Mark Kleiman points to a New York Times article about moves at DARPA, the Pentagon's research funding agency, to cut funding to long-term, academic research in computer science, in favor of shorter-term industrial development projects. A number of prominent computer scientists are quoted in the article, sounding quite incensed at DARPA's supposed shortsightedness in failing to renew and expand their usual grants. Buried towards the end, however, is this telling tidbit:

Still, a number of top scientists argue that the Pentagon's shift in priorities could not have come at a worse time. Most American companies have largely ended basic research and have begun to outsource product research and development extensively even as investments in Asia and Europe are rising quickly.

Now, those of us who were involved in computer science research back in the boom years of the '90's, when industry was spending like crazy on it, might scratch our heads a bit at this claim. You see, I'm trying to recall if any of these same professors back then used to chide DARPA for funding so much CS research, and reassure them that the government's money could best be spent elsewhere, since industry was easily taking up the slack in the CS area.

I clearly recall some academics arguing that industry's massive funding of CS research required a matching injection of government funds. I seem to remember the occasional claim that government funding had to keep pace with industry, to avoid private corporations "capturing" the expected massively lucrative fruits of basic CS research by claiming intellectual property rights on them. Maybe somebody might have argued that the surge in industrial funding of CS research was a sign that the research area had a lot of potential, and was hence deserving of government largesse. Or that it proved the economic importance of research to the hi-tech industry, which therefore needed still more government funding of research to help it stave off competition from other countries.

But I somehow can't seem to recall a single one of the professors quoted in the article arguing back then that government funding is most needed when industry isn't bothering to supply much funding of its own, and therefore that the abundance of industrial funding at the time was a sign that government research funds were less urgent, and could safely be cut back without harming the field or the economy.

Then again, perhaps it's just my poor memory.

Columbia University has just released a report on the results of its investigation into the conduct of certain of its professors of Middle Eastern Studies. The investigating committee consisted largely of faculty conspicuously sympathetic to the professors in question. And, indeed, the report they produced largely exonerates the professors of wrongdoing, and even criticizes the accusers, who have themselves been accused of trying to undermine the professors' "academic freedom".

Let's take for granted (I certainly do) that the accusations against these professors--all of them virulent, even militant critics of the state of Israel--have more to do with the politicized nature of their scholarship than with any real or alleged misconduct. If one were a believer in "academic freedom", then any discussion of the legitimacy of these accusations would end there. But as I've explained before, I consider "academic freedom" to be primarily a cover for eviscerating academic standards, and allowing political propagandists, purveyors of pseudo-scholarly nonsense, or just plain useless deadwood to keep their cushy academic sinecures. There remains the question, though: how is a university supposed to defend academic standards against "academic freedom"?

University administrators are often confronted with this question when an embarrassing faculty member--or sometimes an entire department--is noticed to be producing and teaching propaganda, or nonsense, or nothing at all, instead of serious scholarship. The standard approaches are (1) allowing (or quietly encouraging) more competent scholars to develop somewhere else on campus, whence they can marginalize and overshadow the cranks until the latter retire or leave of their own volition; or (2) giving the offending cranks a push, by digging up "offenses" on their part to justify active measures against them. Ward Churchill's treatment was an example of the latter approach--after the politically incendiary nature of his scholarship became embarrassing to the university, numerous incidents of plagiarism and poor scholarship that were previously papered over suddenly came to light, allowing the university administration to justify taking action. In another case, a professor who openly espoused Nazism was turfed out for excessive absenteeism.

Likewise, the Columbia professors' accusers were clearly trying to give the university an excuse to clean house in the Middle Eastern Studies department. Unfortunately, the university administration refused to take the hint, and instead threw its weight behind the professors' "academic freedom". The result will be more garbage pseudo-scholarship emanating from the Columbia Middle Eastern Studies faculty.

Defenders of "academic freedom" will no doubt argue that it can protect outstanding scholars with controversial political views. (Indeed, some of them will make that very argument in this case.) But in practice, those who are more interested in, say, political conformity than in good scholarship are perfectly willing to denigrate good scholarship in the name of political conformity--while using "academic freedom" to protect politically conformist bad scholarship. "Academic freedom" is thus a much more powerful weapon in the hands of the defenders of bad scholarship than for the defenders of good scholarship. It's bad for academia, and deserves to be discredited.

Eugene Volokh and Mark A.R. Kleiman have been debating a somewhat grisly topic: whether it would be just and moral to torture a heinous criminal (say, a serial killer of children) to death, as retribution for his crimes. They appear to have come to agreement, in the end, that purely retributive punishment of this sort is morally just, but nevertheless operationally impracticable, for various reasons.

Needless to say, I disagree. I support severe measures--such as capital punishment, and even torture--when necessary for legitimate purposes, such as deterrence or prevention of even worse misdeeds. But I strongly oppose mistreating criminals merely out of vengeful cruelty.

I've already articulated my views on these issues at length, and there's not much point in any event in arguing over such fundamental moral disagreements. But I feel compelled to respond to what Kleiman and Volokh apparently consider the clinching argument in favor of retributive justice. As Kleiman puts it:

[C]ould you explain to me why we kept chasing Nazi war criminals well into the 1990s? Was the Third Reich likely to come back? Were we hoping to deter the next round of mass murderers?

Perhaps it's the perpetually warm, sunny weather in Los Angeles that's convinced UCLA professors Kleiman and Volokh that monsters comparable to the Nazi war criminals are purely relics of the past. But those of us with a darker--and, I believe, far more realistic--view of the world see the Nuremberg trials, and subsequent Nazi-hunting, as a serious exercise in deterrence. That's presumably why grand, public trials were held, rather than standard military court martials. That's why the accusers, judges and executioners were from the victorious allies who defeated the Nazis, not from the nations and peoples that the Nazis overran and decimated. That's why the slogan of the Nazi-hunters is "never again"--rather than, say, "torture the bastards". That's why the governments that sheltered Nazi war criminals from prosecution were not those given to expressing horror at the idea of retribution, but rather those, like Syria's and Argentina's, given to voicing sympathy with Nazi ideas. And that's why the iconic monstrosity of the Nazis is used regularly today, along with the stories of similar monsters who got off scot-free, such as Stalin and Pol Pot, to call us to action against contemporary horrors--whereas the fates of those whose cruelties were brutally avenged, such as, say, Italy's Mussolini, Rumania's Ceausescu, or Nicaragua's Somoza, are rarely, if ever, used as moral exemplars of any kind.

Perhaps it's naive to think that power-hungry, megalomaniacal sadists would be deterred by the threat of being brought to justice. Then again, perhaps it's naive to think that everyday criminals are so deterred, either. Obviously, criminals of all types do what they do because deterrence has failed to intimidate them--and perhaps some are, indeed undeterrable.

What we do know, however, is that Hitler is said to have remarked, just prior to his invasion of Poland, "who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" And the Nazis certainly went to considerable effort and expense to keep the scale and many of the details of the Holocaust as secret as possible--even when the Nazi empire was at the height of its power, openly committed to many frankly brutal ends, and in a state of total war with virtually all the countries that could possibly threaten it. Perhaps the fear of being called to account for their crimes did weigh on the minds of the Nazi killers, after all. And if even they felt at least some shred of culpability-inspired inhibition, then who else might?

Should doctors be using computers?
The New York Times often goes out of its way to make it clear that everything bad that happens, or that might be happening, is about Bush and his administration. One example is this article entitled, "Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News". In paragraph 12 they tell us that this practice "also occurred in the Clinton administration". I guess that was the Previous Age.

But what especially upsets me now is that the Times administration has decided that in order to aid their Bush-bashing, they have to come out against the computerization of medical records. At least for now. As I've mentioned before, I have a long standing interest in this subject. I think it is absurd that computers are not used more to keep track of patients' medical records and of the decisions of their physicians. Obviously this should be computerized, and obviously it should be done well and not badly.

The article begins with a really damning attack against Bush: "The Bush administration and many health experts have declared that the nation's health care system needs to move quickly from paper records and prescriptions into the computer age." We are not told just when the administration declared this, nor what they might mean by "quickly". We are told that Dr. David Brailer, the administration's national coordinator for health information technology, took issue with "the suggestion that the Bush administration is encouraging a headlong rush to invest in health information technology". We are not told who made this "suggestion", nor are we given any evidence for it. Brailer says that "for the next year, ... his policy efforts will be to try to encourage the health industry to agree on common computer standards, product certification and other measures that could become the foundation for digital patient records and health computer systems." That certainly sounds like a headlong rush to me.

Just why is the New York Times so afraid of doctors using computers? The excuse is three articles that appeared Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association; all of the abstracts, and the text of one of them, can be read for free. These papers apparently "cast doubt on the wisdom of betting heavily that information technology can transform health care anytime soon".

[The paper by Koppel et. al.] found 22 ways that a computer system for physicians could increase the risk of medication errors. Most of these problems, the authors said, were created by poorly designed software that too often ignored how doctors and nurses actually work in a hospital setting.

The likelihood of errors was increased, the paper stated, because information on patients' medications was scattered in different places in the computer system. To find a single patient's medications, the researchers found, a doctor might have to browse through up to 20 screens of information.

Among the potential causes of errors they listed were patient names' being grouped together confusingly in tiny print, drug dosages that seem arbitrary and computer crashes.

... The study did not try to assess whether the risks of computer systems outweigh the benefits, like the elimination of errors that had been caused by paper records and prescriptions.

In fact, the paper tells us (although the Times does not) that, "Published studies report that CPOE reduces medication errors up to 81%." This is the benefit we apparently get even from a program that is horribly designed and atrociously implemented. The program in question has been in use since 1997, presumably as part of Bush's headlong rush.

Dr. Koppel tells the Times that he is "skeptical of the belief that broad adoption of information technology could deliver big improvements in health care". I guess he wasn't present when my sister took our father to the hospital and had to describe (over and over again) his medical history of cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's, and the medication he was taking for each of these. I guess Dr. Koppel was never present in an emergency room where patients similar to my father come in -- often by themselves -- all the time.

The JAMA issue also has an editorial that propounds at great length the remarkable insight that people designing computer systems should be very familiar with the needs and the practices of the intended users. It also asserts that, "health care ... is from an organizational standpoint probably the most complex enterprise in modern society." This is highly questionable.

Another paper examines more generally computer support systems used by doctors. Or rather, it examines a whole lot of studies that examined these systems. It concludes: "Many CDSSs improve practitioner performance. To date, the effects on patient outcomes remain understudied and, when studied, inconsistent." The Times article didn't have room for this conclusion, but they did say:

[The editorial] found that most of the glowing assessments of those clinical decision support systems came from technologists who often had a hand in designing the systems.

"In fact, 'grading oneself' was the only factor that was consistently associated with good evaluations," observed the journal's editorial ...".

This last statement from the editorial isn't true. Other factors given involve whether or not practitioners used the system, the usability and integration of the system into practitioner workflow, practitioner acceptance of computer recommendations, and the presence of automatic prompting. And the authors point out that there are reasons beside (obvious) bias why people who are involved in both evaluating and designing a system might produce a system that evaluates better.

Of course, the Times provides token balance by experts. But it makes sure to tell us that "even those experts conceded that the articles raised some good points."

It would be nice if the Times would tell us what, exactly, should be done. How much longer should we expect it to take to develop these computer systems, or should we just give up on the absurd idea of doctors using computers? Perhaps we should take away those dangerous, flawed computer systems from nuclear reactors and air traffic control. Perhaps New York Times writers should go back to using typewriters pencil and paper to record their work.

"Why is everyone mad at the mainstream media?", is the subtitle of a recent New Yorker article by renowned journalist and author Nicholas Lemann. "Mainstream journalists want to think that the public is aware of--and respects--the boundaries that separate real journalism from entertainment, and opinion, and propaganda, and marketing," he writes. It appears, though, that "instead, the public....doesn’t accept that [real journalism] really is distinct and superior." Lemann, deeply concerned, set out to investigate.

And where would this esteemed scribe go to study the American news-consuming public, and to try to understand its newfound disdain for "real journalism"? Intrepid fact-finder that he is, Lemann seeks out....Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times; Ann Marie Lipinski, editor-in-chief of the Chicago Tribune; Leonard Downie, Jr., editor-in-chief of the Washington Post; Jim Kelly, managing editor of Time magazine; James Warren, the deputy managing editor for features at the Tribune; Don Wycliff, the Tribune’s public editor; Neal Shapiro, the president of NBC News; and--for a couple of paragraphs,three-quarters of the way through the piece--a single non-journalist: Ed Gillespie, former chair of the Republican National Committee.

Of course, those were only the interviewees Lemann actually quoted in the article. He may have talked to more people, since he mentions that he "spoke to the heads of several large news organizations". According to him, "all of them maintained that they get attacked from both political sides, and agreed that both the amplitude and the frequency of the attacks seem to be increasing." Generally, though, the editors were baffled as to the causes of "the constant low hum of political objection to what they do." Keller offered, "I think conservatives feel this way in part because for years they’ve been told they should feel this way." Warren "was frustrated that what seems obvious to him and his colleagues evidently doesn’t to their audience." Says Wycliff: "I just think the people out there who write to me, who call me, they do not have the governors on their behavior that we have in our industry."

According to Lemann, "[t]his is what journalists in the mainstream media are starting to worry about: what if people don’t believe in us, don’t want us, anymore?" He set out to answer this question, asked a bunch of fellow journalists, and got nowhere. Yet the answer was right there, in plain sight, in his own magazine article--if only he'd made the tiniest effort to look at it, for once in his life, from a slightly different perspective.

The controversy surrounding a recent Los Angeles Times article by Korea correspondent Barbara Demick suggests that the practice of journalism in America may be in for a momentous change. Conservative bloggers have pummeled Demick for the article, in which a North Korean official cheerfully defends his government's record, completely unchallenged. She's even been compared to Walter Duranty, the notorious New York Times journalist who filed glowing dispatches about Stalinist Russia during the Great Terror of the 1930's.

Well, it turns out that the story isn't that simple. Apparently, Demick has written at length about the horrors of the North Korean Regime after all. Then there's this article, from this past fall, in which Demick ruminates on the difficulty of reporting on North Korea while being barred from the country. And now, a few months later, we read Demick obediently parroting the North Korean government's propaganda.

I believe what we have here is a classic example of the foreign correspondent's version of a "source greaser". A couple of years ago, when it was revealed that CNN had prettified its coverage of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in return for "access", I pointed out that domestic journalists do this sort of thing all the time, buttering up sources in return for juicy tidbits. It's hardly surprising, then, that reporters traveling abroad pack a similarly lax set of scruples, when it comes to getting information about countries where the flow of information is tightly controlled by the government. I strongly suspect that Barbara Demick is playing this game--filing some obsequious reports about North Korea in the hope of getting a journalist's visa, where (she imagines) she can get the real scoop on the country.

What's interesting about this case is that it demonstrates the way the collapse of the media establishment (of which blogs are only one part) has opened up journalists' practices--including source-greasers--to withering scrutiny. As a result, many standard journalistic practices--source-greasers among them--may now be impossible to get away with.

That's not a bad thing. Source-greasers are part of an inherently dishonest transaction, whose only beneficiaries are the journalist and the source. The source gets both flattering press and the opportunity to mislead the public by feeding the journalist "scoops" of his or her choice, and the journalist gets preferential access to these scoops. The public is the clear loser from this type of transaction, and its abolition can only improve journalism.

In the case of foreign reporting, scrutiny of journalistic practices is particularly difficult, because the audience is inherently less well-informed about the topic, and therefore less able to assess the credibility of the journalists. But if the CNN and LA Times cases are any indication, even foreign correspondents may soon be constrained by media watchdogs to report in something resembling an honest fashion. That would certainly be a tremendous improvement.

Elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, democratization in Egypt, pro-democracy and anti-Syrian protests toppling the government in Lebanon, even some democratic noises in Saudi Arabia....is George W. Bush's grand plan--to counter Islamist terror by toppling Saddam Hussein, thus igniting democratic revolutions across the Arab world--succeeding?

There are actually three parts to that question:

Are recent events in the aforementioned countries manifestations of a wave of democratic revolutions sweeping across the Arab world?

Is US policy--in particular, the invasion of Iraq--responsible for them?

Should they be regarded as positive developments from the point of view of American interests?

Conservatives are generally inclined to answer "yes" to all three questions. Their star witness is Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt--not exactly a paragon of the democratic spirit--whom the Washington Post's David Ignatius nevertheless quoted as saying,

It's strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq....I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world.

Interestingly, the left offers a fair bit of qualified agreement--including even some credit to the Bush doctrine and its application in Iraq. There is general admiration for the elections there and for the new post-Arafat order among the Palestinians; particular satisfaction over Mubarak's concessions in Egypt; and widespread skepticism only regarding prospects in Lebanon. (Particularly amusing is Flynt Leverett's New York Times Op-Ed warning about the possible disastrous consequences of Syria losing control of Lebanon. He warns that the US might have trouble "containing Hezbollah without on-the-ground Syrian management"--as if Syria weren't Hezbollah's primary lifeline.)

In fact, leftist skeptics are correct in not swallowing conservative triumphalism whole--democracy is far from a done deal in any of these countries. Their skepticism, however, isn't necessarily wisely distributed.

Possibly the most promising case is Lebanon, which was at least somewhat democratic before civil war broke out in 1976, and whose current dictatorial government is foreign-imposed. Its foreign occupier, Syria, is now straining under American and even some international pressure to leave Lebanon to the Lebanese. For Syria, the fall of Saddam Hussein meant the elimination of a major source of distraction from Syria's misdeeds, and of much-needed oil-smuggling revenue.

On the other hand, the Syrians have enormous incentive not to give up so easily--their economy is heavily dependent on its plunder of more prosperous Lebanon--and a long record of being as ruthless as they need to be. If Syria were to react to Lebanese rebellion not by withdrawing its troops, but rather by sending its tanks into the streets of Beirut, it's highly doubtful that there would be any significant Lebanese resistance, and foreign intervention--American or Israeli--is no more likely. Driving Syria out of Lebanon will require much more than a few civilian protests--sustained economic, political, and perhaps even military pressure may be necessary. Fortunately, Syria's government is in a very weak position, and Europe and America are unusually united in this effort.

The new government in Iraq has, in some ways, better prospects than the Lebanese democrats--after all, a supportive American occupation is much less of an obstacle than Syrian hegemony. But Iraq's population is at least as fragmented as Lebanon's, and has an even worse historical record of hostility. Moreover, Iraq's domineering neighbor, Iran, is as ruthless as Syria, and much more resilient to Western pressure. American troops can head off an actual invasion, and help suppress terrorist uprisings. But they can't prevent Iraq's government from disintegrating into ethnic, tribal or regional warfare, or falling into Iran's orbit quasi-voluntarily.

At least Iraq's democracy is off to a fairly promising start. Egypt's and Saudi Arabia's token gestures towards democracy are neither sincere nor likely to be fruitful. Neither country has anything like a viable democratic opposition, although both are threatened by thriving Islamist terrorist movements. Under the circumstances, democracy's poor prospects in these nations may not actually be an unalloyed misfortune--particularly for the US, but also for citizens of those countries, considering the precedent of Algeria's unfortunately premature democratic experiment in the early 1990s.

As for the Palestinians, their recent exercise in democracy spoke volumes. The new Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, actually has a remarkably good record as a supporter of peace and reconciliation with Israel. But Palestinian society is still clearly dominated by supporters of never-ending, all-out terrorism--and not, needless to say, by democratic reformers--and Abbas has no power even to take significant action against the terrorists, let alone to defeat them. Perhaps one day there will be enough popular support for peace with Israel to mount a credible opposition to the terrorist warlords who effectively rule the territories. But that day still looks very far off.

A typical academic
Bernard Gui is a character in Eco's "The Name of the Rose", but he was also a real person who lived in France in the 14th century. I recently came across
this description of his life, which makes it clear that he was an intellectual
whose career path was similar to that of many modern day academics:

Due to Bernard Gui's health, intellect, and communication skills he was chosen to first study logic in his earlier years, then philosophy where he read commentaries about Aristotle. ... Bernard Gui went on to study theology, became a history writer, helped to build the first library in the province of Toulouse and finally was made inquisitor of Toulouse.

What modern academic would turn down such a choice position?

Proof that Kyoto is a fraud
The justifications for the Kyoto Protocol are essentially fraudulent. If you and I both were both atmospheric scientists and economists, then perhaps I could prove this to you by discussing the chemistry of carbon dioxide and by providing numerous charts and tables. But I'm not and (probably) you're not, and even if I were, it would be wrong for me to try to convince you by using material that you are not qualified to understand. Furthermore, my point is not that the justifications are false -- I don't know if they are or not -- but that they are almost always fraudulent. I will show they are fraudulent by referring to the statements and claims made by the proponents of the protocols; these statements make it absolutely clear that all the proponents I've ever encountered -- if not ignorant and delusional -- are extraordinarily dishonest.

I will first show that Kyoto was a fraud when the conference first occurred in 1997. Then I will show that it continues to be a fraud to this day.


Proof that Kyoto was a fraud

In 1995 the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) issued its Second Assessment Report on climate change. This report was often cited as a one of the main justifications for the Kyoto protocol, for example by Greenpeace. This justification is less than compelling since the IPCC is generally acknowledged to be a left-leaning organization. What makes the justification disingenuous, however, is that the IPCC report contained a summary that itself contained a summary about the scientific consensus at the time:

Our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited because the expected signal is still emerging from the noise of natural variability, and because there are uncertainties in key factors. These include the magnitude and patterns of long­term natural variability and the time­evolving pattern of forcing by, and response to, changes in concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and land surface changes. Nevertheless, the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.

I've put the five main waffle words in bold face. Notice that the statement doesn't even mention global warming, since presumably the consensus for that would have been even weaker. This summary makes it absolutely clear that the scientific consensus did not in any way whatsoever justify taking any action at all on climate change, let alone enormously expensive action.

Now if anyone had justified Kyoto by saying that the justification was in spite of the IPCC report -- as far as I know, nobody did -- and then went on to argue that the report was right-biased (in fact many of its authors argued that the conclusions were left-biased) or out-dated, then this justification might have been respectable. (As far as I know) no one argued this way.


Proof that Kyoto is a fraud

In 2001 the IPCC released it's third report on climate change. Unlike the earlier report, this one had a conclusion blaming human activity for causing a large amount of global warming. (Let us ignore the fact that these conclusions have been contested by some of the authors of the report.) Perhaps now, Kyoto really is justified. But I have not heard one single person say, "Yes, Kyoto was a fraud that was not justified by the scientific consensus at the time, but, as it turns out, it is now justified by the scientific consensus of the current time." Rather, most supporters pretend that the consensus has always been there, and has merely gotten stronger. I believe that most of them are lying to us. Furthermore, they usually try to ignore the costs altogether, and only refer to them at all when forced to. And most incredibly, they hardly ever talk about the benefits, and when they do, they usually admit that the benefits are insignificant.

Why do it then? The reasons ultimately become rather mystical: it is about "respecting the planet", about "taking the first step", etc. "Ecotheology" anyone? And of course all skeptics are dismissed as being Oil Company Shills or fundamentalists or people-guilty-of-politicizing-science.

The real scientists are the most despicable here. A serious expert who believes that human activity is causing disastrous global warming, and who has studied the economic costs of Kyoto and considers them worthwhile payment in exchange for the benefits, would say something like the following:

Kyoto was a fraud, but now we should do it. I have nothing but disgust for the dishonest, theological, politicizing by the Left that makes it so embarrassing for any serious person to support Kyoto. I respect the arguments of Bjorn Lomborg that the money could best be spent on things other than Kyoto, but I disagree, for reasons that require more space than I have available here. I also respect scientists such as Lindzen and Singer who disagree with me on the science part, but the subject has been so badly politicized that I have no idea which of us better represents the consensus. Al Gore is jerk.

Speaking of Gore, I think his support for the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" was a turning point. Most Kyoto people now have so little confidence in their own predictions of global warming that they are preparing an explanation for any eventual global cooling: "It was caused by global warming". And if the weather doesn't seem to be changing much, it will be because the warming and the warming-caused cooling are balancing each other out ... for now. This story points out that the term "global warming" is gradually being replaced by the term "global climate change", and that the nature of the "climate change" in question is endlessly shifting.

Lastly, I refer the reader to Dan's excellent post (one of his best ever) on the subject.

Update: Dan has asked me to be more specific when accusing people of fraud. In reality, there are too many individuals to mention, and they are nasty, scary people. But I will name some organizations: the seventeen national science academies that issued a joint statement supporting Kyoto in the journal Science in May, 2001. The full text of that statement is not available for free online; it is described here, and the complete version is every bit as awful as one might imagine.

An Administrative note: We'll be trying out the new Blogger "comments" feature, to see if it's an improvement on the comments system we previously used. From now on (or until we ask you to do otherwise), please enter comments on a posting using the second link under the posting (the "X Comments" link), rather than the first link (the "X Old Comments" link). Comments using the old system can still be retrieved using the "Old Comments" link. If the new system works, then we'll eventually phase out the old system.

Yet more on tenure and free speech
Responding to Dan's recent comments about freedom of speech on campuses:

1) I will defend Tenure to my dying day. Or at least until I retire.

2) The fact that tenure is spectacularly unsuccessful at protecting free speech on campus does not mean that it is completely unsuccessful. For example, it stopped me from getting fired for my speech; I merely received a warning that I'd better not do it again.

3) I agree with Dan that a professor should be judged by his professional output -- teaching and research -- according to the professional standards of that field. And not according to his offline (which may be online) pontificating. This is what I mean by "free speech" in this context.

4) I agree with Dan that many fields (such as ethnic studies and women's studies) have no real content and standards and they should not exist. (I disagree that these people are merely dressing up job preservation as serious work. Rather, I think that in many cases they are profoundly evil.) But how should these fields be eliminated? What is needed is "the cold light of pragmatic scrutiny", but where is it going to come from? One reason it is important to have free speech on campus is so faculty can speak up, and criticize and mock these fields. Where the Left doesn't have an interest, this can happen; an example is at Florida State University where faculty successfully stopped the creation of a chiropractic program .

5) I do not for a minute believe Dan's claim that there is free speech in departments of science, medicine and engineering. (A writer to Jonah Goldberg similarly claims that there is plenty of free speech in his science department. Of course, to avoid reprisals, he chooses to remain anonymous.) There is virtually no free speech in science or engineering in my university. Consider MIT, for another example. Given the speech codes there (that prohibit, for instance, any conduct that creates an "offensive" environment), and given the lack of outrage at the Birgeneau/Hopkins report discussed here, and given some other things that I know about the place, it seems as if there is very little freedom of speech there. In fact, if there is any department in any prominent American or Canadian university where -- for example -- people feel they are (roughly) as free to make anti-feminist speech as they are to make feminist speech, I'd like to know about it. In fact, an argument can be made that Women's Studies departments have more freedom of speech than other departments, for the simple reason that their members and students have already been selected (or self-selected) for the purity and correctness of their thought.

6) Eugene Volokh is one of my internet heroes because of his intelligent advocacy of freedom of speech and because of his dispassionate discussion of legal issues (although I wish he could separate the two a bit better). Dan mocks him for writing about his son and his hobbies, but it is important to point out that the vast majority of his blogging is firmly related to his areas of expertise.

The entire blogosphere seems to be talking about Ward Churchill: the left, the right, libertarians, traditionalists--even this very blog. Churchill, in case you live in the Web equivalent of a cave, is a professor at the University of Colorado who wrote an article justifying in rather callous terms the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Similarly outrageous statements have been, as my co-blogger notes, fairly common in academia for quite a while. But Churchill had the misfortune of shooting off his mouth at a moment when the political tilt of universities has become something of a hot issue. For example, campus conservatives have gathered considerable momentum behind a movement to defend, in the name of "free speech", the expression of conservative views in academia. At the same time, plenty of conservatives have happily called for Churchill's firing, "free speech" notwithstanding. Meanwhile, as my co-blogger has also noted, leftists who are now rising to the defense of Churchill's rights were not nearly so quick to protect Harvard president Lawrence Summers when he made a few seemingly innocuous remarks about gender disparities in science. In short, there's plenty of hypocrisy to go around on this matter.

Of course, as I have pointed out before, the whole business of "free speech" on campus is (pace my co-blogger) pernicious nonsense. A university isn't a democracy, it has no powers to imprison, and it has not only a right but a positive duty, under all sorts of circumstances, to punish speech that is not even offensive or outrageous, but merely factually incorrect or of insufficient academic quality. One can, after all--I would hope--be denied tenure, refused a faculty position, expelled from a graduate or academic position, or denied admission in the first place, merely for saying things that are mistaken, poorly expressed or badly reasoned (in the judgment of the current faculty) in examination or assignment papers, class presentations or job interviews. In such an environment, talk of "free speech" is simply ludicrous.

Why, then, is it so common? It's certainly not protecting unpopular speech on campus. As my co-blogger has pointed out, a combination of powerful social and professional pressures more than suffices to make universities among the most mind-numbingly conformist institutions in North America. And on both sides of the political aisle, as I mentioned above, free speech rhetoric is routinely understood to apply "for me, but not for thee"--that is, it is deployed exclusively in the defense of ideas with which one agrees, and dismissed as inapplicable, for one reason or another, in the case of ideas with which one disagrees.

No, the real reason for all the "free speech" rhetoric is that it's the last-ditch defense of choice for those ensconced in an academia that (as I never tire of pointing out) suffers from a complete lack of societal consensus or internal understanding regarding its proper goals and purposes. Some parts of it, to be sure--medical schools for instance, or engineering faculties--are in fact quite clear on their mission. (Unsurprisingly, these are also the parts of the university least plagued by controversies over "free speech".) Liberal arts institutions and departments, however, are almost entirely bereft of purpose. They face little external pressure to teach job skills (as in the professional schools), nor to inculcate a particular mandated set of beliefs in their students (as in traditional religious colleges), nor to make practical contributions to the nation's well-being through their research (as in scientific and technical departments). They are simply left entirely to themselves to decide what they consider worth doing and teaching--knowing that whatever they decide will matter not one whit to anyone, most likely including themselves.

And so, not unlike modern poets, many modern academics simply pick an agenda--perhaps political activism of one sort or another, perhaps social climbing, perhaps mere job preservation--and dress it up as serious work. When challenged, they hide behind mutually contradictory justifications: their important role as guardians of the standards of their field's great masters; their right and duty to break with those same past masters, and invent their own standards; the impossibility, in the end, of defending any standards. And when all of these sophistries are played out, they fall back on the very last refuge of the useless sinecure-holder: "free speech".

Consider arch-free speech defender Eugene Volokh, defending academic freedom: "Who benefits from academic freedom? Well, if you like this blog....then you do". In other words, without academic freedom, Eugene Volokh might conceivably not be able to indulge quite so freely in his hobby of ranting at his readers over the Internet, while the government of California continues to pay his comfortable salary regardless of what he says. And why shouldn't they treat him the way any other (say, private) employer would? Because, he says,

university professors are supposed to do a good job by saying what they think is right, even when that's offensive or alienating to people. Such an ability to express highly controversial views, even views that many people find deeply offensive, is critical for the effective functioning of universities as institutions.

Now, that's simply false. By "saying what they think is right", university professors may be doing a good job, or a bad job, or an indifferent one--but the criterion is certainly not whether they are being frank. A convinced creationist can be a brilliant evolutionary biologist, publishing groundbreaking ideas which he or she deeply believes to be sorely misguided. Indeed, for all we know, Eugene Volokh himself believes that the US Constitution, properly read, demands a Marxist egalitarian "dictatorship of the proletariat" for America. And that's fine, as long as he teaches his classes a more conventional interpretation of the same document. A professor, in short, does not do a good job by saying what he or she thinks is right, but by saying what the experts in his or her field consider to be right--that is, to be correct and creditable by the standards of the field.

Of course, Eugene Volokh knows this full well, and I have no doubt that when he's not having fun blogging about his son and his gun hobby, he's working hard at UCLA, adhering rigorously to the standards of his chosen field, the law. But what if there are no standards in one's field? When we read about a Ward Churchill, or a Joseph Massad, the topic inevitably turns to "free speech", or some variation thereon: the right of the professor to say what he pleases, the right of other professors with opposing views to say what they please, the right of the professor's students to say what they please. That's because in their respective fields--"Ethnic Studies", "Middle Eastern Studies"--there are no standards under which any of the participants can be criticized for saying whatever they please. There are only political opinions, personal and group loyalties, and positions of power to defend. And because it's embarrassing to admit that they're merely protecting their sinecures, salaries and soapboxes, they instead set themselves up as martyrs to the cause of "free speech".

Here's a modest proposal: instead of fretting endlessly about the "free speech" of politicized professors or their opponents, why not require--as, say, Lawrence Summers did of Cornel West--that professors in all fields demonstrate their value through scholarship and teaching of genuine academic discipline and substance. Moreover, we could demand that entire fields themselves demonstrate their value to society, in terms of concrete contributions to its well-being. Those that cannot convince their university administrations that they are worthwhile could then be safely eliminated from academic faculties, and their professors pensioned off.

If, as a result, fewer Professor Volokhs feel safe blogging their opinions--well, you know what they say about opinions. (And there are plenty of hungry young bloggers ready to fill Volokh's shoes, and willing to endure less glamorous jobs, or accept professional circumspection in their postings, or, if necessary, post anonymously, to lure his readers away.) On the other hand, the cold light of pragmatic scrutiny would surely spell the end of many, perhaps most, of academia's Ward Churchills and Joseph Massads. All it would take is consensus agreement that their supposed right to propagandize on some university's dime need not be preserved at all costs, in the name of "free speech".

Ward Churchill and free speech
Many writers (on the internet) are shocked, shocked to find that gambling support for mass murder is going on in our universities. Although many of those who despise Ward Churchill's remarks think he should be fired, there are others who not only believe that Universities should have freedom of speech, but actually seem to understand what this means. In particular, there are some excellent remarks here, here, here, here, and here.

I refuse to discuss the issue of Churchill's racial purity -- or lack thereof -- except to state that anyone concerned about someone's racial purity deserves to be lied to about it. However, I'd like to add:

1) Eugene Volokh should be commended for having the patience to explain once again why our notion of free speech must be very extreme. I find it very sad that such obvious things have to be said over and over again to intelligent people -- sad that we have to treat these people like children. It's not that it's impossible to make a reasonable argument for a mild notion of freedom of speech, it's just that no one who wishes to do so seems to be aware of the most basic issues. I'm happy that Volokh spices up the lecture by distinguishing between different types of "slippery slope" arguments.

2) Usually "slippery slope" arguments are hypothetical. In this case, the bottom of the slippery slope was reached a couple of decades ago. For a long time, in most respectable North American universities, it has been very risky to say anything antagonistic to the extreme left. Last I checked, Larry Summers was still apologizing, undergoing re-education, and buying indulgences for his incorrect remarks. In my university, incorrect speech is rarely spoken. The last time I spoke incorrectly, numerous administrators threatened to fire me, and they are still trying. The only thing stopping them is my Tenure.

3) This raises the question: given that we have tenure, why aren't tenured professors not-of-the-extreme-left (NEL) more outspoken? Of course, the extreme-left has seen to it that NELs are under-represented, but there are still many of us around. Why don't tenured NELs speak more? I'm not sure, but some of the reasons are: fear of reprisals in spite of tenure, and fear of being different. Tenure has certainly not had the effects its supporters would like it to have, but I still think the situation would be very much worse without it.

4) My reference to "Casablanca" above was intended to poke fun at NELs who either pretend to believe or actually believe that Churchill said something unusual. His "Eichmann" language is more colorful, but it is not basically very different from the "root causes" rhetoric that has taken over our campuses. Similarly, the people who shout "death to Jews" are not really different from the intellectuals who advocate a "one state solution" and the "right of return" and who openly support groups whose members routinely shout "death to Jews". In fact, I much prefer that extremists say what they mean in plain language rather than speaking in code phrases. By being overly harsh with Churchill we are merely encouraging people like that to go back to their coded language. Rather than fire him because he is worse than Chomsky et. al., we should leave him alone because he isn't. If Churchill does get fired, it will be because the extremists are more than happy to sacrifice him: this not only warns others to use proper codes, but it is a small price to pay in return for getting NELs to abandon the principle of freedom of speech on campuses.

5) Some people think that free speech should not apply to nontenured professors. They think that free speech is a perk we give to those with tenure, but this is backwards. Rather, tenure is something we give to help ensure free speech. Then why don't we give tenure to every professor? This wouldn't be feasible, since tenure represents a huge economic commitment. So we compromise, and only give tenure to those who we believe have demonstrated sufficient excellence to at least somewhat justify that commitment. But free speech costs nothing, and should be for everyone. Of course, this tenure system is not necessarily the best one, and I can see all sorts of arguments for modifying or eliminating tenure.

6) Eugene Volokh argues that free speech tends not to be especially desirable in private enterprise. I don't think it should be forced on private companies, but I think a reasonable amount of it is very desirable. Volokh mentions that one of the benefits of free speech is that we get to hear his opinions. Wouldn't I also want to hear his opinions if he worked for a private company, even if producing such opinions was not a mandate of the company? Wouldn't he want to express his opinions, even if he worked for a private company? So the right of employees to express opinions without reprisals is, by and large, desirable for the public good.

If I work as a software engineer, shouldn't we hope that my employer allows me to express my opinions on my own time? What if my co-workers want me fired because of my politics, even if the politics don't interfere with my work? What if the customers I deal with state that they want me fired because of the abhorrent ideas I've just written, even though we've gotten along fine before? What if, instead, these people have no objection to my politics, but can't accept my race or religion? These aren't easy questions, but I think my employer should try to convince my co-workers and customers to be reasonable and professional in their dealings with me.

There is one class of employee that I think should be given relatively little freedom of speech by his employer. I am referring, of course, to journalists. After all, the freedom of speech of the employer is central to the enterprise, and he must be allowed to choose journalists who will not, on their own time or in their work time, speak in a way that is too inconsistent with the goals of the newspaper. If I hire journalists to be "objective", I don't want them to express insane opinions and beliefs even on their own time, for then my readers wouldn't trust them. If I want my newspaper to be a warm x-ist cocoon, I wouldn't trust my journalists if they went around speaking ideas of their own, and it would disturb my readers as well.

Matthew Yglesias asks a very pertinent question that concisely summarizes the skeptical position on the US intervention in Iraq:

Even if the election goes well as a procedural matter tomorrow, what good will it do?

Wrapped up in that question are a number of fears about the outcome of the intervention: post-election Iraq might descend into chaotic, bloody civil war, or be taken over by Ba'athist or Al Qaeda-affiliated insurgents, or fall under Iranian domination, or....remain a violent, draining de facto US protectorate from years to come.

Well, I could respond by reassuring the skeptics that Iraq following the election will no doubt become a model of peaceful, free, pro-Western democracy, from which American troops will be able to depart within months, happy that their work there has been completed. Unfortunately, I can't muster the optimism to declare such an outcome the likely one.

But we can separate the question, "whither Iraq after the elections?", into two separate ones: "whither Iraq in the next few years?", and "how will the elections, in particular, affect the next few years in Iraq?" And it seems clear to me that whatever the answer to the first question, the answer to the second is likely to be, "quite positively".

First of all, the election offers a process by which unviable Iraqi political forces (quite possibly including Iyad Alawi's current interim government) can be weeded out, and a viable political party given a chance to govern. That fact alone makes the likelihood of complete political breakdown and outright civil war less likely (though far from impossible).

Second, the parties projected to do well--the unified Shia and Kurdish slates--are hardly the most disastrous choices one could imagine. Either or both could, of course, turn tyrannical or bloody or unusually corrupt or incompetent or any combination of the above. But the odds of this are probably considerably less than for most other plausible combinations of ruling parties that might find themselves at the top of the heap under an alternative government selection process.

And finally, the mere smooth, uncorrupted exercise of the democratic process, I believe, can have a salutary effect on a nation's long-term political health. It's worth remembering that Germany and Japan--two of the most surprising converts to democracy in history--actually had functioning democracies in their not-too-distant pasts, before embracing fascist dictatorship. Other countries as well--most notably France, as well as a number of Latin American states--went through one or more cycles of established and collapsed democratic systems before finally stabilizing under a democratic government. Still others had what might be called "sham democracies"--parliaments and elections that were not in fact democratic--that eventually evolved into actual democratic governments. A transition from pure dictatorship to functioning democracy, on the other hand, is much, much rarer.

Of course, Yglesias is probably more concerned about Iraq's short-to-medium-term future than its long-term political development--particularly insofar as the near-term presence of US troops makes the former a pressing issue for Americans. Fortunately, one can be a pessimist about the immediate implementation of full-fledged democracy while still being optimistic about Iraq's immediate future.

Consider the situation in post-election Afghanistan, for example: the Karzai government isn't exactly the Blair government, the warlords haven't disappeared, the Taliban still threatens, and American troops remain. Still, Karzai turns out to be politcally shrewd enough to hold the central government together and negotiate successfully with regional leaders. And with the help of a modest American military presence, local Afghan forces have been able to stave off any major Taliban comeback. A similar outcome in Iraq is not entirely implausible--certainly no more implausible than it would have been in pre-election Afghanistan itself. And at this point, achieving such results in Iraq would also have to be considered a tremendous American success.

A couple of years ago, I made fun of the Supreme Court's decision that it's unconstitutional for the police to point infrared scanners at homes to detect heat (from basement marijuana farms, for instance). Some of my ridicule was directed at Eugene Volokh, who defended the decision (Kyllo v. United States) using a wholly (and admittedly) arbitrary "reasonableness" criterion: infrared detector searches are, to him, "unreasonable", whereas searches of neighborhoods for, say, dirty bombs using a Geiger counter (scientifically not terribly different from an infrared scanner) are "reasonable".

Well, now fellow Conspirator Orin Kerr has provided the first plausible justification that I've heard for the Court's Kyllo ruling. He also sees it as part of a recent trend in the Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Unfortunately, he also sees this trend as a "potentially troubling development".

The justification, according to Kerr, can be deduced from a recent decision (United States v. Place) in which the Court found police searches for drugs using drug-sniffing dogs to be Constitutional. Kerr believes this decision to be part of a pattern, in which the Court determines whether particular searches are Constitutional under the Fourth Amendment based on what information they extract. Drug-sniffing dogs, for example, only determine the presence or absence of drugs--a matter of pure guilt or innocence, which citizens are therefore presumably not entitled to hide from police officers--and are therefore permissible to use in warrantless searches. Infrared scanners, on the other hand, can potentially detect a wide variety of details about the interior of a person's home--including details that the police have no business knowing, and might conceivably abuse upon discovery.

To Kerr, this new trend is a deviation from earlier jurisprudence, which held that the Constitutionality of searches depended strictly on whether they violated some notion of property rights (suitably abstracted to include, for example, rented properties, but not, say, telephone conversations). In his view, the "information-based" criterion is a product of an oft-misinterpreted "privacy doctrine"--that the Fourth Amendment exists to protect individual privacy in general from police snooping--that is in fact, when properly understood, simply a restatement of the narrower, property-rights-based criterion.

Now, whatever else one might say about the "privacy doctrine" approach of considering what information a search extracts, it at least has the virtue of being possibly, conceivably tied to some notion of public opinion on these matters. Judges are not really in a position to know what kind of information the public want the police not to be able to extract without a warrant, but if they were to guess, they might plausibly come up with an answer such as, "information, such as the inner appearance of the suspect's home, as revealed by an infrared scanner, that does not pertain to whether the suspect has committed a crime". On the other hand, a response like, "that which can be obtained without violating the property rights of the individual, defined in a technical, abstract legal sense, and irrespective of its relevance to the suspect's guilt or innocence", is somehow less plausible as a reflection of the public's preferred definition of the bounds of their own protection from police searches.

Of course, if judges--or law professors like Prof. Kerr--wanted their judgments to defer to the popular will, they could always leave it to the people's representatives to decide. And we all know what horrors that would entail....

Heresy at Harvard
Harvard president Lawrence Summers recently dared to suggest that it is possible that innate differences between men and women may be part of the reason that there are many fewer women in science than men.(See here and here.) Feminists are outraged, and one went so far as to swoon.

1) Any attempt to explain the small number of women in science has to explain the much larger number of women in the (traditionally male and very time-consuming) areas of management, medicine and law.

2) Feminists very often declare there to be vast differences between men and women. Of course, women usually come off better in these comparisons: nurturing rather than violent, for example. If you read my selected articles from ACM TechNews (all of which are 100% feminist approved) about why there are few women in science, you'll see that the explanations in many of them involve the assertion that men are different from women; the articles are generally too incoherent to explicitly say whether or not these differences are innate, but since the differences make women superior and since no societal explanations for the differences are usually given, the implication is that they are innate.

3) This is not the first time that swooner Nancy Hopkins has been reported in the news as leading the Feminist Fight. In the nineties there were complaints at MIT that female scientists were being treated worse than male scientists. Dean Birgeneau appointed a committee to study the complaints. What was the role of Hopkins? She was the chief Complainant and she was the Head of the committee appointed to evaluate the complaints. ("Forget it, Jake -- it's Chinatown."). Birgeneau is an idiot, and he went on from this success to doing as much damage as he could as president of the University of Toronto; he has now moved on to bringing a much needed breath of fresh political correctness to Berkeley. But if Hopkins' complaints were well-founded, she is also an idiot for investigating them herself, and thus ensuring that no serious person would ever take them seriously.

4) If there are prejudices in Universities against women in science, they are remarkably subtle. The prejudices against men are institutionalized and overt. Concerning institutional restrictions against any speech the feminists don't like: these restrictions are massive, overpowering, and virtually 100% intimidating. On the rare occasion such speech is uttered by a professor in a prominent university, it tends to be national news.

"Groundhog Day", "Superman" and "The Wizard of Oz"
Jonah Goldberg asks for arguments for or against the movie "Groundhog Day". Ever since I first enjoyed and hated this movie I've wanted to write about it, and now I have an excuse.

"Groundhog Day" was very well done and was very funny and entertaining.

But it had at its core a horrible message, namely:
"Normal, heterosexual men are fundamentally evil and should be banished to a circle of hell." (Of course, after suitable re-education there, a few may be redeemed.)

What exactly are Bill Murray's sins?

It's true that he makes fun of people, but that doesn't seem to be what the movie really complains about. I think it's clear that his real sins involve his attitude towards women. What is that attitude? He likes attractive women, he wants to have sex with them, and he doesn't pretend otherwise. He is superficial and self-centered.

And what about the woman he likes? Andie MacDowell isn't attracted to unattractive men such as Chris Elliott just because they're nice, but rather to attractive men who aren't especially nice. But she wants more than just attractive. She wants her man to be knowledgeable about French poetry, AND to expertly play a musical instrument. And then her man must seduce her in just the right way and without making any conscious effort to do so! And the movie sees nothing wrong with this.

The movie "Superman" can be viewed as a satire of "Groundhog Day". (This is possible, even though "Superman" came out first, because of that whole faster-than-light thing.) "Superman" is aware of the superficiality of women, but instead of banishing them to hell it merely pokes gentle fun at them. Clarke Kent is clearly not man enough for Lois Lane, and -- as she makes clear in her flying soliloquy -- she has to be literally swept off her feet by a man before she will consider him adequate. It is possible to make fun of people, or of a group of people, without the stark cruelty of "Groundhog Day".

And speaking of expecting too much from men, or from fathers, I can't resist mentioning my favorite line from "The Wizard of Oz". When Dorothy realizes that the Wizard is a fraud, she says to him, "You're a very bad man!" He responds, as many husbands and fathers have:
"No, I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard".

Few choices are more tempting objects of cultural snobbery than choice of diet. (At least one entire country, just west of Germany and Northeast of Spain, has enthusiastically yielded to the temptation.) One might expect egalitarian leftists to be less prone to this particular vice, but Belle Waring (of Crooked Timber) and Mark Kleiman have both fallen prey to it. Waring speculates idly that the problem with the diet of the American poor is that it doesn't resemble Singaporean cuisine:

I was thinking today of how much better off the residents of American inner cities would be if the Singapore model of hawker centres prevailed. Sure, there’s fattening char kway teow, but every hawker centre has a fruit juice and sliced fruit stand with cheap papaya, watermelon, and kiwi fruit, not to mention carrot juice. I understand that crime is a deterrent, but why exactly is it that US inner-city markets have such awful, expensive, fly-blown produce, even the ones in Oakland CA? Is this true in poor neighborhoods in Great Britain?

Mark Kleiman at least avoids Waring's "let them eat papaya" cultural condescension. But he exudes condescension of a different kind: intellectual condescension.

10. The prosperous generally are more health-conscious than the poor, which among other things means they're more likely to know and care about what foods are healthy.

11. Healthy food is relatively more available and cheaper to the prosperous than it is to the poor. This is both and effect and a cause of (10).

12. Lots of unhealthy food actually tastes vile, and encouraging people to eat it reduces their enjoyment of food as well as damaging their health. There's simply no taste comparison beteen a mango and a candy bar.

Kleiman believes the poor eat unhealthily because "[u]nhealthy eating habits are promoted by the food industry, including the fast-food restaurant trade and the convenience-food segment of the grocery trade." In other words, poor people aren't culturally benighted--they're just pliable sheep being brainwashed by commercials to eat expensive, unhealthy, foul-tasting swill.

I would respond to Waring's musings and Kleiman's points with a few points of my own:

Poor diet and its consequences are hardly confined to the poor. There are plenty of middle-class and wealthy people who overindulge and get unhealthily fat.

Conversely, one doesn't have to eat fashionably to eat healthily. Plain, basic American foods can easily be put together in reasonable quantities to create a balanced, healthy diet.

Nobody needs to be brainwashed to eat junk food. The corporations that invest so much money in advertising fast food also spend a fortune fine-tuning its taste to make it universally appealing--to rich and poor alike.

The only diet-related health problem that is recognized by a consensus of the public health community to be both widespread and serious is overconsumption of calories. This problem cuts across class lines, and has little to do with either cultural norms or advertising. Rather, people overeat because eating is enjoyable, and anything that is enjoyable will prompt many people to do it more than is healthy.

Efforts to encourage people to eat healthily should therefore treat their targets as responsible, intelligent people, and focus straightforwardly on the adverse consequences of an unhealthy diet. Progress can be expected to be slow and difficult, but not impossible--consider the history of anti-smoking campaigns, for instance. Patronizing attempts to recast the problem as one of misled or unsophisticated poor people, on the other hand, will fail to convince the poor, or anyone else.

It being New Year's Day, it's time for me to review my predictions for 2004, and list my new predictions for 2005. First, the review:

George W. Bush will soundly defeat his Democratic opponent, Howard Dean, in November. The Republicans will maintain control of both houses of Congress, with roughly the same margins as today.

A mixed score for this one. I got the winners right in all cases, but overstated the presidential margin, understated the congressional margin, and failed to predict the Dean collapse of early 2004. Perhaps if Dean had kept his mouth shut....

Paul Martin will not win a majority government in a Canadian federal election.

My big winner for the year. One commenter even asked if I was "joking". Nope--just being my usual serious-but-eerily-insightful self.

US troops will still be in Iraq in substantial (though somewhat reduced) numbers at year's end.

Did I say reduced? Silly me. I meant increased, of course.

Of the four leaders I mentioned last year, all will remain in power by year's end (Chavez by falsifying or ignoring the results of the upcoming referendum), barring death by natural or accidental causes.

To refresh your memory, those leaders were Yasser Arafat, Kim Jong Il, Ayatollah Khamenei and Hugo Chavez. Arafat died peacefully in a hospital near Paris, and the rest are still going strong. (This is a fairly easy prediction to make, of course, but it's meant to counter the remarkable number of commentators who like to predict the imminent ouster of one or another of these characters each time he appears to be encountering a patch of political turbulence. Plenty of people were expecting a defeat for Chavez in the past year's referendum, for instance.)

This year the overpriced major American markets will experience a net decline (and this time, I mean it!). The US dollar will also fall, relative to foreign currencies. Inflation and interest rates will tick upward, in reaction to the falling dollar--but not by that much. Economic growth will slow substantially, but will not tip into recession until after the election.

Another mixed bag. The markets ticked upward again, earning people who don't follow my advice yet another year of respite from the inevitable decimation of their savings. Growth also outstripped my prediction. The dollar, inflation and interest rate predictions, on the other hand, were pretty good.

Conflicts between the US and Europe will be overshadowed by conflicts between the US and China (over trade, exchange rates, weapons proliferation, North Korea, and human rights).

Well, neither set of disputes had a particularly high profile in 2004, although I suppose the American election did temporarily highlight European hostility to the current US administration, making my prediction, technically speaking, "wrong". (Or, as I prefer to say, "premature".)

Now for this year's predictions:

There will be a major effort to rejuvenate the Middle East peace process, following the upcoming Palestinian Authority elections. The effort will come to absolutely nothing, and attempted Palestinian terrorist attacks and Israeli military incursions into Palestinian towns will be roughly as frequent at the end of 2005 as they are today.

The coming election in Iraq will completely change the characterization--though not the actual character--of the American involvement there. A new Iraqi government, dominated by the Shiite slate, will assume power, and invite the US military to remain to continue its reconstitution and training of the Iraqi army and security forces, and to help protect the country from "insurgent groups", who will increasingly be labeled as foreign-supported and even foreign-staffed. Syria will be the main target of this rhetoric, because it's much weaker than Iran. But no action beyond diplomatic and economic sanctions will be taken, partly because the US is loath to expand its military burden, and partly because maintaining the Syrian fig leaf will be too useful for both the US and the new Iraqi government as an excuse to support the continued presence of US troops.

Messrs. Chavez, Khamenei and Kim will remain in power yet another year, barring natural or accidental death. Likewise, Kofi Annan will survive the oil-for-food imbroglio and remain UN Secretary General.

The US stock markets will decline overall in 2005. The real estate market will (finally) peak and decline. Inflation will be kept under control by lower oil prices and rising interest rates, but the dollar will continue to fall--though somewhat less precipitously--and economic growth will slow accordingly as interest rates, the drop in the markets, and the ripple effects of the slowdown in China all take their toll.

An event will occur in 2005 that will blossom into a huge, crippling scandal for US president Bush--though possibly not until 2006.

A scandal will also damage the career of television psychologist "Dr. Phil" McGraw.

Note: These predictions were made on a closed course by an untrained non-professional. Do not attempt to emulate them, if you hope to retain a shred of your dignity.

In a classic case of a hammer looking for nails, geography/physiology professor and author Jared Diamond believes he has discovered the keys to why and how various societies have collapsed and disappeared throughout history, and hence how to avoid the collapse of future societies, as well--such as our own, presumably.

What lessons can we draw from history? The most straightforward: take environmental problems seriously. They destroyed societies in the past, and they are even more likely to do so now....

Other lessons involve failures of group decision-making. There are many reasons why past societies made bad decisions, and thereby failed to solve or even to perceive the problems that would eventually destroy them. One reason involves conflicts of interest, whereby one group within a society....can profit by engaging in practices that damage the rest of society. Another is the pursuit of short-term gains at the expense of long-term survival....

History also teaches us two deeper lessons about what separates successful societies from those heading toward failure. A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions....The other deep lesson involves a willingness to re-examine long-held core values, when conditions change and those values no longer make sense.

Diamond gives us several charming historical examples of societies that failed to heed these lessons, and collapsed as a result. We learn all about the environmental depredations of the Easter Islanders, the stubborn unwillingness of the Norse Greenlanders to adapt their culture to a shift in their climate, and the callous insularity of the Mayan kings who did nothing to halt the deforestation and soil erosion that eventually destroyed them.

But strangely, while Diamond gives us much sparsely-supported speculation about the possible environmental and social causes of some famously mysterious and poorly-understood societal collapses, we hear remarkably little about what's surely the cause of the overwhelming majority of more mundane societal disappearances: conquest by hostile neighboring societies. Certainly far more New World civilizations--that is, just about every one of them in existence in 1492--were destroyed by the European invasion and conquest (together with the resulting epidemics) than by their own poor ecological stewardship of their domains. Likewise, the very cradle of civilizations--the Middle East--was home to innumerable noble civilizations over thousands of years that did just fine till being gobbled up by even nobler ones, and disappearing completely except for a stone relic or two.

Of course, a rule like, "be sure to stay militarily stronger than your neighbors", or, "try to avoid falling so far behind technologically that you're easy pickings for invaders", is both less emotionally satisfying and less fashionable than, say, "be kind to mother Earth". Still, Diamond really ought to allot it more than the mere passing mention he offers, given its overwhelming historical importance.

Fortunately, I always choose an aisle seat.

Just to be contrary, here are a few reasons not to donate to the international relief effort for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami:

The most significant damage from this tsunami has already been done. Money donated today would be better spent on establishing an early warning system to reduce the number of deaths next time.

Yes, the survivors endured a catastrophe that took tens of thousands of lives in one blow. But that doesn't make them any worthier of help than the thousands around the world who themselves die every day of easily preventable causes. Their misfortunes are no less tragic just because they are suffered at a steady rate over the course of many years.

As a result of the publicity, aid is already pouring into the affected areas. Many others in need elsewhere have gotten no such massive response.

The victims were disproportionately on the shore (including the beach) at the time of the tsunami. That likely makes them relatively affluent by the standards of their country.

India, Indonesia, and Thailand are considered third-world, but they are actually rather large, prosperous countries--5th, 16th and 22nd in the world by GDP, respectively. How wealthy does a country have to be before the rest of the world stops mounting international aid efforts to help them? Does aid pour in from the rest of the world every time a natural disaster strikes, say, a European country?

Sri Lanka really is a pretty poor country. But a country that pulls something like this....

North America has bigger problems to worry about.

Note that none of these reasons absolves anyone of the moral obligation to give generously to charities that help people in desperate need. (And, the above curmudgeonliness notwithstanding, there is no doubt plenty of desperate need among the tsunami's survivors.) However, if this recent appalling disaster triggers an urge to give, it might be worth remembering that the impulse can also be redirected to the cause of one's choice, with undiminished--and possibly even improved--positive consequences.

The Washington Post complains that insufficiently many women are dying in childbirth.
Nor, apparently are enough of them dying of cancer or in car accidents. It appears that murder is a leading cause of death of expectant or "new" (whatever that means) mothers.

Are more of these people being killed than other women, or other people, of the same age? Or of some other age? Is there a trend? In amongst the presentation of many different anecdotes, we are told that "no reliable system is in place to track such cases" and that we don't know "how often it happens, why, and whether it is a fluke or a social syndrome." We're told that in one state, "slightly more than 10 percent of all homicides among women ages 14 to 44 happened to a pregnant or postpartum woman". What is this supposed to mean? The Post investigated one group of 72 homicides. We are given no idea how this group was chosen, but we learn that "nearly two-thirds of the cases had a strong relation to pregnancy or involved a domestic-violence clash in which pregnancy may have been a factor" and that "nearly 30 percent were caused by violence that did not seem related to childbearing".

The article is very long and tells us nothing we would like to know. Is a pregnant woman more likely to be murdered than a non-pregnant woman or than an old man? What if we investigate a specially selected group of rich women or poor men that were murdered; would we not find that in many cases the death was related to their wealth or poverty? Should we investigate, for example, the murders of ugly, conservative teenagers to see how much we can write on the subject without actually saying anything?

We all know the story: a grisly murder has unleashed a storm of controversy. The legal and procedural maneuvering aside, the killing has greatly heightened the tension and polarization between the population at large and the alleged killer's minority group. It is a group that has never integrated fully into the larger society, with increasing numbers of its members linguistically separating themselves from the majority, and embracing a grievance-based radical form of Islam. Among the majority, it has come to be associated with unemployment, poverty, crime and drug use. Its alienation level can be judged by the disturbing amount of support its more radical members have lent the alleged murderer.

On the other hand, this alienation is also born of resentment of years of discrimination and hostility, as symbolized by the use of racial epithets that gained wide attention in the aftermath of the murder. There has been much talk of a massive, ugly backlash.

So what were the long-term consequences of the O.J. Simpson case, anyway?

One of the most remarkable non-events in contemporary American politics is the virtually complete disappearance of the issue of race from the national debate--only to reappear, with a vengeance, across the ocean, in Europe. Less than a decade ago, the O.J. Simpson trial--occurring three years after the L.A. riots, and 4 years after the Crown Heights riots--seemed to demonstrate a vast, impenetrable wall of hostility and fury along the American racial divide. Tons of ink and millions of pixels were used up discussing this divide, its causes, its implications and its possible solutions. Today, while Europeans grapple with the same thorny issues (with the same air of earnest gravity), Americans barely give the issue a passing thought. People on both continents would surely benefit from knowing how that remarkable transformation occurred.

Some possible factors:

9/11.Of course, nothing unites people like a common enemy. Both black and white Americans may feel less hostile towards each other now that they consider themselves equally threatened by terror. News and political debate about terrorism have also probably crowded out other issues, including race relations.

On the other hand, racial tension seemed to be on the decline even before 9/11, and the actual evidence regarding 9/11's effect is ambiguous.

The drop in crime. Crime dropped fairly steeply during the 1990's, for both races, although blacks maintain their proportional lead in both victimization and victimhood. Crime may well have been an important source of racial tension, feeding feelings of resentment among whites (over disproportionately high crime rates among blacks) and neglect among blacks (over less effective crime control in black neighborhoods). Declining crime might therefore have led to improved race relations.

On the other hand, isolated crime-related racial conflicts over racial profiling and police shootings (for example, in Cincinnati) have continued, despite plummeting crime rates.

Welfare reform. The 1996 welfare reform bill is widely credited with undermining the culture of inner-city welfare dependency that was a source of much white resentment and anger, and motivated no end of racially-oriented activism. Then again, it doesn't appear that perceptions of inner-city black culture have changed all that much.

Immigration. As a friend points out, immigration complicates America's racial mix, and may therefore have reduced the importance of the original black-white conflict. Of course, extra axes of racial interaction haven't always encouraged calm.

Time. Racial hostility may simply have continued the slow, gradual decline it began following the civil rights battles of the 1960s. The boom of the nineties, by reducing black unemployment and income inequality, may have helped matters by reducing the economic--and hence the social--distance between blacks and whites. Perhaps a tipping point of sorts was reached, at which tensions subsided enough to slip beneath the social radar entirely.

On the other hand, racial integration--widely considered an indicator of long-term progress in race relations--increased only modestly, and in some ways actually decreased, during the 1990s.

As you can see, there are many somewhat plausible explanations, and none of them are without compelling counterarguments. Readers are encouraged to offer their own diagnoses, by posting comments. Perhaps our European onlookers will be able to use our ideas to help them identify possible solutions to their own version of the same problem.