January 2004 Archives

"The results last night in New Hampshire represent a humiliating disaster for the mainstream media. The political reporters and editors who have been judging this race for a year have made utter fools of themselves." So says John Podhoretz in this New York Post Online editorial. Podhoretz is harsh but accurate. The media bias we should be concerned about is not left or right wing political bias (both of which do exist) but rather the media's bias towards sensationalism. Certainly some media institutions and editors have a left-wing agenda and others have a right wing agenda, but they agenda that they tend to share is getting market share. This often translates into making dramatic stories where there may be none. We all know this and yet we fall for it every time.

A fascinating piece by Clark S. Judge, managing director of the White House Writers Group, entitled "Our Own Hundred Years’ War." Judge makes the argument that the war we are waging currently is part of an epochal struggle dating back to the end of World War I, and, encouragingly, the end is in sight. It's a persuasive argument.

Excerpts:

-- "The First World War led to a shattering of three imperial systems, and it is not too much to say that the world is still struggling with their demise and that of the international system of which they were so integral a part."

-- "The three imperial systems were the uneasy German imperial brotherhood of Prussian-dominated German and Vienna-centered Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire."

-- "The three major post-[World War I] struggles have been part of a single struggle about the character of the successor regimes [to those empires] and whether they or the democracies -- particularly the United States and Britain -- would establish the norms of the international system that would eventually emerge."

-- "In World War II, we dealt with Nazi Germany, the successor to the Germanic Empires. In the Cold War, we dealt with the Soviet Union, the successor to the tsarist Russian Empire. Now we are grappling with those who followed the Ottomans."

-- "And what of the world after the hundred years' war truly ends? ... [W]e appear to be entering something akin to the Concert of Europe following the Napoleonic Wars. Powers sharing common values are determining that they also share a common interest in other nations reflecting those values.

-- "[I]n classic democratic form, this new international concert appears to be evolving into a kind of party system -- with the United States the leader of the governing party and France the leader of the opposition."

-- "Woodrow Wilson called World War I 'the war to make the world safe for democracy.' He may well have been right, but the war into which he led us is not yet over. It will be soon."

Clay Shirky has some useful observations about the role social software may have played in the Dean debacle in Iowa. Did social software provide a false sense of comfort and reinforcement among a relatively few, who guaged success based on the volume of the already converted, not the number of new converts? Was the mentality behind the strategy of shipping in 3,500 kids (mostly) from around the country, wearing conspicious orange hats, one more of a "movement" rather than a "campaign," as Shirky ponders? In other words, were the Deaniacs drinking their own Kool Aid, and did social software just help dispense it faster? I think Shirkey has a point.

Dean did poorly because not enough people voted for him, and the usual explanations – potential voters changed their minds because of his character or whatever – seem inadequate to explain the Iowa results. What I wonder is whether Dean has accidentally created a movement (where what counts is believing) instead of a campaign (where what counts is voting.)

And (if that’s true) I wonder if his use of social software helped create that problem.

We know well from past attempts to use social software to organize groups for political change that it is hard, very hard, because participation in online communities often provides a sense of satisfaction that actually dampens a willingness to interact with the real world. When you’re communing with like-minded souls, you feel like you’re accomplishing something by arguing out the smallest details of your perfect future world, while the imperfect and actual world takes no notice, as is its custom.

What the "I have a Scream" speech obscured was how badly Dean lost Iowa--he didn't even get HALF of what Kerry got. He tanked--and well before the primordial scream. The problem isn't that the message didn't get out, it was that it only resonated in the echo chamber of progressive circles--helped by social software.

From George Will: No left turn. Excerpt:

This city has, well, distinctive demographics. Reversing the national average, there are twice as many renters (65 percent) as homeowners. Renters, responding to the severe housing shortage that is predictably exacerbated by rent control, predictably demand more controls. They say rent control is a "diversity" measure, preventing the city from being swamped by people willing to pay the market price of housing.

Seventy percent of adults here are single. The city evidently has more dogs than children, and Newsom says the endorsement of a dog -- well, dog owners -- political action committee is much coveted. But strike the word "owners." Gonzalez was the author of the ordinance stipulating that pets will also have "guardians." Can you be arrested for saying just "owner"? Newsom languidly says, "You don't get arrested for much else out here."

The city has about as many camels as Republicans, so Newsom is called a "conservative." This smear gained currency even though Newsom supports "transgender rights," meaning the city pays for its employees' sex change operations, including -- this may be more than you want to know -- expensive hormone treatments. Newsom courted the large LGBTQI constituency, an acronym he can almost explain. It stands for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people, questioners and "intersex." What is that last group? He is not sure.

Newsom does say inflammatory (to "progressives") things like: "You can't redistribute wealth you don't have." And he does not share progressives' enthusiasm for shuffling students around to fine-tune each school's "diversity index." Fewer than 60,000 public school pupils are left, half of whom speak a language other than English at home. Newsom says the high school dropout rate is high, and the average Latino grade is only slightly higher than the African American average of D or D-plus.

San Francisco spends more than any other city on the homeless, so naturally it has more homeless people per capita than any other city. Newsom drafted the "Care Not Cash" bill to provide treatment and housing rather than cash, which attracts the homeless, who use cash injudiciously. Voters loved Newsom's idea, but progressives like Gonzalez and their allies in the judiciary have blocked it.

Thomas Sowell: "As a black man, I am offended when white people take the likes of Al Sharpton seriously -- or pretend to."

Transcript: Democratic Presidential Debate in N.H. (washingtonpost.com):

JENNINGS: Reverend Sharpton, I'd like to ask you a question about domestic policy, if you don't mind.

If during your term as president, if you become the nominee, and you have the opportunity to nominate someone to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, what kind of person would you consider for the job? You can name someone in particular, if you have someone in mind.

And maybe just take a minute or so to give us a little bit about your views on monetary policy.

SHARPTON: Well, first of all, let me say this. I wanted to say to Governor Dean, don't be hard on yourself about hooting and hollering. If I had spent the money you did and got 18 percent, I'd still be in Iowa hooting and hollering.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
So, don't worry about it, Howard.
(LAUGHTER)
DEAN: Thanks, Reverend.
SHARPTON: I think, first of all, we must have a person at the Monetary Fund that is concerned about growth of all, not setting standards that would, in my judgment, protect some and not elevate those that cannot, in my view, expand and come to the levels of development and the levels of where we need to be.

I think part of my problem with how we're operating at this point is that the IMF and the policies that are emanating there do not lead to the expansion that is necessary for our country and our global village to rise to levels that underdeveloped countries and those businesses in this country can have the development policies necessary.

JENNINGS: Forgive me, Reverend Sharpton, but the question was actually about the Federal Reserve Board.

SHARPTON: I thought you said IMF, I'm sorry.

JENNINGS: No, I'm sorry, sir. And what you'd be looking for in a chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

SHARPTON: Oh, in the Federal Reserve Board, I would be looking for someone that would set standards in this country, in terms of our banking, our -- in how government regulates the Federal Reserve as we see it under Greenspan, that we would not be protecting the big businesses; we would not be protecting banking interests in a way that would not, in my judgment, lead toward mass employment, mass development and mass production.

I think that -- would I replace Greenspan, probably. Do I have a name? No.

See this piece, TCS: Tech Central Station - Privatization: The Ultimate "Lockbox" for Social Security, for a discussion about how the "transition cost" that so many of those opposed to privatizing social security fret about is bogus:

Bush-hating economist Brad DeLong has praise for the following argument against Social Security privatization, from Mark A.R. Kleiman:

"privatization proposals actually add hundreds of billions of dollars in extra expenses to the federal budget per year. Which means, of course, hundreds of billions of dollars in additional taxes or national debt. Far from being a free ride, privatization will cost taxpayers dearly."

This is known as the "transition cost" argument, and it is completely bogus. Below is a table that explains why. It shows how Social Security obligations would be paid for, both under the present system and under transition to a system where today's workers are given private accounts instead of paying Social Security taxes.

Read the whole story for a clear explanation on why the transition cost argument is bogus and for why both the left and the right get it wrong when it comes to this issue--and why you should be in favor of privatization anyway.

Catchy (and touching): The Wrong Bananas by Joel and Alex Veitch and Mike Baker

These are hilarious.

"I'm not an expert in politics, but I think it's a bad sign when your speech ends with your aides shooting you with a tranquilizer gun."

A friend recently reminded me that while the Bush Administration is taking credit for Libya's recent decision to dismantle its programs aimed at developing weapons of mass destruction, an homage is due to the courageous and skillful diplomacy of Billy Carter. Here are a few bullet points from his timeline:

Sep 1978: Visits Libya. Why Libya? "The only thing I can say is there is a hell of a lot more Arabians than there is Jews."

14 Jul 1980: Finally registers as a foreign agent of the Libyan government after receiving a $220,000 loan from Libya.

22 Jul 1980: Congress announces intention to hold Billygate hearings. White House admits asking Billy Carter to use influence with Libya to help Americans held hostage in Iran.

The studies that showed that legal action by Big Music were dampening file swapping appear to have been flawed. See: Perhaps the industry would be better served hiring engineers rather than lawyers and increase their pace of innovation. Excerpt:

What's clear, though, is that until the music industry gets fully behind online music sales, file-swappers will flock to next-generation sites like eDonkey -- which has seen 150% growth in the past year, according to independent tallies by both BayTSP and BigChampagne.

"This stuff is not going to go away," Gartner's McGuire says. "The industry needs to provide a compelling legal alternative." Until that happens, pirates will continue to rule the online music seas.

I agree with this post, Sorrow, Schadenfreude, and Skyrocketing from Fraydog Blog Log: "I'm kind of depressed about Dean's showing in Iowa right now. I was kind of hoping that he was going to be the nominee, for real."

I too was hoping that Dean would be nominated because he had no chance, but yesterday was a very bad day for Dr. Dean. Placing third was bad enough--though it was something he could have come back from. However that speech was a total meltdown. Can you imagine ANY of our past presidents delivering a speech like that? First, it suggested a level of denial. Second, he seemed to be making a purely emotional plea to his base while coming off as virtually insane to those that he needs to win over just to win the nomination, let alone the general election. National Review does a good job surveying the wreckage.

I'm not happy about it, but it was one of the most remarkable performances I can remember seeing since General James Stockdale accepted the VP slot from the Reform party in 1992.

Apparently the Dean blog crowd is blaming the "right-wing" but Dean has no one to blame for this but himself.

Thanks to Price Roe for spotting these quotes:

1) Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. - Mark Twain
2) I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
- Winston Churchill
3) A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw
4) A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. -- G. Gordon Liddy
5) Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. -- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)
6) Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. -- Douglas Casey, Classmate of W.J. Clinton at Georgetown U. (1992)
7) Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. -- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
9) Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. -- Ronald Reagan (1986)
11) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. -- P.J. O'Rourke
12) If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist. -- Joseph Sobran, Editor of the National Review at one time (1995)
13) In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. -- Voltaire (1764)
14) Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you. -- Pericles (430 B.C.)
17) The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. -- Ronald Reagan
18) The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. -- Winston Churchill
19) The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -- Mark Twain
20) The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

James Cramer, co-host of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer and self-confessed Democrat, wrote recently that "The economic policies pursued by this president have been a stunning empirical success." This view seems in stark contrast to the almost universal view of Democratic presidential hopefuls who have been unrelenting in their attacks against the Bush economic plan, calling it a "failure" at nearly every stump stop. But as we continue to grow out of the Clinton/Gore recession, as the unemployment rate continues to fall, as interest rates remain low, as inflation stays in check, and as the stock market booms, it will be increasingly difficult for Democratic presidential hopefuls to sell us on the "failed Bush economic plan." It's a thin soup indeed.

Since they can't point to the normal statistics of economic health, the Democrats have restored to scare-mongering about the deficit. Not a one clearly explains what the problem with deficits is or why balancing the federal budget is more important at the moment than bringing the national economy back to health. Instead, the deficit seems to be this evil bogeyman that Bush irresponsibly unleashed with his tax cuts. Voters would be forgiven for thinking that Democrats care more about the federal budget and the national economy.

But of course they don't. Don't believe the Democrats when they decry the evils of deficits--they are being dishonest. They are using this to assail the Bush tax cuts and to grasp at any way to spin the economy into a negative for the President.

For example, Howard Dean wants to repeal all of the Bush tax cuts saying "We can't afford them." And in classic Dean fashion he introduces the element of paranoia: "I think their [Republicans] principal motivation is to undo the pillars of the New Deal, particularly Medicare and Social Security, by making the budget deficit so big that those programs can't be sustained."

OK Howard, so what would you do to REDUCE the deficit?

Or you Dick Gephardt? You want to repeal "the budget-busting tax cuts," what would you do to tackle the deficit?

Or you John Kerry? You've complained that "In just over 1,000 days in office, George Bush has turned a $5 trillion surplus into record setting deficits," and that "We can cut the deficit in half in four years, give Americans access to the health care coverage they need, invests in education and homeland security without doing it on the backs of our elderly, children and families." Really? What's your plan?

Well it turns out that these folks are misleading Americans at best--lying at worst--about the deficit. The National Taxpayers Union & National Taxpayers Union Foundation just released a study that shows that if elected ALL of the 8 Democratic contenders would make the deficit WORSE if allow to enact their own policies.

That's right--whatever money they'd pour into the government's coffers by raising taxes would be spent and then some by their proposed federal programs. While the Bush tax cuts are projected to reduce 2004 revenues by $135 billion, the average spending increase proposed by the Democrats is $479 billion! That's right: even if they eliminated all of the tax cuts, they spend that revenue several times over.

Here is an excerpt from the press release:

"All the Presidential challengers have to varying degrees disparaged the current size of federal deficits," said study author and NTUF Policy Analyst Drew Johnson. "Yet, our examination of the candidates' spending promises reveals an inconvenient fact: the deficit potholes they're complaining about on the road to the White House would only deepen under their own policies."

The NTUF study systematically examined the fiscal policy implications of the eight contenders' agendas, using campaign and third-party sources (like the Congressional Budget Office) to assign a cost to each budget proposal offered by the candidates. For actual legislation that the candidates have endorsed, the study also relies on NTUF's BillTally project, a computerized accounting system that has, since 1991, tabulated the cost or savings of every piece of legislation introduced in Congress with a net annual impact of $1 million or more.

It's worth reading the whole release--and study.

It's easy for Democrats to talk down the economy and Bush bash without having to actually offer a better solution, but voters should demand better in November.

Lessig on blogs in Wired. This excerpt is interesting:

But when done right, as the Howard Dean campaign apparently is doing, the blog is a tool for building community. The trick is to turn the audience into the speaker. A well-structured blog inspires both reading and writing. And by getting the audience to type, candidates get the audience committed. Engagement replaces reception, which in turn leads to real space action. The life of the Dean campaign on the Internet is not really life on the Internet. It's the activity in real space that the Internet inspires.

None of this works unless the blog community is authentic. And that requires that members feel they own their gabbing space. A managed community works about as well as a managed economy. So the challenge is to find a way to build community without the community feeling built.

Stumbled upon this interesting post on blogging.

During the year, the blogosphere doubled in size, and began to mature into a true alternative medium for information and connection. My nominations for the most important ideas of the year in blogs & blogging are: More...

Facinating discussion on "Meet the Press" about the impact of blogs and the Internet on politics. Here's some of the discussion:

MR. RUSSERT: He now loves Iowa. One of the things that we will find out is just how truly effective is the Internet in this presidential race? Johns Hopkins University has already been studying it. Look at this: “The Use Of Blogs In The 2004 Presidential Election,” a study by Johns Hopkins University. And now for the computer illiterate crowd, this is a blog. This is Howard Dean’s blog. Here’s Wesley Clark’s blog. Here’s George W. Bush’s blog. And here to help us is Chuck Todd of National Journals Hotline.” What is a blog.

MR. TODD: The actual term itself, by the way, is short for Web log. And, you know, you drop the W and you get the blog. I’ll just describe what Howard Dean’s blog since it’s the one that has the most traction and the most attention. It’s essentially like a digital bulletin board saying, “Hey, look, this is what we’re up to today. This is our message today. These are some of the things we’re doing today.” And then it allows a section to comment about what’s going on during the day. And this is where you find out who the bloggers are. These are these troops of people—Howard Dean, on any given posting, will have 150 to 200 comments per these posting. That means there’s probably about 80 to 100 people at any one time, they’re just chitchatting. It could be that they’re immediately responding to seeing Dean on television or they’re probably blogging right now while they’re watching us talking about them right now. No doubt probably they’re getting mad at us. They’re very anti-media. Reading the Dean blog is like reading Republican message points from years past and they’re anger toward the media. They felt very mad at NBC News and Lisa Myers over the last couple of days over the story, felt like somehow NBC News took his comments out of context. So it is a little...

MR. RUSSERT: Which Lisa Myers did not...

MR. TODD: No, not at all, but it was...

MR. RUSSERT: ...and the Dean campaign will acknowledge that.

MR. TODD: They acknowledge it. They did, but...

MR. RUSSERT: In effect, it’s a cyber-bulletin board.

MR. TODD: Yeah, exactly.

MR. RUSSERT: But now people who don’t like Howard Dean have occasionally gone up there and said some negative things and they are called trolls.

MR. TODD: You love this term, don’t you?

MR. RUSSERT: Correct?

MR. TODD: Yes, it is the term.

MR. RUSSERT: Roger Simon, when I say troll, I think of you.

MR. SIMON: Well, thank you very much.

MR. TODD: You’re a blogger, Simon.

MR. RUSSERT: But you’re a blogger.

MR. SIMON: I am a blogger sort of. I mean, the difference between—look, a true blog is I woke up this morning, I decided to skip chem class, now I want to write about the last episode of “Friends.” That’s what blogs are. You know, it’s people talking to each other. My site is actually written columns. There’s a difference between writing and typing basically. Well, I mean, the theory between blogging is half correct. It’s everybody has an opinion and then the other half is: And everyone else wants to read about it. That’s not necessarily true. When I first put up the site, it got all these responses. I thought people wanted me to respond to them. They don’t. They want to talk to each other. And that has been the power that Dean has tapped into.

MR. BROWNSTEIN: A long time before the Internet, Henry Luce said, “A magazine creates a community of interest that it did not know it existed.” And the blog does something of the same thing, but I think there’s a broader political question here, Tim. If you think of the blog as part of the overall phenomenon of the Internet growing in importance in politics, one question that has to be raised looking at Dean’s success is whether what it takes to succeed on the Internet and to generate this passion is inimical to what it takes to win a general election and to win over a lot of voters who are less passionate. Does it take a message and a persona that is so cutting and polarizing to attract attention on the Internet that you will then have trouble in November winning over the Senate. I mean, in the end, you need 50 million votes or so to win a presidential election and that’s a lot more people than you have at any given moment signing on to your blog.

MR. TODD: Well, building off of Ron’s point, you know, this whole growth of the Internet for Dean support, it was exponential in the summer and in the fall, and you know what? It’s really slowed. This week, you know, they throw up these fund-raising goals and they do it as a bat. It’s like the old Red Cross goals where you see the progress as you go. They had the Sweep The Seven. On February 3, 700,000, Sweep The Seven. You know what? It was one of their slowest fund-raising bats we’d seen. They didn’t allow the goal by midnight Friday to even show up. They changed it. You know, they realized something wasn’t working, they changed it to say, “Thank you, Tom Harkin” and they made it to about 800,000.

MR. RUSSERT: You know, it’s so striking to me. When we had the big Internet bubble and everyone was saying, “The Internet’s the wave of the future and all the brick-and-mortar businesses are in trouble”—and the AOL Time Warner merger and on and on, and suddenly people said, “How do we make money off the Internet?” The question here is: Will the people who use the Internet, and talk to the blogs, will they show up on caucus night? Will they show up to vote? We have not seen it. We do not know. If they do, Howard Dean will win big. Ironically in all this, I was reading New Yorker magazine the other night, and at the end of 2002, Howard Dean himself said, “What’s a blog?”

From at Free2Innovate, some pieces on standards setting bodies:

Are Standards-Setting Bodies Too Slow to Stop Spam?

Wild Conspiracy Theories

ICANN's Go-Slow Approach Fuels Global Critics

Fantastic feature in New York Magazine featuring Maxine Friedman! Maxine is getting duly deserved attention for her great work in building Lead21 in New York, an organization that I am involved with in San Francisco. Go Maxie!

The Convert
Maxine Friedman is just the sort of person you'd want to help you sell any message. And it's just as well, because Friedman is here to convert. Tall, blonde and glamorous, she moved to Manhattan in 2002 to take a promotion within the marketing division of CB Richard Ellis, the corporate-real-estate firm. More noticeable to her fellow Republicans, however, Friedman came here to spread the gospel of a California-based conservative group called Lead 21.

Lead 21 was founded in serious Clinton-Gore country--San Francisco--three years ago. "It was about planting a flag in the Bay Area, saying that you don't have to be afraid if you want to be Republican," Friedman explains. Lead 21 mixers were a place for serious conservatives to trade ideas with Dinesh D'Souza and former California governor Pete Wilson.

The group targets affluent young professionals, particularly those in the media and finance. While Friedman, 30, fits seamlessly into that crowd, she does have views that tend to raise eyebrows among some of her new friends in the city. "I have been a Christian--I'd say a strong Christian--for about four years. I'm not a Jerry Falwell, crazy, in-your-face Evangelical," she says. "But I'm scared a little bit for our country. I'm scared about the slipping social ethic."

Friedman, thus, is firmly anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. "The whole gay-rights thing is hard for me," she says sheepishly. "I have a ton of gay friends. I have a gay aunt. I have a transvestite uncle. I want what's best for them. It's tough for me. But, you know, I believe what the Bible says. That's the Word for me."

Friedman was raised in Los Altos, California, an only child, but part of a big, and very Democratic, family. "My mom's one of thirteen children, a big Catholic family. My parents were strong liberal Democrats. And I was, too, growing up."

Her "epiphany moment" came during the federal lockout of 1993. "All I could think of was how much money they were wasting, and I kept getting angrier and angrier about it. I felt like Bill Clinton was just so weak. He's articulate. He's a good orator. But he never seemed totally wholehearted on any issue. He was so soft."

Friedman insists that her political views are not a problem for her as she explores life in the East. "If anything, I find that people in New York kind of like the fact that you have an opinion. I really haven't faced too many arguments at dinner parties so far," she says. "But maybe that's because I'm hanging out with too many Republicans."

I try to avoid reading most of the NYT's editorial page when at all possible, but occasionally I slip up when I'm on the hunt for a Safire or Brooks column--and regret it. Even when their are useful points made, the tone tends to be off, as in Take the leading graph:

Americans are smitten by the idea that new technologies will revolutionize life as we know it and greatly expand human potential. This was true of the inventor Thomas Edison, who predicted in the 1920's that the motion picture camera would transform public schooling and might even replace textbooks. An early broadcasting executive, Margaret Cuthbert, made a similar leap when she envisioned radio as "a great national headquarters for women," which would elevate housewives everywhere through high-minded programming like lectures and university courses. Instead of edifying housewives, however, radio gave them long-running melodramas that were dubbed soap operas because they entertained while selling laundry detergent.

The hypothesis: technology hasn't revolutionized life as we know it and hasn't greatly expanded human potential. The proof: Thomas Edison thought the motion picture camera would revolutionize education but he was wrong. Come on. Never mind that motion picture cameras and the TV cameras that followed them have revolutionized many, many other aspects of life as we know it and has greatly expanded human potential in innumerable ways. And by the way, is it a shortcoming of the technology (and its inventors) that video technology hasn't revolutionized education, or is it a shortcoming of the education establishment, which happens to be one of the least innovative industries of the last century? Edison knew his technology, he perhaps didn't understand what would become of the education industry.

The point about radio is equally silly. Would you rather be a woman before or after the radio was invented? Women have done fairly well, despite the arduous challenge of having to contend with soap operas, and technology deserves a fair amount of credit. (By the way, those hucksters selling soap enabled those programs to be enjoyed for free. And oh, housewives--and husbands--actually do benefit from buying laundry detergent--it's much preferable than the alternative. Thanks to innovation and profit motive, the invention and selling of laundry detergent greatly reduced the amount of time it took to clean clothes.) Housewives have especially benefited from technologies, such as vacuum cleaners, dishwashing and laundry machines, refrigerators, electric ovens and the like that have cut the time needed to clean a house and prepare a meal down to a fraction of what it once was--while radio programs (and the TVs that followed) perhaps made their days cleaning the house alone more enjoyable while the soap they sold freed up even more time.

I'm also bothered by the next graph:

The story of technology is the story of noble aspirations overtaken by a hard-core huckster reality. This process is on vivid display in the debate about electronic junk mail, which makes up more than half of all the e-mail that travels on the Internet. The communications breakthrough that was supposed to link people and information in revolutionary new ways is turning into a forum for digital detritus that pushes Viagra, pornography and penile enhancements.

Now I'm not fan of spam and I've written that I think there are real structural problems with email--and it is no wonder that most kids don't even use it (using IM instead.) But please. If email is a "forum for digital detritus" then why can't many of us live without it? There are certainly costs to using email--but spam is not even the biggest. One needs a device (often a PC) and Internet access, for starters. These cost time and money. Spam unfortunately adds to the process cost of using email, but who among us can't hit the delete key?

There are many over-inflated claims about the potential of technology, but the truth has been that the impact of technology over the long term has more often than not exceeded our expectations, even wildest dreams, rather than falling short. Such myopia is unfortunate from a newspaper that's been around to cover the fantastic impact that innovation has had on the human condition--but fortunately it is not a myopia that most Americans are afflicted with, for the first line his piece is probably true: "Americans are smitten by the idea that new technologies will revolutionize life as we know it and greatly expand human potential." Smitten with good reason.

I want to save the birds, but we live in a world in which we often need to make rational trade-offs. Who would choose to sacrifice millions of human lives to save thousands of birds? Environmentalists, that's who. I'm in favor of rational environmentalism, but irrational environmentalism can be quite deadly.

See this piece in Reason. Excerpt:

In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson asked, "Who has decided--who has the right to decide--for the countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power."

Banning DDT saved thousands of raptors over the past 30 years, but outright bans and misguided fears about the pesticide cost the lives of millions of people who died of insect-borne diseases like malaria. The 500 million people who come down with malaria every year might well wonder what authoritarian made that decision.

Despite showing some integrity for reporting the vindication of Lomborg, as well as the campaign against him (unlike the Washington Post), the NYT has clearly show bias by running this piece (Study Says Global Warming May Spark Mass Extinction) from the AP without so much as a faint whisper critical analysis.

The sham Danish ethics panel claims against Bjorn Lomborg have been justly rebuked by the Danish government. But while the NYT covered the recent vindication, the Washington Post has not.

Excerpt from NYT:

A Danish government agency has concluded that a scientific ethics panel erred earlier this year when it ruled that a popular book on environmental trends displayed ''scientific dishonesty.''

The book, ''The Skeptical Environmentalist,'' by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician, rebuts contentions by environmental groups that the planet is in peril and has been acclaimed by conservative groups and some scientists since it was published in English in 2001.

Last January, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty said Dr. Lomborg had used ''systematic one-sidedness'' in selecting data. The report led to calls for Dr. Lomborg's removal from the directorship of a government agency that examines environmental regulations.

But last week the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation said the committee had exhibited ''significant neglect'' by failing to identify where the author had been dishonest, and had been ''clearly wrong'' for failing to offer Dr. Lomborg a chance to respond before its findings were published.

The Onion | Inexorable March Of Time Brings TV's Jerry Mathers One Step Closer To Death

HOLLYWOOD, CA--The inexorable march of time, the prison into which all humankind is born, brought Leave It To Beaver star Jerry Mathers--and all of us--one step closer to the grave Monday.

More at The Onion.