Recently in Politics, but No Science Category

Being that it's a slow day in the weekly cycle I should just kick back and peruse the glossy weekend magazine "How To Spend It", from the Financial Times' -- choose some baubles and get-ups to distract me, and lavish African safaris to amuse me. But a post is overdue. So some notes:

• Runaway Cars: Toyota's "Poppycock"

  Since 2003 the National Highway and Transportation Safety Authority has been investigating safety problems with Toyota vehicles. And apparently, in an effort to "ward off" too much investigation, Toyota hired two former NHTSA workers who helped forestall action government action and inquiry into the failures. Joan Claybrook, formerly of Public Citizen and the NHTSA, spoke about the company's duplicity in dealing with the issues:

  "Toyota came in on the floor mat issue and they said this is not a safety-related defect, but we're going to do it any way. And we're going to obey all of the rules and regulations that you have for carrying out a defect, but this is not a safety-related defect. This is poppycock and they should never have tried to get away with that."

  The company has apparently tried to frame a more serious problem as a floormat issue, but Claybrook recounts that the company is not only replacing the floormats but also installing a brake override:

  "in the recall dealing with the floor mats, this is the Lexus, the Camrys, some SUV's and the Prius, they're going to not only fix the floor mat, but they're going to install a brake override, as it's called, which is a software change which if there's a conflict between the accelerator, throttle and the brake, the brake wins out and you can stop the car. Right now a lot of cars have this, but the Toyota vehicles do not. So they need to have something electronic to stop these vehicles from being runaway vehicles."

  Admission of a widespread electronic problem would apparently be detrimental to the company. As for NHTSA, the agency has apparently been dealing with leadership turnover and budget woes. The growing outside perception is that the agency has grown altogether too close to the industry it's supposed to be regulating. We previously covered the NHTSA and industry coziness when writing about the EPA and the US government's efforts to reduce unhealthy automobile emissions.

  Columbia Journalism Review summarizes media coverage of NHTSA's dealings with Toyota, and reflexively criticizes the media in general for being lax.

• Gait

  There have been some interesting studies on gait lately. Barefoot running has become a fad and research has long indicated that running shoes increase ligament injuries, stress fractures and planter fasciitis. Now, a running shoe study by Lieberman et al in Nature "(subscription) shows that running shoes change human gait, from running toe-heel to running heel-toe. Actually, the authors distinguished three patterns, forefoot first, midfoot first, or rearfoot first. Running shoes encourage heel strike first, which differs from barefoot running. The researchers found heel strike running greatly increases resultant forces that can cause running injuries.

  In another recent study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, Cunningham et al compared the amount of energy expended when humans walk heel-toe (plantigrade), vs. toe-heel (digitgrade). The study found that it takes 53% more energy to walk on the balls of your feet, and 83% more energy to walk on your toes, than to walk heel to toe. The authors conclude that humans conserve energy by walking heel-toe (plantigrade), but don't conserve energy when they run plantigrade. They suggest evolutionary reasons that made heel-toe walking more advantageous.

  Finally, slightly different, another study, also in the Journal of Experimental Biology looked at elephant gait. The authors built an elaborate structure to measure the forces of running elephants and found that elephants use less energy and manage to bounce less (which decreased forces) by adapting a half-walk, half-run stride. This stride decreases by almost one-half the forces exerted by a running elephant compared to a running human.

  Acronym Required previously looked at energetics in Nepalese Porters carrying loads, and in human walking obese and non-obese people

• Matchmaking for Cynics

  Acronym Required has jestingly suggested pairing people from perhaps opposing camps in the past, like an impertinent investigative reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, with a journalist contracting for a bisphenolA-is-safe lobby, as we wrote in BPA Rhetoric and Reaction; or a chemical lobbyist, with an environmental agency scientist, as we wrote "New Strategies for Bisphenol A and Chemicals?". We did this to celebrate the Obama era, as a light-hearted ode to getting everyone at the same table.

  But now an offshoot of Greenpeace has developed a far more sinister and cynical matchmaking concept in "P-Harmony", Polluter Harmony, which proposes to match various legislators and decision-makers with lobbyists. Of course there's no end to such real-life power matches, as a Google search for any combination of "sex", "sleeping with", "lobbyists", "Congressmen", "regulators", "Senators", "in bed with", etc. will attest to. But if I were to rate the site, I'd say it's ripe with potential and has some amusing detail, but is spare on the sort of fleshed-out scurrilous information people find so delicious.

• And Speaking of Which, The EPA...

  No, not lobbyists in-bed with regulators, but websites. The new EPA website is much improved. The Obama Open Government initiative aims to "break[] down long-standing barriers between the federal government and you". To that end, you can "share your ideas" at the open government site or just peruse the evolving EPA site. It's not the first time the EPA has tried to improve public information, but this is a far more comprehensive approach than others, like this 2007 effort. I haven't delved too deep into the site, but the top pages seem also to advance the agency's control over its messaging.

• Obama Quandries

  No one quite knows what to make of Obama. We wrote about the collective disappointment last month, and pondered whether, if people been paying attention, they'd have realized he wasn't necessarily the person they'd fabricated in their heads. We suggested people look at close adviser Cass Sunstein's politics, although they're also highly disputed, but certainly aren't liberal. Of course even as we suggested it, we know it's ridiculous to judge a president on one adviser.

  So you could judge Obama on two advisers. In an article in the New York Review of Books a couple of weeks ago, Jerome Groopman looked at healthcare reform and tried to predict how it would go based on Obama's "closest advisers" on the subject, Cass Sunstein, head of OIRA, and Peter Orszag, head of OMB (OIRA is within OMB).

  Groopman distinguished Sunstein's "nudge" approach based on behavioral economics, from Orszag's "shove" approach, a different take on behavioral economics. Groopman characterized Orszag's approach as a more stringent incentive system that would not allow doctors and heathcare providers to "opt out", but would penalize them for not following government set "comparative effectiveness" mandates. But comparative effectiveness is no different than "cost effectiveness", wrote Groopman, and cost effectiveness doesn't work and won't sell. Interestingly, I've always viewed Sunstein's cost-benefit analysis to have the same shortcomings Groopman seems to loathe. But Groopman wants Sunstein's way to prevail in the healthcare debate because Sunstein offers an "opt-out".

  But perhaps healthcare won't be swayed by only two advisers but four. The Financial Times also judges the president's decisions on the views of his too small circle. FT names four key advisers, Valerie Jarrett, Robert Gibbs, Rahm Emmanuel, and David Axelrod and says that Obama needs to change up a bit to shake his governing woes. Is it realistic at all to judge the president on such small numbers of advisers? It's apparently a fun game, despite it's grounding in reality.

  As gripey as everyone is, I'm more optimistic on this President's day, thinking about the state of US governance and politics, than on the same holiday during the previous administration.

Many people who are now disappointed by the Obama administration didn't pay close enough attention during his campaign and election. It's the same with all presidents, really -- the promise of a new president brings at first a golden era of hope during which people seem to cavalierly shed their analytical abilities; then the denial phase as the president comes into his own; then the rude awakening when they're shocked, shocked, shocked at the scale of the deception.

Remember the Bush presidency? Mr. Compassionate Conservative? People barely twitched when he invaded Iraq, then slowly awoke to his mendacious governance -- the fact that there were no WMDs, there was global warming, arsenic levels weren't safe, Guantanamo prisoners were tortured to within an inch of their lives the end of their lives -- etc.

Warnings

But before presidents are elected there's time to profile their past, time for people to shake themselves out of wishful thinking into clarity. Usually at least one enterprising journalist digs into a candidate's history and accurately predicts their presidency. For instance, during the George W. Bush presidential campaign of 2000, Harper's author Joe Conason wrote an excellent, disturbing article about Bush's tenure in Texas politics called, "Notes on a Native Son: Part I. "The George W. Bush success story: A heartwarming tale about baseball, $1.7 billion, and a lot of swell friends." (Feb. 2000) The article disabused people of their ideas that George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore were very similar. Conason nailed Bush's future leadership proclivities. Perhaps some of it was luck, and I'm sure Conason wasn't the only one who caught on early. But the Harper's article showed that some people really can get a bead on leaders, and that if we pay attention we could too. That, at least, is reassuring to know.

Forward to the Obama campaign, in July, 2008, when New Yorker magazine shocked the world with a cover cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama pictured with radical accoutrements and dressed -- as Al Jazeera put it -- "in what many [Americans] see as 'Muslim clothing'". We think fewer people read the accompanying article, which we touched on back then in "We The Thin Skinned, The Public and The Media".

The New Yorker cleverly juxtaposed a detailed political biography of Obama by Ryan Lizza against their cartoon cover depiction. In Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama, Lizza portrayed Obama as a pragmatic politician alert to the vagaries of politics, who proved himself more than adept at maneuvering through the political quagmires of Chicago and Illinois to emerge unscathed, all the while governing blandly. We quoted this from Lizza's profile:

"Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions..."

Liberals now realize that Obama's "existing institutions", as Lizza put it, were in many cases set up by the George W. Bush administration. The public didn't seem to get the New Yorker's sly joke back then, the paradox of the cover story versus the true inside scoop. The public went apoplectic over the cover. And only now are people starting to catch on to the fact that the Obama they compiled in their head isn't the Obama who's leading the country.

Misconceptions

If liberals and independents are unhappy -- Bush at least went full tilt with his base-- so too are conservatives. Conservative columnist Ross Douthat sought to explain the Obama paradox recently. He wrote: "In hindsight, the most prescient sentence penned during the presidential campaign belongs to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker", then quoted Lizza's two sentences ("Perhaps the greatest misconception...institutions"). Douthat's "The Obama Way" explained that everyone vilified Obama differently but the president fit no particular mold. The most discontented people were the liberals -- as Douthat said:

"The left has been frustrated, again and again, by the gulf between Obama's professed principles and the compromises that he's willing to accept, and some liberals have become convinced that he isn't one of them at all. They're wrong. Absent political constraints, Obama would probably side with the liberal line on almost every issue."

There goes Douthat, first heartily agreeing with Lizza's New Yorker quote describing Obama as a political accommodator, next labeling Obama a flaming liberal who's only tenuously tethered to some middle way -- as if to warn conservatives not to relax. Well, which is it, young feller?

Does Douthat peg Obama as impossible to categorize but at his core very liberal? Or does he fall for the same fallacies of judgement he's just finished explaining to us?

Pragmatism

How liberal is Obama, deep down inside? Honestly, we don't know. But look, for instance at the politics of one of his long term advisors, the only person with a more quixotic image than Obama himself, whose intentions are even more difficult for observers to pin down -- Cass Sunstein. Sunstein leads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA reviews regulations from all rule-making agencies in the Office of Management and Budget, regulations for banking, air and water quality, food, drugs, transportation...in other words, Sunstein's philosophy affects us all, and he's supposedly a close counsel of Obama's .

We've somewhat regularly followed Sunstein's progress in the Obama administration and his amazing ability to attract venomous critics as well as admiring followers from both the left and the right. There wasn't always such focus on OIRA administrators. Sunstein's very driven regulation-allergic conservative predecessors at OIRA, John Graham and Susan Dudley, attracted only the sparsest attention as they weakened regulation, ignored science, and developed symbiotic relationships with industry.

Sunstein often quotes John Graham and shares and builds on Graham's cost-benefit analysis legacy, yet people often label him, like Obama, as an out of bounds liberal. Sunstein's nomination was supported by conservative groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and by the Wall Street Journal. Yet wildly preposterous rumors about his views, for instance on animal rights, held up his OIRA nomination for months. Republican senators stymied his appointment, as hunters and factory farms hijacked meaningful deliberation about Sunstein's most controversial ideas -- on cost-benefit analysis, for instance -- by focusing on the false notions that he might ban hunting, something that he had actually convincingly argued against.

The other thing that's interesting given Sunstein's well-documented ideas, is how pundits from both sides seem to ignore history when they periodically burst out over one thing or another they unearth in his writing. Of course some people, like Rena Steinzor of the Center For Progressive Reform, have long focused on environmental law, cost-benefit analysis, and the likely impact of Cass Sunstein heading OIRA. But to my point, recently Glenn Greenwald popularized a flurry of concern about Sunstein with his Salon article, "Obama Confidant's Spine-chilling Proposal". Greenwald's focus is not on Sunstein's cost-benefit machinations or environmental stances, but on Sunstein's exploration of government control of "conspiracy theories".

The Mirror, A Gift or A Curse?

Greenwald takes Sunstein to task for advocating in a 2008 paper that the government ought to do things like anonymously infiltrate groups to dissipate conspiracy theories. The Sunstein paper is really interesting (and funny, to me), and Greenwald competently attacks the ideas Sunstein presents. But just like Bush and Obama, Sunstein's proposals in 2008 proved consistent with what he has publicly explored/advocated for years.

In his 2001 book Republic.com, for instance, Sunstein argued that the government (he later changed this to private companies) could fight internet "hate-sites" and polarization that 'threatened democracy' by enforcing things like cross-linking to politically opposing sites. What did Thaler/Sunstein's book Nudge urge but for the government to "architect" our "choices"? If you circle through his books and papers you'll find that one way or another, either by infiltration or nudging, Sunstein's quite pre-occupied with government control of "undesirable" information, voices and outcomes, as judged by the government. These aren't terribly liberal obsessions, and it would be hard for me to call Sunstein a liberal.

Back to Douthat's point, I would also be hard-pressed to call Obama a liberal, either by his associations or his Illinois and presidential records. I'm surely biased, but so far he's a pragmatist, (though not a "centrist" Douthat says), and we were adequately and accurately warned. How many years does someone need to act like a centrist/pragmatist before people stop labeling them a liberal?*

Obama gets everyone together, he does. And they're all suspicious. During his campaign, people would say that Obama's campaign gift was that he made everyone see a bit of themselves in him. Perhaps now he has the opposite effect. No one can see any bit of themselves in him. Is that a curse?

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*And btw, as an aside, what is a liberal? And does the country need a "liberal" president, anyway, liberals?

The Chemical Lobby Finds Their Man:

Back when the momentum for banning bisphenol A (BPA) hadn't quite built up to its current fervor, BPA lobbyists used to denigrate everyone who questioned the safety of bisphenol A. Male, female, old, young, it didn't matter, they were 'internet moms' who'd worked themselves into a blind tizzy about bisphenol A, which was 'perfectly safe'.

But things were a little more tense last May for industry leaders who met to discuss a strategy for fighting back against the growing movement to limit consumer exposure to risky levels of BPA. As we quoted the Wall Street Journal in our post back then:

"industry executives huddled for hours Thursday trying to figure out how to tamp down public concerns over the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA. The notes said the executives are particularly concerned about the views of young mothers, who often make purchasing decisions for households and who are most likely to be focused on health concerns."

In addition to crafting clever lines to scare consumers, like "do you want to have access to baby food anymore?", the industry group discussed getting the right spokesman for their cause. A scientist might be difficult they acknowledged, they had reputations to preserve, but a pregnant woman would be "the Holy Grail".

Now it looks like they found their man in a public relations expert named "Joe Householder" -- his real name. This isn't the first challenging public relations assignment for Mr. Householder. He worked with, among others, Enron's law firm, baseball player Roger Clemons, Hillary Clinton, various other politicians, and Public Strategies Inc. Now he's with Purple Strategies Inc., apparently heading a group called "Coalition for Chemical Safety". The Coalition for Chemical Safety works with American Chemical Council (ACC) and other businesses. To date, those businesses are known more for not putting the safety and health of consumers before corporate profits.

So we look skeptically at "The Coalition for Chemical Safety". Indeed, it's described by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) as an BPA astroturfing organization. But it takes different tactics then previous BPA astroturfing campaigns. Mr. Householder and the Coalition for Chemical Safety take a warmer approach to BPA and chemicals, astroturfing-wise, then representatives in the past have.

In step with the times, the everyone_together_at_the_same_table age of Obama rhetoric, as opposed to the more acrimonious Bush era rhetoric, the Coalition is 'educating' consumers about chemicals. Instead of saying bluntly that BPA is safe, the mother in this Coalition sound clip talks about banning BPA in baby bottles, but encourages consumers and public health advocates to always work with the chemical companies (mp3 from EDF). This is the more subtle approach to controlling the public perception of chemicals. And who better to assure "young mothers" making "purchasing decisions for households", than a guy named Joe Householder?

In keeping with this new, more collegial approach to marketing/public relations, Householder has directly engaged Dr. Richard Denison, EDF's sometimes scathing Senior Scientist, in a mano-a-mano on Denison's blog. This is Householder's "purple" strategy, I think, not red, not blue, purple -- get it? That's where we all agree that chemicals are indeed wonderful (they are) and that we love regulation, just the "right" regulation, and "reasonable" regulation. Look out for that.

Mr. Household has invited Dr. Denison to join the Coalition for Chemical Safety, and although Denison hasn't posted a public response, I think with their combined gregariousness and magnetism, it's just a matter of time before they're hanging out together, Richard educating Householder on bisphenol A and Joe sharing public relations tactics and the use of his very apropos name. Isn't that how things get done these days?

Update: 02/14/09 Dr. Denison did continue to engage Joe Householder on the EDF blog. In a February post, Denison continued to ask Householder what his funding sources were, and what PR tactics he had used to get certain sectors so riled up about the Toxic Chemical Safety Act (TCSA):

"What exactly are you telling lawn services and landscaping companies they need to worry about in TSCA reform? And just what tortuous scenario are you weaving to convince police associations that better chemicals management will compromise their safety on the job?"

Denison wants some transparency from Householder. We don't know how/if Householder responded.

Acronym Required has written extensively on BPA science and regulation. We also wrote about individuals hired by industry, the acrimony they stir up, and the possibility of wonderful relationships blossoming between players on either side of the chemical divide in BPA Rhetoric and Reaction

Of Course Denial Is Not The River In Africa:

The upheaval over the climate e-mails is business as usual for the climate science deniers or denialists - not "skeptics", and just a word on that first. Scientists are by nature "skeptics" and consider skepticism a valid approach to analysis. Merriam Webster says "skeptic" derives from the Greek skeptikos thoughtful, or skeptesthai to look. However, unfortunately for all of us, the climate data needs to be denied to be disbelieved. There's too much of it over too many years from too many different fields -- too much evidence to be skeptical about. Meanwhile, while some deniers happily call themselves deniers, others deniers take extreme offense, saying calling them deniers is dismissive or denigrating. But that's not the goal here. I'm not saying deniers don't have feelings, they have valid feelings, and they may also have issues facing reality or other problems.

For instance, just as people who don't recycle may sincerely have difficulty separating cans from cardboard, climate deniers may be incapable of swimming. We can empathize. Swimming may become an even more vital skill in the future. Deniers may fear being seen driving an electric car, fear heatstroke, fear malaria, fear fire, fear tornadoes, fear heatstroke, or fear moving from Florida, which could be affected most by impending climate change with rising sea waters, temperatures and incidence of malaria. Fear may incapacitate deniers reasoning faculties or propel them to convince themselves and others that no change is necessary. We empathize some more.

But if we chance-it, do nothing because of deniers' fears, so we can talk about emails in the UK some more, then we're making a choice that has the potential for far scarier outcomes than facing the mounds of evidence and choosing to do something. And we can do something, we can change, we can support industries that solve climate problems. Or we can do business as usual, and suffer the economic consequences of that. There are all sorts of innocent reasons why deniers are in denial. Only some of them nefarious like fear of losing the vote. But denial for any reason thwarts problem solving.

Rearranging The Deck Chairs on The Titanic. Well..?

We don't necessarily understand their reasons, but we recognize the deniers' rhetoric. If decades of ice core data, Antarctica data, arctic data, temperatures, sea levels, temperatures and, corral bleaching, tree ring data, and more, all show global warming over decades, they'll say "but today is cold out - global warming? Hahaha". If there's noise in a 30 year graph showing an up or down trend, they focus on a one year time period that shows the opposite trend, and throw that out as "proof" that the graph is false.

Here's one video, just one piece of evidence in mountains of available data, showing the decrease in perennial sea ice (seconds ~25-50):

Deniers will ignore all the evidence, focus on a bunch of emails and call it ClimateGate, and get everyone to run over to the starboard side of the ship, when there's an iceberg forward (although, actually, eventually that won't be a problem anymore.) Or they'll say the problem is that the scientists weren't communicating and weren't being transparent with the data. Of course last year the Wall Street Journal was complaining about "too much" global warming evidence. We're not saying that scientists shouldn't have thought twice about pouring vents and frustration into emails, but this is the sideshow which keeps us all spinning, keeps us doing nothing.

Meanwhile, if the sea level of the Mediterranean Sea rose 1 meter, the Nile River Basin, home to millions and cultivated to feed more millions, would lose 6.1 million people to displacement. Where would they all go? 4,500 square kilometers of Nile River Basin cropland would be lost, and the World Bank estimates a 6% loss in GDP to Egypt, and direct GDP losses for about 10 other countries. 6% GDP impact would raise to 16% with a 5 meter rise of sea level. That's one area of the world and one river basin, there's many others. Louisiana and Florida will be lost to rising seas. California and Australia will have more forest fires.

And while many results of climate change are known, other possible changes could be even more catastrophic if they happened. This is the case with The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt or thermohaline circulation. Scientists don't know what the outcome of the collapse of the thermohaline circulation would be. They don't know how that would further change climate, which areas would be warmer, how it would effect ocean salinity. Would the ocean become a pond? Scientists can't predict, but there's a chance that it could be catastrophic. There's never absolute surety in science, but the outcomes can be different both ways, better, or a lot worse.

Deniers like Inhofe would be brandishing threats about emails if he were in hip-waders up to his waist in sea water, rather than accept the evidence. That's the way its always been and that's the way it will always be. Fighting against mult-million dollar "pro-industry" campaigns by oil companies and the people they corral with their ideas, like Inhofe, has occupied scientists as much as the science. So when some people, (including scientists) now turn around and say that scientists need to be more transparent, if doesn't ring true. The data has been there and still is. These 'scientists aren't talking right' distractions only derail scientists from looking for solutions.

What should we do when the world is in overshoot? An article in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books looks at depletion of natural resources in a world of ever increasing demand.

John Terborgh reviews "Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery", by Steve Nicholls. Nicholls is an entomologist and wildlife film producer who became alarmed at the progressive devastation of nature he saw in his perennial travels across America. "The World Is in Overshoot" communicates its message

"...on two levels, emotional and philosophical. The emotion is a restrained outrage at the wanton and often savage slaughter of wildlife -- cod, salmon, seabirds, curlew, beaver, bison, passenger pigeons, sea turtles, oysters, seals, walrus, and on and on. One feels it viscerally. And that drives home the philosophical point that all the excess and destruction were ensured by the cast of mind of the European colonists, the conviction that God created the wealth of nature expressly for man's benefit."

The plight of Grand Banks cod fisheries illustrates the problem that many species face. John Calbot discovered the Grand Banks in 1497, and today the adult cod population of the Grand Banks is 3% of what it was then, an outcome that Thomas Huxley certainly didn't predict. In 1883 Huxley wrote about the fish he called "Darwin's bulldog":

"I still believe the cod fishery...and probably all the great fisheries are inexhaustible; that is to say nothing we do seriously affects the number of fish"

Garrett Hardin popularized the "Tragedy of the Commons" concept in 1968, but the Grand Banks pillage started long before that, and would not be stopped by increased awareness of the issue. For over five hundred years the Grand Banks were fished by Europeans and Americans. Technology improved over the centuries and catches increased with each improvement, hand lines to long lines to gill nets to larger nets; wind to steam to factory ships; the "inexhaustible" bounty grew more precarious. Although the Canadian government imposed a moratorium on cod at tremendous cost to the fishing economy, for many reasons 17 years later, even the moratorium hasn't allowed the cod to recover.

The NY Review of books author talks about the alterations in Grand Bank's species like snow crabs, shrimp, lobster, skate and dogfish, and the damaged ecosystem affecting cod populations. Another damaged ecosystem exists in the "political tragedy of the 'commons'", says Terborgh. The fisherman of course maximize profit today we know that, but the politicians are also guilty of failing to pass effective regulations:

"The reluctance of official bodies to protect natural resources manifests a failure of political systems, particularly of modern democracy."

The article is accompanied by an Albert Bierstadt painting, "Among the Sierra Nevada". The painting is an interesting choice for the article. Bierstadt made trips to Western United States in the latter 19th century, then composed over 500 paintings, many of them depicting idealized western landscapes dominated by lush forests, plentiful wildlife, and majestic mountains, all bathed in surreal golden light. This particular painting was painted while Bierstadt was in Europe, nine years after the artist visited the Sierra Nevada in California, Critics say the mountains look more like the Alps than the Sierra Nevada, as Bierstadt

"painted the West as Americans hoped it would be, which made his paintings vastly popular and reinforced the perception of the West as either Europe or sublime Eden."¹

Other critics say his paintings resemble not Europe, but Arcadia. Either way, Bierstadt paints a seductive west, free of unwelcoming animals and indians, free of hostile mountain passes, and labeled blatant propaganda by some critics. His paintings encouraged people to go West, according to the more extreme view, which inevitably contributed to the destruction of the wilderness.

Terborgh, however, writes:

"The diminution of nature is a price to be paid by a society obsessively dedicated to unending economic growth. To lay the blame on the past obscures the lesson for our own time."

Terborgh rightly points out the weakness in pinning resource depletion on past actions. Past actions can't absolve us of the pressing need to act today. The pairing of the painting with the essay - perhaps inadvertently - also points out that sometimes we give in to temptations to paint the past more idyllically then it really was. Other artists depict the west much more harshly then Bierstadt's commercial aims ever allowed him to. Terborgh writes that Nicholls-

"turned to writing to lay out a sweeping panorama of what North America has lost in the centuries since the first explorers wrote back to their European sponsors of an exuberant nature so bountiful we can no longer imagine it."

Nature was bountiful, but some depictions like Bierstadt's were over-imagined to begin with. And as sometimes we overestimate nature back then, what environmental tradeoffs do we make for economic security that we may be overvaluing today? In relentlessly choosing short term economic security, are we also suffering from a bias, where the value of the most technically accessible solution which provides any modicum of economic security obscures the value of the environment, to our long term detriment?

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¹ Gordon Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West (New York, 1974), 51058, 149-50; Anderson and Ferber, Albert Bierstadt, 74-77, in Hyde, A., Cultural Filters: The Significance of Perception in the History of the American West, The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol 24, No. 3 (Aug., 1993), pp 351-374.

Photo courtesy of WikiCommons: here.

Acronym Required sometimes writes about the environment, and we critiqued a proposal that applied the Tragedy of the Commons parable to antibiotics here.

Now, at PNAS Three Papers in Question:

The science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) offers special publication privileges to members of their Academy, a group of elite scientists chosen by other esteemed scientists based on their unique contributions to science research. Now the editorial board has retracted some of those privileges in light of papers that recently appeared in the journal.

Nature News reported on a "row" caused when PNAS published research that didn't meet the journals' standards for peer review. The dispute is now heating up. The controversy began in August when one article published on-line at PNAS forwarded a theory by author Donald Williamson, all about what he called "larval transfer hypothesis".¹

Williamson suggests that the process of metamorphosis, whereby larvae turn into butterflies, arose when butterfly Leptidorae larva "mistakenly fertilized their eggs with sperm from velvet worms", as Scientific American put it (funnily twisting agency). Velvet worms Onychophora look like larvae but have completely different life cycles -- they don't turn into butterflies. According to Williamson, evolutionary transfer of genetic material causes butterflies to have essentially two lives, one as a worm-like larva, and one as a butterfly.

But there are problems with the theory. First, he offers no proof, just a "testable" hypothesis. And while interspecies fertilization is not unheard of within the animal kingdom, velvet worms are too distinct from butterflies to make this feasible, say scientists. The sperm could not fertilize such a distantly related egg and produce a viable embryo, and even if it did, it wouldn't "explain the process of metamorphosis".

Less charitably, scientists said that the paper was better suited to a a tabloid than to a science journal, and called the paper "absolutely ridiculous". They also scoffed at his attempt to show the "superficial similarity between adult velvet worms and larval moths and butterflies" with "very poorly reproduced line drawings that really need to be seen to be believed".

In short, the August PNAS paper brought a torrent of harsh criticism for the octogenarian's ideas. Moreover, while some people tolerated Williamson's submission as an attempt to generate discussion, nobody thought that PNAS should have published such a speculative paper. Scientific publishing is very competitive and many scientists who produce worthy research with real results are summarily rejected from high profile journals like PNAS. So how did the research get published, they asked, incredulous? The tale gets even more interesting.

When Push Comes to Shove

Shortly after Williaimson's PNAS article saw daylight, Scientific American published an interview with evolutionary microbiologist Lynn Margulis, an editor at PNAS who shepherded Williamson's work through the peer-review and publishing process. In recounting her story of how the paper got published, Margulis mentioned that she had been trying to publish the work for twenty years. After convincing Williamson answer how the worms fertilize caterpillars -- rather than the more conceptually challenging idea that worms breed with butterflies, she told SA it took 6 or 7 peer reviews before she got 2 or 3 that were positive enough to push the paper through to publication. More eyebrows raised in the science community.

It turns out that Lynn Margulis "communicated" Williamson's paper to PNAS, a method of publishing offered to Academy members that differs from "submissions". Via this method, members can suggest for publication papers by non-members, along with reviewers selected by the member. PNAS recently announced it will eliminate this "Track I" publishing in 2010. In the meantime PNAS editors will not publish Williamson's paper in print edition pending further discussion with Margulis about the review process.

But now it's not just that paper. Another PNAS paper by Margulis and co-authors that's being questioned apparently proposes a treatment for Lyme disease that's "800" times more effective than doxycycline -- "it is very important to get this paper published", co-author Oystein Brorson told Nature.

A third paper in question is a computational biology paper by an adjunct professor of the Margulis lab. PNAS has asked Margulis to withdraw that paper because of problems with the methods. Margulis told Nature she would do no such thing, and when asked in turn for comment, PNAS told Nature: "We don't want to respond to any questions or complaints she [Margulis] has through the media." Sounds like more entertainment is forthcoming.

The three PNAS papers all circle themes that Margulis has been pursuing for decades -- Spirochetes, desiccation, spores, symbiosis and more symbiosis than you'd ever believe, and disease. Is the recent spate of publishing from the Margulis camp a final push for these ideas? And even more controversial ones?

Another 2009 paper has been published on-line in the (less well-known) journal Symbiosis (another journal that Margulis edits), by the same authors -- Hall, Brorson, Margulis and others. This "position paper" proposes that antibiotic treatment of Lyme and Syphilis, both caused by Spirochetes, induces the formation of cysts, or "round bodies", that then revert to their original Spirochete form in a favorable (antibiotic free) environment, causing secondary infections, long-term human symbioses, and compromised immunity.²

Although the abstract is pretty straight-forward, the paper quickly leaps out on a limb to suggest that AIDS is not caused by HIV but by Spirochete round bodies. Again, there's no evidence. The authors draw tenuous connections between quotes made by public health officials after a 2007 HIV vaccine trial, and their own round body theory of AIDS. They reason that HIV seems not to infect heterosexual partners as much as men who might be infected with syphilis but not fully treated with antibiotics even though medical professionals say they are. So the authors have an idea:

"Is the situation [AIDS] better described as an obligate and ancient symbiosis where the bionts (spirochetes and humans) are integrated at the behavioral, metabolic and genetic level rather than a new viral infection such that HIV equals AIDS? ...We urge that the possible direct causal involvement of spirochetes and their round bodies to symptoms of immune deficiency be carefully and vigorously investigated."

So then HIV might not be caused by a virus but by Spirochete round bodies. See? Someone test this right away.

Forget Crabs, Look Out For Round Bodies and Symbiosis

Margulis told Nature her attitude about the three PNAS papers in question: "If they definitively reject these papers I will make it very clear to the reading public (because they make it clear in their anonymous letters) that, as usual, they don't like my ideas." Two years ago, we posted on Margulis's controversial ideas and public relations skirmishes. Our post followed her debut on PZ Myers blog, where unchallenged, she forwarded her idea that HIV didn't cause AIDS. If HIV causes AIDS than why doesn't NIH write back to me, she asked? We wrote:

"Margulis relishes controversy and slings mud far better than most people, a well-honed and essential skill....[but] famously, despite her formidable offense skills, she forever portrays herself as someone who has been pushed in a mud puddle."

The PNAS controversy is interesting, although it wouldn't leap out at everyone so much if the papers in question weren't so blatantly ludicrous. PNAS's publication "favoritism" is far from unusual in the science world. And really, Margulis has been publishing these ideas for years, drawing connections based on thin research (often foreign, often Russian, somehow lost on Americans), and asking the science community to run some experiments to test her ideas. In our previous post we talked about her theory of Spirochete symbiosis forming nerves (remember "behavior" from the quote above?):

"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."

"All I ask". That was in 1991. But the gulf between what she "asks" and a warm reception from scientists has grown as science has advanced. Williamson is an 87 year old retired scientist, who himself is no stranger to forwarding controversial ideas. Sketched drawings weren't so ludicrous 60 years ago when he was starting. But now, the idea that a paper could simply describe what you see, like generations and generations of cell biology papers before us, seems ridiculous. As an educator at Princeton said recently, "The days of sort of naturalistic walking around and looking at flowers are long gone". (Look at the emphasis on clinical description in this excerpt from a ptomaine poisoning paper from the early 1900's. Williamson was a scientist not too long after that.)

Margulis has always published in PNAS. Some of the labs' older papers have similar themes and a little research. But it's a different world now. Margulis still has the prestige to gather a cast of characters around her in symbiotic relationships, to continue to push ideas out, and to entertain admirers like PZ Myers and his followers. But while her fame draws admirers and moths it also draws vipers, many of whom are now online.

PNAS claims they were going to change their Track I policy anyway. OK, sure, but no doubt the deluge of online criticism didn't tempt them to tarry with the announcement. Just as high tech science has redefined what a good science paper looks like, online science criticism has become blood sport. And that's a good thing, don't get me wrong. But imagine what would we'd learn if all papers and journal publication policies got such a thorough raking over?

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¹ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Caterpillars evolved from onychophorans by hybridogenesis Donald I. Williamson, Communicated by Lynn Margulis, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, July 24, 2009 (received for review May 19, 2009)

²SYMBIOSIS Vol. 47, No. 1 (2009) Position paper. Spirochete round bodies. Syphilis, Lyme disease & AIDS: Resurgence of "the great imitator"? L. Margulis, A. Maniotis, J. MacAllister, J. Scythes, O. Brorson, J. Hall, W.E. Krumbein, and M.J. Chapman

Better than Chicago 2016: ""Who will win?", they wondered: "Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean opposition leader; two Chinese dissidents, Hu Kia and Wei Jingsheng; Afghan: Human rights activist Seema SamarSo; Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan; the Western-educated Islamic scholar; Eighty-year-old Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Do; Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba?"

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. The reaction, needless to say, was mixed, with the Taliban, Syria and Hamas weighing in, and praises from folks like the Mandela Foundation and Desmond Tutu. And where are the photos of the Weekly Standard staff members, who cheered when Obama's entreaty to the Olympic Committee failed to bring the games to Chicago? Snapshots of them crying into their coffee cups?

We think it's all working out for the best though. Olympics in Chicago would have no doubt snared and infuriated millions of people at the O'Hare airport we know and hate. Chicago 2016 would not have been peaceful.

Nobel Prize To Push the World In a Direction We Norwegians Can Endorse

But if you're feeling like Nicholas Kristof, who thinks that perhaps a prize for Obama would be more apt at the end of his eight years, "after he has actually made peace somewhere", whereas someone else should have won this year, know that all those left out are in good company. Foreign Policy lists other deserving candidates who failed to win in the past.

One committee member said that the prize should be viewed as "support and a commitment for Obama." In a way, the Nobel Peace Prize given to Al Gore and the IPCC in 2007 was a similar statement in its overt political support for one side of the contentious arguments about whether climate change was real.

Obama, charming, said:

"Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!" And then Sasha added, "Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective"

He said he doesn't see the prize as recognition for his accomplishments, rather as recognition for the goals he's set. The committee therefore rewards Obama for being very Obama...and nudges him to do more?

• 2nd Hand Smoke Bans Reduce Heart Attacks: According to two analyses of combined study data on second hand cigarette smoke, town or community enforced smoking bans reduce heart attacks by 17% after one year, and after three years the number of heart attacks decreases by at least 26%. The Journal of the American College of Cardiology published one analysis. UCSF researchers analyzed the same data and also found a 17% decrease after on year, which after three years became a 36% decrease in heart attacks. The journal Circulation published the UCSF results.

  While states and communities have increasingly enacted smoking bans, the tobacco industry generally rejects regulation. As John Singleton, spokesman for Reynolds American told the Wall Street Journal: "Our current position is to let the market take care of the issue". (09/21/09 "The Case for Bans on Smoking") On this argument however, the tobacco industry's reasoning might be losing sway. Smoking bans are catching on the world over, even in hard to imagine places like the country of Turkey's bars and restaurants.

• AIDS Trial: New Results, No Answers

  Scientists stopped the last clinical trial of an AIDS vaccine in 2007 when results showed the vaccine increased the HIV infection. They vowed to reconsider their strategy toward AIDS, especially with regards to clinical trials. Scientists postulated that the flush funding environment and political pressures pushed trials forward too quickly. Now the sometimes exasperating path of scientific research has taken a new turn in AIDS research and scientists have a new quandary.

  A recent HIV clinical trial in Thailand testing a combination of two drugs that had previously failed in clinical trials showed tenuously positive results. The US Army, National Institutes of Health, Thai Health Ministry, and Sanofi Aventis collaborated on the trial, giving vaccines to 16,400 volunteers who were not considered high risk. The new project combined AidsVax, an HIV derived protein, with Alvac HIV, a genetically engineered canarypox virus that contains HIV genes. 51 of the vaccinated individuals contracted HIV and 74 of the unvaccinated individuals became HIV positive, which translated to about a 30% prevention efficacy rate. Though this vaccine is a long way from being considered successful, scientists are buoyed by any news that's positive. The trial suggests that this vaccine could be effective if it were improved.

  The quandaries: First, scientists don't understand how two failed drugs add up to something that looks better or vaguely successful. Second, how and why does the combination vaccine prevent the symptoms of AIDS, if it does, without lowering the viral load -- the amount of HIV measured in the bloodstream of infected individuals? Perplexing. More research needed.

  Treatment is expanding but without prevention of HIV transmission, AIDS will remain a losing battle. So for now, "ABC", abstinence, "be faithful" (limit numbers of partners), and condoms, remain the best HIV infection prevention techniques. The good news for researchers maybe is that perhaps AIDS vaccine research has been kept alive.

  Acronym Required wrote previously about AIDS in Preventing HIV/AIDS: Back to the 1980's, New Directions for AIDS Research Funding", Mbeki's AIDS Legacy and Ours, Public Health, AIDS, Mbeki and the Media, Zimbabwe: Hopeful News for HIV/AIDS Prevention?, Burma and AIDS - Politics Rules", South Africa: Peddling Beetroot, Courting AIDS, and others.

  October UPDATE: Further statistical analysis of this trial showed that the results weren't statistically significant.

• Flavored Tobacco Banned: This week the FDA enacted the law banning flavored cigarettes. The ban does not include menthol cigarettes. Altria Group, formerly Phillip Morris, favors the ban, and not coincidently, is marching ahead with acquisitions to solidify its market leader status in smoke-free tobacco products and also expanding its international tobacco holdings. We previously wrote about the cigarette regulation in The FDA and Cigarettes.

• FISA in the Obama Administration: With part of the USA Patriot Act up for renewal, the House is debating intrusive pieces of the legislations that allow privacy intrusion by wiretap, allow the government by access to business records, and allow surveillance of "lone wolf" suspects who have no known links to terrorists.

  One of the more controversial features gave the FBI authority to deliver National Security Letters to businesses and demand information about individual customers. The Letter recipients are ordered to be completely mum about receiving the Letters, meaning they can't tell their spouses, never mind their customers. Critics charge the National Security Letters provision of the Patriot Act violates the First Amendment. According to the Washington Independent's coverage of yesterday's House Judiciary Committee Hearing, this provision has been widely used and abused by government officials.

• Network Neutrality The FCC upheld the principle of network neutrality this week. FCC chairmain Julius Genachowski's "open internet" is now online, along information, public outreach and requests for comments on broadband and the internet. The FCC site is one of the better ones, sharing and soliciting information on broadband and networking as the agency looks to deploy technology more widely and efficiently across the US for uses like healthcare and "telework".

  Of course, in opposition to network neutrality, a coalition of conservative legislators called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), criticized the principle. Not surprisingly, the group opined that "the market" should be allowed to assure openness unfettered by government.

• PG&E Leaves US Chamber of Commerce: The Northwest energy company PG&E has left the business association, citing the group's refusal to reconcile its rhetoric with the facts of global warming.

• Born Free: "Nature Communications" will begin accepting submissions to their new open-access "born digital publication" in October 2009. The first issue will be published in 2010. According to the press release from Nature Publishing Group (NPG) "authors will be able to publish their work either via the traditional subscription route, or as open access through payment of an article processing charge (APC)."

  "New Scientist points to a "puzzling passage" in the press release, where NPG explains that the new journal will publish papers from all science disciplines "of the highest quality, without necessarily having the scientific reach of papers published in Nature and the Nature research journals." To understand, New Scientist followed up with Ruth Francis, NPG spokesperson, who said that Nature Communications will, as New Scientist put it, "feature research that is more focused and less generally applicable than work that typically appears in Nature" from "fields that aren't covered by the [Nature] research journals".

  The journal will be peer reviewed, NPG stresses in its press release. It will employ a "rapid, yet rigorous, peer-review process", meaning "efficient peer review with fast publication", that is "rapid and fair publication decisions based on peer review, with all the rigour expected of a Nature-branded journal". So...Nature Communications, not to be confused with "bulk publishing of low-quality papers", which, as we noted, caused such a stir last year. Nature has long explored open-access publishing. We look forward to the new journal.

• In the Beginning...Mini-T: Before Homo sapiens, before meteors annihilated Tyrannosaurus rex, before that massive dinosaur bounded over the earth, a smaller, similar looking dinosaur existed. Raptorex kriegsteini had 1/90th the body mass of the ~2.5 ton T.rex and lived about 65 million years earlier. A raptorex fossil found in China had the same body features as T. rex and scientists think that the specialized predatory morphology -- large jaw, small front legs, powerful back legs -- grew larger in future generations, evolving to become T. rex. The photo is of a T. rex is from Wikipedia Commons.

New Science Journalism: Futurity formally launched September 15. Futurity, not to be confused with "Singularity", is a collective on-line publication effort by leading research universities. The universities will promote their science accomplishments and fill the gaps of dwindling newspaper science coverage. Articles will be submitted by members of the Association of American Universities (AAU), with Stanford, University of Rochester, and Duke leading the effort. Critics point out that aggregating news generated by University PR departments (20% fact, 80% big story?) won't provide readers the same unbiased perspective as proper journalism coverage. True, but we can't ignore the fact that a significant amount of science coverage consists of press releases anyway.

• Swine Flu Fallout: The H1N1 pandemic not only causes havoc for humans who fall ill, college campuses trying to manage the illnesses, and health workers. The pandemic effects society and economy in ways you don't necessarily think of. Consider, for instance:

  1.) Egypt can't keep up with its street garbage. As we wrote earlier this year, Egypt set out to kill all the pigs in the country, an unwarranted action. Many belonged to Christian herders whose pigs cleaned the streets of millions of tons of organic waste per year. Now parts of Cairo are knee deep in garbage.

  2.) Pork belly futures, which fell from 89 in April 2009 to 40 in August 2009, have now rebounded to their previous high.

• A Chance To Recalculate the Bush Ozone Ruling?: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that it would reexamine the standard set by the Bush administration for ozone which had motivated states to sue the EPA. Ozone is a health hazard at certain levels, and in 2008, the agency set a new standard at 75 parts per billion (ppb), down from 84 ppm. The EPA heralded this as a life-saving improvement, but according to science advisors of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), only 60-70 ppm will prevent deaths.

  Susan Dudley headed the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in 2008 when the Bush administration decision was made. OIRA influenced the outcome of Bush's ozone ruling by sending a series of memos to the EPA impeding the ozone ruling and killing a secondary standard which would have triggered certain safety measures in some weather conditions. We wrote last year how Susan Dudley had argued on behalf of industry prior to her tenure at OIRA, that "smog was beneficial because it protected individuals from ultraviolet radiation, and that since asthma rates were associated with poverty, a smog ruling would have the 'perverse effect' of costing communities money, which would in turn increase poverty and asthma." Her's was a twisted cost-benefit analysis.

  Now Cass Sunstein heads OIRA. According to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the EPA has calculated the benefits to society from the now thriving environmental industry and determined that those monetary benefits outweigh the costs of the standard. So is cost-benefit ok when the outcome favors the politics you prefer?

• Team Players: Researchers at Oxford University published a paper in Biology Letters reporting that more elevated endorphin levels associated with team sports like rowing than single player activities.

• Justice Department On Proposed Google Books Settlement The Justice Department said Friday that the settlement needed changes to address copyright, class-action and antitrust issues, and urged the Federal Court to reject the settlement. However, the government added that current discussions between the parties were productive and should continue.

• EPA and NHTSA, Together At Last, Overlapping: The EPA also proposed new carbon dioxide emissions this week, in concert with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The new rule would lower fleet standards to 35.5 mpg by 2016. As well, cars would be allowed to emit 250 grams of CO2/mile by 2012, as opposed to the current rule of 265 grams of CO2/mile. The Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, Inc. (AIAM), and Senator Markey praised the agencies for their collective effort.

  A coordinated effort from the two agencies that oversee automobile emissions and mileage efficiency has long been a goal of industry and policy makers, though a goal sometimes cynically pursued. We also wrote about EPA/NHTSA overlap here and here. The standards will cover model years 2012 through 2016, and as the Obama administration bills it: "the automobile manufacturers would be able to build a single, light-duty national fleet that satisfies all federal requirements as well as the standards of California and other states."

• Migraines: McCain's Bane: Cindy McCain is heading to Congress, reports the New Yorker, to lobby for money to study migraine headaches. And you thought perhaps you'd heard the last of McCain science research jokes? She told the American Headache Society (AHS):

  "For the first time in my life, I'm going to go to Congress, and I'm going to be tenacious and be forceful and be honest and tell them that it's time. If you can give five million dollars to study flatulence in cows and its effects on the ozone layer, you can give me some money for migraine research."

  Migraines are, of course, a debilitating problem -- that's no joke. As McCain details in her talks, migraine headaches are sometimes set off by "triggers" -- foods like chocolate, or particular odors or chemicals. McCain reports that her company's beer, Stella Artois, contains sulfites "out the wazoo" that trigger her headaches. Travel is full of trouble. Sometimes a perfume bottle breaks and the debilitating noxious fumes cause her to repack her bags and fly home. Foreign food smells prove treacherous too, she says: "...like...forgive me, but the scent of cooking dog"

  She didn't say which countries serve the offensive "dog", often a subject of nasty rumors, or how one can tell that it's not chicken, water buffalo, or frog. But fortunate she is then, that her role is the ambassador of headaches not the ambassador of smoothing international relations with her would-have-been President husband.

Update: 9/11/09: Cass Sunstein, subject of the note below, was nominated to the OIRA post. The list of Yeas and Nays from yesterday's vote is here.

• Scientist says Nerds are Happy: The New York Times Sunday op-ed section featured advice from educators to students. Nancy Hopkins wrote:

  "Passion is the mysterious force behind nearly every scientific breakthrough. Perhaps it's because without it you might never be able to tolerate the huge amount of hard work and frustration that scientific discovery entails...For the next four years you will get to poke around the corridors of your college, listen to any lecture you choose, work in a lab...You may be the person who constructs a new biological species, or figures out how to stop global warming, or aging. Maybe you'll discover life on another planet..." More here.

• China Surges Ahead With Solar: Inner Mongolia in China will be the location of the world's largest solar facility. China is working with the US company First Solar. The new solar farm is due for completion in 5 years and will generate 2 gigawatts of energy by 2019. Plans are also in the works in India and the US for other giant solar facilities.

• Awesome Hubble Photos: NASA upgraded the 19 year old Hubble telescope this summer and released photos that showed impressive improvements due to the upgrade. Compare the Omega Centauri starfield from 2002 to a recent one taken after the scientists completed the Hubble renovations. The photo to the left is a from the planetary nebula NGC 6302 -- a dying star in the middle -- also known as the "Butterfly Nebula".

• Phoenicopterus ruber falsus: Madison, Wisconsin has named the pink plastic flamingo the city's bird, in honor of a college prank from 30 years ago which Alderwoman Marsha Rummel said "signifies something that makes us a very special place" and "captured in our imaginations forever." Why worry about endangered species when there's plastic so real politicians lose their minds?

• Constitution Day: Federal law now requires that schools receiving federal funding offer an education day to celebrate the signing of the Constitution. September 17th, which used to be called Citizenship Day, was renamed Constitution Day and the education requirement added to the 2004 Omnibus Spending Act by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). Wikipedia suggests that the holiday began as I Am American Day, a May holiday designated by Congress in 1940 after being championed by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Now that newspapers are dying and some Americans are going cuckoo, it seems like a fine time to reinvigorate the holiday. It's a shame that some hosts on certain television networks aren't required to take a refresher course.

• Nudge in Action Despite Opposition to Sunstein: We previously wrote about the preposterous protest of Cass Sunstein's nomination not because of his cost-benefit analysis views (.pdf), but because hunting enthusiasts fear he's too enthusiastic about animal rights. They continue to foam at the mouth oppose his nomination for the same ill-conceived reasons we noted before. But yesterday, despite efforts of Glenn Beck to derail the Obama administration and move the "conversation" to the right towards McCarthyism, Democrats pushed Sunstein's nomination forward.

  Even as opposition foot-dragging continues (an anonymous third Senator has apparently placed another hold on the nomination), Sunstein isn't languishing idle. With more two books published since his nomination, his influence can also be seen in Obama administration policy changes such as the retirement savings plan changes, announced by the President on Labor Day.

• Media Wars: A number of "11th-hour filers" are challenging the Google book deal, including Germany and France. The head of the US copyright office expressed reservations. At a recent Google Books conference, James Love said that Google benefits from people's perception that if Google makes it it must be free and good, and if it were called (I paraphrase) AnyOtherCorporation Book Deal, it would have never progressed this far. People aren't consoled by the Google image as the lovable, do no evil, benevolent adopter of just a small number of orphan books. But was copyright really meant to extend life plus 70 years? In the interest of the public, hopefully they'll settle on the "right" book deal.

• Clues to Potato Blight: Scientists collaborating from 36 institutions across the globe completed sequencing the water mold responsible for late blight and the Irish Great Famine of 1840's-1850's. Phytophthora infestans consumes the plant's leaves and tubers and just as it wiped out potato crops in the 19th century, today the mold causes ~$6.7 billion dollars of damage annually to tomatoes, potatoes and other crops.

  Researchers identified genes that may help the organism evade scientists fight against the costly blight, and also found that about 75% of the genome contained repeat sections of DNA called transposons. Transposons duplicate and jump from one section of the genome to another, where they can disrupt genes and introduce mutations. This could allow the organism to adapt and evolve more quickly and continue to cause havoc in potato crops despite scientists' best efforts to engineer blight resistant crops.

  The part of the genome that contains the transposons also contains genes that code proteins responsible for virulence. Researchers theorize that the instability of this greatly expanded and rapidly changing part of the genome gives P. infestans its lethal power. The sequence data will help scientists understand the mold in order to prevent the destructive blight. Nature published the report: 9 September 2009 | doi:10.1038/nature08358.

Summer Politics: Cut and Dried

On the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, people reminisced about large public gatherings in open spaces. Central Park used to be a mecca for such events. On June 12, 1982, a million people assembled in the park to protest the nuclear policies of the Reagan Administration. People traveled to NYC they did so because they considered it a visible celebration of democracy, a patriotic way to send a message. Shortly after they convened, Reagan opened nuclear arms talks with the Soviet Union and the Cold War waned. To date, that Central Park protest remains one of America's largest.

New York City's study, released this month and conducted by soil scientists, plant pathologists and groundskeepers, suggests limiting the use of the Great Lawn in Central Park to 55,000 people for safety reasons and to protect the grass. The Great Lawn cost millions to restore, but the decision rankled some. A lawyer for the Partnership for Civil Justice told the NYT: "We would call it junk science except that it's not science". Rather she said, the report supports: "a political declaration of intent by the mayor to limit free speech rights by New Yorkers."

Grassroots Change

Central Park historian Sarah Cedar Miller once told a reporter: "Parks are a gathering ground and where democracy happens. Literally, the grassroots happen on the grass." ¹ Barack Obama has often talked about the importance of grassroots action to motivate change, though he hasn't been explicit about the turf. In "Dreams From My Father", he wrote about his decision in 1983 after graduating from Columbia College to become a community organizer:

"....There wasn't much detail to the idea; I didn't know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots."

Twenty-six years later Obama resides in the White House after campaigning on a platform of Change. In his acceptance speech he attributed his victory to a strong grassroots campaign. He assured his supporters that corporations wouldn't have all the seats at the table and urged them to continue the grassroots fight for the causes he would champion during his presidency.

Grassroots From the White House?

But of course Barack Obama also won the presidency because his campaign implemented well-organized fund-raising which corralled large donors and bundlers. Now, as constituents, stakeholders, and lobbyists wrestle over American healthcare, headlines detail the president's efforts to appease these interests.

Last week, we heard news about the executive branch's concessions to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). These agreements supposedly involve White House concessions like opposing drug importation, in return for a hazy promise from PhRMA about "up to" 80 billion dollars in cost cuts. Last weekend Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius asked people not to focus so much on the public option, leading the media to think the public option is off the table.

All this leaves grassroots Obama supporters to wonder, who is occupying the seats at the table? But wonder though they might, when it comes to healthcare, Obama's 13 million strong grassroots organization remains busy with their busy lives. Who among them has time, attention, or money to speak out on each of the plethora of issues that the Obama presidency tackles? Furthermore, if the president's supporters did have time, and knew what they were supposed to be rooting for -- a viable public option, details to the proposals, direct answers, and available talking points -- how would they express their interests? Are we really even a "grassroots" kind of country anymore?

Is It Astroturf or Have We Changed?

Public protests and large gatherings of past decades can't be idealized. They've always been contentious affairs, with riot police, shootings, covert and overt suppression. There was a certain community achieved by those Central Park protesters in 1982, who all gathered in one place to express the collective hope for a safer better, world. But that was almost three decades ago. A different place and time, when, as some New Yorkers say, Central Park was overgrown and scary and New York invited anyone to occupy the space to keep worse elements at bay. Today, large protests are not necessarily seen as viable options to petitioning government. The Department of Defense recently labeled protests "low-level terrorism".

Perhaps businesses that surround Central Park wouldn't appreciate their view being a bunch of protesters with idle time on their hands agitating against ideas that challenge the premises of the business deals their executives negotiate at a frenzied pace eighteen hours a day. They may want to assure that their backdrop is lush, peaceful, untrammeled grass as far as the eye can see, a copacetic business environment. But does an insistence on pretty lawns discourage the public's inclinations to join a peaceable protest? To express views about the government?

Perhaps grassroots protest is a bygone era and nothing is lost by limiting people's right to protest on public greens. Even those who traveled up to Woodstock write about the event forty years ago for the NYT with detached amusement, as if obliged at a family gathering to watch sibling antics on a scratchy home video before quickly snapping that dusty box shut.

A manicured law is an asset too. And determined agitators can always be relegated to highways or still unkempt DC malls. If in 2009 public protests are limited on Central Park's Great Lawn, perhaps they will continue to flourish at "town halls".

Townhalls -- "A Dip In A Cool Stream?""

Town halls, afterall, can be an idyllic way to exchange ideas. Obama wrote about his experience when he was an Illinois State Senator in "The Audacity of Hope":

"One of my favorite tasks of being a senator is hosting town hall meetings....And as I look out over the crowd, I somehow feel encouraged. In their bearing I see hard work. In the way they handle their children I see hope. My time with them is like a dip in a cool stream. I feel cleansed afterward, glad for the work I have chosen"

You may say that today's town halls are a quite different brand of love-in than Obama's. Today, there may be some heart-felt questioning, but disenchanted Americans drown it out by ferociously confronting their representatives about strange apparitions they've concocted pertaining to government. Now they decry the scurvy of government run healthcare. Next week they may be yelling about jobs the upcoming the energy bill.

Fox News insists that this "anger's not 'manufactured' it's REAL". However, others say that corporations, perhaps even oil companies, are contributing to town-hallers' messages against change. No matter, it's a different beast from the cool stream Obama described. Some representatives may be wanting to shower after the events.

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says the Democrats running town halls can handle it, but they need to "know the difference between grassroots and Astroturf." Television news, however, does not necessarily differentiate between Astroturf and the more plebeian, grassroots protests, it duly broadcasts discontent. To us, it seems that whatever was The Matter With Kansas has gone both viral and national. Unfortunately but importantly, whatever the source of townhall agitation, everyone's paying attention to it.

TV Cameras on the Ruckus -- The Limits of Technology

The internet remains an alternative grassroots medium mobilized to good effect by MoveOn.org and the Obama campaign. But even if Obama's grassroots organization were to see fit to mobilize and use the internet to it's previously powerful effect, it would be a quiet effort.

As Obama said last week "TV loves a ruckus". Email campaigns don't attract television cameras the way even the smallest collection of agitated people waving scrawled signs do. Face it, that's why businesses oppose 200,000 people gathering in Central Park and why some send people to town halls. Even if we had a million emails it still couldn't make a televisable ruckus.

Woodstock is overrated, they write forty years later. Too much mud, not enough sandwiches, and mind-boggling traffic jams. But how will current brand of town hall protests look forty years from now? If pundits and participants don't think back fondly on Woodstock today, how will they recall the shouted, spit-laden confrontations from people insisting that healthcare reform is facism, death panels, and communism all wrapped up in one ideologically impossible hairball of anti-reform? Not "Change!" or "No Nukes" -- but "No-Change!", ie: "Long-Live the Uninsured!" -- delivered with a swagger that only a pistol strapped to one's leg can insure?

I'm not trying to idealize the old, flowers in your hair days that I didn't even live through. But is something lost if we've reached an age when the TV news may never capture a million people gathered in a park with a vision of a changed and better world? When "Astroturf" -- always capitalized for the always capitalist world, and working mostly to prevent Change and progress -- is for all intents and purposes the only "grassroots" we know?

¹ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, October 17, 2005

Googley Economic Indicators

Lawrence Summers addressed the Peterson Institute for International Economics today, with upbeat comments about the economy. While it had been in "free fall" at the start of the year, he said, with "no apparent limit on how much worse things could get", optimistic statistics were now starting to pour in.

We'll take Summers word that there are positive signs -- other economists agree. Summers lost us though, when he said that the number of people searching on Google for the term "economic depression" has "returned to normal levels". Is this the best statistic he could come up with? I think you could present an alternative theory which said that at the beginning of the year people were curious about what "depression" would feel like, so they Googled it. Now, they know, they don't really need to Google it.

Waking Up From Free Fall: A Recurring Dream

We also note that you would see the same optimistic trend by searching for the term "free fall" (as in economic, not parachuting). Four months ago the expression littered the papers. Now, not so much, perhaps because Summers has eased up on his "free-fall" rhetoric. Summers has been saying the free-fall is over for months:

• April 3, 2009 (Wall Street Journal) Lawrence Summers talked to the Wall Street Journal about the economy, saying that: "this sense of free fall will give way before too long".

• April 9, 2009 (Reuters) Lawrence Summers told the Economic Club of Washington: "I think the sense of a ball falling off the table -- which is what the economy has felt like since the middle of last fall -- I think we can be reasonably confident that that's going to end within the next few months and you will no longer have that sense of free fall".

• April 19, 2009 (Fox News Sunday) Summers told viewers: "You have a sense of a more mixed picture in terms of consumer spending, and "not the kind of free fall that you saw, in part, because the stimulus that the provided in the recovery and reinvestment act is coming into people's paychecks, and that's putting a little more energy into the--into the consumer."

• April 26, 2009 (Washington Times) Lawrence Summers: "But I think that sense of "unremitting free fall that we had a month or two ago is not present today," he said. "That's something we can take some encouragement from."

• May 16, 2009 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. "economy is no longer in free fall" Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, said today in a pre-recorded video shown at a forum in Shanghai.

• June 12, 2009 (Associated Press) In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Summers said the government had acted as necessary to avoid dire outcomes: "While we still have a long way to go, the sense of free-fall that surrounded any reading of economic statistics a few months ago is no longer present"

Of course some economists argued vehemently that the economy never was in "free fall", but that was back in October, 2008. Summers has long been bullish on the effects the economic stimulus package had on halting the "free fall", although economists point out that the stimulus money is only just now starting to filter in now. Summers didn't dwell too much on the abysmal unemployment rate, a less positive economic indicator, in his speech today. Nevertheless, we think Summer's is pulling his weight trying to bolster consumer confidence.

Your Healthcare Dollars At Work Lobbying Congress to Defeat the Public Option?

Bill Moyers focused on health care last week, interviewing Wendell Potter, who worked as a corporate public relations executive at Humana and Cigna for the last 20 years, then recently retired from what he describes as a lucrative and posh executive position. Potter's one of those clever people who after they retire their position of import and influence, find a way to remain in the spotlight by suddenly seeing all the inequities they helped propagate before retirement.

Potter delivers some timely reminders though, with bonafide authority. For instance, in the 1990'a, the for-profit insurance industry's "medical loss ratio", that is the amount that insurance companies spent on patients, was about 95% of each premium dollar, whereas now it's only 80%. The insurance companies need to keep this percentage shrinking in order to meet investor demands. An efficient way to accomplish this is to kick people of the insurance rolls, and deny claims. What does insurance spend the extra money on? Acquisitions to increase market share? Executive compensation? Perhaps lobbying Congress for more market share?

The Language of Luntz

Moyers shared a healthcare reform communication memo, "The Language of Healthcare" by Frank I. Luntz. Luntz's name may be familiar to anyone who follows the climate change denial business guided by his public relations blueprints, the pro Israel settlements language, or many other GOP policy positions and "science based" rhetoric.

Luntz's healthcare memo presents "poll-based" advice on how to spin a healthcare solution which favors existing stakeholders like insurance while keeping the government out of healthcare. Luntz highlights "words that work" and "words that don't work".

For example, he writes:

"If the dynamic becomes "President Obama is on the side of reform and Republicans are against it," then the battle is lost and every word in this document is useless."

"One-size-does-NOT-fit-all." The idea that a "committee of Washington bureaucrats" will establish a single standard of care for all Americans and decide who gets what treatment based on how much it costs is an anathema to Americans. According to him, there are a number of ways to attack this:

• Demand the 'protection of the personal doctor-patient relationship';
• Compare the personalized relationship with their doctor to the distant, cold, calculations of a federal medical panel;
• Utilize examples of medical breakthroughs that would be undermined or jeopardized. .."

Or, says Luntz:

"The Democrats plan will deny people treatments they need and make them wait to get the treatments they can actually receive. This is more than just rationing. To most Americans, rationing suggests limits or shortages - for others. But personalizing it - "delaying your tests and denying your treatment" -- is the concept most likely to change the most minds in your favor."

The Luntz document contains 28 pages of explicit wording suggestions that he suggests people should use to persuade people to choose the "right option".

The insurance industry and other health care interests are lobbying hard against a government-sponsored, nonprofit, public health insurance option, and are spending, according to The Washington Post , up to $1.4 million per day to sway Congress in this direction.

President Obama remains upbeat, saying that the administration has made "unprecented progress", and telling Congress, "don't lose heart".

This We Believe

The world is abuzz about the way Twitter funnels communications out of Iran and for a while even seemed to have tipped the government slightly off balance. We in the west are amazed -- will technology enable Iran to move towards Democracy, people keep asking? At AR we have expressed deep cynicism about this idea in the past. But we also come back to it again and again because it's an irresistibly intoxicating theory and we can't help but fervently seek evidence to prove us wrong.

Technology is addictive to us in the West, we're always after the next coolest thing. Did you get your Plasma TV? Your new iPhone? Yes? Good. Rest assured -- if you feel any twinge of guilt whatsoever -- that standing in line in front of the Mac Store at 7:00AM isn't just some hedonist capitalist folly. It's much more. That slick gizmo which you listen to and speak into and urgently push buttons on is not just some toy, not just better than sex, drugs, Christmas and chemistry all wrapped up in a tiny-shiny irresistible package that fits so nicely in your hand. Your iPhone can change the world. Yes, it can bring peace where there was war, transparency where there was opaqueness, freedom where there were shackles. This we believe. We need technology to be so much more than plastic and tunes and what we ate for lunch today.

Bearing Witness?

But despite our hopes, still, doesn't Iran look like Burma, look like Tiananmen Square? When the fax was the fastest way to get news out of the country no one could stop 2,500 killed and 10,000 wounded in China, students who confronted tanks in peaceful protest and were shot and treaded to death -- an event that's now written out of Chinese history books. In Burma, the regime allowed the monks to march, then brutally put an end to the protests and the filming of the protests. In Iran, news got out via Twitter. A You Tube video showing Neda bleeding in the street shocked and dismayed us deeply and to our core.

But what do we do with this? Believe it enables more freedom, democracy? Or does it make the paranoid more paranoid, the brutal more brutal, the callous more callous, while the rest of us are rendered still just helpless bystanders, onlookers?

Is it progress?

Or is it entertainment?

If you want to imagine horror, you can do something like visit Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia where the skulls gape out at you haunting "why"? You'll be reminded of the massacre of 12,000-16,000 people 30 years ago. In this place, S-21, you can easily become overwhelmed of the tragedy and scale of evil of "government" power run amok. Time and geography soften the blow, though, standing in the prison, and keep the tragedy at arms length. The Cambodian genocide happened long ago in a very different place. It's history we can barely conceive, but for the man in charge of S21 prison, Kaing Guek Eav, aka Duch, who only now, decades later, stands trial -- defiant and apparently proud of his efficient work.

Does the immediacy of photos from Iran change anything?

In the 1970's many Americans were exposed to little more violence than in Starsky and Hutch, or some other TV show. We saw war footage, but didn't learn of Cambodia's true horror until four years after it commenced. In the 80's and 90's, for entertainment, the reality of a goofy cop show was eclipsed by the more palpable, grittier reality of real cops shows, where the cops actually beat down some guy's door and caught the perpetrators. Today, we flee by these shows via the remote, because we can so easily satisfy whatever real violent drama you hanker for via You Tube. Who needs TV crime drama when you have car crashes on demand? They're there on You Tube. Blood and gore and guns and drugs are there too, for our entertainment 24/7.

So how do we feel when we view murders that happened only yesterday, only last hour, only a minute ago? Does Iran's violence in real time make for a better world? Are we less helpless than we were 30 years ago when we wouldn't learn of government atrocities until years after they happened? Does the instant communication help Iranians? Does "bearing witness" help Iranian people? Or is it technology aided rubbernecking about our needs?

This morning my "non-science" reading included Paul Helmke's observation a few days ago that Obama habitually says he's "deeply saddened" when gun brandishing people kill citizens, but has yet to move beyond condolences.

After a gunman in Oakland, California shot and killed four policemen, Obama said:

"I was deeply saddened to learn of the tragic loss of Sgt. Mark Dunakin, Officer John Hege, Sgt. Ervin Romans, and Sgt. Daniel Sakai. Michelle and I hold their families and your community in our thoughts and prayers."

After a gunman killed 13 people in Binghamton, NY, Obama said:

"Michelle and I were shocked and deeply saddened to learn about the act of senseless violence in Binghamton, NY today..."

After a US soldier killed 5 US soldiers at Camp Victory in Iraq, Obama said:

"I was shocked and deeply saddened to hear the news from Camp Victory this morning..."

After a gunman killed one soldier and wounded another in Little Rock, AR, the president released a statement:

"I am deeply saddened by this senseless act of violence against two brave young soldiers...."

Then today, following the killing of a guard White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Obama was of course "saddened" to hear of the Holocaust Museum shooting.

College Roomate Questionaire -- Please Check The Appropriate Boxes: Are You a Vegetarian? A Smoker? A Concealed Gun Carrier?

The US has long accepted criminal on criminal killing, but now guns are moving into more and more areas like parks and classrooms. The US government is doing little to stop it. Microsoft Encarta advises that "Choosing a college roommate is like a game of Roomie Roulette". Indeed. Despite the spate of college gun violence, including the 32 people killed at Virgina Tech, neither the US government or the states are dedicated to preventing people from getting guns and using them to kill.

Following the Virgina Tech tragedy, not only did Virginia vote down a law that would make it more difficult for potentially deranged people to buy guns, other states also started easing gun restrictions. Last month the Texas Senate approved a law that would allow students to carry concealed weapons on campuses. Recently the Senate passed a law making it legal to carry guns in National Parks.

Helmke noted that although Obama is very busy, he's been unwilling to forge ahead with new rulemaking but instead repeats "gun lobby rhetoric that we should just "enforce the laws on the books"'. Helmke say that Obama is "sidestepping the fact that there are only a handful of Federal laws which make it harder for dangerous people to get guns."

Gun Lobby Rhetoric

As gun violence becomes routine and Obama becomes saddened, the gun lobby uses each and every sad episode as a marketing opportunity. Following a shooting the gun lobby doesn't even pause for the funerals before regaling us with stories of how innocent people were killed because they didn't have a chance to protect themselves by carrying a weapon.

So when the congregation was kneeling down murmuring, "Our Father, who art in Heaven...", the NRA scenario would have five parishioners spring up from their prayers, reveal their concealed weapons and shoot through the shoulder to shoulder church-goers praying in the pews thus saving the abortion doctor. You see?

Are you a woman who wants to feel safe riding her bike? Carry a gun, so that when your doing 20mph on the bike path and a criminal jumps out of the bushes, you can whip the gun out of your pannier and stop 'em in your/their tracks. Are you a frail senior citizen afraid of purse snatchers? http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/04/road-rage-among-seni.html">Carry a little gun in that purse and criminals will know better than to target you. A teacher afraid of school violence? Carry a gun and if a wayward student threatens math class violence lift up your shirt and show class whose boss.

Despite the perception propagated by hundreds of blog commenters across the US, all who have a friend who stopped a potential mass murder by a crazed gunman by carrying a concealed weapon, it's a real simple equation: More guns in a dog eat dog half crazed world, equals more deaths from guns. Europe and Canada have crazy people too, but a fraction of US gun homicides.

Arms Control Starts At Home

On the positive side for some people, more guns also equals more NRA subscriptions which means more lobbying dollars to politicians, which means more guns and -- oh wait -- more deaths....no that's ok -- which means more guns, etc.

Some of the most steadfast orators for gun control in the legislature buckle under the pressure. When Congress passed the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act of 2009 (H.R.627), Senator Boxer said "Congress has taken historic action to protect consumers". She of course omitted to mention the concession to allow concealed weapons in national parks and monuments (and of course omitted mention that Congress refused to imposing an interest rate cap). For anyone who doesn't wrack up credit card debt but likes to walk in nature this is not "consumer protection". But Boxer said she had voted with her "conscience", and that she if she didn't bow to NRA pressure nothing would get done in the legislature. Now that's sad.

As Goes America...

Now I will argue that the US government's inability to stand up to the gun lobby effects not only American citizens but international relations as well. Senator Boxer recently commended the choice of California Representative Tauscher to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, saying Tauscher was a "constant advocate for stopping the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons across the globe." (Notice she omitted mention of arms manufacturers -- but lets talk about it.)

US arms manufacturers have demonstrated for decades an excellent business model that just happens to result in global weapons proliferation. The US doesn't expect anything less of a business model from allies like France, but acts surprised when countries that give us the jitters like North Korea try to muster their economic independence by advertising their own special brand of missile development progress. North Korea has gone down this paht, dramatically marketing their missiles to rogue buyers across the world, while the US stands by flexing weakly.

Likewise, if we can't control our own gun manufacturers and their lobbyists, who at the end of the day, encourage rogue American citizens to buy guns for the purpose of shooting innocent people, how is the US proposing to urge the world to disarm? If some of the finest rhetoricians in the world can't beat the gun lobby's rhetoricians when they insist that more guns will make citizens safer, as Democrats stand by while the gun lobby successfully convinces half the US population that the Second Amendment protects automatic weapon buying at gun shows, how will those fine orators disengage belligerent leaders from their weapons of choice, be those conventional, nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons? How?

How Will They Deal?

The Holocaust Museum shooter published racist vitriol and hate speech on the internet. Some would implement a policy to monitor such speech. But he started the pattern of threatening federal officials with weapons decades ago, before the internet. Some would argue for a better database to track such potential criminals. But we have that technology and it isn't working. Some would say people who shoot people with guns would otherwise use other lethal weapons, knives for instance. A knife is not a automatic machine gun, thank you.

Some would say anything to get us to buy their product -- their cigarettes, their oil, their guns.

Where's the logic? For this state of affairs, US gun violence and weapons proliferation demands both moving rhetoric and conscientious objection to both the arms and gun lobbies. If you want to climb a tree at 4AM on a November day with a pot to pee in and wait for a deer to wander through your neck of the woods, well that's your choice. But gun violence demands federal legislation that makes in tougher, not easier, to purchase the weapons used for homicides.

"As there is a use in medicine for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues." Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The New York Times Calls Out the Rogues

  A couple of weeks ago the New York Times seemed obsessed with Star Trek, focusing on Obama and Star Trek in no less than three articles in the Sunday "Week in Review". This week the Times seem to have something for "rogues". No not their own rogues or their economic journalists whose expertise leads to to personal bankruptcy and cringeworthy public confessionals. The Times is taking on rogues of another sort.

  Charles Blow calls conservatives on their hypocrisy in "Rogues,Robes and Racists", a great take-down of conservative lies about Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

  Then in "A Rogue Industry", an editor writes about the Senate's upcoming vote to regulate tobacco through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Tobacco, an industry that the court found guilty of racketeering, false statements, and deliberate public deception, has proved itself incapable of regulating itself, says the editor.

• Refuting the Scoundrels

  Speaking of rogues running awry, the right-wing is loud lately. If I could ask a question of Sonia Sotomayor, I'd ask her what it was like to go to sleep one night as a moderate, highly accomplished Latina and respected Federal judge, and wake up the next morning morphed into a "racist" whose a "bad for business" Supreme Court nominee.

  Thus, some conservatives seem intent on shooting themselves in the feet over the Obama administration's astute nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. First they claimed she was a racist, and to prove so, they parsed statements she made at the University of California years ago and presented them radically out of context. In addition to the response by Charles Blow in the NYT above, Brad Delong's excellent rebuttal of their attempts is here.

  Dancing back from that precipice, conservatives then moonwalked into the less treacherous but equally rocky territory -- her lack of business qualifications. Why can't Obama nominate someone to the court who knows "what it means to explain to a client that what was a secured debt yesterday is not a secure debt today. A little empathy for the people who make America's economy go." There's the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) argument, complete with all that fake indignation we'd expect, but with no merit.

  There's only one person with "business experience" in the current court line-up, but despite the lack of "business credentials", the Robert's court is the most pro-business court in 30 years. This according not only to Jeffrey Rosen's 8000 word New York Times article on the subject, "Supreme Court Inc.", but also the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and business leaders throughout the world.

  Of 30 business cases decided in the 2007 term, 22 were decided close to unanimously for business, in what the Times called an "ideological sea change". This was the result of a sustained effort by business since the 1970's to change the court action on issues like punitive damages and ability to sue for product liability. Still, some columnists insist on making a spectacle of themselves over the Sotomayor nomination with statements like: "business should shudder in its boots".

  Not only do pro-business venues like the Wall Street Journal think Sotomayor, who was a corporate attorney for years, is mainstream, it's not entirely clear that a judge needs to have run a plumbing business to be a pro-business judge. Pro-business is a philosophy, not a craft -- a philosophy that dominates the American character. We're all pro-business now, as conservatives well know, especially Obama. It's what makes the world economy tick, it's what makes us tick.

• Link This

  Using a technique that we routinely, wholeheartedly criticize here at Acronym Required, authors recently submitted an article on the fossil find "Ida" to the journal PloS One with such a preemptive froth of advertising hoopla you'd think the researchers were instead a global beverage company unveiling of a new "secret recipe" flavor of soda.

  By all accounts, Ida, who the researchers precociously named Darwinius masillae, is an great fossil find. Nevertheless paleontologists don't agree with the hyperbolic descriptions of Ida as "the link" -- for starters. Scientists are also disturbed by the zany marketing campaign that skips over the peer evaluation and contextualization by the community of scientists. Seed writes that the Ida fossil find, is:

  "...an astonishingly slick, multi-component media package--certainly the first of its kind. In addition to the press conference itself, Little, Brown, and Company released The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor, by Colin Tudge on Tuesday; a multimedia-rich website, RevealingTheLink.com, was launched; and a two-hour documentary will air on the History Channel, the BBC, and various stations in Germany and Norway next week..."

  Yikes. PLoSOne out-Seeds Seed. And when Nature questioned the media blitz last week the blog world didn't even launch its usual knee jerk defense of PLoS. Something must be amiss.

  We were away, so missed some of the excitement, but is this the future (demise) of science? Aside from Ida, fossils are usually interesting to us Homo sapiens, and fossil finds always manage to attract public attention, which is a good thing.

  Fossil finds are also notoriously contentious. We previously wrote about Homo floresiensis, the fascinating fossils unearthed in a Flores, Indonesia cave a few years ago. In The "Hobbit" Species in Indonesia -- New?", and ""Homo floresiensis: To Have Been or Not To Have Been", we discussed the high profile scientific dispute over the origin of the cave dwelling fossil's remains.

  For years, Homo floresiensis researchers have been excavating, analyzing and presenting new evidence, in Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and other journals, evidence that supports or disputes the theory that the Flores hominin represents a new species. One of the most recent papers in Nature, authored by William Jungers et al, describes the very unique feet of Homo floresiensis that make it quite unlike em>Homo sapiens, more evidence supporting the idea that the Flores cave dwellers were a new species.

  But the Ida spectacle bests what we thought was the overwrought media coverage of the Homo floresiensis research. Clearly, all the media players could benefit from greater exposure via Ida, but how will science fare? Science research is not, after all, a melodious singer from Scotland who you can pretty up to boost your ratings when needed, before demoting to second place. Research is the backbone of technology which drives capitalist economies. So please, a little respect -- as they would say?

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Acronym Required wrote about tobacco in "Tobacco's Coups", and "UC Senate Smokes RE-89", and "My Lab Thanks You For Smoking", as well as other posts. We've criticized media hype of dubious research frequently in posts like "Autism, TV, Precipitation: Dismal Science", and "News of Lightweight Study: 'Obese Should Walk Slowly"', and "Britain's Science Path: Brilliant Lights?"

Recently Chicago and Connecticut enacted bans on bisphenol A (BPA), hinting at a trend that's making industry nervous. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last week, and Washington Post today, manufacturers of cans containing bisphenol A and their customers like Coca-Cola are "trying to devise a public relations and lobbying strategy to block government bans" of the chemical. To anyone who has followed bisphenol A news or is at all news-aware, this isn't a news flash. But several papers got a hold of some meeting notes from a industry strategy session, which point to familiar tactics the industry has been using to frustrate legislative action on BPA. As the WP wrote:

"industry executives huddled for hours Thursday trying to figure out how to tamp down public concerns over the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA. The notes said the executives are particularly concerned about the views of young mothers, who often make purchasing decisions for households and who are most likely to be focused on health concerns."

According to the Post, the meeting a Washington DC's Cosmos Club discussed their public relations goals: research, "legislative and grassroots outreach [to mothers 21-35 years old and students]", and a "clear-cut plan to defend their industry." They needed a spokesperson for their cause, and wrote in the notes obtained by the newspapers that a pregnant woman would be "the Holy Grail".

According to the Post, ideas for defending the BPA industry could include "using fear tactics [e.g. Do you want to have access to baby food anymore?]", as well as "giving control back to customers", by explaining their "choice": more expensive frozen food packaging, or food in canned packaging.

According to the Journal Sentinal, the group worried that finding a scientist to act as a spokesman would be difficult because the scientists think they would be "tainted" by industry association. Really? (Do we think industry is being modest about their ability to recruit scientists to their causes?) In that case, the papers conclude, the industry would need to depend on marketing, not science, to get push their product. Not really the motherlode of insight, but interesting enough commentary on the BPA industry's remarkable consistency.

To the relief of many environmentalists and scientists, last week the Obama administration's EPA found six greenhouse gases endangered public health and welfare -- as ordered by the Supreme Court. Many in business jeered and booed and issued misleading and false complaints with hyperbolic gusto. Also last week, the EPA issued a preliminary review of the energy bill released by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) and concluded that the cap and trade portion would not handicap the economy (pdf). Leaders in Congress said that cap and trade legislation might be preferable to EPA regulation. Of course sectors like the chemical industry as well as free-market think tanks and their dedicated columnists have gone apoplectic. How will Congress deal with all sides? How will the Obama administration -- led by its famous mediator -- mediate?

Industry's Place at the Table and Bush's EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), found that high concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride threatened human health and welfare. Environmentalists and lots of others, basically anyone who cares a whit about life or Earth or species, not to mention human health, etc., cheered -- action, finally. But as we know, this wasn't really such a bowl-me-over stupendous accomplishment. The Bush Administration's EPA had also found that greenhouse gases endangered human health and welfare (and they weren't the first) -- and famously smothered their findings.

Let's briefly recall some highlights. Consider that Congress passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act in 1970 under President Nixon. Industry and those in Congress whose dispositions trend radically free-market, or whose campaigns certain industries help finance, have since fought vigorously against the legislation.

The battles go back decades, familiar faces in familiar roles. For instance in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan steadfastly tried to undermine Clean Air and Clean Water, House Representative Barbara Boxer (D-CA) noted:

''They can't get the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts amended, the way they want to. So they weaken them through regulation, and defy the intent of Congress. They are the best at figuring out ways to legally undermine the will of Congress, but this time, in the E.P.A. case, we caught them.''

Boxer was a junior member of Congress in 1983. Did she know how many rounds were left to go? Some recent history, starting 20 years after Boxer's comment:

• 2003: The states petitioned the Bush Administration to regulate CO2 emissions from motor vehicles. The administration refused, asserting that CO2 wasn't a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. (The states sued.)

• April, 2007: Massachusetts vs. EPA finally ended up in the Supreme Court. The court ordered the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases endangered human health and welfare, saying the administration needed to ground its assertions in some science, as required by the Clean Air Act. Acronym Required talked about the court's findings in "Supreme Court Rejects EPA & Coal Plants' Nonsense".

  In a darker moment of EPA history, the agency defended its mulish inaction by citing in testimony an old tobacco case, Brown v. Williamson. Then, the court ruled that the FDA couldn't regulate cigarette smoke on account of "tobacco's unique political history", which, the EPA reasoned, shared that of greenhouse gas's "unique political history". In addition, the EPA argued that it couldn't be effective against such a "global problem", and that tailgate regulation was the place of the Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Any attempt at EPA regulation, the agency said, would would be "piecemeal" and cause "agency overlap". The Supreme Court categorically rejected all of these arguments. (Environmentalists -- my shorthand for anyone who cares a whit -- cheered.)

• May 2007: Bush announced: "Today, I'm directing the EPA and the Departments of Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture to take the first steps toward regulations that would cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles." (Environmentalists -- and anyone who cared a whit --cheered.)

• May 2007-November 2007: Bush's EPA hired a 70 person team to investigate endangerment, vehicle and fuel issues after the Supreme Court ruling. The EPA found that based on the "underlying science" CO2 emissions cause "consequences for public health". The resulting report included costs and benefits. At about 300 pages the EPA conducted the study in consultation with the DOT's NHTSA. The 2007 report budget --for six months of work? -- was $5.3 million. (Who knew?)

• November 2007: EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he would propose EPA regulation by the end of the year. (Environmentalists cheered.)

• December 2007: EPA finding of endangerment emailed to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Johson's proposal for regulating CO2 emissions was sent to the National Highway Safety and Transportation Agency (NHTSA). The documents disappeared into the black hole of the White House. (Few knew.)

• March 2008: EPA administrator Stephen Johnson writes to Congressman Waxman to advise him that the EPA will issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), rather than a finding on endangerment. (Business cheered.)

• July 2008: The EPA follows through on Johnson's promise and releases the ANPR. (Business complained.)

• July 2008: Jason Burnett (remember him?) resigned as the chief climate-change adviser to then EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, alleging that VP Cheney and the White House Council for Environmetal Quality redacted parts of CDC documents about greenhouse gases and human health. Burnett's move seemed overtly political, nevertheless, he helpfully detailed in a letter to Senator Boxer how findings on public health were manipulated by the White House: "CEQ requested that I work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change". (Environmentalists gasped.)

Pressuring the EPA for the ANPR

How will the Obama administration's EPA differ from the Bush administration's? When Obama campaigned for President, he promised that industry would have a seat at the table, but not the only seat, which sounded great. But just as in the Bush administration, industry lobbyists still spend billions of dollars for their seats, while the majority of citizens, those who pollution disproportionately affects don't fund campaigns and rarely get seats. Will their Representatives really represent them despite their disproportionate campaign donations? How does it work when corporations don't play to compromise, don't accept "fair" solutions?

To get perspective on this, let's look quickly at the EPA's handling of the Supreme Court ruling last year via their Advance Notice of Public Rulemaking (ANPR). At the time of EPA Administrator StephenJohnson's decision last year to issue the ANPR we quoted from the Heritage Foundation's letter to -- as the conservative think tank put it -- "everyone that we could think of" in Congress.

The Heritage Foundation implored Senators and Representatives to pressure the EPA for an ANPR rather than find on endangerment. They said the extended public comment period would "start a record of" "cost[s] and burden[s] of carbon caps and Clean Air Act expansion". Note the Heritage Foundation didn't say "costs and benefits", but "cost[s] and burden[s]".

The Heritage Foundation also urged the EPA to issue an ANPR in a March 28, 2008 article published on its website, titled, "The EPA's Prudent Response to Massachusetts v. EPA". Heritage wrote "a wave of costly new regulations is the last thing the economy needs. An ANPR is the best option at this time."

The Response the EPA's ANPR

As the Heritage Foundation requested, the EPA issued the ANPR, so you'd think Heritage would be happy, maybe send a bouquet of flowers. Rather, they were extremely displeased, along with organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce. The Heritage Foundation issued warnings in dry, authoritative press releases filled with charts and graphs, like the October 29, 2008, "CO2-Emission Cuts: The Economic Costs of the EPA's ANPR Regulations". They warned that the ANPR would "damage the U.S. economy severely", cause a "large loss of national income" , "throw a monkey wrench into the production side of the economy", accumulate job losses that "exceed 50 percent" for some industries, in excess of "800,000 for several years".

Despite new technology investment, reported the Heritage Foundation, "more capital is destroyed than created." Heritage constructed a scary cliff-hanger of a bar graph that showed GDP sinking dramatically for nearly a quarter of a century. Yet analysis done EPA and non-partisan sources shows the opposite, that investment in green economy and reduction of destructive greenhouse gases will help the economy.

Of course you can get perspective on the Heritage Foundation's ominous forecasting by acknowledging the result of the past 8 years of deregulation -- the conservatives' ideal business model. Deregulation has not been good for labor or the economy. In 2008 job losses were 2.6 million, more than 3 times Heritage Foundation's yearly job loss scenario for the green economy. Under conservative tutelage, manufacturing has been decimated. 2009 has been even worse for jobs, the US economy has shed over 2 million jobs so far this year.

And Now, A New Round of Warnings for Endangerment

Now that the EPA has found on endangerment, as it is required to under the Clean Air Act, and as was ordered to by the Supreme Court, the right again comes out swinging, and has also found a cadre of columnist flacks willing to take up the rhetoric of deception. The thrust of these arguments is: 1) the EPA has suddenly grabbed unprecedented amounts of power, (no mention of the Supreme Court order), and 2) The EPA will ruin your life and steal your job.

Despite how misleading and misinformed, these pieces are being published by still working newspaper editors all over the US. With all the newspaper layoffs of talented journalists, somehow these hyperbolic, mendacious columnists and their (dare I say, shameless) editors seem unreasonably spared. Wrote the Augusta Chronicle: "The EPA recently announced it has authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.....You pretty much have to be a piece of antique furniture not to emit something".

"Antique furniture" in Maine turned out to be Northeast quaint compared to other commentators who used more extreme examples, like the EPA was "putting a gun to Congresses head". In California an LA Times columnist wrote "the EPA has launched its power grab over all that burns, breathes, burps, flies, drives and passes gas." (As an aside, the LA Times had more than 1200 people in its newsroom in 2001, and now has less that 600. And this guy remained in the keeper pool? Oh, and why is the public misinformed?)

The Obama administration certainly takes a different, far more skilled public relations tack than the Bush administration, with nods to the "left" and nods to the "right". However skilled the public relations of the administration, though, what will the end result look like? The idea that market based solutions are the best is not in question in the Obama administration. Senator Boxer generally aligns herself with the president in her cap and trade propositions and many agree that that tactic will be the most amenable to busiess. Even automakers have offered guarded support for the Markey/Waxman bill. But of course cap and trade is under attack from conservatives. Will congressional "compromise" successfully curb greenhouse gas emissions when no solution will satisfy conservatives? I guess we can hope.

Guns and Money

In Johannesburg, South Africa, supporters of presidential candidate Jacob Zuma celebrated by leaning on horns, blowing whistles and waving flags, after the National Prosecution Authority (NPA) dropped 16 charges against the African National Council (ANC) front-runner. Prosecutors had accused Zuma of taking bribes via Schabir Shaik, his adviser who connived with French arms company Thales International (Thint) to win military arms deals from the state.

Deals with the French company worth several billion dollars were in the works in 1999, when investigators began to look into the details of the transactions. The arms company apparently worked through Zuma's financial adviser Shaik, and recruited Zuma to interfere with the investigation. Zuma, who served as deputy president under Thabo Mbeki, had faced corruption, fraud, racketeering and money-laundering charges.

In 2005, Schabir Shaik was found guilty of corruption and sent to prison to serve several concurrent sentences amounting to 15 years. In 2005 President Thabo Mbeki dismissed deputy president Zuma after the high court found Schaik guilty. The judge in the case noted the "generally corrupt" relationship between Zuma and Shaik. After serving 28 months of his sentence, mostly in private hospitals, Shaik was released on a controversial medical probation last month.

Upon hearing the charges were dropped against Zuma, hundreds of supporters danced and sang to Zuma's theme song, "Bring Me My Machine Gun", an apartheid era rally song.

Who Needs Lawyers?

Zuma's popularity assures broad support for his election April 22, despite his ripe court history, not only on account of the the corruption charges, but also because of a rape trial in 2006. Zuma's comments during the rape trial included the assertion that he had showered to protect himself from contracting AIDS from the woman who accused him of rape, and that he knew that the woman wanted to have sex because of the type of skirt she wore. His comments incensed those who care about public health and women's rights. As deputy president under Mbeki, Zuma served as the head of South Africa's National Aids Council and the Moral Regeneration Movement. Zuma was acquitted of the rape.

People anticipated the charges would be dropped, and now expect Zuma to win the presidential election. But the corruption case hovers in the background uncomfortably. The case dragged on for years before wiretap tapes and transcriptions emerged which seemed to show a politically motivated plot on the part of the investigators. The case against Zuma fell apart on technicality, but the prosecutor pointed out that his decision: "does not affect the substantive merits of the case against [Mr] Zuma". Some people believe the charges will taint the South African democracy, not to mention the presidency of Mr. Zuma.

Thabo Mbeki dismissed Zuma as his deputy president after Shaik was found guilty, and Zuma was never found guilty of corruption charges. Interestingly though, Thabo Mbeki habitually railed against pharmaceutical companies who offered AIDS drugs by accusing them of being "like marauders of the military industrial complex who propagate fear to increase their profits". Of course, while thousands of Mbeki's compatriots died of AIDS, Mbeki denied the viral cause of AIDS and pursued various themes to produce AIDS drugs in Africa. During this time, while Mbeki refused to treat AIDS patients, under his administration billions of dollars of South Africa's wealth was going to foreign weapons manufacturers.

Strong-Arming Countries -- Oil For Planes

In the scheme of things, the bribes that Jacob Zuma accepted were not a big as bribes can get. Starting tonight, Frontline will air a one hour special titled "Black Money", a documentary on international corruption by military corporations. "Black Money" is based on the work of Guardian journalist David Leigh, who has been reporting on BAE corruption across the globe for more than five years. Last year Leigh wrote about BAE bribes to South African, in which BAE pressured the country to buy war planes at inflated prices. Chippy Shaik, the brother of Schabir, worked in the defense department and helped secure the deals.

"Black Money" focuses not so much on South Africa, but on BAE's bribes and the web of relationships between Britain, Saudia Arabia, and the US. BAE devised complex deals to secure £43bn in arms deals with Saudia Arabia. When British investigators at the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) started digging into the deals and Britain's part in them, Saudia Arabia threatened to break off collaborations with Britain against terrorism. Tony Blair's government abruptly curtailed the investigation.

"Black Money" follows the kingpin role of Saudia Prince Bandar bin Sultan, former Saudia ambassador to the US, who benefited handsomely from the bribes. At one point Bandar retorts to the interviewer who probes about the multi-billion dollar deals: "So What?". Filmakers also interviewed former US FBI director Louis Freeh, now a private lawyer and consultant to Prince Bandar also appears "Black Money". He admits that money transfers amounting to $2 billion dollars flowed from BAE in Britain to the US bank accounts of the Saudi prince, but Freeh denies that Bandar accepted bribes. While acknowledging that the complicated deals and payments were set up in part to avoid congressional scrutiny Freeh retorts that the commingling of Saudi accounts is none of the US's business. The narrative and exchanges portrayed in the show "Black Money" add up to no more than "reckless allegations", says Freeh.

Has globalization and unfettered money exchange made the the world as callous as "So What?" and as compromising as Louis Freeh? Corruption is a globalized problem, with some of the biggest victims being the poorest countries, like Bangladesh. Of course all citizens of all countries pay for privileges of the lawless few at the top. The US is perhaps not as corrupt as Saudia Arabia nor is poor as South Africa. But while Africa and Europe and the Middle East and Asia see plenty of corruption, the US has its fair share of nefarious deals and Seawolf-like contracts made in the name of business by self-interested companies, lobbyists and politicians. Even now, as the Obama administration announces the military budget and certain key legislators obstruct the administration's goals to protect their states' prized military contracts, it would be remiss not to acknowledge that the US has its own solid brand of backroom dealmaking and military procurement malfeasance -- not to mention a faltering healthcare system.

Congress Takes on Bisphenol A

The US House and Senate introduced bills last week that would ban bisphenol A (BPA) in all food and beverage containers. The proposed bills are the latest federal legislation to try to curb the used of BPA, even as production of the chemical continues to increase worldwide.

Studies conducted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) have found that bisphenol A is found in 92.6% of people tested. For years consumers assumed that the chemical was benign. However BPA has now been shown through hundreds of science studies to be linked to prostate and breast cancer, obesity, neurological problems including behavioral problems in children, precocious puberty, altered sperm counts, immune disorders and other problems.

For a long time, even though more and more studies showed the dangers of BPA, legislation was nowhere to be found. Now legislative efforts are starting to gain traction following increasing public awarenes and outcry on bisphenol A. In 2005 Acronym Required reported on the first bisphenol A legislation out of California, introduced by Wilma Chan, that proposed a limit to bisphenol A in childrens products. "Plastic Bottles- Protecting Your Baby, by the ACC", focused on the industry's use of misinformation about baby bottles to protect their plastics and bisphenol A market. Reporting on San Francisco's attempt to clamp down on the use of BPA in baby bottles and children's products, we wrote: "It will be interesting to watch the progress of this legislative attempt to control use of this chemical". The California legislation was swiftly defeated under industry threats.

In the four years since, the accumulation of science research attracted public attention then propelled citizen action, which in turn motivated city, state and federal legislatures to pay heed. Not coincidentally, the companies who we chronicled vehemently denying the dangers of BPA, now "voluntarily" discontinue some of their controversial uses for the chemical. Not all lobbies are so agreeable however. The Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association (JPMA), which currently owns the site www.babybottle.org that we took exception to 4 years ago, still runs under a banner of blatant lies "PLASTIC BABY BOTTLES ARE SAFE. Convenient. Tested. Trusted."

Taking a Stand on the Precautionary Principle?

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sponsored the Senate bill S. 593, which Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) co-sponsored. Said Feinstein when introducing the bill:

"I strongly believe that the time has come to utilize a precautionary standard in all food and beverages with respect to chemical additives. If you do not know for certain the chemical is benign, it should not be used. Bisphenol A, known commonly as BPA, is one such example. It is used in consumer products all around us: plastic containers that store food, compact discs, water bottles, canned soups and other canned foods, even baby bottles. More than 100 studies suggest that BPA exposure at very low doses is linked to a variety of health problems..."

America consumers should not be "guinea pigs", Feinstein said. The bill would ban Bisphenol A from all food and drink containers, effective 180 days from enactment. The chemical is ubiquitous, found in pipes, baby bottles, infant formula cans, dental sealants, and car parts. But the Environmental Working Group commissioned research showing that half of the cans they tested had detectable levels of BPA that would not only expose adult consumers to levels of BPA considered dangerous, but could expose unborn children whose mothers eat canned food to up 200 times safe levels. Therefore a bill that targets the use of bisphenol A in food containers would help keep the chemical out of humans.

Feinstein's legislation would allow companies to petition for renewable waivers by claiming that it was "technologically impossible to replace BPA in that time frame", an interesting and potentially problematic criteria.

The language Senator Feinstein used in her statement is interesting for other reasons too. "Precautionary Standard" is similar to "Precautionary Principle", which is a sort of loaded term, one that industry and free trade organizations detest. The presumed head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) (in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Executive Office of the President), Cass Sunstein -- unofficially nominated but at large (maybe somewhere in the bowels of OIRA) -- has periodically taken a strong stand against the Precautionary Principle. (For instance read the paper "Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle", the book of the same tittle, papers or the related less conciliatory CATO article on the subject. Some of these same ideas which are propagated throughout his writing including in "Nudge"). If Congress goes forward with the legislation, will it bring the US stance on chemicals closer to the European one? Will the "Precautionary Standard" edge its way into policy or become more mainstream?

Whatever the outcome, if you were to take a stand on the unfortunately named but potent and historically interesting Precautionary Principle, would the chemical bisphenol A, which has been thoroughly researched, be the chemical you'd choose? (It's not clear whether Feinstein is doing this or whether this is just convenient, casual wording.) Acronym Required has written about the disconnect between the hundreds of studies showing potential dangers of the chemical, legislative action, media coverage, and stalling action by lobbyists, in Phthalates and Bisphenol A: Media and Politics".

The research on bisphenol A does not leave very much doubt as to the dangers of this chemical. So then is this "precaution"? Or even "caution"? Or is it legislation that is very late in to the scene, slowed by chemical companies and their intense lobbying, which makes it simply "reactionary". Not to dredge up an overused cliche here, but is this that different from warnings on cigarette boxes, decades after the first health studies came out? I'm not answering, just asking.

Making this a joint congressional action, Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced the companion bisphenol A legislation in the House. Markey's bill will be known as "Ban Poisonous Additives Act of 2009".

Senator Feinstein also helped write a 2008 amendment to the Consumer Product Safety Commission which banned the sale of phthalate containing products to children under seven. California passed a similar law in 2007.

Communities Take On Bisphenol A and Companies Suddenly Choose Science

As we mentioned above, Acronym Required previously chronicled San Francisco's failed efforts to ban bisphenol A legislation. The San Francisco City Council members deleted language that would have restricted the use of bisphenol A in certain infant and children's products when sued by plastic manufacturers. We also wrote on Chicago's city legislation and Canada's, and Canadian communities' bans. Since then, more communities have taken on bisphenol A, and Suffolk County" is the latest to institute a ban on the chemical. While manufacturers can afford to take one city to court, if multiple states and cities are introducing legislation, the balance of power changes. Steve Hentges, the prolific American Chemical Council spokesman and author of editorials proclaiming BPA's safety must be spinning (as in 360s) trying to keep up.

American manufacturers are expert at stalling legislation. But at some point, they too, glance over their shoulders an realize that legislation and negative public opinion is bearing down on them. Six companies, Playtex Products, Gerber, Evenflow, Avent America, Dr. Brown's and Disney First Years said they would stop the sale of plastic polycarbonate baby bottles in the USA, in response to action by Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal, and the attorneys general in Delaware and New Jersey.

In other company responses to public outcry, Sunoco wrote a letter to investors saying that they would stop selling bisphenol A to companies that can't assure that BPA won't be used in food and water products for children under 3. Sunoco noted they couldn't assure that bisphenol A was safe. Sunoco's action, though rather anemic, was in response to investor actions and queries to the company. Interviewed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Tom McCaney, associate director for corporate responsibility at the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, a group of about 600 nuns who petitioned Sunoco on BPA: "We thought this was a really bold step, especially for a company that's a member of the American Chemistry Council." Bold indeed. Not the adjective I would choose perhaps, since Sunoco's not guaranteeing anything, but a "smart" business move? Sure.

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This is a continuation of our last post "The Galt Gestalt". Not that Ayn Rand hasn't been memorialized enough. Quite the opposite. Companies like the demolition contractor at the World Trade Towers site proudly name themselves John Galt this or Fountainhead that. Companies also name themselves after John Galt or Howard Roark, and at least one architectural design firm in Minneapolis named a imaginary "Howard Roark" as a senior partner of the firm (in charge of marketing). Thousands of books and hundreds of institutes all over the world celebrate her ideas -- among them the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, the Ayn Rand Institute, Ayn Rand Society, RebirthofReason.com, Liberty Institute, AtlasShrugged.com, The Atlas Society, The Objectivist Center, Objectivsm 101, Objectivism Reference Center, ObjectivistAcademiccenter.org, AynRandInstitute.ca -- to name a few.

With all that, who needs more Ayn Rand verbiage? Well, the recent outpouring of Randism would never suffer for more "balance". The gushing accolades over "Atlas Shrugged" at FOX News and cable news channels -- by announcers who Americanize Rand's name to "Ann" instead of "Ayn" rhymes with "all mine", or "swine" -- as Rand would say, could use another look.

In our last post we talked about modern day Ayn Rand acolytes -- those who didn't have the opportunity to write books with her like Alan Greenspan, but who still forward her ideas and writing. True, we read her books -- in high school -- as fiction -- so we are as surprised as anyone that full grown adults actually say that Rand's half a century old books foresaw America's current economic state. In our last post we reviewed the movie "The Fountainhead", with its fallible characters Howard Roark and Dominique, set among quarries and "modern" 1940's buildings -- all his "creations". We challenged Rand's portrayal of Roark as a "creator" and questioned how such daft writing by could be misinterpreted for 2009 economic wisdom. We observed that Rand's coterie of admirers pick and choose the parts of her philosophy they like and disregard the bits that don't fit their political agenda -- like her intolerance of mixing religion with politics.

Some executives say that "The Fountainhead" is their favorite work. Yet in "The Fountainhead" Howard Roark blows up buildings with explosives then defends his crimes by telling a jury some fantastic gobbledygook about great "creators" who stood up to all the men. Each individual scientist or inventor, he intones

"lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement..."

How can a novel where the demi-god Howard Roark dynamites buildings be seen as a blueprint for America, by a nation that claims to revile the tactic of blowing up buildings? There's some irony to the fact that former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, who is a respected as a professor and Chicago community service leader, is labeled a "terrorist", while fictional Howard Roark is revered by Ayers' same detractors as a "hero".

Everyone, including us, capably cherry-picks their evidence, and just as Rand's most fervent admirers cherry-pick her ideas, she cherry-picked her evidence, her ideals, and her followers, scorning even those who most fervently embraced her ideas. She dismissed libertarians as "a random collection of emotional hippies-of-the-right who seek to play at politics without philosophy." But still, they loved her, just as Howard Roark pined for Dominique in the quarry in the "The Fountainhead" and made statutes in her image when she married other men.

Why the enduring adoration? Why are sales of "Atlas Shrugged" still booming, aside from the fact that it's impressively thick but vapidly light read -- a delirious combination of Harlequin romance and "For Dummies" -- perfect airplane reading?

Americans Testy About The Flimsy Enterprising Spirit Myth

Is it the myth of the rugged individual? Historically, the US had some very hardy Americans, Teddy Roosevelt, for instance. But the US and its corporate economy hasn't been a wunderkind of noble individualists recently. In 1984, Roger Rosenblatt wrote about this strange phenomenon, asking in Time magazine's ("The Rugged Individual Rides Again"): "Why the pretense--why the evident pleasure--in seeing the country as a collection of loners?"

Now, twenty-five years later, the myth may be less intact but politicians still pimp it. It has served the GOP well since Ronald Reagan rode in with "Morning in America." Reagan came up in Hollywood at the same time as Ayn Rand, and seemed to be acting out his part as the rugged individualist, with his ranch, the his far-away look and his mythical powers -- "Tear down this wall!"

Two decades later GW Bush didn't ride horses around a ranch like Reagan but he acquired that dried out piece of land in Texas, and he would gamely pull on gloves -- Ironclad Icon Series Extreme Duty^TM gloves no doubt -- over soft hands and hack at brush and joke to the rolling cameras. The American male image is very particular, you see, and can't be properly projected from the decks of a Kennebunkport yacht.

If the whole American rugged individualism was seen as "hypocritical" by the mainstream magazine Time, over two decades ago, and was even more far-fetched as played out by GW Bush. Then when Bobby Jindal took a stab at the iconic myth the other day the whole premise jumped the shark. Talking about how he went down to the docks after Hurricane Katrina and saved some people threatened by bureaucracy Jindal deadpanned:

"Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and go start rescuing people. There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens."

It took mere hours, if not minutes, for people to uncloak Jindal's lies. You see, for Americans "enterprising spirit" has been exploited and tested and now it's seriously testy.

Interestingly though, while everyone attacked the Katrina survivors part of Jindal's story because Jindal wasn't on the scene, the larger myths that his tale served stayed preposterously intact. First, despite his claim, there is no bureaucracy in the US that holds up enterprising spirit. There is bureaucracy without a doubt, and some of it may encroach on certain individuals. But it largely enables business and corporate benefits, and occasionally, like with the Clean Air regulations, protects individuals. As well, needless to say, Jindal is not the rugged leader leading all the rugged individuals, that's his fantasy world.

Rugged Individual or a cog in the Machine

We're a long time from the Cold War era in which Rand became a political fixture. Nevertheless the rugged individual myth is one that the American people are less willing to tear down. The myth matters because GDP and production and fairly docile citizens who go to work matter. If you drive off to your job in your SUV everyday, thinking how "rugged" you are, you might get through eight hours in a cubicle without cracking up. Politicians push the conceit since its certainly an easier populist sell than all the proceeding political-economic models -- monarchy, colonialism, feudalism, slavery, etc. But the myth is outdated.

A global economy needs global leaders, and individuals who work together. Today, the enemy is certainly not "the collective", although that might have been a believable enemy for someone who immigrated from the Soviet Union half a century ago. Nor is the enemy "the government", which has secured property laws, patent law, corporate law, free trade, privatization, and an entire infrastructure to the service of capitalism and private enterprise. There is no salient enemy.

Of course that is not what we hear from media because there would be no television news if not for enemies and wars, and if the market did not first go up, then come down, and if there were not Democrats who opposed Republicans and Republicans who opposed Democrats. How could we go to all our boring jobs day after day if we did not have network news to break things up, with their histrionics, their drama, and their enemies? This breaks the boredom and it helps us feel whole and human even as so much of what humans do is totally dehumanizing. But lets separate entertainment from information and policy.

Prophets on Profits, Work, Nature

I previously described how Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, like many Rand fans, thought the fiction of "Atlas Shrugged" was "eerily similar" to today's events.

If you too, think Rand was predicting the events of today half a century ago, than read more carefully to see how many predictions she made that were plumb wrong. Shift your gaze or tilt your head differently and Ayn Rand can seem like any cheap novelist. Sure, her books advocate capitalism. But her ideas were bounded by her experience, that is, Bolshevik history and the Cold War. Some people see Lenin in her work. You can even see Marx, whose philosophy Rand opposes. Both Karl Marx and Rand ruminated on the higher purpose that humans sought through fighting nature with labor. Compare Marx to Howard Roark in "The Fountainhead".

• Karl Marx said: "He [man] opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces. in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants."

• Howard Roark said: "The creator's concern is the conquest of nature".

Sixty years ago humans were still ensconced in what we would dub today "a war on nature", and indeed their life hung in balance everyday as they farmed and fished, although their fate was not as precarious as their pioneer ancestors. But now in the 21st century, when humans have decimated so many species and environs, how can people doubt we have the upper hand? In fact, our domination is so complete that the poles are literally collapsing back on us. Paradoxically, nature still challenges, but global warming is our Frankenstein, and the fight is against ourselves. The reality is vastly different than what Rand and Marx knew. We don't need individuals who feel compelled to prove their worth in big highway cruisers.

Marx and Rand shared other constructs. Marx had his class struggle. Today the internet swirls with talk about "Going Galt", the folly that professional workers should walk off the job if the tax rate increases.

• Karl Marx, writing on how bees build intricate hives noted, "...what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own..."
• Howard Roark said: "Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision...His truth was his only motive. His work was his only goal. His creation...gave form to his truth. I am an architect.

If there is a class struggle, its not against the government, which is printing money to save large corporations as we speak. Most Americans work for these corporations, and even if they're a self-employed electrician their income is completely entwined with the banks. There are few "creations" to speak of unless the making of financial instruments count, and as we've learned, cowboys in finance do real harm. It is not the government that got us to this place.

Ayn Rand and CEOs -- She Completes Them

While economics departments don't include Rand in their curricula, everyone outside of academia acknowledges how much Ayn Rand influences politicians and businessmen. Apparently it doesn't matter to her fans that "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" are cheap potboilers. In a 2007 article, the New York Times interviewed John A. Allison, CEO of BB&T, one of the largest banks in the US, who said of "Atlas Shrugged".

"I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that 'Atlas Shrugged' has had a significant effect on their business decisions...It offers something other books don't: the principles that apply to business and to life in general. I would call it complete."

And there I was thinking all that math I learned in economics and business classes was so important, when all I needed to read was an overly thick Harlequin romance?

In January, 2009, the Times reported that BB&T profit fell 26% in the 4th quarter of 2008, and so the bank accepted $3.1 billion in government money". Poof? Just like that? Rand out the window? To hell with "principles"? Mr. Allison can you comment? Should we shelve Rand next to Marx, now that it's 2009?

The American Image Dilemma

Worshipping the individual and the market may be what business leaders say they like to hear, however, it doesn't make Rand's ideas successful policy. A few years ago Americans strongly believed in their rugged individualism, as they flipped houses and extracted equity and took out big mortgages from aggrandizing lenders. Now they're feeling a little chastised and mad. Americans are caught up in the throes of a financial behemoth of their collective making, generated by private banking and enterprises they don't understand. But they'd probably like to feel like rugged individuals again.

Although "rugged individualism" is evidently music to emasculated workers ears, it's hard to buy. The USA is, after all, a country where 30% of the people are obese. Rugged doesn't usually come in size 3X stretchy pants. As well, Rand preached "reason" not religion, but 50% of the people believe in the Creator, not the "creator", and will tell you that humans roamed the earth with dinosaurs 6000 years ago. In 2009 a political party that tries to lead by encouraging this level of intellectual rigor from its citizens doesn't bode well for the nation of "knowledge workers".

But the GOP seems unable to become anything else. The party seems superglued to the rugged individual image and in it's service, they've forwarded the most unlikely series of messengers, Joe the Plumber, Bobby Jindal, Michael Steele, Sarah Palin. Nice try, attempting to be the party for "one-armed midgets" and the party of rugged individualists a la Reagan? Seriously Republicans, America -- the individualists, the midgets, and everyone else -- deserves a more up to date and congruous image.

Of course in the frightening series of public relations debacles by the GOP and their media, Rand actually plays a tiny role. The rugged pioneering individualist myth is a strained fictional construct. But unfortunately, Rand fans and some in the GOP do have one winning strategy, which is to promote the facile idea that far, far less government is better (except military and police). It's a winning strategy because the US (and every other state) will never have no regulation. Government regulation is what ensures "free markets". Therefore Ayn Rand fans have a permanent platform.

Like the unlikely longevity of the myth of the rugged individualist, now it's painfully obvious that deregulation is not the answer. But it's child's play for Randians to argue that George W. Bush was no Ayn Rand, and we need still less regulation. When we examine the notion however, it's clear that this too is part and parcel of old plot lines from outdated fiction. Mid-century may be fine for furniture, if orange plastic chairs and aqua blue polyester are your thing, but it doesn't work for economic policy.

• Globalization 3.0 -- Sneakers, Call Centers, Banking?

  When the Obama administration suggested a cap executive salaries for banks on national dole, news quickly bubbled up about all the loopholes behind the announcement. Bankers bristled at the mere idea of caps. It occurred to Bank of America that they really didn't need any federal money after all. Deutsche Bank cheekily predicted that US bankers would defect to Europe. But according to this news report, bankers don't earn as much in Europe or anywhere else as they do in the US. Not only that, excessive banker salaries are being criticized in Europe, Japan, and China, although in Japan and China bankers reportedly make about $400K per year. So far China's not recruiting US bankers, although they are recruiting scientists. Maybe someday soon, when bankers think the rules are too tough to grapple with in the US, they'll be able to seize the day in China.

• California Floods of the Future

  Rain may be causing consternation about flash floods in California, but scientists are thinking about even more intense flooding when global warming causes the seas to rise. A study by the U. of Oregon and University of Toronto published last week in Science, found that the melting Antarctic and resultant collapse of the ice sheet would cause sea levels to increase differently in different parts of the world.

  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the Western Antarctic ice sheet would melt and cause the sea level to rise 5 meters. However this uniform rise of sea levels may not happen. Instead the seas will rise more in some places, like North America and the Indian Ocean, than others, like Antarctica.

  The paper's authors discuss with the NSF three effects that will contribute to the uneven rise in sea levels. Now, because of the ice-water gravitational attraction, the Antarctic ice sheet draws water to it. But as the ice sheet melts, less water will be drawn to it and more will flow to North America. Second, the Antarctic ice sheet now sits in a hole, caused partly by the weight of the ice mass. As that mass melts, the depression will become smaller -- so more water will flow to North America. Finally, the melting ice sheet would alter the rotational force of the Earth, so the South Pole will move, shifting water away from the pole to other places, like the west coast of the United States.

  In California, $2.5 trillion in real estate assets is endangered by climate change.

• Dams for Water -- And Quakes?

  Speaking of water damage, was the earthquake in China hastened by the dam? Scientists are suggesting that the weight of water in the Zipingpu reservoir, created by the massive Zipngdu dam in the Minjiang river affected the seismicity of the Beichaun fault a mile away and perhaps contributed to the timing and dynamics of the 7.9 Sichuan earthquake. The excellent movie "Up The Yangtze" followed the dam building on the lives of one family.

• Worst Job -- Marine Biologist?

  Rising seas, more marine biology? It was my dream job as a child, but apparently it doesn't suit everyone. Unable the get a job for three years as a graduating economist from UC Davis, Daniel Seddiqui set out to try 50 jobs in 50 states. His best job so far, he says, was border patrol, tracking immigrants on the border. His worst? Working as a marine biologist in Seattle. "Boring", he said. At the moment you can't find out the details of his ennui on account of the 404, but a couple other scientific-ish careers seemed to please him more. See him on Fox News or wait for the book.

• A World of Cheaters and Crooks?

  Some of Obama's recent picks for leadership positions have stepped aside with tax payment problems. Tom Daschle will not head Health and Human services. Nancy Killefer withdrew her name as chief performance officer. And Friday the Senate committee reviewing Rep. Hilda Solis's nomination for Labor Secretary canceled their meeting because of outstanding liens -- some 16 years old -- on Solis's husband's business. Timothy Geithner managed to get through with his much larger unpaid tax obligations, that's before we understood how trendy tax evasion was.

  While Republicans rally for some populist rage around these tax missteps, one "senior Democratic official" told the Financial Times (Feb. 3, 2009): "In practice, you have to make exceptions for individuals. Very few people can withstand such scrutiny." Really?? I will never apply then. How embarrassing would it be to admit to some wealth-conscious senatorial committee that my only perk is an annual Medecin Sans Frontieres map of the world's trouble spots?

• The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act: Senators Sing, Dance, and Beg for Phthalates and Lead

  The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act that goes into effect Tuesday will make it illegal for stores to sell products for children under twelve that contain dangerous levels of lead, and products for kids under three that contain dangerous levels of phthalates that cause deleterious effects on development in babies. Consumer groups were denied their request to delay the law by federal Consumer Product Safety Commission last week.

  But some US senators chafe at the idea of losing toys like the Valentine's Day mechanical singing-and-dancing plush animals with red plastic guitars -- the toxic lead containing "Wild Thing Gorilla", "Ain't Too Proud to Beg Dog", the "Sing & Dance Puppy". The LA Times reported last week that Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah) "introduced a bill Thursday that would postpone the law, and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) introduced a stimulus package amendment that would block the law.

GOP to The Base? Wait! Come Back! We'll Talk About Sex!

If you managed to avoid cynicism in the first week of the administration, the congressional tussling over the stimulus plan might convince you that politics today is just what politics was before January 20th. No change.

The Republicans especially, seem intent on pushing the economy further into the tank while riling their party's baser instincts. Evidently at their wit's end trying to get their hand back in the till, the GOP engrosses itself in reinvigorating the lowest common denominator of civilian interests while Rome burns -- so to speak.

As Obama's team nudges Limbaugh towards the edge, the radio host's marbles spilling all over like codeine pills from some drug-addled alley dweller's puffy hands, the fine leaders of the GOP seem to be assuming his mantle. Smart move?

68 Pages of Science Management Challenges and the Honorable Senator Wants to Talk About Porn?

I was at first dubious about accusations that the GOP was baiting Democrats on funding for birth control and STD prevention in the stimulus bill. Oh please, I thought, reading this:

"Prompted by Drudge and Limbaugh, the Republicans are lurching around like less-cool, less-serious Beavis & Butthead knockoffs, snickering at the mere mention of birth control...say[ing] "STDs" and "contraceptives" on television and thus making the bill appear silly, salacious and borderline immoral."

I don't know whether STD funding belongs in the plan. But I am becoming convinced that some representatives in the GOP have a weird preoccupation with sex and derailing science. Today Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced he would try to halt $3 billion dollars worth of funds to the National Science Foundation (NSF) because of a 'porn scandal'. As he put it when announcing the six incidents of viewing porn reported by the NSF:

"The semiannual report raises real questions about how the National Science Foundation manages its resources, and Congress ought to demand a full accounting before it gives the agency another $3 billion in the stimulus bill"

Grassley, in a disingenuous interview with FOX News, reported that he was launching an inquiry and demanding "all documents" related to the NSF's findings so he could get to the bottom of the horrible scandal. On cue, the internet went wild with "ugghh" and "gross", and jokes about scientists who like sex, and "Go Grassley!" -- so intrepid -- protecting our interests like that.

OK. I'm a person who happens to be most intolerant of all aspects of the porn industry. I am also, like everyone else on earth, against government waste. I've approvingly covered Senator Grassley's efforts on other issues, lobbying, bisphenol A, etc. But c'mon, wake up.

Here's the full NSF 68 page semi-annual report to Congress from last year, with 3 pages of revelations about 6 cases of computer abuse involving porn during work hours.

The Senator is Launching an Inquiry? Getting More Details?

The only reason that the Senator got his hands on the apparent GOP treasure trove in the first place is that NSF is compelled by law to print for public consumption every last detail of its management oversight audits. This is good governance meant to expose waste. What private company sends you a biannual report that includes each sex scandal they're investigating? OK. So abiding by the governance standards set out in this law, the NSF wrote in great detail about:

"six cases of viewing, downloading, saving, and/or sharing pornographic images and videos, and one case of extensive participation in pornographic chat websites and the concomitant significant waste of official time."

This last, the most egregious case, was a "senior official" who has since been fired or left the agency. I assume the person has a problem. Like a prescription drug addiction. The report is very clear about the official's sacking, and the fact that "the agency has now installed filtering software" and is implementing further policy changes. I'm not saying $50,000 isn't a lot of waste, but are there some other priorities the GOP needs to focus on?

To me Grassley's interview with FOX, when he claims he doesn't know what the agency is doing or what happened to the individual, seems like nothing more than a gratuitous exchange about sex, with science as the scapegoat.

As far as I can tell there's nothing left for Grassley to "inquire about" or "investigate", unless he has some lurid agenda of his own. More details? All the documents? Who's the sick puppy here?

Studies Find that 25% of Employees with Computer Access Download Pornography. Audit Finds 6 Cases for Over 1000 NSF Employees

Six offenses found and thoroughly delineated. The NSF has over 1000 employees. To be fair, the report emphasized that the search was limited in scope. But these results are far from surprising. If anything the small numbers are unusual given the incidence of workplace computer misuse, especially in large companies.

Porn site hits are highest during office hours, according to M.J. McMahon, a company that tracks the adult video industry. You can read all about the widespread problem of pornography viewing and activities in the workplace. Ask Microsoft, ask IBM, ask financial companies, ask any company. They keep it low profile, for obvious reasons. The NSF is compelled by law to air it all publicly.

A Nielsen Online survey in October, 2008 found that 25% of employees who use the Internet visit porn sites during the workday. Perhaps fewer are purposeful, but various surveys have found similarly alarming results. Workplace computer misuse is persistent and increasing. It's quite awful but it has nothing to do with the NSF, with scientists, or reviving the economy.

Stay Focused People -- Change, America, Economy, Jobs...

Perhaps Chuck Grassley, with his affiliations to prayer breakfasts and the Family Research Council, with his stellar right to life credentials, has some agenda with sex. Perhaps science also falls conveniently in his sights, for reasons beyond me. I do know its a popular pairing, but a cheap shot.

Not long ago, in , we wrote about the Republican's insistence on taking pops at science:

The Inauguration

Many wept. Some for Obama, some for a lifetime of waiting; some because they'd miss Bush, still others because they'd thought Bush would never leave. Even Bush himself brushed tears from his face as he hopped up the helicopter steps. (The loss of power must be a blow.)

Who wasn't somehow moved by the reality of new presidential leadership? Less often now, my stomach churns before I check the news. I'm slowly deprogramming my habit of bracing for the next stunner, the next mendacious policy announcement, the next hair-raising revelation from the White House. I'll admit, in the past couple of weeks I've even lapsed into moments of (naive) hope.

• Hope for inclusiveness, triggered by small, many would think irrelevant episodes. Like when Pete Seeger showed up at the preinaugural concert to sing an Arlo Guthrie song with his grandson and Bruce Springsteen. Seeger may be an ever popular folk hero now as he approaches 90 years, with a new album and glowing biographical movie. But it wasn't always like this. He was blacklisted and banned from radio in the 1950's and 1960's on account of his "subversiveness".

  In the early 1960's Seeger refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on First Amendment grounds, a decision which through him into economic hard times and patriotic hot water. But before that he had performed for US military chiefs in Theodore Roosevelt's White House. His father administered music programs as part of FDR's New Deal.

  Patriotism is so subjective isn't it?

• Hope derived from the crowds at the inauguration, good-natured people of cultural, racial and political diversity. Hope for religious tolerance. In his inaugural address Obama described a "nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers". How observant. According to a Pew Center report, about 16% of Americans identify as non-believers, but not one member of Congress does. It was surprising recognition for what a Beliefnet writer calls the "untouchables".

• Words that warmed my heart on a chilly day, Obama promising in his speech to "restore science to its rightful place". Indeed, on the first couple of days of his administration Obama overruled the ban on international funding for organizations that provided contraceptives, overturning Bush's ruling which overturned Clinton's policy. Obama also promised to revive stem cell funding.

  Bravo for science awareness!

Dashing Hope

Obama's first moves gave us plenty to be optimistic about. But as Mark Slouka wrote in this month's Harper's:

"It would be churlish to quibble.

Still, let's."

Slouka points out that Obama won in a perfect storm of economic disaster and Republican failure, that Obama was an exceptionally talented and articulate candidate. Given all this he still only got 53% of the vote. What about the others Slouka asks, those who thought Palin would be a fine Vice President, or who couldn't discern any difference between the candidates therefore didn't vote? Slouka worries about American citizens' choices and what he sees as an overwhelming contentment with ignorance.

"When one of us writes a book explaining that our offspring are bored and disruptive in class because they have an indigo "vibrational aura" that means they are a gifted race sent to this planet to change our consciousness with the help of guides from a higher world, half a million of us rush to the bookstores to lay our money down."

We're doomed, he concludes.

I'm not quite so cynical. But the barriers to "change" look high. Not to be a wet sock, but should stem cell policy changes and international funding for organizations that inform people about birth control options assure us that science is in its "rightful place"? Of course not. From these quick executive changes, we're convinced only that politics determines the place of these science policies.

True, nothing can happen overnight. More policy changes are in the works. Obama is set to increase NIH biomedical funding. He ordered the Department of Transportation to get to work completing emissions standards. He's told the EPA to review California's request for a waiver. But we have a long way to go to meet the President's promises on the environm ent and science.

Tunnel Vision

Will it happen in time? If the citizens cannot to be trusted, than we should look to their leaders. While the Republicans argue about every aspect of the stimulus bill, the economy sinks further. And if politicians seem unbearable, what about the corporations groveling about, looking for their next hand-out, planning their next party, all the while complaining how they can't possibly improve their product, honor a warranty, concede a dollar, accept a regulation.

Will we emerge from this tunnel in time? Or are Americans indeed doomed? While carmakers argue that technology doesn't allow them to raise emissions standards, a Chinese engineer, one year out of college, cooly introduced a new electric car from Chinese automaker BYD (Build Your Dreams) at a recent autoshow. The car? "A $20,000 plug-in hybrid that can go 60 miles before the gas engine kicks in, or the e6, an all-electric crossover that cruises 250 miles on a single charge."

According to The Atlantic the BYD car was parked next to the $500,000 Maybachs, the Lamborghinis, Maseratis, and Bentleys. Taking in the expensive American cars draped with bejeweled women, the Chinese engineer noted: "Those beautiful vehicles are for the very handsome men, those high in society. They're not for the everyday man."

Will Congress please slap its cheeks to alert itself to the dire straits of the situation and start working for us, the everyday man?

• When All That's Left is Blogging:

  Fifteen shopping days left in a holiday season that hasn't been exactly cheerful. October unemployment rates came in at 6.7% nationwide. Not included in that number are hundreds of thousands of people per month who stopped looking for work or took part time positions but needed full-time jobs. In some states the situation is worse. Michigan and Rhode Island have 9.3% unemployment, California has 8.2%, South Carolina has 8.0%.

  While grabbing coffee yesterday, I noticed once-were-businessmen arriving, full of hustle bustle habits, who then sat and read the paper from end to end, no better place to go. One man began by pouring over the obituaries, which I guess is upbeat than a 7AM perusal of the business section.

  Fortunately, just in time for media business sections to be all about "severe recession", economists have now OK'ed the use of the term "recession". The soon to be bygone business section, that is. The Chicago Tribune recently reported layoffs at Citigroup, United, Wyeth, Allergen, 3M, Sony, at the NFL, in the travel industry, in the real estate and service sectors. The Red Cross even laid off people.

  Of course then the Chicago Tribune announced its own bankruptcy. Not altogether unforeseen, Sam Zell's highly leveraged takeover never did bode well for the news. I, for one, am disheartened by the financially plagued New York Times, the now bankrupt Los Angeles Times, the Tribune, and many others. Will we have to depend on "blogs"? I'm not sure I could get all my news online, even if investigative journalism in media hadn't significantly slipped recently.

  Ariana Huffington told Jon Stewart: that blogging is a "first draft". "First thoughts, best thoughts." She tried to get Stewart to blog (for her). "Why should I give you...?" -- Stewart started. Then he got a hold of himself to politely demure that whatever was left in his brain after TV was "dreck". Not a blogger, or won't dilute his brand? Arianna's also recruiting unemployed bankers to "blog the recession."

  Huffington's blog definition reminded me of those written by Andrew Sullivan, who explained the appeal of blogs in the The Atlantic magazine recently: "For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud."

  Cool, but still -- no newspapers? Ugghhh...

• Meanwhile, In the Land of Too Big to Fail:

  Lawmakers publicly chided the automakers for their arrogance and forced them to drive to Washington in their own vehicles, albeit "concept cars". Congress is now rewarding such good behavior by unfolding their hands from behind their backs to reveal a $15 billion dollar gold star and a "car czar".

  Usually the media labels the manager of a state's auto fleet a "car czar", or they dub Lee Iaccoco, or some Nascar race car driver a "car czar". But back in 1992 Automotive News actually clamored for President Clinton to hire a "car czar" to oversee "clear policies", and to "coordinate regulations". To sum it up, the magazine wrote: "Like it or not, we always have an industrial policy; right now, it is chaotic, to the great harm of the industry and of the economy." Of course that idea didn't fly, as one reader wrote in "Depend on market, not a car czar":

  "...you'll never hear Washington intellectuals admit the marketplace is superior to federal meddling because that would mean admitting their own superfluousness (Nov. 30, 1992)

  We're all real clear about superfluousness 15 years later. Or are we? In the current deal, automakers and Republicans have insisted on removing one important measure the Democrats tried write into the law. The measure would have barred automakers accepting federal loans from suing states seeking to impose tougher auto-emission standards.

  California and more than a dozen other states tried to pass stricter emissions rules this year, and were rebuffed by the EPA, auto and oil industries. It was too tough they said, the technology was unavailable. Now, two of those auto manufacturers claim in their business plans that they could surpass the California standard ASAP.

  Since Barack Obama would probably allow California its waiver, the automakers aren't quite as technically challenged as they were earlier this year when they fought tooth and nail against CAFE standards.

  Thomas Friedman tells us that electric cars will upend this nonsense.

• Recession Proof Banks:

  While many business sink in the economy, some still do fine. Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, find themselves the belles of the talk show TV circuit. The Financial Times still publishes its glossy magazine "How To Spend It" for all the princesses and dukes in its audience, just as if it were 2005. The Financial Times hasn't declared bankruptcy.

  Still other institutions pull out all the stops for lavish holiday parties. First Republic Bank, owned by Merrill Lynch, which was bought in a fire sale by Bank of America, apparently threw a lavish holiday spread over three floors of the San Francisco Symphony last weekend. The blow out party has been the talk of the west coast. Sushi stations, prime rib and lamb stations, tuxedoed violin players on spiral staircases, a cookie making station and "7 or 8 bar stations with a wonderful high end selection of wines and champagne". Hearing it all described so gushingly, it was hard not to think -- Titanic.

  Hard to believe that Bank of America, one of the "too big to fail" financial institutions, is now strapped for equity and analysts have now downgraded the stock to "underweight".

  Of course institutions who squander taxpayers money once, will do it again. We're reminded of A.I.G., who once their bailout was assured, sponsored a lavish hunt in England. (As in animals running hither and thither, and guns) As Maureen Dowd noted:

  "In an astonishing let-them-eat-cake moment, the A.I.G. big shot Sebastian Preil held court at the bar and told an undercover reporter, "The recession will go on until about 2011, but the shooting was great today and we are relaxing fine."

  Perhaps it's a disease.

• Reminiscing About The 60's?:

  Quite a few commentators look at the future Obama presidency and ask us to harken back to the sixties of our imaginations if not our memories. During his campaign they compared Obama to the Kennedy brothers, saying he orated like John or Robert. Bill Moyers and Charlie Rose commented during that there hadn't been a leader who so inspired up and coming politicians since Kennedy. Lately people comment on Obama's leadership picks, saying he's chosen people who were brainy or savvy, often educated at Harvard. The "best and the brightest", they say.

  But other commentators, including Frank Rich in the New York Times, point out that David Halberstam's use of the phrase as the title of his book "The Best and The Brightest", was ironic. Even though he chose the smartest from business and academia, the Vietnam War proved disastrous.

  The shortcomings of the Kennedy team were especially pronounced in Halberstam's depiction of Robert McNamara, whose flawed hindsight was also illustrated in the excellent movie The Fog of War. Halberstam describes McNamara's approach to leading Ford, all numbers and predictions. Of course this characteristic outlook -- educated but somehow all cold calculation, was also evident in some of the Bush picks too. We hope the comparison is paranoid.

  Speaking of the 1960's, the Economist also reminds us of that era with its series of recent covers. In quick succession the magazine published covers asking "Where Have all The Savings Gone?", and "All We Need is Loans". I bet you don't have an endless and getting annoying loop of another generation's anti-war hippie dippie songs like Pete Seeger's "Where Have all The Flowers Gone", and The Beatles "All We Need is Love" running through your head now -- right?

Outsourcing: Not Just Call Centers. Shocking.

Back in 2005, Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs wrote in "My Outsourced Life".

"Call centers do it. IT firms do it. Manufacturers are doing the hell out of it. Even the CIA does it. So why can't I?"

That 2005 piece was followed by articles and books by others who raved about personal outsourcing. "The 4-Hour Workweek", forwarded the idea that outsourcing would open up free time in our calendars and allow us to frolic as we wished -- drink lattes, go kite-surfing, or create like Rembrandt.

When he wrote his article, Jacobs was reading the first of Thomas Friedman's Flat series¹; "The World is Flat", and he wanted to test the outsourcing theory for himself. He ended up outsourcing not only the usual research and writing duties but calls to his parents, apologies to his wife, bedtime reading for his kid, and autobiographical Wikipedia entries. Neato.

But Jacobs got a little nervous when "Honey", his Bangalore personal assistant, started sending him feature ideas for Esquire. India wasn't just a place to hand-off tedious chores to free him up for creative leisure, it dawned on Jacobs:

"the Indian workforce can be just as innovative and aggressive as the American, so the "benefits" might not be so beneficial. Us high-end types will be as vulnerable as assembly-line workers.

Friedman predicted that outsourcing would be more prevalent in the future. Companies outsource because it's cheaper and that's "what shareholders want". Americans workers go along more reluctantly than businesses, but corporations convince them they'll all get better jobs when all the 'low level' jobs go offshore. The secret to success is education Americans are told, over and over again.

The Tin Cup Corps

Americans protest outsourcing in fits and spurts, but resistance seems futile. Outsourcing is facilely explained as a natural phenomenon, 'the nature of economics'. So Boeing moved many operations overseas when it moved from Seattle to Chicago, and of course automakers outsource as much as possible. But while US manufacturing capability moved offshore and hungry off-shore workers always look for more work, American workers sink, over their heads in debt and unemployed.

Today, at a time when the US population is faced with a caving economy, people are furious at corporate automakers' malfeasance and insouciance and have come out vigorously against bailing out the auto industries. People seem too befuddled to protest en masse about the banks, the obtuse details of the Fed's bank bailouts are confusing and frustrating. So they seem to seek revenge for the whole mess by throwing the auto industry into the dumpster. ²

Of course the auto CEOs, like the banks on bended knee before them, are not too proud to grovel, as they do now with "concessions". They're relentless like the Salvation Army Kettle Drive man at Christmas, except the "cause" is less appealing. Whatever comes of the stand-down Americans won't want for cars. Imported cars back up in dry dock, just in case, if not just in time.

But what about jobs? What about manufacturing? If everything is cheaper overseas why bother? American cars guzzle oil and our air suffers for it. Last April Acronym Required wrote "The EPA: Mulish Days, Staring Out to Pasture", about the clout the auto industry used to try to keep emissions standards status quo. Our post discussed the industry assertion that any emissions standards must (as in 1970), preserve the "health of the industry", and we wrote:

"...We need to evolve policy to preserve the auto industry. In 1975, the Chevy Chevette got 40mpg highway, 28mpg city. Surely we can do better with mileage and emissions? Otherwise, if the health of the American auto industry is truly still a goal, maybe the government's kindest move would be to shoot it, or drown it in the bathtub, or whatever libertarian types do these days with ponderous, surly sectors they want to put out of their misery."

We wrote our acid response after the auto and oil industries successfully lobbied for another anemic CAFE standard. But we didn't really mean get rid of manufacturing. We didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, just the bums. Last spring, congress didn't stand up to the auto industries to force them to change. Now the executives fly hither and yon on private jets seeking recompense for their habit of fiscal abandon. They've learned lucrative lessons in the past 30 years.

The question now is, would the US really consider letting the auto manufactures sink? Or is this the usual charade before they write the check? But no solution on the table today bodes well for America's manufacturing tomorrow.

Where Once a Country Stood, Now it Sits

If those jobs were lost would they morph into more creative consulting positions like Friedman suggested they would? We're skeptical. America was founded by craftsmen. I grew up with the lore of Paul Revere the silversmith, of clockmakers and furniture makers, pewterers and braziers and potters and glass blowers and iron casters, professions so antiquated my spell check tells me all these words aren't in the English language.

We need none of these materials now. (We have plastic.) And anyway, why make these products anymore, we're all hip economists who can outsource anything because of how "efficient" it is? But who will Americans be then? Folks of some gentle arts movement who construct Martha Stewart inspired husk pillows to stand in for manufacturing? Still, we're told, this is the way it's meant to be. (Economists announced today they found a recession as if they were biologists announcing a new species after an arduous jungle trek.)

Friedmans "Untouchables" (Pun Probably Intended)

According to Friedman, those who survive the flattening world with their livelihoods intact will be "synthesizers, explainers, leveragers, and versatilists". Friedman recommends that schools build right-brain skills that can't be computerized. A few years ago Friedman assured one audience of the the American advantage while trying to ease fears about China's quick economic rise: "I think this right-brain stuff is very culture-bound and hard to teach", he said.

A Harris poll in 2005 found that 71% of polled people agreed that "the long term success of the U.S. economy requires that we have a highly educated workforce who do highly skilled jobs here which cannot easily be done abroad." Only 13% disagreed with the statement.

If these jobs require sophisticated special-culture-delineated educational techniques, is that why schools tried and failed to outsource some teaching tasks to India? Or was that just parental outrage? Is that why Americans are moving overseas to go to school? Education is not so sacred, as it turns out, in the US. To believe that American has some cultural superiority that makes it more capable of the superior "right-sided thinking" is not only arrogantly condescending, its riskily short-sided.

This "flat" world is not only a world of opportunity but also of disparity, with gaps and canyons, and mountains of inequality. The world is not "flat" when some countries have no education, no health care, and 50% unemployment. The world is not flat when some people make .20 cents an hour and live in a dirt hut, and their counterpart in the West makes $80,000K/year.

This enables companies to arbitrage and profit mightily from the unflatness. If the world was truly flat then there wouldn't be an endless pool of cheap labor to exploit. If you're a business, don't worry, the change won't happen soon. India and China have not only outsourcing prowess but business chops to flourish even more. But how will the American autoworker, journalist, lawyer and doctor fare?

And what about other untouchable skills? Lawyers outsource legal tasks. Doctors are outsourcing test interpretation. A company called Wellpoint started a trial sending patients to India for treatment.

Maureen Dowd wrote about a company in Pasadena that outsources news reporting to India. The writers glean information about the story on the internet. One of Jason Blair's crimes as a reporter for the NYT was that he lied about places he claimed to visit and cover with live reports. Now we're paying people to do this type of reporting. The company's owner James Macpherson told Dowd: "'I pay per piece, just the way it was in the garment business,' 'a thousand words pays $7.50.'" Said Macpherson: "the newspaper industry is coming to a General Motors moment -- except there's no one to bail them out."

Maybe Maureen can walk over to Tom's desk and ask, who are these "synthesizers, explainers, leveragers, and versatilists"?

---------------------------------------------

¹ Thomas Friedman ("The Lexus and the Olive Tree), wrote "The World is Flat" (2005), "The World is Flat: Expanded Edition" (2006), "The World Is Flat, 3.0" (2007), and "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" (2008). We look forward to a sequel in 2009, something along the lines of, "The World is Hot, Flat, Crowded, in Recession, with Rising Disparities on all Planes -- but Flat Damn It!"

² Photo by Craig ONeal, or Florida, who risked his life to take it. Used with permission under the Creative Commons Licence 2.0 Attribution, Share Share-Alike.

YAY!

It's a new day.

"...His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world..." (NYT)¹

Yes, there's work to do. Yes, it will be difficult. But today we recognize how much America's just accomplished.

-----------------------------------

¹Obama won despite warnings about possible GOP ballot fraud stemming from information dribbling out of the Ohio trial concerning 2004 Ohio ballot fraud. In the latest episode, Michael Connell, a consultant whose firm has been accused of computer manipulation, denied knowing anything about GOP rigging the 2004 Ohio election results. Connell works for Randy Cole. Cole owns 15 companies that work simultaneously on GOP election campaigns (Bush/Cheney 2000/2004, McCain 2008, many others), anti-Abortion groups and churches, GOP mass mailings, government contracts, etc. Stephen Spoonamore, a key witness in the trial brings the allegations, explains in a multi-part series starting here.

Happy Halloween. Over 23 million people have voted in early elections across the United States. People are now driven to distraction by the election, even Acronym Required at times. But we're also distracted by science topics.

• Decidin'

  For instance take the cartoon that accompanied an article in last week's New Yorker. It was a drawing of a TinTin looking character, eyes wide, eyebrows arched, finger to his pursed lips, puzzling over two choices on a wall chart. On the left I saw a rooster. On the right I saw a Drosophila.

  The accompanying article "Undecided", by David Sedaris, discussed the baffling group of supposedly undecided voters:

  "I look at these people and can't quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?"

  He placed the dilemma in terms of airline food (he probably flies in the class where the still have that):

  "The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?"

  It still took me a while to figure out that the cartoon character was standing in a voting booth. The choice was not a silly Rooster or Drosophila but "chicken" or "shit with bits of broken glass" in it. The Drosophila wasn't that at all, just a giant red-eyed other type of more fuzzy fly, standing on a small brown mound that represented Sedaris' subject, "shit". In an effort to explain my confusion, I'll just say I was writing about C. elegans at the time, another model organism, so perhaps that's why I saw Drosophila melanogaster.

• Buggin'

  It was a Drosophila kind of week. Scientists and many knowledgeable Americans (and French) were angry that V.P. candidate Sarah Palin dissed fruit fly research as waste. Of course she wasn't talking about Drosophila melanogaster, but olive fruit flies in a completely different taxonomic family. But the outrage over her perfunctory dismissal of California agricultural research is warranted.

• Poisonin'

  Updating our melamine coverage from previous posts, this week brought China and Hong Kong melamine contaminated eggs, thus widening the scandal. The culprit may be melamine laced grain which has spread the toxic chemical throughout the food chain. China is now culling chickens. The past year has seen the demise -- through culling and dumping -- of some major protein sources, pigs, milk, eggs, chicken -- hopefully there's some unadulterated beans and soy and rice around.

• Labelin'

  India passed the Prevention of Food Adulteration (Fifth Amendment) Rules, 2008, which will require food product labels starting in March, 2009. Fruit products cannot be labeled as such unless they contain fruit, etc. Cardiac conscious customers will now be able to identify transfats such as "vansapati", hydrogenated vegetable cooking oil which is commonly found in packaged food.

• Trick-or-Treatin'
  The cost of drugs to treat type 2 diabetes doubled between 2001 and 2007, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine, from $6.7 billion dollars in 2001, to $12.5 billion dollars in 2007. The higher cost is due to new drugs, which can be 10 times higher than old drugs, as well as increased numbers of patients. The number of patient visits increased from 25 million in 1994, to 36 million in 2007.

  But today's Halloween. So here's a carbohydrate chart (PDF!) from "DLife" (For Your Diabetes Life!") For example:
  - 3 Musketeers 16 gram fun-sized bar: 12 grams
  - Gummy Bears 11 pieces: 30 grams
  - M&M's "Halloween" mini box: 10 grams
  - Tootsie Roll midgets 12: 30 grams
  - Heath Bar 1.4 oz. bar: 20 grams
  

• Cravin' Palin

  One of this year's most popular costumes is a Sarah Palin costume. This would be a challenging one to pull off for three reasons. One, it's just gonna' be an icky couple of hours sitting in that particular suit. Two, do you really have her style down? Sarah Palin is hot, according to, well, everyone, which may be hard to live up to. I recently got an explanation of this relative hotness -- it's "niche hot". Therefore if she doesn't win the vice presidency maybe she'll vamp through Playboy, with a "hot" politician theme, and if not that, then she actually already has her Palin calendar awaiting your purchase.

  But she's a tricky act to follow, which brings us to your third challenge. You might be able to cackle "you betcha!" with the best of them, you might be able to wink wildly, you might be able bend the elite right wing news staff of the Weekly Standard, the National Review, The Hill, and the New York Times to your side by leading them around by the front of their pants, as a recent New Yorker article describes¹.

  But do you really have her diction down? Can you remember to drop the "g" on pallin', and lyin' -- like Palin'? Maybe, but can you remember to leave the "g" on the word when necessary? Can you remember to say "cravING", as she does? As in, American's are craving that straight talk"? And Americans are craving something new and different..." You're not hearing "I'm Sarah and I'm cravin'". Americans are cravinG.

  Sure "it's genuine, not affectation", just like she's genuine in every other way, an outsider, didn't hire lobbyists to buff her image as Alaskan governor. I think it's a tough Halloween costume to pull off.

• Swoopin' & Spookin'
  Merriam Webster's Word of the Day is Chiropteran:

  "Chiroptera" is the name of the order of the only mammal capable of true flight, the bat. The name is influenced by the hand-like wings of bats, which are formed from four elongated "fingers" covered by a cutaneous membrane. It is based on the Greek words for "hand," "cheir," and "wing," "pteron." "Cheir" also had a hand in the formation of the word "surgery," which is ultimately derived from the ancient word "cheirourgos," meaning "doing by hand."

  Acronym Required wrote a little about bats in "Bats, Riddles, and Viruses."

• Mappin' not Spyin'

  The town of Molfsee, Germany, is rebelling against Google's "Street View". Google would dispatch vehicles with camera's to map the town's streets, but the 5,000 citizens have laid down the law. The company would need a special permit to photograph the city's streets, which the town politicians refuse to grant. The town's concerns about privacy are shared by state and federal privacy experts, according to Spiegel.

• Votin'

  As for the election, some, like Larry David, are pacing and suspicious. There's been a steady stream of alarming reports about voting machines, it's no wonder that everyone's a bit on edge.

  There's apparently a trend now, everyone's droppin' their g's. On the positive side, voting turn-out so far is great. Pray; no Hope; no Work for the most honest, cleanest result.

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¹ This article also contends that this one young Republican started a blog advocating Sarah Palin for Vice President, and that blog precipitated a lot of conservative enthusiasm: "In the month before Palin was picked by McCain, Brickley said, his Web site was receiving about three thousand hits a day". To put this in perspective Daily Kos gets about 2,604,779 page views a day, so if there's about 3-4 hits per page view, DKos gets about 6 million hits a day. Brickley was getting about 1000 pages a day -- not too much.

Subcommittee to FDA: Room For Improvement

The FDA subcommittee reviewing the FDA's August 2008 draft report has released its first recommendations(PDF) on the draft BPA report. The subcommittee brought lots of suggestions for improvement.

They wrote that the draft did not adequately provide scientific support for their method of choosing which studies to include: "Specifically, the Subcommittee does not agree that the large number of non-GLP studies should be excluded from use in the safety assessment."

The subcommittee also questioned the use of "no observed adverse effect level" (NOAEL) standard the FDA employed to determine the safety of exposure. The panel pointed out that so many studies show effects in neurobehavioral development, prostate gland, mammary gland and puberty in females, that it seems BPA must bind to gonadal hormone receptors during development. The panel said this suggests safe exposures "at least an order of magnitude below the 5 mg/kg/bw/day NOAEL identified in the draft assessment." The panel authors suggest several alternative ways to measure dose response that would model findings across the many studies that the FDA excluded in its draft.

The subcommittee offered additional point by point criticism and noted that the studies cleared by the NTP's Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) indicate that the FDA standard should be "substantially below (i.e., at least one or more orders of magnitude lower than) the 5 mg/kg bw/day level selected in the draft FDA assessment."

Living Through Chemistry -- U. Michigan and Dow

The FDA panel released their draft at an opportune time. Philbert was under increasing pressure about his role on the panel given appearances of conflict of interest. Acronym Required wrote a couple of weeks ago on Philbert's directorship of the University of Michigan SPH Risk Science and Analysis program, founded and heavily contributed to by Charles Gelman, a retired manufacturer and tireless critic of chemical regulation. Had the subcommittee's report dared reach the opposite conclusion than the pressure would have increased.

Following our post Martin Philbert wrote a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel protesting the paper's allegations that his work would be influenced by the donations he accepted from Gelman: "This simply is not true", he said.

To illustrate his point he described in his letter the $15 million dollar grant the Risk Science Center took from Dow Chemical for a dioxin study. Philbert told how, given the grant, his colleagues "still found that people living near the Dow plant had higher levels of dioxins in their bodies."

However, nobody should find Philbert's assurance about his work for Dow Chemical comforting since Dow manufactures bisphenol A and takes political action to protect its market when necessary. For instance at (http://dowaction.com/grassroots/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=30665022), you can read Dow's letter thanking their employees for their "Best in Class", 31.5% "grassroots" effort in defeating California SB 1713 Bisphenol-A Ban.

The University of Michigan task in the Dow study was to measure blood dioxin levels of home-owners in different geographic areas -- not to investigate health affects. In that sense the dioxin study is not an analogous situation to the BPA panel. But even if were comparable, the University of Michigan results got Dow off the hook in a way, by finding that the variation in dioxin levels was due to things like age and body mass index (BMI), not levels of dioxins in the air or soil.

Media, politicians, citizens and scientists criticized the study because Dow had long been under pressure from the EPA to clean up dioxin contamination ¹ and the study was seen as a stalling technique. The EPA had this to say in one memo: "the study was initiated at the request of Dow in order to downplay the risks of exposure to dioxin contaminated soils." The EPA went on to say:

"public presentations of the preliminary results have emphasized how little effect living on contaminated soils has one an individual's dioxin blood level. This emphasis has resulted in numerous media stories, an understanding by some members of the public, that remediation of dioxin contamination is unnecessary."

The BPA memo on the FDA draft will no doubt assure the doubters in the public that Philbert's panel has their best interests in mind. ² If not, Philbert warns that he will "think long and hard" before taking time to "perform this kind of public service".

Stay on your toes...

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¹ Burnham, D. "1965. Memo Show Dow's Anxiety on Dioxin.", NYT 1983)

² Perhaps Dow's BPA economy is not at stake in Michigan? John Dingell (D-MI), bulldog for the auto-industry, has also taken on BPA.

If John McCain called you a "Super-Trailblazer", You'd Feel.....?

Before we dove into more earthy science news in our last post, we wondered why Palin's handlers had canceled so many of her public appearances. A couple of days later Politico inadvertently answered our query. Apparently an "anonymous aid" to the McCain campaign "stressed" they weren't canceling her appearances, instead: "the finance calendar was planned before Palin was tapped...and it's being adjusted now to fit the nominee."

Unsurprisingly, the somewhat discomfiting explanation doesn't really mesh with history. Just a week or so earlier, McCain campaign officials bragged to reporters around the nation about the amazing reception for Palin's campaign events that kept forcing them to change to larger venues. In an article describing the Obama campaign's "urgency" for funding, the New York Times and other outlets reported that GOP fund-raising was especially successful after Palin's nomination and that "party Officials have also sketched out plans for Ms. Palin to do some 35 fund-raisers over the next two months."

Every time they talked to the press, and they often did, McCain's fundraisers gloated about how popular Palin was and how much money she was going to raise in those 30-35 scheduled appearances, with comments like: "I just think it speaks volumes that she is coming in here. I can tell you, it has generated great excitement. And it has reinvigorated, certainly, the Republican base".

In the spirit of things, GOP organizers upgraded the titles they would award fundraisers who raised another $100,000 or $250,000 to more glorious labels, "Trailblazers" to "Super-Trailblazers", "Innovators" to "Super-Innovators". Lavish words in light of their simple folksy targeting, words, come to think of it, that could more easily be attached to a Google product than to the McCain campaign -- but I digress.

In California, Palin was scheduled to star at an event at the home of software mogul Tom Siebel, "where the asking price for a snapshot of her and a seat at the headtable is $50,000." (Just think, your smiling face with the hot one at the head table. A $50,000 snapshot that you could place under your mounted fixed-eyed, six-point buck's head at the cabin. Who needs "spit parties"? Unanswered -- if you purchased two photo-ops could you be called a "Super-Innovator"?) Alas, Palin canceled.

Scintillating Starlet Strategies

However, Palin did re-appear on the Katy Couric show, according to the short clips released by CBS at carefully timed intervals. You can't say McCain oversold her international experience when he said: "Alaska is right next to Russia; Sarah Palin understands that". Still her re-debut must have been a blow to all her coaches. Canceled, canceled, canceled.

Even if the Couric preview was disappointing, Palin's cancellations still nagged, we haven't been so let-down since the projectionist abruptly stopped The Princess Diaries halfway through the movie. The McCain campaign probably told Sarah that it wasn't personal, and it now seems it wasn't. The campaign also canceled all of Carly Fiorina's upcoming talks, including the one scheduled at Iowa State. She was to speak on: "Tough Choices: Women, Leadership and Power". Now you're sorry. They canceled a Fiorina headlining GOP rally in Florida, canceled her television appearances, rallies and other events -- canceled, canceled, canceled.

As if cancellation were a disease, yesterday McCain himself started canceling -- the Letterman show, his debate, Palin's debate. And to note, since the VP contender and present executive of Alaska previously cued us in to the importance of blinking, we couldn't help noticing that McCain showed a disconcerting blinking pattern when explaining the necessity of the bailout and needing to be in DC.

Canceling seems to be McCain's new endgame. You dash a lot of hopes, so it seems like an odd vote-getting strategy but granted, its a real attention getter. It keeps the-media-on-its-toes too. Try it at home. You'll have to adjust his routine to take into consideration the fact that you're not tailed by paparazzi day in and day out, but if it works, you won't actually have to participate at events anymore. What you need to do is every time you get to a party, don't say anything, just walk out the door and slam it with loud, conversation disrupting force. Then turn around a while later and walk back in, leaving the door open so that everyone is freezing from the draft and begs you to close the door. Cell phones are a great decoy to keep you moving in and out the door as if you had something else more important to tend to. See how now all eyes are trained on you, waiting for your next move? Make everyone else blink -- gotcha. Results guaranteed.

McCain eventually flew to Washington, where apparently he sat on the sidelines during the meetings and said very little, then reported that he was there. See? Walk-in. Do nothing. Walk-out. Precisely the executive skills America needs.

How to Bail Out

Really, I didn't want to write about all this. I wish I could follow this game with anything but lurid fixation. I wish it were a joke, or a light movie that I could walk out of when I pleased. In my airy flick, Fiorina, Palin and McCain would be going around a bend in the back of the Straight Talk Express, talking about all they have in common and enjoying a glass of Chardonnay together, getting pedicures, when the ladies would convince John that he too needs to take some time off. None of it would really matter because would be a light movie. So I'd walk out. But the actual unfolding real-life scenario is tense, filled with suspense and innuendo. It feels ominous as if it could all end badly.

Why am I so fixated? For the past couple of decades we have desperately needed responsible, wise, smart, resourceful council and leaders in government. There are many excellent, dedicated public servants. But the louder voice heard from government and the media that represents it is that of a tremendously spoiled, petulant 13 year old. Now, as the headlines scream that the whole edifice is crumbling, the GOP has the gall to suggest to us a VP leadership solution that's 180 degrees opposite of what's needed, someone who presents herself as so vapid and un-informed, so incapable of putting a sentence together or formulating a cogent response, yet such a smart-ass. (Not to be uncharitable, but Palin's not my stage-struck friend trying to get over a phobia at Toastmasters, nor is she running for student council here.)

The GOP suggestion their VP pick even approaches a solution completely insults any remaining dignity of America. Palin makes me squirm because she's will be representing the US to the world. Yet at the same time the cynical choice is perfect, as it represents the apex of an ignorant, manipulative, self-indulgent leadership that's increasingly excused, if not celebrated. How can this even begin to create a better vision for the country? [That's my bi-partisan opinion.]

Squaring the Circle

And that's not even touching Palin's talking points on the $700 billion dollar bailout. As the FT explained it a couple of days ago in "Bernanke logic reveals route to square a virtuous circle":

"the US government would fix the problem of procyclicality embedded in the mark-to-market accounting regime by the back door. It would use its purchases to establish new prices to which banks would mark their portfolios - prices based on expected cash flow rather than the prices private sector buyers would be willing to pay."

Supply, demand, you ask? Please don't garble on. Instead, we trust congress, a cadre of millionaires. We trust they won't sympathize too much with previous heads of banks who ran up debts with investors money and are now down on bended knee praying for their way of life to continue. And of course the de-regulators bay in the background for further concessions based on their own unique interpretations of research.

Personally, we hope that the government can negotiate down the "firesale price" and properly assess the "hold-to-maturity price", as its called. For now, the tentative bailout agreement is now apparently in disarray following the John McCain's little walkabout.

After their initial stunned silence at the news of the $700 million dollar proposal, it looked like the Democrat Party was staging a new episode of "They're Not Going To Get Away With This", but we harbor doubts about their gumption to negotiate any course they articulate. In examples from oil drilling, to military spending, to vetting Supreme Court appointees, to investigating the mushroom clouds of the Iraq War, the Democrats talk big then whimper submissively in the end, signing exactly what they vehemently said they opposed (but of course with all the right rhetoric).

Watching the Democratic Party in action can be like watching the occasional little league player who's assigned to right field. A ball's hit at them, they hike up their pants, scrunch up their face with can-do determination, run, run, run, plant their little legs, assure everybody "I got it", then the ball sails off past them, hits the wall and finally emerges from the flurry of mitts and dust. Meanwhile, the third base coach for the other team is circling his arm with rotator-cuff straining enthusiasm, yelling "go on home" to the hectic base-runners and the crowd covers their eyes.

Next, when the next player comes up, the bat cracks and another ball flies towards right field, the loyal fans will of course squint out in between their crossed fingers, as if imagining a time when their fielder might actually field the ball. Perhaps the Democrats will make it work. Or is all the fumbling around in the dust simply a populist charade?

Can We Wake Up Now?

It's a presidential campaign: Can't we talk about Iraq, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan...? About global warming, energy, education or healthcare? Economics -- housing, unemployment, banking, regulation, etc.? Isn't the US international standing diminished enough without the entire press corps fixating on "lipstick on the pig" and Jane Swift's "truth squad" and rote coverage of Obama's perfunctory swift-boat charges?

There's a faux seriousness and tension to all this, like in "Dancing With the Stars". Episodes full of inane commentary and winking gravitas that communicates to the audience: "none of this really matters you know, its just a game."

But it does matter. As Letterman joked, "A vice president who likes guns? Well, what could go wrong there?" There's so much more. A vice presidential candidate who believes that dinosaurs, Adam and Eve roamed the earth a few thousand years ago; who appears to fundamentally misunderstand current events such as the recent government nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; who's been in politics a shorter time than your average school board member; who jokes about her lack of international experience, and who treats the VP position like it were the challenge of bagging a moose. Ms. "I'm Ready". What could go wrong there? Think the Bush administration, I suppose, then pick some exponent to multiply the disaster by.

But lets not go overboard in histrionics. On one hand you just want Palin-drone to stop. Can't the show move on to any more substantive issue? On the other hand we might as well throw our arms up in the air and surrender to the inanity. So what if the US turns out bands of nincompoops who elect leaders with the gall to convince citizens that they'll prosper by praying for oil, promoting ignorance, and making their primary democratic focus advocating for teens' rights to pregnancy? Does anyone really lose when candidates pander to the lowest common denominator? So what if the US ends up with all the international clout and resources of a Trashcanistan?

In the Lands of Olive Trees and Insouciance

Other countries have successfully expanded their cultural offerings and so achieved acclaim, proving that perhaps it's not the worst fate. Are Greece, Italy and England deprived by their eviscerated international clout? In order to make the post almost-empire transition, perhaps the US should invest in culture. This will certainly appeal to some middle school teachers as well as to people like Wendell Berry who suggest art as the antidote to all the problems science and technology can't solve. ¹

Sure, Greece had its dark moments during and after the Empire. But it ditched the drachma, joined the Euro, and now things look brighter. Greece shores up its economy by cementing every inch of every island, and serves up nothing more serious than feta, freshish fish and ouzo.

Maybe the US is a "nation of whiners". But I'm sure Americans would relax if the whole country took a daily nap between fourteen hundred and twenty-two hundred hours.

Then there's Italy. As tourists gawk at the splendor that was once Rome, Italians sniff in scorn. Americans would turn their noses up too if we could satisfy the yearnings of international tourists clamoring for our "culture" by serving them no more than a sneer and limp pasta or Tuscan pizza, costing excessive Euros. Perhaps if the country simply invested more in sculptors and painters the US could run a sham of a military while chiding other nations for their military blunders.

Britain hasn't fared as well as Italy and Greece in developing an enviable cuisine, but I believe in time, like the rest of the continent, they'll develop their culinary offerings to the point that no one will pay attention to their diminished importance on the world stage. You can imagine that eventually the UK will serve dishes that augment those kidney pies, chips, and Yorkshire puddings (the most deceptively named of their flour and water specialties).

They haven't had enough time in Britain, with surviving generations still alive and attached to the legacy of the former Empire and collectively a bit too up-tight for the post-megapower club of nonchalant arrogance. They cling to the pound drink to excess on the continent and when vacationing in India sniff crossly about the train system being the only sign of civilization.

But you can see cracks in the stiff-upper lip resignation. At home they'll joyfully tuck into Indian curries rather than wash down one more dried out baking powder biscuit ("scone", they euphemise). As they delightedly slosh back their Rogan Josh you can imagine that eventually they'll lose the polo helmet and the clipped speech and take cues from their laid back Mediterranean brethren. They'll spice their food and enjoy long afternoon siestas. Sooner of later the UK will be so laid back they'll be exporting the Channel Diet.

The Post Never-Quite-An-Empire Adjustment

To successfully follow in these footsteps the US will have to lose aspirations to empire and adjust to the relaxed life. Americans will have to settle on some national cuisine. I'm not sure Freedom Fries will cut it, but perhaps some local, fresh California diet will suffice. If they adopted some of the Mediterranean cooking guidelines that might help with the adjustment to not thinking your hot stuff, as well as heart disease.

The US tourist industry is already booming, with Europeans shopping in New York, whirling through to peek at the Washington Monument, at Hollywood, and at Golden Gate Bridge. I've recently met several tourists renting RVs and touring the National Parks, a trend which will give the country continued rational to build large vehicles and continue the wars for oil.

Does the US really need to worry about the strength of the Chinese economy, about terrorists in Pakistan, about that grand "way of life"? Maybe the nation should ditch its hegemonic inclinations, make movies, brew beer, invest in artists and edifices, build some fences, kick-back under olive trees, stop arming the rest of the world and just mock it. If worse comes to worse they could temper certain inclinations to meet the Copenhagen Criteria, then appeal to the European Union for membership. This whole McCain, Palin thing just doesn't matter.

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¹ In Harper's, "Faustian economics: Hell hath no limits", May 2008, Berry proposes somewhat circuitously and alarmingly:

"To deal with the problems, which after all are inescapable, of living with limited intelligence in a limited world, I suggest that we may have to remove some of the emphasis we have lately placed on science and technology and have a new look at the arts. For an art does not propose to enlarge itself by limitless extension but rather to enrich itself within bounds that are accepted prior to the work."

In "Torture Team", Phillippe Sands analyzes the Bush legal team's strategy to implement interrogation tactics at Guantanamo that defy the Geneva Convention. He first interviews the lower level lawyers who worked on the ground in Guantanamo, then works his way up to Cheney's immediate legal advisors.

At this point many Americans acknowledge that torture wasn't the action of a "few bad apples", rather something that was sanctioned at the top of the administration. Recognizing that fact makes the book no less interesting, rather it's even more chilling to see how the lawyers carefully pieced together a policy that would not only to obliterate the standard of international law but fly in the face of long standing wisdom on how best to deal with terrorism. Sands' position as an international lawyer who worked on Chile's Pinochet case and also a UK citizen who also saw first hand the failure of torture policies to stem IRA terrorism gives him a unique perspective to analyze the implications of Bush's policies.

Sands concludes that the most senior Department of Defense officials, the president, vice-president, and their most senior lawyers are directly implicated in the policies for Guantanamo detainees. He focuses particularly on the legal framework constructed for torture tactics used on the prisoners, and the six lawyers at the top who wrote those policies: David Addington, Jay Bybee, Doug Feith, Alberto Gonzales, Jim Haynes and John Yoo.

He notes that despite the public outrage propagated when the torture memos were revealed, none of the lawyers' "careers have suffered unduly". Jay Addington works for Vice President Cheney. Doug Feith teaches at Georgetown, and since Sands' book, published his own book and strode through the talk show circuit forcefully advocating his version of events. Alberto Gonzalez had not yet forfeited his position as Attorney General when Sands finished his book, a fact Sands attributed to his "poor memory and the personal support of the President". Perhaps now he's regaining a memory that will debut as a memoir. Jay Bybee was assigned to the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco by George W. Bush. Jim Haynes, having failed to be confirmed as a federal judge had announced his intention to leave DoD when Sands finished "Torture Team", is now working for Chevron, headquartered in the Bay Area. A third lawyer in the Bay Area, John Yoo, teaches constitutional law at the University of California, Berkeley. Their futures look bright, although Sands concludes:

"Thanks to the immunity from criminal process that has been built into U.S. law, and to which several of these lawyers contributed, they are presently free from criminal investigation at home. That immunity does not, however, extend beyond the shores of the United States. The members of this distinct group of six lawyers, and perhaps others, may decide wisely to think carefully about where they travel in the future."

Equally interesting is Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side" : The inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals." Like Sands' book, her story pulls the bits and pieces of the new's we've heard together. She explains: "It's been hard even for someone paying close attention, like myself, to follow these developments. We have learned about them out of order - first perhaps with the pictures of Abu Ghraib- and only piece by piece later - did we get to read the legal memos that justified a whole new system of law and detention." Mayer describes how not only lawyers and top administration brought about torture, but how they involved psychologists and physicians in it's practice. She also describes how the system spread beyond Guantanamo to foreign countries, and how US citizens have also been imprisoned.

Sands' focus is on one prisoner and his specific treatment in the hands of his captors. While any sane person can read from his description a system of torture, the media have focused on what everyone agrees is barbaric, waterboarding. Mayers stresses that the media focus on waterboarding "deflected attention from what was truly the worst part of the program - the combination of many forms of physical and psychological pain together over time."

While Mayer's acknowledges the Red Cross determination that the torture committed constitutes war crimes, she also says that it "would take a political movement bent on punishing the most powerful members of the Bush administration for taking steps it thought necessary to protect the country. Right now, I have trouble imagining there will be the political appetite for this." She notes that ranking members of congress were briefed on "enhanced interrogation" techniques and are therefore also complicit. While torture is not historically new, Mayers says, the way it has been institutionalized in the United States violates not only civil liberties but "the spirit of The Enlightenment on which the country was founded. It's a very deep break with the founders' values."

Newt Gingrich joined his party to promote drilling yesterday, warning Democrats who won't hold a vote on drilling that Republicans could shut down government. Gingrich is practiced at this, having led his party to two government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 that were criticized by voters.

Drilling in protected areas will not bring immediate relief from oil shortages, nor is it the best environmental strategy. But wasn't Newt the environmental guy? So confusing. Not more than a year ago, when the Republicans decided that Democrats were gaining too much support with their environmental positions, Newt was one of the first ones to try to reshape the Republicans as green. Faced with growing movement to stem carbon emissions, Gingrich wrote for the AEI in "We Can Have Green Conservatism - And We Should":

"...if the debate becomes, "Al Gore cares about the earth, and we're against Al Gore, we end up in a defensive position where the average American could end up perceiving conservatives as always being negative about the environment."

He asserted that liberal environmentalism was bad policy, bested by green conservatism, that is, "Green Conservatism", capitalized of course. Republicans (and him) went way back being green he wrote:

"In my commitment to the environment, I was echoing the conviction of two well known Republican leaders. The first was President Theodore Roosevelt, who said that "the nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets, which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value." The other was then Gov. Ronald Reagan, who upon the occasion of the first Earth Day said that "[there is an] absolute necessity of waging all-out war against the debauching of the environment."

First he slyly claimed Teddy Roosevelt as his own, then he defined the "Green Conservative":

"For green prosperity and green development, we have to have a strategy that makes the transition from the unimproved fossil fuels...to a new generation of clean energy that will: enable us, in national security terms, to be liberated from dependence on dangerous dictatorships; enable us, in economic terms, to be effective in worldwide competition; and enable us, in environmental terms, to provide for a much cleaner and healthier future."

He said "green" a lot, 23 times in a couple of pages. But that was then, April, 2007, and this is now.

So will all Republicans who denounced drilling changed their minds? The Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP) don't support drilling as of August 7th, posting articles such as "Quickest Way to Cheaper Gas Prices Is Not More Drilling." Will they change their minds? Will the Daily Green, another "green" Republican blog?

Flyboy Gall: Who Said "I believe God wants me to run for President"?

Issues and non-issues fly by fast as the campaign season winds up. The finale brings us bold lies, fantasy, and frankly, nausea. McCain aired an ad with Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea, inferring that Obama thought he was "the chosen one". The irony is that the current president, in whose shoes McCain proposes to step, is the one that said: "I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for President".

Is "Flyboy" spiraling downwards in a "festival of juvenilia" as Maureen Dowd called it"? Or is this just a swirl from the giant whirlwind of hot air sweeping us all up in its flotsam and jetsam. Just think, there we were a few months back, clamoring over science debates. McCain was probably chuckling to himself: "Stem cells? Henh? I'll be at the biker fair, Cindy in her denim shirt"

When Hilton Trumps McCain This Can't Be Good

In response to McCain's ad comparing Obama to celebrities, which many people took at face value, Bob Herbert set the record straight in Running While Black". He wrote: "Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain." As an aside, I do I think people are long past thinking McCain is "high minded". Referring to the "slimey Britney and Paris Hilton ad", Herbert wrote: "The racial fantasy factor in this presidential campaign is out of control." He added that it's a well honed tactic used on previous candidates by Republicans, and "[i]t was at work in that New Yorker cover that caused such a stir."

"It's frustrating", he said, "to watch John McCain calling out Barack Obama on race. Senator Obama has spoken more honestly and thoughtfully about race than any other politician in many years. Senator McCain is the head of a party that has viciously exploited race for political gain for decades." Here's the full column.

Of course unlike Herbert, Paris Hilton actually did think it was about her celebrity and promptly eeked yet another 15 minutes of fame out of it. She suggested a compromise between the Democrat and Republican energy plans, a "hybrid", where

"offshore drilling carries us until the new technologies kick in." Since it would be years until offshore drilling comes to fruition however, and new technologies are readily available, her video wasn't the IQ turnaround some people cheered -- but hey she's got her brand to protect.

The Pitch: Drilling Won't Work but the "Psychological Effect" Would be "Beneficial?"

Arguments about energy this week, shallow though they may be, far surpass last weeks campaign chatter -- McCain dissing Obamas "fame", McCain offering his wife up for country fair "beauty" contests. In response to Obama's offhand comment that we'd save more gas by keeping our tires inflated optimally than McCain would by drilling under his feet, last week McCain sent gag gifts of tire gauges. He turned around this week and said this might be a good idea.

In what has been said was a "forceful pitch for his U.S. energy strategy", Barack Obama called for $4 billion in aid to auto companies to help them produce more fuel efficient cars, particularly electric ones. His Lansing, Michigan speech came after a Detroit News poll in July found that McCain and Obama had equal support from voters in Michigan and that people were concerned first about the economy and second about gas prices.¹ Acknowledging the necessity of politics, if the computer industry had been coddled as much as the auto industry over the past couple of decades, there might be no such thing as a desktop computer or an internet.

Obama also decided to soften his formerly strong opposition to offshore drilling, saying off-shore drilling might be OK as part of a more comprehensive energy plan. Democrats including Obama urge leaders to open up current reserves.

Drilling wouldn't result in petroleum until 2030 according to the Bush's Energy Information Administration, and so Nancy Pelosi has stood ground in the House of Representatives against Republicans who present drilling as a solution. Like Obama Democrats in the House of Representatives also seek compromise, although they continue to flatly oppose drilling in protected areas.

Democrats heartily refute the Bush administration's presentation of offshore drilling as a solution to the pressing energy problem. Rather they say, drilling as a solution is an oil industry con that further shackles the population to oil dependency. Democrats argue, as does Obama, that the oil companies already have access to 68 million acres of permitted federal lands in the lower 48 and Alaska that they under-utilize. People view the oil industry's current push for drilling as a campaign by the oil industry to obtain more leases on potential drilling sites. This would give them even more control over the market energy market in the face of increasing demand, and would prolong oil dependency.

McCain was also opposed to drilling, but switched his stance. McCain's reason for drilling off the coast would have a . The psychological effect on voters would be to muffle their clamor for cleaner energies, which would extend legislators vacation on the issue, and allow petroleum companies to extend their energy monopoly. Apparently McCain's campaign was promptly gifted with an influx of donations from oil companies.

The Republicans, just off their successful rally to defeat the Democrats' "use-it-or-lose-it" legislation (H.R. 6615), are making a big production of calling the Democrats back from their "recess". H.R. 6615 would have prevented oil and gas companies from obtaining new federal drilling leases if they did not meet new government standards for development on leases they already hold, prevent them for collecting leases and using them as market leverage. The oil companies, as the multi-billion dollar beneficiaries of the "oil crisis" apparently yield some clout in this election, and citizens, who protest wildly about the price of gas on one hand, are willing to give them more power with the other.

What special treats will next week bring? This season's whirlwind campaign is tough to endure but I look forward to seeing lots of Harley's outside my poling station. Yeah.

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¹ Acronym Required wrote about the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car", and about the auto industry's failure to innovate in "The EPA: Mulish Days, Staring out to Pasture".

Court Declares Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) Not Patchwork Enough

Back in December, 2007, the EPA denied California the waiver the state requested under the Clean Air Act (CAA). The state wanted to set its own tougher emissions standards, which at least 18 other states would have adopted. However the auto and energy industries lobbied successfully against the waiver to an administration as dedicated as they were to denying global warming. EPA administrator Stephen Johnson defended the denial, saying the waiver would have created a "patchwork quilt" of regulation.

At the time, Bush had just signed the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) mileage standards passed by Congress under the National Highway Transportation Safety Act, and he defended the EPA's denial, saying: "Director Johnson made a decision based upon the fact that we passed a piece of legislation that enables us to have a national strategy, which is the -- increasing CAFE standards..."

Last week, the administration might have had another opportunity to point to the success of its own brand of environment legislation, while once again shooting down the Clean Air Act. The EPA announced its decision to ignore the Supreme Court order in Massachusetts v. EPA to regulate greenhouse gases and instead decided to issue an Advance Notice of Public Rulemaking (ANPR)¹. But unlike the CAFE standards which Congress passed and Bush signed into law, the Bush administration's Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) aimed at regulating sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from stationary polluters was challenged by the state of North Carolina and rejected by a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

CAIR was a cap and trade system for large stationary polluters in the framework of Bush's "Clear Skies". It required 28 eastern states to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NO_x) emissions (not carbon) that contribute to air pollution. The D.C. court disputed the EPA's regional plan: "The EPA's approach, region-wide caps with no state-specific quantitative contribution determinations or emissions requirements, is fundamentally flawed....the trading program is unlawful, because it does not connect states' emissions reductions to any measure of their own significant contributions."

Environmental groups thought it ironic that the conservative court overturned what some considered the best-of conservative Bush legislation on greenhouse gases .Although attempts to project the exact effects of CAIR fell short of providing a thorough understanding of outcomes and overall there was very little reaction from either science and environmental groups, almost everyone, including utility companies, agreed that effort was worthy. The projected benefits to health and air quality under CAIR would have improved acid rain and air quality on the eastern seaboard. According to the EPA CAIR would reduce SO₂ emissions by over 70% and NO_x emissions by over 60% from 2003 levels.

While people were taken aback that the court struck down CAIR in its entirety, no one was surprised that the EPA's Stephen Johnson announced the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) instead of working to create new Clean Air Act regulation. He had responded to Representative Waxman (D-CA) several months ago with his intention, as we wrote in "The EPA: Mulish Days, Staring out to Pasture".

At that time, many saw the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), especially the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) headed by Susan Dudley, as in the "catbird seat" over federal regulation as Public Citizen put it, and therefore overlord of the EPA's actions. People weren't sure that "Director Johnson" really had too much choice in the issue. Susan Dudley had a long history in conservative think tanks advocating the types of cost benefit analyses that the Bush administration sought to impose, as we described in "EPA, OMB and OIRA: The Biggest Kid on the Block is Back". The OIRA footprint was evident under the Bush administration, especially in the EPA's lack of action on the environment.

When the EPA released its several hundred page document last week, it of course included a statement from the OIRA head Susan Dudley, who rejected the EPA's staff's recommendations, writing: "the [EPA] draft cannot be considered Administration policy or representative of the views of the Administration". Dudley magnanimously added that given the Supreme Court ruling the EPA could go ahead and seek public comment.

Considering the previous repudiation of the OMB/OIRA from critics who called the agency on its interference with the EPA's mandate to protect clean air,², it's not surprising that the OMB recruited additional support from the secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation, and Energy. They too denounced the EPA draft in 75 pages of testimony, saying:

1. The Clean Air Act (CAA) is "fundamentally ill-suited to the effective regulation of GHG emissions" because the US cannot control emissions from other countries, so state or regional reductions could be "replaced with emissions increases elsewhere"
2. CAA would hurt international competitiveness
3. The EPA draft "suggests that regulating GHGs under the Clean Air Act would be workable. We disagree. The draft offers a number of legal constructs to support its position but there is no certainty of how those theories will work out in actuality, or whether they would be unheld by the courts."

The Secretaries cited the "burdens, difficulties, and costs, and likely limited benefits" of CAA. Of course this is familiar Bush rhetoric, delivered with orchestral cohesion. However if the Clean Air Act is ill-suited for the task, shouldn't the reasons be grounded in fact rather than fear laden campaign?

The Wall Street Journal described Johnson as being stuck in between his staff and the White House, and as if to illustrate the dysfunction, Johnson disagreed with the conclusions of his staff, calling CAA "ill-suited for the task of regulating global greenhouse gases."

The Administration's Gut

The document was a product of "career EPA's" critics said, with the hint of a sneer they might use for "teacher's unions". Piling on the hyperbole, William Kovacs, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington told the Wall Street Journal "This is a classic example of EPA staff saying we can manage the economy of the United States better than the president." (WSJ July 11, 2008) (To which some economists gasped in surprise -- Aha, the president's running the economy?)

The Bush administration has led a sustained attack on the Clean Air Act and the EPA. Last fall Bush publicly conflated the Clean Air Act emissions standards with CAFE standards, acting as though they were the same thing. But they're not. The NHTSA in the Department of Transportation (DOT) sets gas mileage standards through (CAFE). The energy bill that Congress passed and Bush signed (H.R. 6) last December improves long term mileage standards (barely).

The EPA regulates carbon emissions that contribute to global warming, through the Clean Air Act. Several industries argue that the EPA should not regulate emissions because of "regulatory overlap" between the NHTSA and EPA, but the Supreme Court rejected that argument in Massachusetts v. EPA. Said the court, the EPA "has been charged with protecting the publics 'health' and 'welfare'", whereas "DOT sets mileage standards".

The legislative goal of CAA was to protect considerations about healthy air and water from being corrupted by private interests and business. It's this goal that industries resent. As we described in previous posts, the petroleum and auto industries petitioned the EPA and the Bush administration to deny the California waiver. Industries argued that the EPA should adopt the notion of "maximum feasibility", and "set standards that take account of the limits on the investment capabilities and product cycles of the industry, just as NHTSA does...", as Chrysler put it in a memo last year.

One-Two Punch

There are legitimate criticisms of Clean Air Act, however the auto industry simply wants to continue its 30 year run of little to no regulation, despite the evidence that this damages health, the environment and the auto industry.

As the administration winds down, the Bush administration now seems more then ever about criticizing the EPA document directly. Bush chose the familiar war theme when he called the EPA outline a "'command-and-control' regime that would regulate virtually every aspect of American life from cars to factories, hotels and lawnmowers". "Command and control" is a conservative slur you run across scanning the conservative op-eds, as in "command and control communism", "command and control socialism", and "enemy of the free-market".

The push by the OIRA, the administration, industry, and much of congress for measures that considers projected costs to industry when determining whether or not to regulate of course has valid points, but is subject to abuse. If the cost to industry is used to determine whether industry should clean up the mess it makes of air and water, then why shouldn't industry make a really BIG mess and what incentive is there to accurately estimate either costs or benefits?

An example of how costs and benefits can be manipulated is in the latest report from the EPA on CAA. The Los Angeles Times reported that the benefits section of the current draft was "sharply revised" from a May draft that calculated savings to consumers of up to $2 trillion dollars.

"$2 trillion in savings to consumers at the gas pump and elsewhere could be achieved if greenhouse gas regulations were implemented.. [In the current draft], that number was slashed to $830 billion, and the price of gas was calculated at $2 a gallon for the next 30 years.

According to the LA Times EPA press secretary Jonathan Schradar said "he did not know why the numbers had been changed". Or perhaps he knew why but didn't know how or who or when? An inherent danger of such analyses?

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¹ (ANPR) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act.

² Congressman Waxman's Committee of Oversight and Government Reform has a long running investigation of the OMB and EPA's actions on the environment/. He held the two agencies in contempt of court for refusing to release documents related to decisions about the ozone and the California waiver, to which President Bush claimed executive privilege.

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 Congressman Dingell (D-MI) [correction, 11/07/08], 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.

Democracy is Like an Orchid, a Tree

A month ago in an interview with Charlie Rose, George Will said he opposed McCain-Feingold, the bipartisan campaign finance bill, because the bill essentially "empowers the government" to "limit [aspects of] political speech", making it he said, "probably the most dangerous [legislation] since the fugitive slave act". To which we say: Why didn't we ratify his version of the First Amendment long ago? Freedom isn't freedom, liberty isn't liberty, money is freedom and money is liberty, therefore more money equals more freer speech? Of course.

Anyone can see the twisted logic of the argument, but Will had talking points to deliver, and he hit them with authority, bullishly marketing a Bill of Goods in place of the Bill of Rights. However he was much more reticent discussing his prior policy recommendations. When Rose asked Will about his lack of discussion of Iraq in his new book, he stared him down as if -- "Iraq is dead to me". He now considers "nation-building as oxymoronic a phrase as orchid-building".

This is a change, since Will had long agitated for the war, writing syndicated columns for decades that turned up in hundreds of papers. He was relentless. In 1991 he wrote "a sensible war aim is a new regime in Iraq"¹. He consistency taunted Clinton's hesitancy for military engagement, charging: "Getting a democracy to do what does not come naturally requires leadership. To get that for the defense of this democracy, a different commander in chief is required." ² When Bush got into office his drumbeat continued in columns penned under headlines like this one in August, 2002: "Iraq attack would nudge Mideast toward democracy"³.

He now explains his changed opinion on Iraq as his "quickened sense" of the "brute inertias in the world rooted in religion and ethnicity". Like orchids, he noted, democracies are "not built they're a product of a long complicated organic evolution". After writing years of columns under titles like "The Politics of Manliness", after relentlessly chastising Democrats for their "feminization of politics", characterized he says, quoting Carnes Lord of the Naval War College, by "'competitiveness, aggression or, for that matter, the ability to command'", his startling summons to visualize democracy as "orchids" is more than a bowtie's worth of change. As I dutifully visualized orchids and recalled their cultivated history, I struggled with the comparison.

We can test his analogy, though. Democracy is to Orchid, as Marriage is to....Old Man of the Mountain? No. Hmmm...Democracy is to Orchid, as Raising Children is to...Poodles? I was still pondering these comparisons when I happened to be listening to another Charlie Rose interview. Talking about his new book, "Democracy's Good Name", John Hopkins professor Michael Mandelbaum declared to my surprise that "democracy is not like a pizza" (it cannot simply be delivered), it's "more like a tree". Now I was really confused.

Democracy is Like Rising Rafts, and Tides, and Botany

Wrapping my mind around pizzas and orchids and trees then comparing and contrasting them to democracy proved taxing, so I searched back in history to acquire more perspective. Jimmy Carter once said: "The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself -- always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity." This seems like a more apt analogy, if more nuanced and difficult to grasp then trees and flowers.

Democracy was more described less tactilely in the past. We know that Lincoln stuck close to the Greek roots of the word democracy, demos kratia, for his oft quoted description of democracy as "of the people, by the people, and for the people". But it seems that people often yearn for something more tangible. As democracy has spread more people feel more free to conceptualize in their own terms. There are the water analogies:

• "Democracy is like a rising tide; it only ebbs to flood back with greater force, and soon one sees that for all its fluctuation it is always gaining ground." (Alexis de Tocqueville)
• "Democracy is like a raft. You never sink, but, damn it, your feet are always in the water." (Fisher Ames)

There are of course other botany analogies. Some have said democracy is "like a reed", "like a flower in the desert", "like a seed", "like a delicate flower", or like a tree and/or its components. Ralph Nader said: "Democracy is like a tree; the people are the roots and the trunk, the politicians are like the branches and the twigs."

Also in the plant theme, Dr. Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, said in comments to the Carnegie Council, about the publication of her book: "Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope":

"For me, democracy is like a flower. This is a flower that can flourish and bloom only in favorable circumstances, where you have calm, you have peace, where you can give plenty of water and nourishment and sunlight to this flower. Obviously, if you have torrents pouring down on the flower from the sky, that flower cannot bloom. This is precisely the reason why we are opposed to any kind of military attack."

Democracy is Like Riding a Bike, Like Motherhood, Like Blowing Your Nose

Alternative definitions for democracy are frequently hatched in the context of Iran and Iraq. Rumsfeld once told the French that democracy in Iraq was like teaching a kid how to "ride a bike". Like riding a bike, he said, you might at first need the trainer to hang on to the bike with four fingers, then three fingers. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice described the Middle East as going through "birth pangs". However, H.D.S. Greenway warned in the Boston Globe:

"Democracy is like motherhood: well worth supporting. But democracy, like motherhood, should not arrive in the Middle East as a result of an armed invasion and soldiers breaking down the door in the middle of the night, Fallujah-style."

Back in 2004 the blog Flavog had a more satirical take, in an "interview" with the "interim Prime Minister" of Iraq: "'....Fafnir, democracy is like a horse, or a beautiful woman. It is a fine thing to see, and everyone admires it, but in order to get it to behave sometimes you must beat it and torture it and shock its gentals.'"[sic]

Many, like George Will, proselytized the government's democratic intentions for the US invasion, but later became doubtful. However some never trusted the Bush administrations' inclination or their entreaties to "bring democracy to Iraq", even if those reasons had been true. G.K. Chesterton once wrote "Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it's something you ought to do yourself."

Democracy is Like A Stovkel, A Three Legged Stool, Marketing, A Rolls Royce...Rolls Royce? What!?

While people make easy comparisons of democracy to plants and natural elements, others don't hesitate to compare democracy to inanimate objects -- drugs, a poem, a forum, a gate, or entwine it with capitalism. Many quote theologian Michael Novak, who said: "...liberal democracy is like a three-legged stool. Political freedom is the first leg, economic freedom the second, and moral responsibility the third. Weaken any leg, and the stool topples." Citizens of neoliberal inclination or persuaded by "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" choose stronger commercial comparisons. Democracy is "like a high quality wine", they say, "a house", or a "Rolls-Royce".

Hernando De Soto would superimpose capitalism smack on top democracy, as he put it: "[D]emocracy is like a constant marketing program, it allows you to get the feedback and knowing that you take out a product that is useful to everybody." In his view democracy as more useful for capitalism than for its appeals to freedom and equality.

If democracy confuses people, it's clear that they define it in their own terms. They're no more shy about saying democracy is like a stokvel, then they are saying that bad democracy is like a bad toupe.

But no wonder democracy is tough to adopt when no one can agree whether it looks like a stream or a soft drink, a bank, a TV dinner. a giant Redwood tree or Niagara Falls. Democracy is not obvious, cannot be shrunk down to a convenient tagline, cannot be flashed on the screen, cannot be turned into technology, has no clear visible outline, and is never convenient.

Democracy is Sovereignty of the People, Human Rights, Equality, Due Process, Pluralism Tolerance, Pragmatism, Cooperation, and Compromise

Can George Will et al. convince us that like the air and the sea and the forests, we should monetize freedom, democracy? Likewise in De Soto's definition he asks us to sidle towards an interpretation that libertarians like George Will advocate. They would prefer the government institutions that help preserve our freedom be "drown in the bathtub" as Grover Norquist put it, so we can "free the market" and make it king -- or dictator.

However, unfettered capitalism, freeing the market, threatens to supplant the original intentions of democracy -- freeing the people. Lincoln defined democracy as "of the people, by the people, and for the people". Now people straining to make democracy and easy to grasp idea excise the "people" from it. Even those who see democracy threatened, like Mandelbaum, are tempted to simple comparisons: "oil is the enemy of democracy". While his point is easy to assimilate, can a noun either threaten or define democracy? Or is it the follies and sentiments of people that threaten democracy?The US Department of State reminds us in "Pillars of Democracy" that democracy is:

"sovereignty of the people, government based upon consent of the governed, majority rule, minority rights, guarantee of basic human rights, free and fair elections, equality before the law, due process of law, constitutional limits on government, social, economic, and political pluralism and values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise."

People chuckled when, Erdogan, then mayor of Instanbul, now Prime Minister of Turkey famously said "Democracy is like a street car; you ride it as far as you need, and then you get off". Democracy often seems tentative at best, in China, in Russia, in Nepal, in Thailand, in Zimbabwe -- and is always an elusive goal that demands intention and vigilance. Fortunately Erogan's once cynical view doesn't always hold up to history, since Democracies continue to spring up and thrive throughout the world. In the end, perhaps democracy is like a chess game, a fight between ideologies. But in true democracy, constructed with a balance of powers in government and an attentive population, more people can play and win -- economically, politically and personally, even if we can't discern every Pareto efficiency of every freedom.

¹St. Petersburg Times, February, 1991
² Plain Dealer, June, 1996
³ Deseret News, August , 2002

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 Bill 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 comrades.

But mere months ago she was hanging out with Bill in the country diner cheerfully wondering idly about Chelsea's whereabouts. Journey's 1981 "Don't Stop Believing" hummed nostalgically in the background. Not too far from Fleetwood Mac's, "Don't Stop", which Bill's theme song, the theme was no change. 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 advise: "You do not defend yourself from a conflict-of-interest charge by insulting a large segment of the voting public." He wrote that Clinton's remarks were: "elitism in action". 16 years later you can say she's absorbed Safire's patronizing 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 pulling 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 picking through old jutebox favorite with hubbie to being one tough bitch who'll obliterate anything in her way. But have we?

Star power

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 determination 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. Remind me about the working class cred of New York Times columnist? 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?

When Merck's AIDS vaccine candidate failed in clinical trials, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called a summit. The drug candidate did not reduce HIV infections, in fact the adenovirus based vaccine seemed to increase the risk of infections.

The meeting of scientists on March 25th in Washington focussed on the future of HIV/AIDS research in light of the fallout of Merck vaccine trials. Scientists including Anthony Fauci, who heads the NIAID, agree that funding needs to be redirected towards a broader research agenda and ideas beyond drug development and vaccines. Science last week noted that the decision about whether to proceed with the large NIH clinical trial planned for its HIV vaccine is still pending. ("Review of Vaccine Failure Prompts a Return to Basics" DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5872.30)

Nature also reported on the summit last week, pointing out that these clinical AIDS trials went forward not necessarily based on the strength of the science -- one of the vaccine candidates had a unimpressive track record -- but because programs needed to "show the public that progress is being made, thereby justifying the millions of dollars from philanthropists and taxpayers". ("Broken Promises" doi:10.1038/452503a).

The Nature editorial offers analysis of this HIV-AIDS vaccine experience, noting that ambitious commitments made in a flush funding environment in the early part of this decade short-changed basic research. These choices to heavily fund drug development are regarded less forgivingly in light of the trial failures and the budget shortfalls of recent years, according to the journal. Nature warns other fields, for instance stem-cell research, autism, and Parkinson's disease, are repeating these same mistakes.

The business approach comes with a high stakes mentality and ample, vigorous marketing that can ratchet up expectations both within the organization, the field and the public arena. The business-oriented nature of many philanthropic organizations influences the focus on development and can distort public expectations. But investors can and do influence the direction of an entire field. When a field becomes dominated by a few foundations it can gather tremendous productive momentum, but it can also stampede so hard down a particular path with such strong momentum in a particular direction. If that direction proves to be less fruitful than hoped research cannot turn around on a dime.

Each high-funded disease has its own idiosyncratic pitfalls, but behind the good works and fine intentions of charities, but the science research rarely responds to pressure, unlike many entrepreneurial ventures. When scientists request research funding, the results don't always yield answers as quickly as businesses might hope -- research is the mythical man myth on steroids. Some people investing in biotech and international public health come from businesses very unlike public health with its vagaries of not only politics and human behavior, but biology.

In today's fast paced communications and computing climate, intense focus on "results" is inherent to our culture. Expectations carry over from the successful and extraordinarily speedy progress of the genome sequencing. Scientists and politicians built hopes during that time that drug development and an accelerated understanding of human disease would follow. It has, but did we expect more? TV drug advertising gives the impression that scientists are developing a pill for every insignificant hangnail, when many of these drugs aren't new, just the subjects of new marketing campaigns. Meanwhile tougher diseases and conditions remain elusive.

High profile funding can influence the research environment and lead to a very public dead end. In the larger picture, despite the wisdom that should be accruing from these experiences, politicians, technology leaders, and pundits sometimes wax-on about technology's potential to produce solutions not only for specific diseases but for extremely complicated social problems such as global warming and healthcare. But while science research may yield pharmaceuticals and oil extraction techniques but one cannot look to science or technology to solve the healthcare crisis in the United States. Science and technology contextualize these problems and are integral in our lives but despite heady declarations, they are not central to the solutions.

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Acronym Required has written previously about these subjects, AIDS and research directions, and vaccines. Here are a couple of our vaccine articles:

Vaccinations -- Why Worry?
Polio Vaccinations - The end of a scourge?
Group B Strep Vaccine Development
Vaccine Development For Infectious Diseases

Sequoia Systems sent Princeton professor Ed Felten an e-mail, warning that if Felten's lab proceeded to analyze the security and/or hackability of Sequoia's voting machines, the company would consider its intellectual property infringed. The move followed disturbing reports about Sequoia voting machines in New Jersey, for instance that 10,000 voting machines were uncertified by the state, that February primary officials noted irregularities in the vote records, and that Princeton professor Andrew Appel bought a few Sequoia machines at a state auction site and managed to program them to misappropriate votes.

The Sequoia Systems' letter warns that the company "retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis". Felten produced a demo last year showing how to hack a Diebold machine in one minute, and recently published a paper on the Diebold machines' vulnerabilities.

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Acronym Required also mentioned voting machines in this post.

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.

FDA Leader Criticized

We wrote the "State of the FDA" about a couple of reports documenting FDA management shortcomings compounded by budget shortfalls that compromise the health and safety of US citizens. Now Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who heads the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in the House Energy and Commerce Committee has called for FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach to be replaced. Eschenbach has been in the post a little over a year.

In a press release Feb. 1, 2008 on the FDA, Stupak said the agency was no longer a "pending" crisis, but rife with problems and fresh off a formidable record of "378 recalls last year on everything from peanut butter to pet food to drugs". Stupak's goal "is to help identify what went wrong and implement changes to minimize negative health effects on the American people." Stupak even has a replacement candidate in mind according to the Wall Street Journal.

Firecracker Appointees

However some politicians see the Michigan Democrat as a little too aggressive. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) says that firing the commissioner is a bad idea and told the journal that Dr. von Eschenbach is a "dedicated public servant," who has "certainly not done anything unethical or illegal". (Gold Star commendable these days, but shouldn't we be throttling for a higher standard?)

Some news agencies scurvily suggest that the death of Stupak's son from suicide, a reaction to the acne drug Accutane, motivates his attention to the FDA's problems. However the congressman points out that while the incident gave him insight into the FDA, if people knew how little oversight the agency had on some products they'd be "marching in the streets." (like the Sixties?)

It's too bad Stupak wasn't in on the Senate confirmation hearings in August, 2006, since perhaps he could have guided the leadership choice at the beginning of the process. The Senate deliberated during von Eschenbach's confirmation hearings, voicing reservations about his suspected attention to politics over science. The commissioner is a family friend of President Bush's who had what Newsweek at the time called "a history of generating controversy".

Prior to his FDA tenure he worked at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he "introduced prayer to commission meetings", unrealistically set a goal of eliminating death from cancer by 2015, and was called a "disaster" by some staffers. Senators Murray and Clinton balked on his confirmation over the stance the FDA was taking on Plan B, the birth control pill. In what seemed like a sort of a quid pro quo deal, once Plan B got passed von Eschenbach got confirmed.

The interesting thing about Bush's political appointees to science agencies is that the lifecycles between Senate confirmation and given appointees' agencies' disasters has become quite short, in a way that nicely matches the current pace of news. The predictability and familiarity of it all gives us a sense of reassurance in a day when little else is predictable. Reporters aren't like - von Eschenbach who? It's just - oh yeah, that guy everyone worried about a year and a half ago.

But again, as with many of the science agencies it's not all about the commissioner. Stupak acknowledges that the FDA has entrenched problems that preceded Eschenbach's short tenure.

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Acronym Required wrote about von Eschenbach's confirmation hearings in "The FDA'S 'Medical Ideology'"

We wrote "Resuscitating The FDA", about the FDA in the wake of various fiascoes.

"FDA -- Calling Off The Dogs", is about Plan B and FDA staff turnover.

"Ethics- The NIH and FDA", discusses conflicts of interests among scientists in these two agencies.

Reps. John Dingell and Bart Stupak sent a letter to CDC Director Dr. Julie Louise Gerberding yesterday, questioning a report on pollution in the Great Lakes suppressed by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) . The Center for Public Integrity published "Great Lakes Danger Zones" detailing how the CDC blocked publication of a study for seven months because it contained "alarming information."

The 400 page report, "Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern", documented elevated rates for cancer mortality, infant mortality, low birth weight, and premature births, concurrent with hazardous waste such as dioxins, polychorinated biphenyls (PCBS), pesticides, lead and mercury (no cause and effect research yet). Nine million people living in "problem areas" around the Great Lakes are potentially affected, including the metropolitan areas around Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee.

The International Joint Commission, an independent bilateral organization that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on the use and quality of the Great Lakes and other "boundary waters" commissioned the report. Dr. Peter Orris, a professor at the University of Illinois School of Public Health participated, and urged the ATSDR not to suppress the report. He talked to the Center for Public Integrity about the rigor of the findings:

"This report, which has taken years in production, was subjected to independent expert review by the IJC's Health Professionals Task Force and other boards, over 20 EPA scientists, state agency scientists from New York and Minnesota, three academics (including myself), and multiple reviews within ATSDR. As such, this is perhaps the most extensively critiqued report, internally and externally, that I have heard of."

Christopher De Rosa, also involved in the production of the report, had headed ATSDR for 15 years as the director of the agency's division of toxicology and environmental medicine. He had a strong international reputation, including commendations from officials at the IJC, specifically for his work on that study. De Rosa had also pressed agency heads to release of the study, and said that delaying the study had the "the appearance of censorship of science and distribution of factual information regarding the health status of vulnerable communities." Senior agency officials first criticized De Rosa on the study, then demoted him -- apparently for his temerity.

The congressmen wrote in their letter "The validity of the findings of this [ADSTR] report deserves a fair and open debate within the scientific community. That cannot occur if this report is withheld from publication; accordingly, the report should be released." The letter asks for specific documents and records relevant to the investigation, provides a definition for "records", and necessarily warns against the destruction of evidence . The full letter is here. A previous member of the IJC had an opinion about why the report was suppressed. The "whole problem with all this kind of work is wrapped up in that word 'injury'", he said governments are aligned with chemical companies and don't want evidence of injury because "If you have injury, that implies liability".

To Run

The Unreasonable Man is running for office again. I recommend the movie, whatever your point of view about Ralph Nader's decision to run for president.

For those people in our generation who are not familiar with who Nader is and what he could possibly offer, The Village Voice points out what that might be. In a good review of the movie, the author marveled that Nader, the man now reviled as "Benedict Arnold", was "once a hero -- a little guy who brought Big Auto to heel, helped prevent more than 190,000 automotive deaths in 30 years, and was directly responsible for the Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA, the Freedom of Information Act..."

These are the same institutions and scientists marginalized by recent politics. A large, growing group of individuals wants to hold a presidential debate involving the fate of science at some of these very institutions. But some in this group don't want Nader's voice, insight, or history.

Should we mention the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, The Wholesome Meat Act, Mine Health and Safety Act, Medical Devices Safety, Food Labeling, Public Citizen? Not relevant enough? I don't know, maybe he is insufferable. But is this presidential candidate more ego driven than the others? Should the other candidates not run because they've already served their country as senators, or as First Lady, as a prisoner of war during service for the US, or as a civil rights lawyer? Is Nader just too...ancient history...really?

What Nader offers is at least a different, seasoned, knowledgeable perspective to citizens and politicians alike. Why shout for democracy (or have I misunderstood) then confine yourself to two parties? The movie "An Unreasonable Man was balanced, fast-paced and interesting, and offered insight to the party system -- and perhaps contextual information about the current election season. It filled in some questions that the emotive backlash against Nader in 2000 never answered. To be clear, those angry voices are well represented in the movie. But so too is a little history, a few facts and the voices of some very thoughtful critics.

There's also a very well reviewed book on the subject that I haven't read called "Crashing the Party". This from the preface: "people should play active roles in shaping the electoral agenda and ensuring varied, open debates. In short, democracy is not a spectator sport."

During the 2000 campaign a presidential youth conference of the National Youth Platform involving thousands of young adults in their teens and twenties, supported by Pew Charitable Trust, Heinz Family Foundation, Wisenbaker Foundation, the League of Women Voters, the YMCA and the YWCA held a forum after the primary, and invited all the candidates. The students discussed ten topics with Nader for a couple of hours. Ralph Nader attended but Bush and Gore declined since polling showed that young adults have general agendas and don't vote in large numbers. Bush canceled at the last minute saying that the Republican Party had engaged students in other ways, for instance at "conventions young people have led the effort to create hand painted signs." (PR Newswire, August 1, 2000).

Or Not

Lawrence Lessig on the other hand, decided not to run. You didn't know? In a quick turn-around for second thoughts, he called the party off. He had decided last Tuesday night to run for the seat of Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who died earlier this month.

Whales

"The safety of the whales must be weighed, and so must the safety of our warriors. And of our country."

So said Judge Andrew Kleinfeld of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling over the future of the Navy's sonar testing program off Los Angeles waters. Last Friday's stay allows the U.S. Navy to resume training exercises halted August 6th by a Los Angeles judge because the sonar testing endangered 30 species. The Natural Resources Defense Council has more information about the effects of sonar testing here [link fixed 10/08/08].

The 3 judge panel noted the exceptional situation the U.S. faces today when regarding ecological questions: of being "engaged in war, in two countries." According to the ruling:

"we customarily give considerable deference to the executive branch's judgment regarding foreign policy and national defense."

The Navy's testing is not constrained to these waters, it conducts tests elsewhere. But the judge frames an issue of the local environment in the context of the war on terror. Outrageously, while spewing fallacies, the court also hasn't caught up with the rest of the world's judgment of the executive branch's abilities "regarding foreign policy and national defense". The NRDC will appeal the decision.

Armchair Warriors

So much for the whales, says the judge. But to the subject of the executive branch's "judgment". As the war in Iraq seems to lead policy by the nose in many seemingly unrelated areas, the nature of the executive judgment that guided us to this place never ceases to occupy us and the authors of numerous books, reports, legislative investigations, and judicial rulings. Such mendacity outrages the public, fuels years worth of reality comedy, and causes international consternation.

Now the occupation is taking over Hollywood in a slew of new movies, some of which we at Acronym Required have seen recently. And since man cannot live by science alone, we'll ungracefully segue into reviewing them here.

One arresting documentary is No End In Sight, a movie that chronicles the decisions made by Pentagon and White House during the first few years of the Iraq war, and links those decisions to Iraq's subsequent degradation into violence and chaos. The accounts are relayed by administrators and military who served in Iraq. I hesitated before seeing it, I'd heard it all, I thought. But it was especially captivating to view the build-up, invasion, and occupation of Iraq as contiguous history, rather than as news accounts broken up over time with distracting news about science and movie star jail episodes interrupting the narrative.

There's also War Made Easy, narrated by Sean Penn (on DVD) that deals with public relations efforts in by the executive branch of the U.S. in all wars since WWII. The message is that U.S. citizens are far too trusting of the executive branch. This film too is very good, but is not without it's own slant and advertising. (To begin with, it's not narrated by Sean Penn as much as by Norman Solomon.)

You can warm up for these accounts by reviewing Charlie Rose's interviews with Patrick Tyler and with Amy Goodman, at his table, on March 12, 2003. Seeing this display of unfettered war hoopla before the recent releases provided a sharp reminder of the media deluge we were under before the war, and gives a nice backdrop to the documentaries. The Rose interviews happened in the aftermath of a report on the unforeseen risks of going into Iraq just before the invasion. Patrick Tyler, a former New York Times correspondent, who is considered by certain sources to be a part of the (evil) politically "liberal" cabal of the Times, discussed the war with Rose,agreeing that it was "a giant roll of the dice", with unknown risks but possibly great payoffs.

Tyler's best case scenarios for the Iraq war were fairy tales. In the first week, he predicted, liberation Americans would march in and form "that big ring of steel around Baghdad...using psychological operations to break the will of his commanders...force them to choose between Hussein and American forces...Iraqis will cheer the arrival of Americans....". This strategy, Tyler mused, would serve to improve our foreign relations with Europe, Russia and the entire Middle East, teach North Korea a lesson, and set the stage for peace between Israel and Palestine. Not to mention get Bush re-elected. Needless to say, no one had really looked into the future beyond their fanciful visions of leis joyfully draped over the broad shoulders of U.S. military by the grateful Iraqis.

It's fascinating to see exactly how wrong the pundits were -- even the "liberal" ones -- about the pressure put on media to sell the Iraq war, about the actual vs. perceived threats of the invasion. They were not only dead wrong about Iraq, their visions for how other foreign policy would play out were off too. Tyler noted Putin's great leadership, and his remarkable inroads towards the west and democracy. One of the most dire risks predicted by Tyler was that the U.S. could get stuck in Iraq "3 months from now", and Bush would lose the election. All of this discussed in those somber, serious tones reserved for such especially exciting occasions. It's stunning just how much hindsight of a mere four years provides. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now has an interesting and relevant minor showdown with Charlie Rose in the same episode, about whether or not major TV networks were influencing the reportage of their anchors.

Not to focus exclusively on the U.S. and non-fiction, in fiction movies there is the somewhat related This Is England, which tells a story about England during the 1980's, and argues a view that desperate economic straits of that country under Thatcher led to the decision to go war and eventually, of all things, to the rise of skinheads.

These movies are apparently only the beginning. There are more Iraq themed movies attracting attention at the Venice Film Festival. These days, however, almost any movie, Bourne Ultimatum for instance, can be seen by a jaded audience as containing an underlying message for U.S. foreign policy.

In times like these, the courts and Hollywood argue, the place of the whales fades away along with the mystical escapism of movies like Whale Rider, when warriors coexisted with whales, a product of ancient times -- 2002.

To escape global warming you need to buy a new car. The automobile industry reminds me of this every day. In reality when I drive my "old" fuel efficient car, I end up on the highway, snagged in traffic with thousands of other cars. But all the car advertisements insist that if I would only buy a shiny brand new Ford or Chevy or Dodge, I wouldn't be stuck in that traffic jam. I'd be driving on the open road, in the mountains or the desert, not a car in sight, no smog, only the sunset baking the auburn canyons and the glint of sun off the new wax -- just me, the car, nature, (and my sunglasses).

Really, I seldom drive because I don't need to. I love to walk and I actually enjoy public transportation, with all its jostling and smooshing together of humanity. It's also a pragmatic choice, this "alternative" transportation. There's a lot of traffic congestion in my neighborhood, which at peak hours, involves mostly high-strung, work-ready parents dropping their kids off at school. Their idling SUVs jam the intersections for blocks. Each parent in turn deposits their child at school, with the lunch, and the homework projects, the gym bag, and the well-wishes. This inch-worming, stop and go and stop traffic wildly irritates the workmen and FedEx drivers. How and they deliver goods and services on time? People become frustrated and irritable and resort to crazy maneuvers and horn-blowing. So for me, it's often faster, cheaper and more relaxing to take the bus.

Sometimes when I'm out for a walk or run, I have to pass this restless line of SUVs and trucks and I try to hold my breath like I'm swimming under water until I get past the idling vehicles and short-tempered drivers, the restless children, and the impatient truck driver who wants to swerve around the whole line of cars and get through the intersection but then at the last minute -- can't. When I finally pass all the carbon monoxide emitting vehicles I eagerly gulp whatever air ends up in that space.

I should worry about the quality of that breath, I'm sure. How well am I oxygenating my lungs as an uncommon pedestrian in a sea of cars? In order to be a good citizen in a time of global warming, Time Magazine says you should live in the city. But if I were to take this advice to heart, would I become a naive martyr for the cause? Cities are polluted, and if I walk or take public transportation don't I make myself even more vulnerable to everyone else's choices to drive?

Plus, the new-car ads constantly tug at me, telling me to ignore reality and instead envision cars as a sort of personal utopia. Leggy models have long since been replaced by the rest of nature, and now I have confidence that if I buy any Infiniti, or Volvo, or Saab, the new vehicle will swiftly transport me from the smoggy present to a pristine, otherworldly mountain road. There I will switchback along, zooming past snowbanks and negotiating slick spots with the surest of handling, surrounded by the freshest air, forever warm and safe in the arms of mother nature.

Marketing with animals is effective marketing, and automobile marketers don't shy away from piling on animals as well as nature. Infiniti ads once featured woodpeckers that flew into the car to peck at the wood on the console. I'm not sure what happened to the birds, but I remind myself that it's not only the Queen of England, with her privilege and idle time, her Landrover and a vast territory of heaths and heathers, who can see a fourteen-point buck in the countryside. There's nothing to stop me from doing the same. I can purchase a new Subaru from my local dealer any day of the week and crash through beautiful forests in four wheel drive comfort. Then, according to one Subaru ad, a deer will emerge magically from the forest, stand next to my windshield and gaze at me appreciatively, the two of us, bonded by nature and my new car.

With all the marketing talk of blue skies, I'm always convinced that there's a very very environmentally hospitable, economical car just around the bend. I turn each magazine page expectantly, hoping to see this dream car of mine.

You would think my dream car would materialize, they've been "working" on it for decades. The time is ripe. News articles are suddenly unanimous, definitive and grim about global warming. Newpapers and online news shows feature photos of cars, bumper to bumper, in cities obscured by brown smog, with people on scooters wearing gas masks, sometimes coughing. But the automobile industry still natters away with the very same antithetical vision -- large gas-guzzling vehicles zooming silently through pristine, untouched nature. And how did they get that Jeep to the top of that precious precipitous canyon, so much cliff and sky, without a trace of car noise or exhaust?

At some point perhaps, we can be swayed, along with the auto industry, to conjure up any vision, no matter how absurd. To wit, you can place you and your imaginary new car into a scene from "An Inconvenient Truth" without a trace of remorse or irony. A recent magazine ad did this very thing, featuring an Aston Martin Roadster parked in front of a glacier, similar to Grey Glacier and Lago Grey, bits of ice floating by the car. (You can see the ad in this PDF. )

Of course the Aston Martins is the classic luxury car-- sporty, fast, and expensive; you would need to pay to realize this dream. The flagship "Vanquish" model lists for $255,000. It gets about 11mpg in the city and 17mpg in the country, but notably has outstanding horsepower and reaches speeds of 165 to 225 hundred miles per hour. All the better to blow by glaciers with. Naturally, for that price you have your choice of leather seat color, from among hundreds of nature's finest shades, including Falcon Grey, Kestrel Tan, Quail Grey, Red Fox, Sandstorm, Shark Blue, Bison Brown. I think their "Arctic Blue" succinctly complements the glacier theme. By immersing yourself in such dissonance, carbon credits would be a distant afterthought.

We know better than to think that the Vanquish is melting earth's glaciers, and to be honest, given the chance by some benevolent spendthrift, we'd probably be all too happy to take the Roadster for a spin. But while emissions soar, fuel economy standards remain the same, decade after decade. The auto industries fights tooth and nail for the right pollute, and we the people of habit collude with polluters by resisting change. The automobile industry, like an aging Faulknerian belle, forever insists on miring us in their beloved automobile myths. But there must be some breaking point. The further they attempt to pull us into the wilderness, the greater our cognitive dissonance. Then at some point we'll collectively snap and insist on change, insist on a new reality for transportation.

South Africa's Wealth/Health Paradox

South Africa, where approximately 1 in 9 people are afflicted with AIDS, has a paradoxical economic development profile. It is considered an upper middle income country based on its healthy Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The World Bank ranked South Africa's GDP 27th of 177 countries in 2005, putting it in about the 85th percentile for GDP. The International Marketing Council of South Africa, with the slogan "South Africa, Alive With Possibility", describes the country as the "economic powerhouse of Africa".

Yet about 800 people a day die from AIDS in this country. Life expectancy in South Africa has decreased by four years and deaths from AIDS continue to decimate populations of young women under age 35 and men in their 30's and 40's, people who are in their prime and who -- from an economic perspective -- are in the most productive years of their life.

Now more bad news. An alarming study from Statistics South Africa's shows yet another dramatic increase in deaths from AIDS in South Africa. The report analyzed death rates from unnatural and natural causes and found that the death rate from communicable diseases of South African women aged 30-45 had increased by about three times, from 500 per 100,000, to 1500 per 100,000 between 1997 and 2004. Male deaths from communicable diseases had also increased and had even doubled in some areas. Some of this bad news was predicted. Since there is a lag between infection and full blown AIDS, it was assumed that the death rates would not decrease until 2008. However the figures are still stunning - as they were last year, and the year before...

The expectations of economists and politicians was that post-apartheid Africa would rebound and that the health of South Africans would improve. Indeed according to economic measures Africa is doing better and foreign investment has skyrocketed. But even compared to Russia, where life expectancy decreased as a result of political upheaval and economic downturn, the current patterns in South Africa indicate a dire state of affairs. For scientists and doctors, the increases in deaths are distressing since there are few signs that action is being taken to stem the epidemic.

South Africa AIDS Policies

With full knowledge of the toll of South Africa's AIDS policies, international public health officials, scientists and doctors are taking South Africa to task and rightly so. Historically, the government has denied that the HIV virus caused AIDS, and it has been slow to implement treatment programs for AIDS afflicted patients. Despite pleading from world leaders, South Africa's AIDS policy remains one of obfuscation and denial. Health minister Dr. Tshabalala-Msimang often insists that nutrition will beat AIDS, and regularly pushes garlic, beets and lemon, and African potatoes as effective cures. Since patient treatment via antiretrovirals now costs less that $130 dollars a year. South Africa's health policies are out of step with the modernity and prosperity that it claims.

The country was condemned at the AIDS conference in Montreal this year for displaying a basket of this produce in its booth, initially without antiretroviral drugs. Earlier this year the country banned two non-governmental organizations (NGO's) from a UN AIDS conference because they were particularly critical of Mbeki's policies.

In the most recent international public plea for policy change, a group of 81 doctors wrote a letter to President Mbeki asking the president to replace the ineffectual health minister, Dr Tshabalala-Msimang. In response to the recent letter, the health minister complained that the international community was undermining the country's efforts. She has long defended her nutrition advice as "the truth", and allegedly doesn't mind her moniker- Dr. Beetroot".

In response to the outcry against him, the president has assigned a new committee to oversee the AIDS program, according to an associated press article (South Africa Scales Back Health Minister's AIDS Role). But the health minister denies that she has been demoted, and in typical sidestepping form, a government spokesperson, Themba Maseko, said: we need to shift the focus from saying the problem is the Minister of Health".

Effective AIDS Policies

AIDS programs succeed in countries because of many deliberate actions by leaders. It is imperative that there is strong leadership to combat AIDS at the very, very top levels of a government. So in South Africa's case, if the problem is not with the minister of health then it is with the president.

People have said that effective AIDS policies will be pushed to the fore by governments who realize that deaths impede economic progress. It's hard to imagine that South Africa, where 1 in 9 people on average are affected by the deadly disease and only a small fraction receive drugs, has not come to terms with this economic reality. Any government which claims that beetroot is as effective as antiretrovirals is, as Stephen Lewis put it: "obtuse, dilatory and negligent."

Once it seemed intuitive that a higher GDP could be linked to greater general welfare of a country's citizens. Economists now recognize that GDP doesn't always correlate with overall broader measures of prosperity. South Africa is a telling example of this phenomenon. The United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI) rates quality of life factors such as education, the status of women, morbidity, and mortality. South Africa's comes in at 121sh out of 178 countries. This puts it in about the 33rd percentile of all countries, in the company of many countries who have far fewer resources. Therefore in terms of HDI, as opposed to GDP, South Africa's is in the same band of countries that its pro-business groups lord over with their "economic powerhouse" status.

In this "post-apartheid" era, we would not expect this chasm between the HDI (where it lies in the 33rd percentile) and GDP (where it is the 85th percentile). We would not expect the travesty of preventable AIDS deaths. We only wish that such a sorry state of affairs would convince those at the top levels of the government that only an active AIDS program will assure that South Africa truly is, as its marketing campaign says: "alive with possibility".

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Acronym Required previously wrote about AIDS in Not in Paradise Anymore - AIDS in Africa - Reason for Optimism?" - in response to a David Brooks column and optimistic prognosis for the AIDS epidemic in South Africa. We also wrote about AIDS in Zimbawe, in Burma, as well as in other articles.