Fishing for a good mood

Some new research from Israel show that good mood and brain health is not just about having enough Omega-3’s (e.g. fish and its oils), it’s also about its proportion with Omega-6's (e.g. corn and soy oils, etc.).

Today most of us need to eat a lot more 3's and a lot less 6's.

Not that hard and it ain’t rocket science to do. Your local Costco carries Kirkland Signature™ Enteric Coated Extra Strength Fish Oil Concentrate for a whole 6 cents each. And it's molecularly distilled so there's no mercury, PCBs or dioxins.

A bit of rocketry if you're so inclined:

Omega-6's bring on increased cellular inflammation, the breakdown of cells through oxidation, which as loosened oxygen-based molecules, aka oxides, react and break apart cellular membranes (e.g. heart, brain, skin, basically everything between your head and toe).

Omega-3's, in addition to being the premier brain food cited below, is also a potent antioxidant, a molecular agent that absorbs those oxidative molecules and helps maintain cellular integrity. They also constitute roughly half of the essential fatty acids (aka Omega-3's) that is your brain.

A diet high in omega-3 and low in omega-6 beats the blues

By PsychologyToday.com

The evidence has been mounting for several years that the best way to ensure a bright mood—and a strong heart and working joints—is to consume plenty of cold-water fish, because they are rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. These fats, basic components of nerve cell membranes, facilitate all kinds of transactions in the brain, and one net effect is to keep depression at bay. It is through the fat-rich cell membrane that all nerve signals must pass—think of it as a kind of gatekeeper of the mind.

Now, from Israel, comes another piece of evidence linking omega-3s to mood states. And it confirms what many scientists have suspected all along. It isn't just that you need to consume omega-3 fats; at the same time you need to cut back on foods and fats that are loaded with omega-6 fatty acids, which are found in soy and corn oil.

The Israelis found that animals exhibiting the signs of depression have increased levels of an omega-6 fatty acid in their brains. Not only may depression result from a deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids, it may also result from an excess of omega-6s.

This so-called "phospholipids hypothesis" of depression has been supported by research showing that omega-3 fatty acid concentrations in the blood of depressed patients is lower than that in nondepressed people. The assumption is that low fatty-acid levels in the blood reflect low fatty acid levels in the brain. But most of the evidence is indirect, because it's not possible to examine the brain tissue of people directly.

The Israeli researchers, using an animal model of depression, found that the depressed animals and nondepressed animals had about the same levels of omega-3 fats in the brain. But they dramatically differed in levels of omega-6s, particularly arachidonic acid.

"The finding that in the depressive rats the omega-3 fatty acid levels were not decreased, but arachidonic acid was substantially increased as compared to controls, is somewhat unexpected," the researchers reported. "But the finding lends itself nicely to the theory that increased omega-3 fatty acid intake may shift the balance between the two fatty acid families in the brain. It has been demonstrated in animal studies that increased omega-3 fatty acid intake may result in decreased brain arachidonic acid."

Omega-6 fatty acids compete in the body with omega-3s. Consume an excess of omega-6s and they displace the omega-3s. The catch is, you need a proper balance of omega-6 and omega-3 intake for cells to function optimally.

Here is one of the central ironies of the American diet: While consuming too much fat overall and too much saturated fat, many North Americans fail to consume enough polyunsaturated omega-3s.

And they consume too many omega-6s. These are also polyunsaturated oils, and they're widely recommended as healthful for the heart. They're also widely used in cooking, frying and in prepared foods—corn, safflower and sunflower oils—have almost no omega-3s. Instead they are loaded with omega-6s.

Canola oil and walnut oil are highly recommended because of their fat make-up. Omega-3 fats also appear to have been integral parts of the diets of our prehistoric ancestors. Although the amount of omega-3s in the food supply has radically dropped in the past hundred years, eons of evolution have custom-crafted our brains and bodies to depend on them for basic biochemical maneuvers.

So adding seafood to your diet is only half the story. It's essential to cut out sources of corn oil and soy oil—almost ubiquitous in margarine, fried foods and commercial salad dressings. They contain a predominance of omega-6s.

By cutting out soy oil and corn oil, and using olive oil instead, you can, virtually double the effect of any fish that you eat, scientists believe. Plus, that brings you closer to a Mediterranean diet—more like the diet on which mankind evolved, and which our bodies are basically suited for.

Gates charity gives $500M for AIDS care

This is just terrific.

But much more is needed; G-8 governments need to step up.
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14269506/:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation took its support of AIDS-related research and care to a new level Wednesday, announcing a $500 million grant to an international fund that provides AIDS assistance in poor countries.

Some musings...redux

I realized a while back that sometimes one can take their background and life experiences for granted. And once in a while, you get some time to really think and, in some cases, realize all over again that everyone's history and life experiences are truly unique.

I wrote something a couple nights back to someone that I thought would also be of value in shedding light on my background and core beliefs. In other words, get to what motivates my thoughts on religion, science, and history more deeply, delving into who I am as the political/economic creature you read and see here today.

Altogether, it's sort of a redux of my other blog musing. So here goes:

• My grandfather was a general in the Taiwanese army who marshalled the front lines, later emigrating from Communist China to Taiwan as Mao slaughtered millions. I know many stories of what our family experienced; many in our extended family were left behind and suffered Mao's reformation labor camps and torture. (Eerily, my grandfather went to the same high school as Mao). We were fortunate enough to escape. Thus, we were all instilled with a strong sense of duty, honor, self, and the recognition of the importance of knowledge, history and one's critical thinking. However uncomfortable, many Chinese know Mao's red book mesmerized countless to kill millions (estimates range between 40-80 million dead during his reign).
  
  
• Growing up, I experienced poverty first-hand and saw those without, regardless of merit, who just didn't have a shot at opportunity. And as a Christian for 10 years, then full of hope for true salvation baptized and seeking redemption as a confessed sinner who believed, I witnessed how people who in Christ's name acted less than what Christ would've liked. It all only increased my resolve to find things out for myself, with science as guide - open and self-critical, and providing a consistent model to compare and contrast things as they were, not how they should or claim to be.
  

• Throughout my life, I've always respected people of faith. There are many of faith I've come to known whose deeds follow principled actions that I've always had the most sincere and utmost respect for. Charlie Rose recently interviewed notable scientist Francis Collins (38 minutes on), Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, whose book, "The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief", speaks to the meaningful coexistence of science and faith. It is an open assessment and would be a good counter to my musing; his assertion that science has no domain or relevance in things religious and vice versa is central to faith and one's religious beliefs.
  

• In recent years, I've just grown increasingly concerned about the religious extremism in this country that has fomented as an ex-ante response to Muslim fundamentalism. When we happen to be the superpower, every step we take wields enourmous influence to literally uplift or destroy millions of lives in our lifetime. The musing was essentially a reactionary piece arising from today's proponderance to treat science and critical reasoning as throw-away commodities.

• ...Science is about bearing repeatable, testable experiments to expand and apply our body of knowlege for the betterment of mankind, and making predictions that verifiably withstands serious, repeated and transparent peer review and scrutiny.
  

• I strongly stand by the scientific method and its processes, which however seemingly mundane, has afforded humanity in a relatively short time of less then a hundred years to control the wanderings of the smallest electrons and photons. Or comprehending the nuances for preventing the spread of malaria which kills thousands of African children nightly. Or allowing mothers of sick newborns to bear hope that one day we'll bear witness to humanity stopping AIDS and its various mutations in its tracks, and in such a way that everyone will be able to afford a vaccine treatment.
  

• Bill and Melinda Gates deserve superlative kudos for their efforts, both in deeds and in principles. Not many people (Warren Buffet excepted) in their position have stepped up like they. Perhaps as a economics afficiendo, like Jeffrey Sachs and Bono, those numbers are more real to me than most - many are lives that could be saved for a quarter a day. And if someone gave up a quarter of their food a day, they could save more than 50 souls. It troubles me that that isn't the case, despite our best stated intentions and promises as a nation and people.
  

• I've come to believe that society suffers a lot more than is obvious when religion and science mix, especially when one claims to be the other and vice versa, using each as pawns in a larger political battle to undermine each other.

• ...Very particularly when a growing number of extremists absolve or ignore suffering and violence as part of a necessary God-given, Calvinistic, order, e.g. the numerous end-times prophesies that see a holy war between Christendom and Islamists as an inevitability versus heeding Christ's words of "loving one's neighbors" or "let those without sin judge..." or that "noone will know the hour or the day" of Christ's return.

• ...This includes not seriously moving the mideast peace efforts forward today in a real attempt to stop the bloodletting of innocents, thus implicitly acknowledging such war as a natural order of things to come, etc.
  

• At the end of the day (no pun intended), this slippery slope mutes if not deadens a society's will and aspirations, as JFK put it, "to lift all boats" irrespective of religious creed, race, color, sex or geography (or as Warrent Buffet deadpans "womb-based economics"), and subverts the positive forces and developments accrued thus far this past hundred years, parlaying it instead into increasing cynicism and despair.
  

• Since when I was a deeply religious Christian to present-day, I've always passionately believed in a liberal democracy and deliberation between its body politic and sciences, e.g. stem cell research is not the next a-bomb but should be carefully regulated to avoid human cloning. And liberal in the political science sense of minorities having an equal of a voice as the majority.
  

• I believe that we disregard extremism's slippery slope at our own peril; accepting such cases as [inevitable] reality is catostrophic for humanity. Just in the last ten years: in Yugloslavia where a democracy let its majority vote for and carry out genocide on its religious minority slaughtering hundreds of thousands or over a million and a half people dead in Rhwanda or the 5,600 civillians who were killed in Iraq for May/June alone or 9/11's 3,000 dead.

• ...They're all based on distorted belief systems and stories that do little else but perpetuate hate that infects subsequent generations, where the horridly wrong acts of killing and slaughtering become a righteous one with rewards to be had in the afterlife - an unbeatable promise and operational war doctrine.
  

• We dare not stand by and do nothing. And here at home, secular science and critical reasoning and all the benefit that it affords is losing ground to all our detriment because society's grown complacent and come to take its fruits for granted as the British, French, Spanish and many before have, with similar belief that God was on all their side(s) as well.

In conclusion, society's at its best when religious expression thrives in coexistence with a secular society that firmly respects it, and vice versa. An imbalance is in no one's interest. Christianity as it stands today is very different then where it stood when I attended a Billy Graham crusade in Anaheim, California more then a decade ago and was deeply touched by his message. I still prefer Billy Graham but his is a waning voice seldomly heard today.

Some history lesson

While the following just wasn't one of the smartest pieces of mail I've received; nonetheless this was in my Hotmail today (followed by my response):

Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 2:11 PM
Subject: FW: History Lesson...

Evolve not involve.

In the early years, humans existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunter/gatherers. They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer & would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundations of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: L&C Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early human ancestors were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as "the Conservative movement."

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. The rest became known as 'girliemen.'

Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy and group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservative came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass. Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard liberal fare.

Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't "fair" to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big-game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, corporate executives, athletes, Marines, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to "govern" the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America.

They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get MORE for nothing. Here ends today's lesson in world history:

It should be noted that a Liberal may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before forwarding it. A Conservative will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this history that it will be forwarded immediately to other "true believers".


My raw two cents follow. If you don’t like raw, delete the mail. If you dig raw (sashimi variety), read on. Thought it only fair I should respond in kind. I wanted to title mine drunk v. sober but then that’s not as fresh as evolve not involve, whatever that’s suppose to mean.

Anyways.

The schoolyard tales that get passed around so proudly as super deep conservative thought these days. It’s overdone, too self-stroking and ample congratulations for all its brethrens to revel in. Get a room already.

If conservatives can swivel away from Fox News for a few and consider by their lonesome selves that the British too had their share of proud surefooted apologists who thumped their chests, full of bravado, of apparent might and righteousness right before their empire crashed and burned around them.

Romans, French, Spanish empires…the list goes on. To imagine that conservative dogma today is in any way original v. just rehash of dogma spewed and regurgitated many a times over in history is typical kool-aid overdose and delusional egomania, of the ideological and groupthink variety.

The below tries to denigrate a whole class of people, roughly half of Americans who happen to live in richer, more colored “blue” states, who also happen to account for the majority of this country’s GDP.

Which is plain odd since the wealthiest men in the world are hardy Democrats (Gates, Buffet et al). Hmm, let’s crack that wider. Name the 100 wealthiest Americans. Tell me how many actual Republicans there are. Go by % of 100 or just total wealth of top 100.

My god, I mean talk about something measurable and comparable already, just this once - so we can at least try to keep score. Go ahead, amuse me. Amuse yourself.

And yah, liberals are nuanced creatures. Guess physicists are liberals. But then what would we do without the electron, eh?

And liberals like to govern. Someone’s got to do it. By George if W is and he seems to like it.

Others like abstracted long-term thinking. That no doubt includes nerdy do-goody-Gates to those damn physicists working on the nonsense that is string theory, just ruining our country.

Other libs like to invent. And damn those liberal Japanese inventing hybrids beating down our lame big-2 ½ (again), perpetuating the liberal meltdown of environment propaganda, nm Greenland ice caps melting or record worldwide temps or first-time ever 102 degrees in Seattle.

With liberals, it just takes a rainbow. Omg, end of days are surely upon us.

Conservatives have to wait until it hits them in the face (Katrina pun intended), otherwise who cares….if $’s can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist – as if economics is a perfect science, and coming from me that’s saying a lot.

Conservatives abhor nuance and prefer simpler worldviews, e.g. we hard working, liberals lazy bums (thump, thump). To believe that one’s superior based on a mockery tale mimicking a history lesson is what’s that word besides liberal-wannabe’ - oh right, ludicrous, a big nice juicy liberal word that’s just so right on.

It also belies a major weakness of the conservative movement today – the obsession with simple tales & short stories that’s made into “horse-sense”, which scary enough takes a life of its own becoming hard rules of thumb and conservatives’ worldview of reality.

Sadly, actual reality show that horse-sense to be all wrong and brimful of excuses, a la why invade Iraq with its two-dozen before and after versions of excuses, budget-deficit BS that’s just repressed shame for all conservatives, to whatever top issues are choice news this week.

If you can’t find any, email & I’ll happily oblige.

More damning is W and Co’s inability to address measurable evidence and facts, particularly contrary ones without resorting to continued blaming of that not in charge party (lame), rehashing Fox News’ sound-bites, conspiracy theories, immeasurable and incomparable “facts…of faith”, take 3 for giggles:

• fight them over there so we can help arouse a whole new Arab extremist army all so we don’t fight them over here,
• tax cuts through debt-spending somehow equal more money for government coffers and increase net growth,
• spending a trillion dollars without being a hair-closer to bin Laden is cheap and on the money in return for a hoped for middle east freedom that a big multi-generational war will surely bring – nm Halliburton to (fill in the blank).

Mash those and a few more up and you get bastardized neocon “horse-sense”, which today then gets bantered about as core conservative “principles.”

It’s not what Buckley had in mind. But then, like Goldwater and Nixon, he’s probably considered a lame liberal by now, so who cares.

Sure, liberals by nature were born to consider both or more sides to an issue, and spend too much time squandering and bickering among themselves and over think…. “Over” in the sense that it has not helped us win or kick-ass in the school-yard bully fights and one-line frat-boy bagging now aka the elections.

So congrats, reality-TV politics finally comes to age in the states.

But when one considers the current Republican fracas over just 3 things - stem cell research, gay marriage and fiscal imprudence, it’s obvious deep thinking is not their forte. Still, brilliant crafting of one-liners like “flip-flop” and "girliemen" – bravo, well-done, genius.

I’m sure that’s what the founding fathers had in mind.

And true believers, boy haven’t they caused enough trouble (and wars and genocides). Right-wing conservatives are proudly “true believers” of one certain absolute truth, perceived or otherwise – an honor that happens to be proudly shared by fascists.

Liberals do this critical thinking deal that can actually lead to flip-flopping (gasp) based on what peer-reviewed evidence suggests. Liberals actually deal with, dare I say, different and multiple points of view and, gasp again, science (the stem-cell, not creationist, kind).

After all, someone’s got to cure a disease if prayer, however steadfast, fails.

Sure they’re also the ones that go on to lose 'em well-argued and debated American elections yet win those snobby, liberal-drenched, self-absorbed Nobel Prizes in the sciences and those really snobby ones in literature. Go figure.

Yah, ignorance may be bliss, and if things weren’t so fucked up, I’d be laughing my head off right now too, like hilariously and loud even.

But as the world has become fucked up beyond recognition in way too many cases, I just feel sorry for the writer (and readers who feel such pride, if not outright titillation) of this misguided, caricatured homily - evangelical self-righteousness intact - that is today’s bastardized, intellectually-starved neoconservative.

Of fish and evolution

Just for kicks, I was following up on a statement I heard on Discovery Channel - and considering the recent news of the missing land-sea species link makes this even more pertinent perhaps - so was doing some well-rounded reading and came upon these gems.

To preface, I’m pretty passionate about this because it has really changed my life for the better. Something simple that when consistently and sufficiently done greatly influences one’s well-being, mental acuity, and physiological health.

An angle that probably doesn’t get a lot of airplay and thus not a lot of people know about is that Omega 3 fatty acids (e.g. fish oils) were/are crucial to human evolution, particularly for the significant growth of the frontal lobe of the hominid brain.

Regardless of how fish has been bastardized these days by modern marketing thus so negatively perceived as something for health nuts, over fished, or tainted by our man-caused mercury contamination - though smaller, cold-water fish like salmon is still clean so far - good ol’ common sense should apply today, however unsexy it may be (or you can get ultra-pure molecularly distilled fish oil capsules at Costco, which at 6 cents a softgel is a bargain insurance policy of sorts).

So I present to you, the reader, an academic paper outlining DHA’s role in evolving the hominid brain (DHA is a primary form of Omega 3’s) as well as the importance of Homo Sapien's close proximity to land-water masses. A pretty nice, readable bedtime piece or you can just skim the abstract :) ...

Evidence for the Unique Function of Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) During the Evolution of the Modern Hominid Brain

ABSTRACT
The African savanna ecosystem of the large mammals and primates was associated with a dramatic decline in relative brain capacity. This reduction happened to be associated with a decline in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) from the food chain. DHA is required for brain structures and growth. The biochemistry implies that the expansion of the human brain required a plentiful source of preformed DHA.

The richest source of DHA is the marine food chain while the savannah environment offers very little of it. Consequently H.sapiens could not have evolved on the savannahs. Recent fossil evidence indicates that the lacustrine and marine food chain was being extensively exploited at the time cerebral expansion took place and suggests the alternative that the transition from the archaic to modern humans took place at the land/water interface. Contemporary data on tropical lake shore dwellers reaffirms the above view.

Lacustrine habitats provide nutritional support for the vascular system, the development of which would have been a prerequisite for cerebral expansion. Both arachidonic acid (AA) and DHA would have been freely available from such habitats providing the double stimulus of preformed acyl components for the developing blood vessels and brain.
...
We suggest that the evolution of the large human brain depended on a rich source of DHA from the land/water interface. We review a number of proposals for the possible influence of DHA on physical properties of the brain that are essential for its function.

Money in the bank

By exporting & lending to the US cheaply (and the American consumer willingly), China has amassed nearly 1 trillion in dollar reserves.

From The Economist (March 2006):

China surpassed Japan as the world's biggest holder of foreign reserves. The news came amid more politicking over China's currency policy, which American politicians regard as a cause of their trade deficit. Charles Schumer, a senator who has been shrill in his attacks on Beijing, dropped plans, for the moment at least, to slap a 27.5% tariff on Chinese goods, partly in response to signals from China that it would allow its currency to float more freely.

Tides Turning

A new book, Tides Turning, predicts that climate change is likely to be abrupt and cataclysmic—and that these sudden shifts could cripple national economies.

Newsweek has an interesting interview with the book's author here.

Implicit in this article, and mainstream economists are the first to admit, is the idea that there’s tremendous uncertainty and an unknown territory when it comes to modeling and estimating the costs of pollution, climate change, and natural disasters.

Yet sometimes in the assumed belief that free markets address most issues big and small, we fail to realize that in reality there are significant limitations and staleness with the economics discipline and free markets, particularly when dealing with uncertainty in complex, open systems with unknown transaction costs.

This is despite Nobel economist Ronald Coase’s work decades ago on transaction and social costs, that is, when property rights are fixed and defined, it was possible to “internalize externalities” like pollution. While it was a good starting point it was only for closed systems (two parties) with known transaction costs.

Unfortunately, meanwhile many have come to assume that mother nature is a trash collector that works for free, when it’s that we just don’t know how to accurately measure such externalities so it’s as if such costs don’t exist, even when it does and is often quite visible for show like Katrina.

To get a good sense of the limitations with Coase’s theorem as it applies to externalities like pollution, see A Critique of the Chicago School of Economics: Ronald Coase and the Coase Theorem

V for Wow

My wife and I saw V For Vendetta last night and it was absolutely magnificient. Highly recommended.

Finally a podcast I like

Podcast interviews of the world’s leading economists. Awesome.

Some musings & book recommendations: Religion, science, and history

Happy New Years! It's been a while again since my last entry and thought I should squeeze one in as I end my extended holiday vacation. And well, perhaps right now you’re looking for some new books to put on your reading list. If so, some out of box suggestions / musings:

As far as religions go, I’m an agnostic. Given my utmost respect for what I understand of [the history of] the scientific method and physics, I find Buddhism to be the most open-minded, interesting and compatible of the bunch. Speaking as an ex-practitioner, Christianity is to me at best a set of haphazard myths and inconsistent tales that have long outlived its usefulness as humankind’s shining light on the future, unless one now considers the end of days to be the future to look forward to shortly. Surely then, the vast majority of the world will be damned to hell except a small fraction of [mostly American] people who qualify to be saved. And the absolute clash of logic irreconcilable between that of an unquestioned being’s omnipotence that wills glorification & worship by mere mortals, who in return goes on to afford countless children and other subjects a dismal right to live and suffer in abject poverty, squalor, destitution. Any logical person should at the very least seriously ask [a Christian apologist], “Is that the best an omnipotent being can do?”

With that said wrt Buddhism, I was compelled to pick up and read the Dalai Lama’s The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. It is one of most elegantly written religious perspectives that succinctly delineates spirituality and science with all its fine lines and wrinkles intact. It clearly puts together a rich and engaging storyboard distilling complex ideas and concepts that cleanly synthesizes both concrete-physics and meta-physics, using everyday language. Something similar I read some time ago in high school was an early edition of The Tao of Physics. That felt forced and was a bit confusing as it tried to force a 1:1 mapping between the parallels of physicists’ attempts at a “grand unified theory” to the foundations of eastern mysticism. It is more comprehensive, though somewhat repetitive.

So it is hard for me to pick up a religious tome unless it’s grounded on a scientific foundation with its knack for consistency and rigor. I recently read The End of Faith, somewhat an exception to the rule since it also relies quite a bit on a set of tougher to follow metaphysical arguments. It presents a strong case against today's rather fervent religious movements (radical veins of Islam and Christianity in particular) that since time immemorial have resulted in some of mankind's most awful atrocities, acted out by followers of its various factions, always bearing a similar set of exclusionary and unwavering beliefs from which comes the notion, "it's my way to heaven or hell’s on your way", thus arising the Inquisition, the Crusades, Islamic jihad, religious genocides like Rwanda and Bosnia, and so forth. They seem to eventually trap its “true” believers in an un-repudiatable straitjacket of [blind, unprovable tautology that is] religious faith, when mixed with growing extremism, death merely becomes a doorstop to heaven provided enough earthly blood is shed to get someone a one-way ticket there.

I also got to spend some treasured vacation time reading a bit of early American history. A particularly compelling narrative - a bit stylized but provides for a unique portrait of a great man - was put together by a Pulitzer Prize writer whose earlier LBJ biography accorded the award. Now, her Team of Rivals tells a rich and layered story of Lincoln’s life, perseverance, and leadership during the Civil War as he guides a very fractured yet indispensable cabinet that's constantly in turmoil throughout the entire war. Also began David McCullough’s 1776.

Managed to revisit string theory a bit as well, prompted by an excellent primer by one of the top physicists of our time. Ed Whitten of Princeton obtained a PhD @ 25 after a brief stint with history and happens to hold a professorship founded by former Microsoftie Charles Simonyi. And if you’re interested in the very latest that advanced physics and vibrating strings have in store, physicist-extraordinaire Greene’s magnificent and fun to read best-seller, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory would be highly recommended. It is accessible to anyone who knows some introductory-level college physics sans the math. String theory is even more fantastic and mysterious than standard [atomic] theory and quantum mechanics, particularly for those who are instinctively curious about the worlds around them.

Theocracy, here we come

Kansas educators voted to downplay evolution
Kansas state education board approves science standards for public schools that cast doubt on the theory of evolution.

Why clean air isn't free

http://www.earthsky.org/shows/showsmore.php?t=20050909

Economist explains forest 'costs and benefits'

Kenneth Arrow of Stanford University has been heralded as one of the most prominent economic theorists of the 20th century. Among many other accomplishments, he was a 1972 Nobel Laureate in Economics. When Earth & Sky's Jorge Salazar spoke to him in December of 2004, Arrow told us some of the issues "hot on the agenda" of 21st century economists.

There's a lot of discussion. For example, one of the discussions is how, overall, do you measure the impact of the anthropogenic causes of Earth change? How do you balance the impact?

There are lots of things going on in the world. We're using up fossil fuels. We're putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. On the other hand, we are making technological progress. We're inventing methods of cleaning up things as well as methods of destroying them. These are very disparate activities, so one problem is how do you measure the balance between these activities in some overall way? How do you measure the overall impact of these things? That was the focus of our paper (Are We Consuming Too Much? Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2004).

....

Of course, the typical situation is using up fossil resources, for example oil and coal. Or the degradation of farmland. Those things are profitable today, but don't take the future into account. Or consider dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which for many years, didn't create any significant problems. Now the dumping, which has been going on since the 1800s, since the Industrial Revolution began, is beginning to show up.

The point being, once stuff goes in, you can't take it out. So, the result is that there is a permanent effect, and -- from the perspective of an economist -- you don't pay for it. You don't pay a tax, a price for putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is what you call a dynamic effect, an effect over time.

Or think about what they call ecosystem services. If you have a forest, not only do you have wood, but the forest also tends to control the flow of water. When you start deforesting, you start to get erosion, you start to get floods, because the forest acts like a big sponge.

These things are very indirect. You think of forests, you think of the wood. And of course there are a lot of subtle things. Of course, the forest is a habitat for many pecies, and so forth.

And those are just a few topics that are rather hot on the agenda of economists.

Disgrace

…There is substance, laid out in stunning detail by Sidney Blumenthal on Salon on August 29. “In 2004,” Blumenthal wrote, “the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.” That was one of about eight amazing pieces of information. It will be fascinating to monitor how aggressively the major media follow this story over the coming days.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10191

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The Lost City: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179587/

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The Rebellion of the Talking Heads: http://slate.msn.com/id/2125581/

Thought I’d take the liberty, particularly when it has been so hard fought for and rarely exercised in everyday discourse these days, to say bluntly: I am very pissed and ashamed by this fiasco. We have become a hallow country for long enough now, sans serious thinkers and policymakers. In lieu of which we are led by unbridled fear-mongers and hawks that have lowered our collective expectations and sense of optimism, distracting us from what’s important (e.g. stemming nuclear weapons proliferation, disease prevention, addressing poverty, education, and infrastructure, to name a few).

Results altogether have been too meager yet excuses bountiful. While neocons shout of reaping the fruits of [an intended] Iraqi freedom a dozen years later (as was the intention in Vietnam or Korea, each with a different story of such intentions gone awry), it does little to ameliorate deteriorating economic and political conditions today, e.g. if the ME stabilizes a decade later but we are greatly weakened in the process and lose our relative economic thus military hegemony to the India/China/EU trifecta – then following the shadows of a former British Empire we win ourselves a hallow victory at best, especially acute now if we don’t have a leader capable of manning and fighting on these equally important fronts.

Also, I’m sick to death of the constant, circuitous PR campaigns always distracting attention away from the unwise and meaningless policies time-and-again. For example, why do we as the world’s #1 superpower tolerate a 13% poverty rate, and we publicly care more about are how people use their sex organs based on narrow interpretations of the Bible – you’d think listening to the extreme right these days that it’s as if Jesus never mentioned love thy neighbor, do considerable charitable acts to help the poor, forgiveness for none of us are without sin….

We have clearly become a country numbed by fear and swayed by meaningless sound bites coupled with senseless policies, sans fact-based deliberation or thought-out strategy – all long-standing products of this president for which no American should be satisfied.

If I hear another right-wing Republican apologist try to find excuses gleaned off a sound-bite blaring from a right-wing cable channel or radio circuit to try to explain away W’s incompetence now - and to think people use to believe that the buck stopped at the top; those were the days - or start blaming this on the “liberal media” I’d write you off a troll and fanatical ideologue who is radicalizing the country, blind to dollars & common sense, unwilling to find common ground to address the numerous very real bread-and-butter and life-or-death challenges of everyday Americans, ignorant of broken promises made by a politician who happens to be on the same team. Not to mention particularly susceptible to fear-mongering rhetoric, and too lax to thoroughly weigh the costs seeing only a lofty gold-rush vision of benefits that apparently only a war’s blood and treasure could bring along.

Or treating the environment as one big free garbage disposal - as if Mother Nature won’t foot us or our children a bill with interest, as it always does, for absorbing today’s poisons and contaminants. As Newton parlayed, every action has an equal reaction, or what goes around….

We use to expect more from a president (at least I did with Clinton and Bush I). And I expected a lot more from Republicans who have so far been sorely disappointing, not speaking up with their own voice, yet were so quick to drag Clinton to the crap-house of 2 independent counsel investigations for such (minor) perceived wrongs like Whitewater and an oral fixation that were so frivolous in retrospect. Moreover, Friends of W can be so blind, it’s almost like FOW’s are fearful of being publicly wronged, and thus like W, never-ever dare admitting when W is wrong (using a bit of W-speak so to speak), for fear of straying from the party line.

No president is infallible, much less this one. A few prominent Republicans need to get some balls and stand firm with Democrats to try to make sure this kind of crap doesn’t happen again, considering that almost 4 years after 9/11 we are still obviously and inexcusably short and inadequate to the deliberative task of planning ahead in order to save our own people when it’s needed most, never mind a terrorist attack which usually don’t come with a 5-day advance warning.

And tough talk, or holding a lot of press conferences everywhere, or coining memorable phrases like “axis of evil”, “dead-or-alive”, or ‘flip-flop’ or having a record longest vacation in presidential history just don’t cut it anymore (particularly when we’re at war with soldiers in harm’s way and need an active, vigilant leader … and one who can cut their road trips short when a Category 5 storm is bearing down on the homeland). Americans expect and deserve better, especially when innocent people die when they do not have to, if only there was more forethought and less talk.

Latest read

Went to the bookstore recently with my wife and managed to pick up two books that I don't know if I'll have the time to finish but got it anyways. Go figure - Borders had a sale :)

So ended up picking up a biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernov. So far so good, though I still find John Marshall, Definer of a Nation by Jean Edward Smith to be crisper and better written.

Also began reading economist and UN adviser Jeffrey Sachs' book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Times; as one who has a keen interest in development economics, this book was a must read, though the first couple chapters has been a rehash for me so far. The foreword by Bono was a bit odd but I suppose it does help the book appeal to a broader audience.

I've also been soaking up a number of interesting white papers on .NET Development. For those of you who do web application development, are intersted in the forthcoming ASP.NET v2 and related security best practices, may want to check out Security Guidelines: ASP.NET 2.0 published by folks from Microsoft's Patterns and Practices group. They did a fantastic job.

The world is flat

In his new book, "The World is Flat", Thomas Friedman claims, "When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate". But, how did the world `become flat'? Friedman suggest the trigger events were the collapse of communism, the dot-com bubble resulting in overinvestment in fiber-optic telecommunications, and the subsequent out-sourcing of engineers enlisted to fix the perceived Y2K problem.

Those events created an environment where products, services, and labor are cheaper. However, the West is now losing its strong-hold on economic dominance. Depending on if viewed from the eyes of a consumer or a producer - that's either good or bad, or a combination of both.

What is more sobering is Friedman's elaboration on Bill Gates' statement, "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow. In math and science, our fourth graders are among the top students in the world. By eighth grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations.

. . . The percentage of a population with a college degree is important, but so are sheer numbers. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind."

Similarly, a while back CNN's Lou Dobbs' released a book skewering HP's Fiorina on Offshoring - Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas.

His book continues a long-time theme of his CNN-TV show, that American workers are being sold out by greedy, shortsighted CEOs who are damaging America.

Dobbs says corporate eagerness to send jobs offshore is undermining the American middle class, costing Americans jobs, forcing Americans to work harder and longer for less pay, devastating some communities, and depriving governments at all levels of the tax revenue for upgrading public education and providing other essential goods and services.

"India can provide our software; China can provide our toys; Sri Lanka can make our clothes; Japan make our cars. But at some point we have to ask, what will we export? At what will Americans work? And for what kind of wages? No one I've asked in government, business or academia has been able to answer those questions," Dobbs writes.

Dobbs singles out Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who said, "No American has a God-given right to a job."

Dobbs' reaction to that statement was the urge to tell Fiorina where she could go.

"That first reaction has held up as a lasting impression. As much as I hate what she said, I at least have to give Fiorina credit for straight talk. She didn't sugarcoat her sentiments for public consumption, because she didn't have to. Forty or 50 years ago, Fiorina's bald statement, and its clear implications, would have fueled a firestorm of labor protest and political controversy. Not now. Working men and women in this country aren't part of the political equation. Business and capital rule. It's that simple," Dobbs writes. Among the others spotlighted by Dobbs for outsourcing jobs to India, the Philippines, Romania, Ireland, Poland and other countries are IBM, SAS Institute, Intel, Microsoft, Perot Systems, Apple, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems.

I wrote a version of the below August 2004 here but think it's woth restating:

Focusing on purely the economic balance of costs and returns misses a larger, more important piece to the puzzle: Innovation and the leadership required to foster new types of markets, technologies, and jobs. I am a deep believer of free trade. As a professional economist would no doubt state, it's important to understand the benefits we Americans receive through international trade that is based on each country's comparative advantage. That in of itself receives no argument from me.

However, it's also important to note that comparative advantage is not static for a fixed number of areas - it is a constantly changing variable that each country and its political and business leaders must think over the long term, formulating strategies that maintain, if not expand, the scope of things a nation is good or better at vis-a-vis other nations.

We were once leaders in the markets for cars, planes, and consumer microelectronics. Now, we are not (the Big 2 car makers are re-learning the harsh lessons again from the Japanese, as if the 1980s never happened). As a sampler, presently, we are leaders in entertainment, software and PCs, as well as big pharma (albeit in turn is distorting the cost structure of health care system for the worse). In this sample list, the Japanese and Chinese are encroaching entertainment (Japanese anime, Chinese movie imports, as American plots become rehashed and predictable, much like our music), Airbus is giving us a run for our money, while we maintain a lead in the software and PC space (with the ASEAN countries not far behind).

The root concern I have is while that is true, there is a decreasing fraction of our economy and its leadership that are innovating and executing in the long term, while our basic pillars (education, healthcare, and technology infrastructure) deteriorate, which we have and continue to take for granted, watching passively as they deteriorate buttressed by a variety of excuses: fear of big government, or assuming private industry can effectively provide such public goods for society's greater good.

Meanwhile, foreign govt's are incenting and working with their businesses and political bodies to grow and nurture new IP and markets, we stand aside and hope our Fortune 1000 executives lead the charge of cost cutting, repackaging existing goods and services, and driving growth through cost-cutting (vs. innovating). It's easy to blame executives alone. But let's not forget the Internet and how it affords a voice for all who choose to participate and political leverage to grass roots efforts, and how more of us are getting involved and more need to hop on board.

It's time to stop being passive citizens, take some individual responsibility, and start getting involved in a real conversation at the local, state, and federal level about what's going on all around and where Americans want to take this country, and stop being so PC to the point of essentially having no voice, not speaking out, and being numbed ultimately to economic defeat as we let our many (not all) short-sighted politicians and CxOs get away with degrading, myopic policies and business practices.

Announcing the SQL Server/Visual Studio/BizTalk Connected Systems Developer Competition

Show Microsoft what a great developer you are! Show how innovative you can be! And win $50,000 USD!

On April 25th 2005 the SQL Server, Visual Studio and BizTalk teams launched the Connected Systems 2005 Developer Competition.

The Connected Systems 2005 Developer Competition, sponsored by Microsoft Corporation and MSDN Magazine is a skill based competition for professional developers intended to highlight and reward creativity and programming excellence using SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2004/2006.

The competition is open to anyone who practices in the field of technology development, either individuals or organizations. Some eligibility restrictions apply; see Official Competition Rules for details.

Entries will be judged on creativity, innovation, design and technical excellence, usefulness, usability and value by a panel of industry experts selected from the Microsoft Regional Director program.

All competition entrants must be registered and have submitted a description of the application they are entering into the competition by August 30, 2005. The official closing date for final competition entries is September 15, 2005.

All finalists will be invited to join the SQL Server, Visual Studio and BizTalk teams at the Joint SQL Server 2005/Visual Studio 2005/BizTalk 2006 launch event where the Winners will be announced at a dinner the evening before the launch.

For more information or to enter the competition please visit the competition website located at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/devcompetition

What Can You Win?

• First Prize of $50,000 USD Copies of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2006 MSDN Universal subscription
  
• Paid Trip to the joint SQL Server 2005/Visual Studio 2005/BizTalk 2006 Launch Event and competition finalists dinner
  
• Winning entries will be highlighted on various Microsoft and CMP websites and in a special magazine inserts in MSDN Magazine, Software Development magazine and Dr Dobbs magazine.
  
• 1 Community Winner will receive a 1 year MSDN Universal subscription plus the chance to talk about their winning entry at Tech ED 2006 in Boston.
  
• 5 Microsoft MCP Winners will receive a Certificate of Accomplishment, a 1 Year MSDN Universal Subscription and a ticket to attend Tech ED 2006 in Boston. All 5 winners will be entered into a drawing from which one will be selected to speak at Tech ED 2006 in Boston.

Hey Atlanta, come experience Microsoft .NET for yourself!

This Friday (May 20th), come to the Microsoft Alpharetta office for the .NET Experience Expo! This is a free event where you can come hear all about some of the hottest topics for developers and architects. This is a huge opportunity to learn more about what Microsoft is doing for developers (and it’s a great chance to win an Xbox!) All attendees will receive a free copy of beta 2 (yep, Team Suite... the full deal), a copy of "Introducing ASP.NET 2.0", and a swank .NET shirt. We will have a reception at the end of the day for attendees (who can beat free beer?) There will be partners attending as well in the partner pavillion (AmberPoint, Avanade, AVIcode, RDA, Internosis).

But wait... there's more! We will have a Hands-On Lab room where you can play with the bits (BizTalk, SharePoint, VS 2005, and more), Ask the Experts sessions, an Ask the MVPs session with some of the Atlanta MVPs, and lots of time to interact with the Microsoft Developer Evangelist team!

Make sure to sign up and register here!

Come for the Experience… stay for the beer.

DATE: Friday, May 20th, 2005

LOCATION: Microsoft Atlanta Office

1125 Sanctuary Parkway

3rd Floor

Alpharetta, GA 30004

Time	Line of Business Development	Patterns & Practices	Back Office Development
7:00 - 8:00	Registration, Partner Pavillion, and Hands On Labs
8:30 - 9:15	Opening Keynote - Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Team System
9:30 - 10:30	.NET Fx 2.0 - New Features for Windows Forms	Service Orientation in Practice	.NET Fx 2.0 - New Features for the CLR
10:45 - 11:45	Mobile Clients & Compact Framework	Enterprise Library	.NET for Operations
11:45 - 1:00	Lunch, Partner Pavillion, Hands On Labs, and Ask the Experts
1:00 - 2:00	Microsoft Office - A New Breed of Smart Clients	Workflow and Business Process using BizTalk Server 2004	SharePoint for the Developer
2:15 - 3:15	Deploying Smart Clients using ClickOnce	Writing Secure Code	Identity Management Using Active Directory, ADAM, and MIIS
3:30 - 4:30	Web Applications - Innovations in ASP.NET 2.0	Distributed Architecture on the .NET Platform	SQL Server 2005 & SQL Reporting Services - What's in it for the Developers?
4:45 - 5:30	Closing Keynote

Again, to register, simply sign up here.

Does the future belong to China?

Does size matter? If so, China matters. Fareed Zakaria writes another stimulating piece.

Does the Future Belong to China? A new power is emerging in the East. How America should handle unprecedented new challenges, threats—and opportunities. By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek.

...What America needs to do

What you can do is be better prepared. For Americans, this means a renewed focus on the core skills that have propelled the American economy so far: science and technology. The United States has been slipping badly in all global rankings of these fields. Its research facilities are dominated by foreign students and immigrants—but a growing number of them are staying home or going home. Without a massive new focus in these areas, America will find itself unable to produce the core of scientists, engineers and technicians who make up the base of an advanced industrial economy. China and India already produce many more engineers than does the United States. In five years, China will produce more Ph.D.s than the United States. They may not be as good as American Ph.D.s, but numbers do matter.

For the American government, the free ride may be coming to an end. It has run irresponsible fiscal policies, knowing that foreign governments and people would provide it with unlimited credit. But that credit comes at a price. When China holds huge reserves of dollars, it also holds the power to damage the American economy. To do so would certainly hurt China as much or more than it would America, but surely it would be better if U.S. policy were less vulnerable to such possibilities. Fiscal responsibility at home means greater freedom of action abroad.

In foreign policy, Washington will face two possibilities. The first is that China will push its weight around, anger its neighbors and frighten the world. In this case, there will be a natural balancing process by which Russia, Japan, India and the United States will come together to limit China's emerging power. But what if China is able to adhere to its asymmetrical strategy? What if it gradually expands its economic ties, acts calmly and moderately, and slowly enlarges its sphere of influence, hoping to wear out America's patience and endurance?

The United States will then have to respond in kind, also working quietly and carefully, also adopting a calibrated and nuanced policy for the long run. This is hardly beyond its capacity. America has been far more patient than most recognize. It pursued the containment of the Soviet Union for almost 50 years. American troops are still on the banks of the Rhine, along the DMZ in Korea and in Okinawa.

A world war is highly unlikely. Nuclear deterrence, economic interdependence, globalization all mitigate against it. But beneath this calm, there is probably going to be a soft war, a quiet competition for power and influence across the globe. America and China will be friends one day, rivals another, cooperate in one area, compete in another. Welcome to the 21st century.

Crash

Reminded by a friend, Chani and I saw Crash last night. From what I’d previously seen in reviews, I fully expected it to be a great movie and it lived up to that billing (it's the directorial debut from the writer of 'Million Dollar Baby'). Though presently #2 at the box office, it’s not your typical slick Hollywood screenplay, but rather a raw yet rich, layered story about real life that makes you think and better appreciate life’s complexities from a wide-angled perspective of many disparate and distinct characters.

It also had a deep nostalgic effect, reminding us of our former home, the City of Angels, and its rich melting pots bound to its many concrete jungles with people of all stripes and economic strata. Persuasively drives home the fundamental premise that, regardless of culture, skin color, and other markers that mainstream society chooses to tag on, at the end people are just people.

MSN's Movie summary says:

A Brentwood housewife and her DA husband… a Persian store owner… two police detectives, who are also lovers… an African-American television director and his wife… a Mexican locksmith… two car-jackers… a rookie cop… a middle-aged Korean couple…they all live in Los Angeles. And, during the next 36 hours, they will all collide… 'Crash' takes a provocative, unflinching look at the complexities racial tolerance in contemporary America. Diving headlong into the melting pot of post-9/11 Los Angeles, this urban drama tracks the volatile intersections of multi-ethnic characters as they struggle to overcome their fears while careening in and out of one another's lives. In the gray area between black and white, victim and aggressor, there are no easy answers.

You can also find an MSBNC movie review, "Ambitious Crash is a Stimulating Drama", here.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Mitchell decries nuclear option threat (CNN)
Saturday, April 2, 2005 Posted: 2:13 PM EST (1913 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell called on senators Saturday to reject a Republican plan to ban filibusters of judicial nominees, calling it "unprecedented, unfair and unwise."

"Neither I nor any other senator, Republican or Democrat, ever dreamed of taking the kind of drastic action now being proposed," said Mitchell, a former federal judge himself who was majority leader from 1988-95 as a senator from Maine.

"We had the power to do so, but we refrained from exercising that power because it was as wrong then as it is now. The end does not justify the means," he said in the Democrats' weekly radio address.

Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, the majority leader, has threatened to try to push through a rule change to eliminate the ability to filibuster judicial nominees.

Democrats have been using filibuster threats -- to stall the nomination through extended debate -- on 10 of President Bush's judicial nominees, which requires 60 votes to overcome. The Senate has confirmed 204 of the president's 214 trial and appellate judicial nominees.

Observers expect Frist to attempt the rules change before Memorial Day in case of a possible Supreme Court nomination during Bush's second term. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, 80, is fighting thyroid cancer.

Mitchell said the ability to block judges is an important part of Congress's power to check the presidency. "The Senate's power to confirm or reject judicial nominations balances the president's authority to nominate them," he said Frist's plan is called "the nuclear option" because "it will destroy any hope of bipartisanship and permanently change the Senate for the worse," Mitchell said.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada has threatened to shut down the Republican legislative agenda, which would cripple the Senate, if Frist succeeds in stopping the filibusters.

Republicans want to "silence the minority," Mitchell said. "What they are proposing is unprecedented, unfair and unwise. Our democracy works best when the parties work together in the interest of all Americans."

Mitchell served as a U.S. District Court judge from 1979-80 before filling the Senate seat vacated by Edmund Muskie.

A rather bleak indictment of the pope's legacy

A papacy and church transformed
John Paul II ushered in 'new springtime of Christianity'
ANALYSIS
By Hanna Rosin
The Washington Post
April 3, 2005

The title is misleading given that the conclusion of the piece was diametrically opposite it and rather unfair, akin to criticizing a Fortune 500 CEO for failing to win a popularity contest. Obviously, comparing apples to pork loins; he wasn’t a rock-star CEO, but rather an apostle to Christ, and as such held an altogether different, more pressing set of obligations. John Paul’s moral authority was derived from his broad consistency evangelizing the substantive values he firmly concluded from Christendom’s core doctrines & beliefs as well as an unspoiled laser-focus on the original spirit of Christ’s teachings.

I didn’t see fault in his voice being irrespective of the whims & malleable moral-vane of fickle, huddled masses that are oftentimes swayed to stand behind actions contrary to Christ’s original message. In the midst of it all, he stood a true apostle: From apologizing for earlier this century when Catholics & Christians did little as Jews endured the concentration camps, to castigating today’s moral tolerance for the pro-war, pro-life yet pro-death penalty, idolizing wealth & power while abandoning the weak, slide of Western culture onto a long slippery slope of moral bankruptcy.

And if one was a religious cynic, all an early prelude to Armageddon.

This piece was more thorough:
The Church Loses Its Light
In John Paul II, World Found a Direct, Dynamic Leader
By J.Y. Smith
Special to The Washington Post
April 3, 2005

"...In "Witness to Hope," a noted biography of the pope, author George Weigel said John Paul believed that culture, rather than politics or economics, was the engine that drove history. It was clear from the beginning of his papacy that he had a particular interest in bringing Eastern Europe back to its Christian traditions..."

...Practicality vs. Principle
John Paul was fascinated by science. In contrast to the church's traditional wary approach to the subject, he established a Pontifical Academy of Sciences, a body made up of eminent scholars, Catholics and non-Catholics, to advise him on developments in the field. He also commemorated the 100th birthday of Albert Einstein and directed that Galileo, imprisoned by the Inquisition in 1633 for asserting the truth of Copernicus's theory that the Earth circles the sun, be fully rehabilitated...

In October 1996, he declared that physical evolution is "more than just a theory," advancing the church's view, held for a half-century, that the process was worthy of discussion but still open to question.

...At the same time, he deplored the Enlightenment, the 18th-century movement that gave the Western world many of its scientific, economic and humanitarian glories. Its triumphs included the Industrial Revolution and the propositions embodied in the Constitution of the United States. But its central idea was that the human being, not God, is the center of the universe. This struck at the heart of Catholic dogma.

In "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," a book of reflections that became a bestseller in 1994, John Paul traced these developments to Rene Descartes, the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician. His dictum, "Cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"), countered the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the landmark theologian who said being was a gift from God that preceded every human activity, including thought.

John Paul spoke repeatedly and movingly against the modern tendency to make profit and efficiency the measures of success. He blamed this trend for the alienation of individuals, the disintegration of the family and the abandonment of objective standards of behavior in modern society. In 1993, he used the occasion of a World Youth Day gathering in Cherry Creek State Park near Denver, one of a series of biennial events he began in 1986, to summarize his thoughts on the "culture of death":

"In a technological culture in which people are used to dominating matter, discovering its laws and mechanisms in order to transform it according to their wishes, the danger arises of also wanting to manipulate conscience and its demands. In a culture which holds that no universally valid truths are possible, nothing is absolute. . . . Good comes to mean what is pleasing or useful at a particular moment. Evil means what contradicts our subjective wishes. Each person can build a private system of values."

At a Mass the next day, he cut short a homily that said, in its widely quoted prepared text: "In our own century, as at no other time in history, the 'culture of death' has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, 'final solutions,' 'ethnic cleansings' and the massive 'taking of lives of human beings even before they are born or before they reach the natural point of death.'"

Sin City rocks

Haven't seen it, trying to make up your mind, and need that extra push after having read the critics' jibber-jabber reviews? Go. It really hits the spot for an action movie. The rich plot development, the various arcs & storylines, super acting, and slick cinematography made it an all around 5-star flick.

Million Dollar Baby

It's been a while since my last post. Work has been swamping me, and while I have lots of thoughts to share, I just haven't had the chance. Well, except now - a quick blurb on the already lavishly-praised movie of the year.

After all the hoopla and media fanfare, recently, Chani and I finally went to see Million Dollar Baby.

Given all that's been said, I'll just say it was a nice story albeit one I didn't expect to be portrayed and delivered in such an understated way. It was telling a story w/o trying to tell you one - as if you just happened to be along for the ride.

Is that one of the marks of a great movie? For some it is, including me. I know years from now, I'll still remember its many memorable storylines and scenes, long after the media hoopla subsides, which is a lot more then I can say for the majority of flicks Hollywood pumps out these days.

World can end poverty by 2025

The New York Times fronts and the Washington Post stuffs the U.N. report concluding that rich countries can meet their promise to halve extreme global poverty if they increase their international aid to about half of one percent of GDP, up from the current average of .25 percent. The difference would be about $50 billion annually and could save millions of lives. Currently, 500 million people live on less than a dollar a day. Nations have not met their pledges to world's poor; the U.S. currently clocks in at about .15 percent, last among rich nations.

Report: World can end poverty by 2025
Experts say richest nations would need to double

When fear follows fabric along the assembly line

The Los Angeles Times front page reports on the disturbing news that hundreds of thousands of women in poor countries could lose their jobs because an international system of import quotas is expiring--meaning that wealthy countries will not be compelled to buy manufactured products from any specific poor country.

In many of these nations, the article says, "women's paychecks have been a driving force behind significant gains in living standards, health indicators and educational levels," and, especially in Africa, they've helped slow the spread of HIV-AIDS.

It goes to show concretely how these [now-threatened] low-paying jobs are invaluable to women in developing nations, promoting stronger families as well as economic security and greater personal freedom.

…“Across the globe, women who work, and control their paychecks, are more likely than men to be the drivers of change for their families and communities.

Study after study has found that as the economic status of women improves, so do literacy levels, caloric consumption and other health indicators.

In Ivory Coast, expanding women's share of cash income significantly enlarged the share of the household budget going to food and decreased the amount spent on alcohol and cigarettes, according to a study published in the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics.

In South Africa, cash received by women through an old-age pension program increased the funds spent on schooling and food for their grandchildren, a World Bank study showed.

Extra income in the hands of women in Brazil resulted in more of the household budget going to education, health and nutrition, according to a study by Duncan Thomas, an economics professor at UCLA.

And when mothers' incomes were increased, their children ended up growing taller and weighing more.

In Cambodia, where the garment industry is responsible for more than one-third of gross national product and 93% of exports, the effect of the 220,000 apparel jobs is visible even far from the factories in the cities.

Money sent home by apparel workers — in Cambodia, as everywhere else, the vast majority of them women — has trickled out into the countryside. There it has been spent on school fees and healthful food, aluminum roofs and cement-lined water wells.The effect is immeasurable.

Hun Srean, a 22-year-old who earns $3 to $4 a day stitching men's shirts in Phnom Penh, supports two brothers and four sisters who live in the tiny southeastern village of Chreykrahim. "It feels good that I can contribute," Hun said.

But she added that the influential role she plays goes far beyond money."When I tell them to study because my work in the factory is hard, they listen to me."…

Bleed-curing the economy in 2006, old Western style

Bush's Budget Expected to Be Aggressive Program Cuts and Spending Freezes for 2006 Are Intended to Trim Record Deficit

Program Cuts and Spending Freezes for 2006 Are Intended to Trim Record Deficit - The Bush administration is preparing a budget request that would freeze most spending on agriculture, veterans and science, slash or eliminate dozens of federal programs, and force more costs, from Medicaid to housing, onto state and local governments, according to congressional aides and lawmakers.

2006 will be when the United States of America will be all about increased homeland security and defense spending. Hooray. That’s W’s Harvard MBA hard at work. In 2006, everything except homeland security and defense will be held constant or cut.

Almost half-trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy (80% of all tax cut refunds) to invest in their global portfolios, er, to spend for stimulating the economy has already evaporated, e.g. the lack of consumer spending and economic growth to show for it. The still lackluster economic results 1½ years later means that a significant portion was invested and/or saved than spent. The tax cuts just didn’t work as originally advertised.

I know - the wealthy “deserve” it. Presumably, it was their money to begin with.

However, consider that most of us aren’t wealthy. And that it is the not-so-wealthy consumers among us that spend and drive the economic engine, which taken together grows the wealth of this country. And the average consumer can't continue on spending too much, since they’ve overloaded their credit and home equity lines already.

Right now, circa 2003-2005, we actually have an investment glut in this country – lots of capital with no productive use since there’s insufficient, unsustainable consumer demand – as evidenced by flattening retail sales and a large slack in hiring, which has failed to replace all the jobs lost over the last four years much less to create all-new jobs to sustain the population's growth.

Meanwhile, the wealthy did their duty at tax time, investing most of their tax cut monies, and finding low returns domestically, resorted instead to foreign capital markets of China, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere to get the double digit returns they’ve become so use to 90s-style.

Under such circumstance, Bush’s tax cut for the wealthy during wartime was and is the very wrong choice and simply unprecedented. No other president has ever reduced the tax income the Fed receives while the country has to spend massive sums of money driving war efforts – for sound, obvious arithmetic reasons, until W.

In any event, education, veterans benefits, Medicare, Social Security, R&D, roads and infrastructure, housing programs are all on the block. One wonders how long we we afford such enormous expenditures for tax cuts and Iraq, even after these cuts. In comparsion, these programs are a pittance, yet ones so many Joe “W” Sixpacks rely on and even more so will over time, given:

1. More non-degreed (75% of population) Americans can’t find low-end [manufacturing and assembly] jobs many of which moved offshore, have given up looking for a job altogether, thus not counted as part of employment or unemployment rates, and thereby not contributing as taxpayers,
   
2. We have poorly educated kids who score in the last quartile of standardized exams, versus well-educated foreign students who are better equipped for the jobs of tomorrow, which immigration tightening cannot mitigate, especially given virtual outsourcing trends,
   
3. Americans save 2% of income while borrowing the rest at double-digit interest rates payable to foreign creditors as the dollar devalues,
   
4. Average weighted salaries are stagnant across the board particularly for Americans with no bachelor or advanced degrees, and as oil, medical and housing costs are rising significantly along with increasing offshore and outsourcing pressures,
   
5. Almost 25% of Americans have little or no health care coverage, and with low or nil savings, meaning significantly increasing catastrophic healthcare costs to come

Where does that leave Joe “W” Sixpack a decade from now - gainful employment in the military or homeland security? If Joe only knew or cared…as they charge up & overload their credit cards, how dependent we are on foreign “crack” credit.

Trade Deficit Leaps Again - $60.3 Billion Gap in November Is 7th Monthly Record Set in 2004

The monthly U.S. trade deficit soared to an all-time high of $60.3 billion in November, the Commerce Department reported yesterday, sending the dollar tumbling and raising new worries about whether the U.S. economy has become too dependent on borrowing from foreigners.

And as China’s domestic consumption increases over the next 5-10 years - consider how their surged hunger for commodities had led to a drastic rise in steel, rubber, and oil prices this past year - foreign creditors will eventually shift their funds elsewhere in search of higher returns. Interest rates will rise. And many average Americans will finally feel what’s it’s like to have to live within their means.

From where I stand, the gathering macroeconomic trends for the next 2-5 years look pretty ugly for the average Joe. For W, it’s all cost-cutting now to salvage what he can out of this shoddy economy, lacking proactive planning that reflect any long-term vision except military and security spending, the former of which is being cut back since we can’t afford it already.

Mark these fonts, such simpleton policies will leech us bone dry – and we’re already beginning to see worrying symptoms today - large cuts in the military budget, unbelievable deficits, jitters in the bond and currency markets.

Through lens of Cold War-era history, one could almost find it ironic; al Qaeda did to us what we did to the Soviets, albeit with a whole lot better ROI.

Killer waves were sometimes only inches high

A color-coded map, based on data from four Earth-observing satellites, shows how the wave generated by the Sumatra quake spread out to varying heights three and a half hours after the seismic event.

While a tsunami can rise to great heights when it arrives at the shore, such waves are often barely noticeable in the ocean.

In this case, scientists found that two hours after the undersea quake that launched the tsunami, the wave was about 2 feet (60 centimeters).

An hour and 15 minutes later it was down to about 16 inches (40 centimeters).

After eight hours the main wave was down to about 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters), though a portion in the Bay of Bengal was still at about 10 inches (25 centimeters), the N0AA scientists said Monday.

An earthquake deep beneath the ocean off Indonesia caused the tsunami by shifting the sea floor, resulting in displacement of the water overhead and causing a wave to spread out from that location.

Unlike surface waves that affect only a shallow amount of water, a tsunami stretches all the way to the sea floor and, as that rises to the land, so does the wave. Arriving at shore, such waves can grow suddenly by dozens of feet.

The satellite imaging did not provide a depth for the waves that came ashore.

The new measurements were based on data from four Earth-orbiting satellites. Researchers hope the work will help them develop models to improve tsunami forecasts.

The data, which took several days to analyze, came from the TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason satellites operated NASA and the French space agency, CNES; the European Space Agency’s Envisat; and the U.S. Navy’s Geosat Follow-On.

Moving off the docks

A nice piece that explains how much the fishery business has changed drastically over the past few decades: The harsh economics with razor-thin margins, fast-growing and oft-changing demand, where the fishes come from today vs. a decade ago, how business has moved off the dock and open marketplace to the e-office and keyboard, as well as the fierce cut-throat global competition.
Moving Off the Docks

Technology Transforms Once-Parochial Seafood Business Into Global Enterprise

The shrinking dollar

A handy primer on how a foreign exchange imbalance affects you.
Everyday Economics - The 97-cent weakling

Day by day, your dollar buys fewer and fewer euros or yen. If you think you don't care, just wait. You will.

A few things that I worry about (politically-speaking)

Politically Speaking
Right-of-center oratory (as I see it on cable news in particular) is quite effective for inflaming the passions and promugating a sense of self-rightousness but does little to help reach common ground and get working political solutions for everyone, not just the most impassioned and vocal lot.

Putting such passions in perspective, simply put, is that for the past 4 years the numbers just haven't added up under W. While cable news' fiery almost-sermons are worthy that of a Christian Coalition convention yet, in the end, can't negate several trends: We as a nation are weakening economically and militarily, our foreign policy is mostly a one-dimensional military push with no diplomatic or geopolitical prongs or depth, we increasingly can't compete in the global marketplace and we aren't planning or investing for the long-term.

On this blog, I try to focus on numbers, not name-calling, and more often than not, the numbers bleed red and show that we are weaker, not stronger, irregardless of the tough rhetoric W projects in sound bites or his admittedly memorable catch-phrases.

What I Worry About
I worry about competing against the likes of Indians and mainland Chinese that enthusiastically pump out 3-4x more highly-educated scientists and programmers from their schools than we do, to outsourced jobs and their aim at usurping our economic might patiently and methodically.

I worry that American job growth has been stagnant for the past 3 years, new jobs' wages that are almost $2/hr lower then before while we're working harder, longer (then even the Japanese now) for less then before, and with an increasing number of unemployed ill-equipped or insufficiently trained to compete for the technology jobs of the 21st century.

I worry about the budget deficit and our inability to finance the military that is leading to drastic cutbacks and basic education that puts us almost last among the G8 and the world.

I worry about our lack of an energy policy, relying on Saudis and the Middle East (home to the 9/11 terrorists and Wahabiist-Muslim extremism) as our main energy suppliers, doing little to promote alternatives.

I worry about tax cuts as being the primary economic policy of the US government to drive growth that mostly benefit the wealthy, who invest the bulk of their refunds back into their portfolios that are tied to global capital markets for higher returns, not spent domestically where it's needed to drive US economic growth and jobs.

I worry about the jittery bond markets and our undervalued dollar that is slowly losing its credibility as the world's de-facto currency arising from our enormous record budget and trade deficits.

I worry that this in turn may prompt Euro and Asian creditors to forgo our bond and debt instruments in the future, driving up prices for everyday consumer items (the majority of which we import) and our interest rates for credit cards, mortgages, and loans, thereby making already poor Americans (and businesses) poorer and richer Americans (and businesses) invest their money overseas for better rates of return.

I worry that we're not doing anything to alleviate poverty and promoting economic growth at political hotspots that engender terror and global unrest, and particularly, not engaging as leaders with full presidential involvement in a full-court press in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process (especially now w/o Arafat).

I worry about ineffective homeland security (that is also cyber- and tech-smart) to protect ourselves and our children from even-smarter, more-patient and stealthier terrorists looking for cheaper, more effective ways to harm us en masse.

I worry about eliminating our complacency with national competitiveness that is inextricably linked to reforming education for the 21st century, in order for us to remain [at least one of] the world's economic superpower[s] creating new markets and new types of jobs.

I worry about paying down our debt and saving a surplus so our children won't have to deal with an unstable national economy and have to pay the burdens we incurred.

I worry about single-/two-issue Americans dominating our political discourse taking our security, as embodied today by Iraq, and moral values to be the end all, be all.

I worry that there is much more at stake for the United States to take the leadership role in but we're stuck with Iraq front-and-center, pumped daily by 24/7 cable news-cycle economics, leaving room for little else on the policy agenda.

Postscript
Great statesmen in time of war would be the likes of Roosevelt who during WWII rallied the nation and the world (with Churchill) to wholeheartedly sacrifice in order to win the war against the evil that was Naziism. They had also laid out and executed a plan that kept the peace as well as led the largest successful rebuilding of the major nation-states of Western Europe and Japan. Or Lincoln who instituted land-grants to establish the nation's leading universities in midst of a mighty bloody Civil War.

In light of such historical greats, unfortunately, W is but a simpleton - whether in terms of long-term vision, pragmatism, or depth and breadth of leadership. The world is mighty complicated, and it requires more than one man's guts to run the greatest nation on earth, a man who based on his gutsy eye-to-eye meets trusted Musharraf (sp) and Putin, not realizing that both men have cataracts and stand for many things we Americans abhor.

Apparently, a lot of these things don't seem to be of much concern for those worried about our moral compass and setting the right direction for this great nation - and the world's singular role model for democracy. And it often seems like many Americans just don't care anymore.