wikipedia users could judge.

The author says we need to proxies for authority to assess information. Health and science data is especially daunting to assess, therefore we often rely pedigree. So credentials become the proxy for assessing knowledge, occasionally to a fault, as in: Nobel Laureate trumps Professor trumps Associate Professor trumps Assistant Professor trumps MD/PhD trumps Lecturer trumps Resident or PostDoc trumps PhD trumps MS trumps BS trumps Harvard Dropout trumps BA (or something like that). In science the gold standard for research is redoing the experiment, but such testing is usually impractical. These judgments often work, obviously, we will trust our doctor over a spam mail advertising the benefits of herbal health enhancers, but if we put too much faith in credentials or publishing record, we can unwittingly cede our power to evaluate information.

Government as Information Arbiter?

There's some literature out there on this subject and we stumbled across this paper titled: "The problem of online misinformation and the role of schools". The author proposed a two part solution for schools. One was to teach skills to help students assess data, which he fleshed out considerably. Secondly he suggested assigning "intermediaries" to vet sites and "promot[e] reliable sources of online information". For this, he proposed "government-sponsored Web portals and librarians". As far as I know, librarians already do this, so we focused on what he meant by "intermediary". He used medical information as an example of information difficult to evaluate for validity. He cautioned about the potential drawbacks and biases of many types of information sites even those from trusted government sources. He recommended MedlinePlus, part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) as a good source for students because it was free of bias, amply funded, a well organized, and carried the right pedigree, which he defined as: "18,000 staff, including thousands of physicians and scientists in white lab coats, 106 of whom have been awarded Nobel prizes."².

It's certainly a sound enough recommendation, but nothing is this simple. Frederick Seitz probably wore a "white lab coat". He is a very credentialed PhD physicist, the recipient of the National Medal of Science, the Franklin Medal, the Herbert Hoover Medal, the Defense Department Distinguished Service Award, as well as two NASA Distinguished Service Awards, and The Compton Award. He is a President Emeritus of Rockefeller University Former President of the National Academy of Sciences, Recipient of the Fourth Vannevar Bush Award and the R. Loveland Memorial Award of the American College of Physicians, former President of New York City Commission for Science and Technology, Former Chair of the United States delegation to the U.N. Committee on Science and Technology for Development, as well as over 20 honorary degrees.

Seitz used his stellar credentials to obtain a job working for tobacco companies', and on their behalf he argued for several decades that cigarette smoke was benign. He also used his credentials to rally scientists against climate change evidence. He cited his awards to establish a foundation used to advocate "sound science", that bolstered political positions in order to undermine real scientific evidence. He often inserted himself and his impressive credentials in between business and public health, especially when business interests seemed in conflict with public health risks.

Reference Regulation

This isn't to denigrate the expertise of scientists and doctors and lawyers, but upon occasion experts are as fallible, capable of bias or deception as non-experts. In science and medicine, sycophants to pedigree have enabled huge sweeping, expensive catastrophes and personal tragedies. Renowned scientists have produced false data, and a recent study found that 44,000 to 98,000 Americans a year die from medical errors, many from credentialed doctors.

Nevertheless, everyday as consumers of information we must make decisions; judge the validity of a medical study funded by pharmaceutical companies, learn why science facts are excised out of government science reports, and try to figure out whether the "man on the street" is being candid about the technology or astroturfing while we live our busy lives.

Banning Wikipedia may rightly force students to find alternative sources of information but what data is reliable? Are professors guiding students, elaborating about how history books can be slanted? Do they explain that newspaper articles can distort the facts, as can the evening news? What biases do they bring to their lectures? Are we saying that primary sources don't have opinions, that their value systems are not intermingled with their accounts? We can hopefully vouch for the fact that primary sources said what they said, if they're speaking on camera, but do we know they meant it? Marketing and public relations have altered the landscape and many people have no compunction about standing up and lying on camera. Scientist who do primary research recognize the myriad challenges to designing and conducting experiments to generate and report accurate, relevant data. Pedigree is a very imperfect standard for assessing truth, as is the internet.³

The skill of assessing sources should be honed in college by practice not rules. A professor can be the arbiter of sources for a semester, and a college or librarian may serve that role for a few years, but our future depends on students mastering these skills for life.

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¹We're biased. We like encyclopedias (in general). We love Wikipedia's mission and are forever impressed with the information we find. We often link to Wikipedia to give readers background to subjects we editorialize. We also choose not to link to Wikipedia when articles about controversial medical procedures or public health/policy issues understate risks or read more like product literature.

²Suggesting that the government sanctioned sources is different than the proposed Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (FRPAA) which would require federally funded researchers to post papers online after six months.

³ There is a book on this called "Who Controls The Internet?" that's well-argued.

Back to the 70's

PBS "Frontline" airs the first of a four part series tonight, called "News Wars: Secret Spin and The Future of News". According to the show, in the aftermath of Watergate journalists enjoyed a level of respect in a touted "watchdog" role. That role and the respect attached to it has now diminished under political, economic, and legal pressures. The show will cover a lot of ground, but one question it ponders is whether American media can continue to be withstand these current pressures without morphing into insignificance, or becoming a compliant agent of state and corporate interests.

Some people might not care about these issues. I'm sure some believe that news and its demise or survival is irrelevant or even beneficial to blogging and that the print news and its future have little to do with science. However for years people have complained that mainstream news more often delivers pablum then news. Most of us readily question that which is called "news" is, as does the show. Even this site, Acronym Required, was partially spurred into existence by the fact that science in mainstream news was incomplete, misleading, and often inaccurate. What actually put us over the edge was a television news story that presented Lyme tick arthritis as a threat comparable in scope and severity to the AIDS epidemic. We've hardly remained faithful to the original purpose, and now there are hundreds of science blogs that cover these issues succinctly, as well as blogs on history, economics and politics that do also.

Jon Stewart has been addressing quality of news issues on The Daily Show for ten years. Academic studies and even the mainstream media acknowledge that the Daily Show is a more comprehensive compendium of current events and politics as a "fake" news show than most evening news shows. A contingent of independent journalists, citizen journalists, and bloggers fill in the gaps of traditional media. When the New York Times writes front page articles supporting the war in Iraq based on unquestioned "leaks" that reporters receive from White House officials, as they did during the build-up to the Iraq war, or publishes a front page story supporting administration's agenda against Iran, as they did yesterday, independent journalists and bloggers step in to take a stand.

Not content with accepting obsequious news for information, many readers seek out independent journalists whose writing, observations, protests and collective blogospheric activity fits their own world view or satisfies curiosity not met on the evening news. Journalism that is not mainstream has become increasingly important. Lowell Bergman and Steve Talbot of "Frontline" spoke to the influence of the internet in their talk about the upcoming "Frontline" show back on January 11th. While recognizing the web as a disruptive force on traditional media, they also stated that 85% of new information is delivered via traditional reporting. They seemed to acknowledge that new media is a force to be reckoned with while at the same time questioning whether it is capable of the challenge it sets for itself. Or whether in the end it would be subsumed by traditional media. To wit, they reported (and we don't know what's happened since) that "The Daily Show" was being courted by the Washington Post to cover the 2008 campaign. This is the same Washington Post that asked just last year whether Jon Stewart was "An Enemy of Democracy?"

Other than to mention the web's sometimes beleaguered image, we won't dwell on this theme now except to note that blogging or its approach has a place on most mainstream papers, albeit after much kicking and screaming by those same papers. Even some major editorialists like the New York Times' Frank Rich have incorporated the online style by including hyperlinks to outside sources within recent Times editorials. Why shun sensible technology?

Going To Jail

What is potentially more threatening to independent bloggers and citizen journalists than being incorporated into traditional media, are the new strong armed tactics of the government. While science bloggers aren't necessarily writing contentious topics that would prompt government crackdowns, censorship will have a widespread effect on many independent journalists.

To this end, "Frontline's" "News Wars" also addresses the issue of who has the right to publish. The show notes that the Judith Miller case established the prerogative of government to demand a journalists' sources, something that since the 1970's has been completely off limits. The government is now using this precedent to prosecute other journalists who try to protect sources. Documenting this history, the show contends that we haven't seen this type of encroachment on journalistic freedom for 35 years.

Again, independent journalists and certainly not scientist journalists might not feel an immediate chill from these developments. However citizen journalists and independent journalists potentially have the most to lose. Large, established media outlets, like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, can afford to hire lawyers to protect their journalists from the types of legal demands that the government is making. However independent journalists who try to cover news not covered by traditional media don't necessarily have the legal and institutional resources to back them up.

Josh Wolf is one such journalist, imprisoned for the last six months in a Dublin, California federal correctional institution for refusing to share his sources with a federal grand jury. He was interviewed for the Frontline show, and was also interviewed from his jail cell for the show Democracy Now yesterday. As an independent journalist, Josh filmed a G-8 protest in San Francisco. The Federal government became aware of the footage via his site, and claimed that he had more film footage that federal prosecutors could use to investigate whether crimes were committed during the protest. They also wanted to use him as a witness against protesters. Josh refused to turn over the footage. The state of California affords journalists the right to protect sources. However federal prosecutors are circumventing California State law in order to imprison Josh Wolf.

Furthermore, in a January 29th document, according to Democracy Now, federal prosecutors stated that it was in Josh Wolf's "imagination" that he was a journalist. Asked by "Democracy Now" to comment on the characterization, Wolf questioned the right of the state to designate who was and who wasn't a journalist. The Society of Professional Journalists named Josh Wolf Northern California 2006 Journalist of the Year and awarded him the James Madison Award for Online Journalism.

Wolf noted that newspaper journalists faced with similar charges are threatened with imprisonment based on circuit court decisions, whereas he was imprisoned immediately after his hearing, and has been incarcerated throughout ninth circuit court proceedings. Martin Garbis, Wolf's lawyer, notes that the grand jury is a thinly veiled attempt on the part of a joint terrorism task force to identify and persecute people who are hostile to the Bush administration.

These new rules on how journalists are allowed to report could continue to frame how independent journalism is or isn't allowed the freedom to contribute to how citizens think about pertinent issues, matters of science, history, politics, or international affairs. The Frontline show will address these and many other themes central to today's journalism. Based the January 11th presentation the shows seem like they'll be really compelling. The third hour deals with the fate of the Los Angeles Times, which has been pressed by it's nonlocal corporate owners to discontinue investigative reporting, and has also faced significant and destructive reorganization. The fourth hour was outlined in January by Bergman and Talbot, they thought it might cover a South Korean site called OhmyNews.com. However the show wasn't completely edited at the time and the current Frontline website suggests that the final hour might highlight the role of Arab media in influencing politics and news.

The non-science world reels with bad news -- national, international, all of it. We shudder and shut our eyes tightly as we pass the news stands, we cover our ears when we hear a radio or TV. But while much of the bad news emanates from Washington, Washingtonians have mastered an uncanny ability to forget it all. Have you noticed? Famously forgetful the Bush administration jeopardizes world affairs with its amnesia. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, when asked why the U.S. invaded Iraq when Korea posed an imminent nuclear threat, said that "North Korea was sui generis", a particular case. Veterans of the Korean War, stunned by Korea's bellicosity, plea that we don't forget North Korea's aggression in the "forgotten war". But the Secretary of State can't seem to even keep track of recent wars. Asked about why the U.S. invaded Iraq, she recalled spuriously: "We actually went to war against Iraq in 1991 because they invaded and tried to annex Kuwait...", as if she forgot when and why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and by declaring events this way could distort her listeners memories too.

Not long ago, when reports suggested that Rice might have had a meeting with George Tenet before 9/11 when he warned her of possible Al Qaeda attacks, she morphed into apoplectic horror. She declared herself appalled by the allegations, she would remember the event she insisted. Has Rice merely perfected the scrunched up insulted expression of a prim goody two shoes in order to glibly side step reality? If we were to take the act at face value, the idea that Rice "does not recall" -- seemingly, anything -- alarms us. Is she afflicted by a rare disease, previously disregarded -- like chikungunya, but that affects neural cells? Has she caught a virus endemic to "Foggy Bottom"?

Unfortunately Rice can't be described as "Sui generis" in this way. Donald Rumsfeld scratches his forhead through every interview, squinting into the distance and wending and winding his way around various outcomes of his decisions. Shouldn't the leader of the Pentagon be mentally sharp as a tack? Reportedly he had only the "vaguest recollection" of warnings by top brass on the ground in Iraq about his strategy. In his 'fruit in a fruitbowl' analogy, he compared escalating insurgent attacks in Iraq incongruously to apples and bananas and oranges.

Congress, of course, epitomizes the symptoms of the affliction. In the latest in a long string of scandals, key Republicans knew about Mark Foley's flagitious ways but forgot to oust him, or, alternatively, lost the facts in the legislative shuffle. No one informed Senator Hastert of Foley's messages to pages, or perhaps Tom Reynolds told him but "brought it in with a whole stack of things". Our elected legislators find too multi-tasking onerous, apparently. Foley on the other hand, takes a break from harrassment to "remember" that he's an alcoholic, an abused child, a gay and in need of rehab -- thus maligning and misrepresenting all who are abused, gay or alcoholic. We're nervous, scared maybe, to watch Washington come apart into a billion little pieces.

The forgetfulness afflicts news reporters too. Millions of Americans protested the Iraq invasion 3 years ago and have kept up the chatter ever since, but some pundits didn't seem to know that Iraq policy was amok. Only now do they declare Iraq policy officially a disaster, now that Bob Woodward says so in his book. Woodward