Red Door Cafe

FDA approves computer chip for humans

2004-10-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

Devices could help doctors with stored medical information.

The Associated Press Updated: 6:38 p.m. ET Oct. 13, 2004

WASHINGTON - Medical milestone or privacy invasion? A tiny computer chip approved Wednesday for implantation in a patient’s arm can speed vital information about a patient’s medical history to doctors and hospitals. But critics warn that it could open new ways to imperil the confidentiality of medical records.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical purposes.

With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and leaves no stitches. Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.
Think UPC code. The identifier, emblazoned on a food item, brings up its name and price on the cashier’s screen.

Chip's dual uses raise alarmThe VeriChip itself contains no medical records, just codes that can be scanned, and revealed, in a doctor’s office or hospital. With that code, the health providers can unlock that portion of a secure database that holds that person’s medical information, including allergies and prior treatment. The electronic database, not the chip, would be updated with each medical visit.

The microchips have already been implanted in 1 million pets. But the chip’s possible dual use for tracking people’s movements ? as well as speeding delivery of their medical information to emergency rooms ? has raised alarm.

“If privacy protections aren’t built in at the outset, there could be harmful consequences for patients,” said Emily Stewart, a policy analyst at the Health Privacy Project.

To protect patient privacy, the devices should reveal only vital medical information, like blood type and allergic reactions, needed for health care workers to do their jobs, Stewart said.
An information technology guru at Detroit Medical Center, however, sees the benefits of the devices and will lobby for his center’s inclusion in a VeriChip pilot program.

“One of the big problems in health care has been the medical records situation. So much of it is still on paper,” said David Ellis, the center’s chief futurist and co-founder of the Michigan Electronic Medical Records Initiative.

'Part of the future of medicine'As “medically mobile” patients visit specialists for care, their records fragment on computer systems that don’t talk to each other.

“It’s part of the future of medicine to have these kinds of technologies that make life simpler for the patient,” Ellis said. Pushing for the strongest encryption algorithms to ensure hackers can’t nab medical data as information transfers from chip to reader to secure database, will help address privacy concerns, he said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced $139 million in grants to help make real President Bush’s push for electronic health records for most Americans within a decade.

William A. Pierce, an HHS spokesman, could not say whether VeriChip and its accompanying secure database of medical records fit within that initiative.

“Exactly what those technologies are is still to be sorted out,” Pierce said. “It all has to respect and comport with the privacy rules.”

Applied Digital gave away scanners to a few hundred animal shelters and veterinary clinics when it first entered the pet market 15 years ago. Now, 50,000 such scanners have been sold.
To kickstart the chip’s use among humans, Applied Digital will provide $650 scanners for free at 200 of the nation’s trauma centers.

Implantation costs $150 to $200In pets, installing the chip runs about $50. For humans, the chip implantation cost would be $150 to $200, said Angela Fulcher, an Applied Digital spokeswoman.

Fulcher could not say whether the cost of data storage and encrypted transmission of medical information would be passed to providers.

Because the VeriChip is invisible, it’s also unclear how health care workers would know which unconscious patients to scan. Company officials say if the chip use becomes routine, scanning triceps for hidden chips would become second nature at hospitals.

Ultimately, the company hopes patients who suffer from such ailments as diabetes and Alzheimer’s or who undergo complex treatments, like chemotherapy, would have chips implanted. If the procedure proves as popular for use in humans as in pets, that could mean up to 1 million chips implanted in people. So far, just 1,000 people across the globe have had the devices implanted, very few of them in the United States.

The company’s chief executive officer, Scott R. Silverman, is one of a half dozen executives who had chips implanted. Silverman said chips implanted for medical uses could also be used for security purposes, like tracking employee movement through nuclear power plants.
Such security uses are rare in the United States.

Meanwhile, the chip has been used for pure whimsy: Club hoppers in Barcelona, Spain, now use the microchip to enter a VIP area and, through links to a different database, speed payment much like a smartcard.

2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/

Yao Ming and Rockets arrive in Shanghai

2004-10-12T10:25:00.000-07:00

NBA to play first-ever games in China

The Associated Press Updated: 2:47 a.m. ET Oct. 12, 2004

SHANGHAI, China - Declaring himself “here on business,” hometown favorite Yao Ming joined Tracy McGrady and the rest of the Houston Rockets on Tuesday as they prepared for a pair of exhibition games against the Sacramento Kings ? the first NBA games played in China.
Yao and the Rockets settled into their hotel after the long flight from the United States, but canceled a scheduled practice session after a baggage mix-up.

The 7-foot-6 Yao told reporters at a packed press conference that he was happy to be home, but didn’t consider his visit a social call.

“I’m here on business and I want to play well,” said Yao, who was selected for Shanghai’s youth team at age 14 and later played for the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese professional league.

Houston will play the Kings in Shanghai on Thursday and in Beijing on Sunday.

Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy said he would likely play Yao between 22 and 28 minutes in Thursday’s game to give the fans the thrill of seeing the hugely popular center on the court.
“Obviously I want to play him because he’s in his hometown, but I don’t want to overplay him given that it’s only the second exhibition game and we have a long season ahead of us,” Van Gundy said.

“I know he wants to play very, very well here and I want to give his fans the opportunity to see him play,” he added.

Van Gundy said the team would work out in its hotel health club Tuesday, then hit the court Wednesday.

“We don’t want to make any excuses. We just want to play well and keep improving so I don’t think that the long flight will have anything to do with how we play,” Van Gundy said.
Shanghai has heavily refurbished the city gym that was built in the days of Mao Zedong’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, adding an NBA regulation floor, giant television screens and additional dressing room and office space.

The gymnasium seats about 10,000, but only about 3,000 tickets were available for fans ? those were snapped up in one afternoon.

Chris Webber, Mike Bibby and the rest of the Kings were scheduled to practice later Tuesday afternoon. Liu Wei, Yao’s teammate on the national team and the Sharks’ current star, was invited join the Kings for training in July and is expected to appear on the court in Shanghai and Beijing.

Yao said he wouldn’t try to make things easy for Liu, but added: “I’m more afraid of accidentally passing the ball to him just out of habit.”

The games are the NBA’s latest attempts to harness basketball’s surging popularity in China, 25 years after Wes Unseld and the Washington Bullets visited Shanghai to play the Chinese national team.

Wang Zhizhi became the first Chinese player in the NBA in 2001, and four others have either played or trained with NBA teams, including Liu and Yao.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6229661/

2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

News Analysis: Why Make Leno a Lame Duck?

2004-10-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

Jay Leno, the host of the “Tonight” show on NBC, said Monday night that he did not want to see a repeat of the turmoil when David Letterman moved to CBS in 1993.

By BILL CARTER from New York Times.

After NBC's surprise announcement Monday of the unusual deal that secured Conan O'Brien as the next host of the "Tonight" show at the end of a five-year transition period, the question facing the network's executives yesterday was one the current host, Jay Leno, once memorably asked:

What were you thinking?

Unlike Hugh Grant, the actor who answered that question on Mr. Leno's show in 1995 in his first television appearance after being arrested with a prostitute, NBC's executives, along with everyone else involved in the negotiations with the two stars, were maintaining an official silence yesterday.

They preferred to let Mr. Leno's comments on his show Monday night, and Mr. O'Brien's on his show last night, speak for everyone. But neither man addressed the question that was the talk of the television industry yesterday: Why would NBC set up such an extended transition in a business, network television, that is unsure what condition it will be in next season, never mind five years down the road?

The answer: because protecting the late-night franchise is more important than ever. Indeed, at a time when most of the network television audience continues to erode, late-night programs remain not just stable, but actually capable of growth.

Five years ago, the two biggest late-night entertainment franchises on the networks, "Tonight" with Mr. Leno on NBC and "Late Show With David Letterman" on CBS, attracted a combined nightly average of 9.8 million viewers. Last year, the two shows actually did better, averaging just over 10 million viewers combined. (Notably, Mr. O'Brien's 12:35 p.m. show, "Late Night," was also up from five years ago, to 2.5 million viewers from 2.3 million.)

Almost no other area of network television has been adding viewers, with the occasional exception of morning television, where on-air stars are also highly prized. In contrast, the four big networks - NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox - had a combined average of 48.1 million viewers in prime time five seasons ago, a figure that fell to 42.8 million last season.

The finances tell a similar story. NBC made more than $200 million in profit on Mr. Leno's and Mr. O'Brien's shows this past year, on revenues of $320 million, according to one NBC late-night executive. That is more profit than either ABC or Fox made as an entire network. (CBS made close to $100 million on Mr. Letterman's show on revenue of close to $180 million, according to a CBS late-night executive.)

While it may seem risky for NBC to set up so long a transition - even a re-elected president is a lame duck for only four years - in late night, the move makes some sense.

By doing so, Jeff Zucker, the president of the NBC Universal Television Group who spearheaded the negotiations, could secure two known stars and NBC's late-night future for most of the rest of this decade. His problem was that Mr. Leno had little reason to think about stepping down, having dominated the late-night ratings since 1995.

But the threat of losing Mr. O'Brien was real. "The known quantities in late night are so valuable, because with all the fragmentation in the rest of television, it's so hard for people to become known quantities," said Rob Burnett, the executive producer of Mr. Letterman's program.

The Fox network chased Mr. O'Brien four years ago, suggesting at one point a salary of $25 million a year. (He makes about $8 million at NBC. Mr. Leno makes an estimated $25 million; Mr. Letterman makes $31 million).

More recently, ABC, which made a similar run at Mr. Letterman three years ago, discreetly let Mr. O'Brien's associates know that it could be interested in talking to him when he was free to listen to other offers in the last year of his contract, beginning next January. Had Mr. O'Brien become available, ABC would almost certainly have dropped or pushed back its current late-night lineup, "Nightline" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

(One name often mentioned along with Mr. O'Brien's as a potential 11:35 late-night star is Jon Stewart, the host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. But Mr. Stewart, who was passed over for Mr. Kimmel two years ago for the 12:05 a.m. time slot, is locked into a four-year contract.)

Mr. O'Brien had made plain his conviction that he could not remain a host of the 12:35 show much longer, telling The New York Times earlier this year: "I think it's natural to at some point want to move earlier. I think I've proved I can do a show that I don't think has to exist at 12:30."

He had already surpassed Mr. Letterman's 11-year tenure at "Late Night." When Mr. Zucker signed Mr. Leno in March to a contract extension through 2009, some of Mr. O'Brien's representatives expressed frustration that he would not get a shot at "Tonight," and began discussing more openly the possibility of jumping to ABC.

NBC had suffered through a similar set of events once before. That was in 1993, after the network gave "Tonight" to Mr. Leno and Mr. Letterman then jumped from the "Late Night" spot to CBS, where he established the first viable challenge to what had been a half-century of late-night dominance by NBC.

NBC's top management, led now as then by Bob Wright, did not want to see a replay.

According to a friend at NBC, neither did Mr. Leno, who was in the middle of the nastiness surrounding Mr. Letterman's departure. Referring to his fractured relationship with Mr. Letterman, Mr. Leno said on his show Monday night: "A lot of good friendships were permanently damaged. Quite frankly, I don't want to see anybody go through that again."

The elements came together first in Mr. O'Brien's decision to put off a chance to move up to an 11:35 slot for about three years - he could have probably first appeared on ABC in September 2006 - and then in Mr. Leno's decision to allow NBC to take Mr. O'Brien off the market.

The decisions only underscored the continuing value of the "Tonight" prize, still the best job in late-night television.

Shaq angrily denies Kobe's payoff allegations

2004-09-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

Bryant reportedly told police O'Neal paid women $1 million to keep quiet about sex.

The Associated Press Updated: 8:08 p.m. ET Sept. 29, 2004

Separating Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal on different teams on different coasts has done nothing to lessen the animosity between the one-time Los Angeles Laker teammates. If anything, the feud is escalating.

On Wednesday, O’Neal dismissed as “ridiculous” Bryant’s allegations that O’Neal had paid up to $1 million in hush money to various women and then took his own shot by saying, “I’m not the one buying love.”

O’Neal made the remark over the telephone to a staffer at ESPN, the network said, after the Los Angeles Times quoted a police report as saying Bryant told detectives in Eagle, Colo., “he should have done what Shaq does ... that Shaq would pay his women not to say anything” and already had paid up to $1 million “for situations like this.”

The statement came near the end of a lengthy interrogation about a hotel employee’s complaint that Bryant had raped her.

The Times said it was unclear precisely what Bryant meant by his remarks.

Prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Bryant earlier this month at the accuser’s request, but the woman has filed a federal civil suit against him in Denver, seeking unspecified damages for pain and suffering since the case began.

O’Neal was informed of Bryant’s allegation last September, and the relationship between the two was cool throughout the 2003-04 season. O’Neal was subsequently traded to the Miami Heat.

“This whole situation is ridiculous,” O’Neal told ESPN. “I never hang out with Kobe, I never hung around him. In the seven or eight years we were together, we were never together. So how this guy can think he knows anything about me or my business is funny. And one last thing ? I’m not the one buying love. He’s the one buying love.”

O’Neal’s latter comment was an apparent reference to a ring ? reportedly costing several million dollars ? that Bryant gave his wife, Vanessa, after he was charged with felony sexual assault last summer.

There have been no published reports of O’Neal ever being accused of any sex crimes. He was charged with misdemeanor battery in Orange County, Fla., in 1998 after a 23-year-old Walt Disney World employee claimed he grabbed her neck, but the case was dismissed in 2000.

2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6134411/

U.S. soldiers' blogsdetail life in Iraq

2004-09-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

Unvarnished accounts comfort family,anger some commanders.

By Ellen Simon The Associated Press Updated: 10:17 p.m. ET Sept. 27, 2004

Spc. Colby Buzzell’s squad was on a mission in a poor neighborhood in Mosul when two Iraqi boys ran up carrying old artillery shells. “Give me dollar!” they said.

Another came carrying bullets and demanding money.

“Then, all of a sudden, this really skinny Iraqi kid comes running up to us with a f---- HAND GRENADE in his hand,” Buzzell wrote on his war blog. “ ’Drop the f---- hand grenade! Drop it now!’ We all started yelling. The little kid, still with this proud smile on his face that said, ’Look what I just found’ just dropped the grenade on the ground, and walked over to my squad leader and said, ’Give me money!”’

The grenade didn’t go off.

The squad leader explained to his men that an Army division that had been in the area earlier had paid children for weapons or unexploded ordnance.

For Buzzell, it was grist for his online war diary, http://cbftw.blogspot.com/, whose fans range from soccer moms and truck drivers to punk band leader Jello Biafra. Before the counter dropped off the site, says Buzzell, he was getting 5,000 hits a day.

Iraq war blogs are as varied as the soldiers who write them. Some sites feature practical news, pictures and advice. Some are overtly political, with more slanting to the right than the left. Some question the war, some cheer it.

Buzzell and a handful of others write unvarnished war reporting. A few of these blogs have been shut down, and Buzzell, an infantryman in an Army Stryker brigade, says he was banned from missions for five days because of the blog and has stopped adding new narrative entries.

Details of warFor the folks back home, soldier blogs offer details of war that don’t make it into most news dispatches: The smell of rotten milk lingering in a poor neighborhood. The shepherd boys standing at the foot of a guard tower yelling requests for toothbrushes and sweets. The giant camel spiders. The tedium of long walks to get anything from a shower to a meal. A burning oil refinery a hundred miles away blocking the sun. A terrifying night raid surprised by armed enemies dressed in black.

On the blogs, soldiers complain, commiserate and celebrate their victories and ingenuity.

What do you do if the electricity goes out while you’re sitting in the latrine, leaving you in complete darkness with a dead flashlight? Blog answer: Reach into your cargo pocket and crack open a Chemlight.

The blogs offer more than war stories, they offer images from Iraq not seen elsewhere, like a sign in an office with no air conditioning: “We’re in the desert. The desert is hot. Now quit your whining.” and a sign on a truck, presumably driven by National Guardsmen: “Two weekends a month, my a--!”

Sean Dustman, a 32-year-old Navy corpsman from Prescott, Ariz., started writing his blog, http://docinthebox.blogspot.com/, after reading other war blogs.

“I was entranced with their stories,” said Dustman, who recently returned from six months in Iraq. “This was where the real news that mattered to me was coming from, unlike what you saw through the regular media. Reading them (the blogs) helped me and my Marines prepare for the trip.”

Dustman started a photo blog, where he’d post pictures of his unit. Relatives visited religiously ? and let him know with instant feedback when he wasn’t getting new pictures up fast enough. One comment: “Where is my Cody??!!”

Other bloggers encouraged him to write more than photo captions, so he did.

In April, Dustman wrote about flying over Baghdad. “At night there’s hardly a flight that there’s not someone shooting at you. They can’t see the aircraft (hopefully), but as soon as they hear one coming, they come out and shoot into the air. Mainly they’re hoping to get a lucky shot in. A tracer flies by a window and we’re banking and rolling, which is kinda like gambling, they can’t see us, we can’t see them either, a great game of Battleship in the sky.”

Leaving Iraq, he gave a litany of advice for soldiers heading there.

“The biggest way to save money on a trip to Iraq is to have a quality battery charger,” he began. Later, he wrote, “Be nice to everyone. Remember, everyone is armed ....”

Flashes of absurdityA recurring theme is the flashes of military absurdity, such as the hurried martial arts training some Marines undergo before they leave Iraq.

One blogger said his platoon is trying “to qualify everyone in the company for the next belt level in, like, fifteen days with only one instructor (the other having gone slightly nuts and been shipped off for everyone’s safety.)” The blogger asked that his name and screen name not be used because he feared disciplinary action.

While some military bloggers (or milbloggers) say their commanders have encouraged their online literary ventures, a few say their commanders have shut them down.

Jason Hartley called his blog “Just Another Soldier” and wrote unflinchingly about everything from his buddies’ families to the conditions on base.

“I think I’ve been duped,” he wrote from a base in October 2003, while his unit was preparing to go to Iraq. “I’m not actually at a modern US military installation, but Sing Sing, circa 1940.”

“My commander had a meltdown when he discovered it,” Hartley, a sergeant in the New York National Guard, said of his blog in an instant message. “He demanded I take it down.”

The Pentagon has “no specific guidelines on blogging per se,” said Cheryl Irwin, a Defense Department spokeswoman. “Generally, they can do it if they are writing their blogs not on government time and not on a government computer. They have every right under the First Amendment to say any darn thing they want to say unless they reveal classified information, and then it becomes an issue as a security violation.”

Military bloggers say they’re careful not to reveal any information that would be useful to enemies. “Nowhere does either blog say where I was or give out full names of anybody but myself,” Dustman said.

One military blogger speculated on his site that the Army would eventually develop a liberal policy on blogging and other instant communication.

“The Internet is such a wonderful tool to keep soldiers connected with their friends and family and has a huge morale impact that prohibiting access would create a huge outcry,” wrote Eric Magnell, a lawyer whose blog, http://www.daggerjag.blogspot.com/, chronicles his work with the Army as it tries to build a legal system in Iraq. “The Army isn’t a sinister organization looking to trample individual freedoms, but, as any large bureaucracy, it can be slow to react to new situations and changes in the environment.”

Said Dustman, “Most people do have their minds made up about the war, but bloggers let them know that we’re human too, just like them. We’re the best way for the public to take a pulse on how we’re handing the situation.”

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6115600/

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Can drinking less tea defend a nation?

2004-09-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

Taiwan thinks so; citizens told to cut back to help military budget.

Reuters Updated: 10:44 a.m. ET Sept. 21, 2004

TAIPEI - Taiwan people should drink less tea and use the money saved to help pay the United States for a big weapons package that will protect the island from arch-foe China, the defense ministry said on Tuesday.

Faced with criticism that an $18 billion arms offer from Washington is too expensive, the ministry is issuing pamphlets to rally support for the special budget, which has to be approved by lawmakers.

“A cup of pearl milk tea for national security,” the ministry said in a colorful cartoon, which pictured a boy holding a giant plastic cup of tea next to photographs of a submarine, Patriot anti-missiles and submarine-hunting aircraft.

“We can buy top-notch equipment to protect our country (if) everyone drinks one less pearl milk tea every week,” it said.

Pearl milk tea, also known as “bubble tea” is a popular drink containing small white balls of glutinous sago.

Opposition parties have vowed to block the budget, saying the money should be spent on education and welfare. The military says the weapons are vital to counter a build-up by China, which views Taiwan as a breakaway province to be brought back to the fold, by force if necessary.

“It’s very sad that we have to use the milk tea analogy to seek support for the arms purchase,” Defense Minister Lee Jye told parliament. “But we hope to use the simplest terms to tell people the arms budget is not too big.”

Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6063203/

America's 25 Hot Schools

2004-09-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

By Barbara Kantrowitz Newsweek

Competition's intense and there are scores of colleges. Large, small, public, private, urban, rural?what's best for you? Here are our top picks for the places that everyone's talking about for 2005.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5626574/site/newsweek/

The MGM story takes another turn

2004-09-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

Sep 14th 2004 From The Economist Global Agenda

A consortium led by Sony has agreed to buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Hollywood’s last remaining independent movie studio of any size. What does this say about where the industry is headed?

METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER (MGM) has made a fortune several times over for Kirk Kerkorian, its octagenarian owner, who has bought and sold it three times over the past three decades?but this time the Hollywood studio is likely to stay put. A consortium led by Sony, a Japanese consumer-electronics giant, agreed on Monday September 13th to buy it for close to $5 billion in debt and equity. Sony, which owns a big Hollywood studio of its own (see chart), had just previously done a deal with Comcast, America’s biggest cable telephone and television provider, to sell its old movies through Comcast’s network. That tie-up encouraged Sony to raise its offer for MGM and snatch it from under the nose of Time Warner.

MGM has Hollywood’s biggest movie library, with some 8,000 titles, though Sony intends to close the company’s ongoing studio operations, with the exception of the James Bond and Pink Panther franchises. The new, combined group will own half of the colour movies ever made.

Sony, which is struggling with low margins in its core consumer-electronics division, is also trying to amass content that it hopes will drive sales of its electronic goods. Sony Music recently merged with Bertelsmann Music Group, another big record label. It hopes this enlarged catalogue of songs will help it sell music to buyers of its new, portable digital music player, which rivals Apple’s hugely successful iPod.

Comcast is fresh from a defeat in its audacious bid to acquire Disney (and its Buena Vista studio) earlier this year. In addition to its distribution deal with Sony, it is also understood to have an option to acquire 20% of MGM for $300m. Both agreements underline the belief that drove the Disney bid: that owning content is essential to Comcast’s target of reaching 40m customers by 2006. Indeed, Comcast’s involvement is symptomatic of a broader trend in America’s media business: consolidation between those who make music, movies and television programmes, and those who distribute them, whether via broadcast networks or, increasingly, via cable, satellite and the internet.

These new channels of distribution are changing the way movie studios make their money. In the early days of cinema, studios made almost all of their money from box-office takings. Then the advent of television gave them earnings from selling old movies, especially family classics like “Gone With The Wind”, to broadcasting networks. The video recorder brought two new streams of income: from renting and selling video cassettes. And the industry got a big lift from the invention of the DVD.

New digital technology brings new opportunities as well as the threat of online piracy. Five studios already offer customers a chance to download movies directly through a service called Movielink. However, few customers have the technology to make this anything other than a clunky and time-consuming exercise.

Movies have also become the latest weapon in the battle between cable companies and fixed-line phone companies. The cable companies’ superior technology allows them to offer interactive content and video-on-demand as well as a regular phone service and high-speed internet access. Comcast already offers more than 1,300 hours of progammes free, on demand. The Sony deal will bring hundreds more movies every month. Fixed-line phone companies are trying to emulate this sort of deal. SBC Communications, a regional phone company, and EchoStar Communications, a satellite television company, have agreed to develop a set-top box that would allow users to play movies virtually on demand.

While the vision of a world in which every movie ever made is available at the press of a button is an enticing one for consumers, some worry that it spells disaster for independent movie studios. Ironically, Ted Turner, who founded CNN, a cable news network, and avidly pushed consolidation of the film and TV industries, is now one of the loudest protesters. In particular, he has bemoaned the recent loosening of America’s so-called “fin-syn” rules, which had been put in place to limit the power of a handful of companies (at the time, broadcast networks) to control America’s media.

OPEC’s liquidity trap

2004-09-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

Sep 16th 2004 From The Economist Global Agenda

At its meeting in Vienna, OPEC, the oil-exporters’ cartel, has raised its production quotas by 1m barrels per day. But oil will flow no more freely than before.

ONLY the words of Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, attract closer scrutiny than the hints and whispers of oil ministers and officials from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Fed-watchers must wait until September 21st for another interest-rate announcement to pore over. But the OPEC cartel has provided plenty of words in recent days for its followers to hang on.

Last week, the oil minister from the United Arab Emirates said that OPEC was likely to consider raising the formal production quotas it sets for its members, in response to an oil price that has remained stubbornly above $40 per barrel. At the weekend, other OPEC delegates contradicted him, saying a rise in quotas was unlikely and a cut in production was quite possible before next spring. But at its meeting in Vienna on Wednesday September 15th, OPEC announced that it would raise its quotas by 1m barrels per day (bpd), to 27m bpd, with effect from November 1st. It also decided to meet again sooner than scheduled, agreeing to reconvene in Cairo on December 6th.

If OPEC’s signals are even harder to read than Mr Greenspan’s at the moment, it may be because the cartel finds itself in a position the central banker would dread. When Mr Greenspan sets his target for the federal funds rate, he can be sure it will be met. But when OPEC announces an output quota, it can be quite confident the target will be missed?the cartel is currently exceeding its official limit by as much as 2m bpd. Even worse, OPEC’s oil output is now almost as high as it can go. Raising quotas may thus have no discernible effect on production.

Cartels exist to place artificial constraints on supply. But the constraints on today’s oil supply are all too real. OPEC’s members, excluding Iraq, produced 27.5m bpd in August, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises oil-consuming nations. The most they could sustain with their current capacity is just 27.8m bpd, the IEA says. Only Saudi Arabia is said to have much spare oil ready to pump, but no one knows exactly how much, how quickly it could be brought to market, or indeed how marketable this sulphur-heavy variety of crude would be.

With supplies stretched this tight, any disruption or disturbance can move the oil price: the insurrectionist sabotage of pipelines in Iraq, the court-ordered sabotage of the Yukos oil company in Russia, or the meteorological sabotage wreaked by Hurricane Ivan in the Mexican Gulf. News of another fall in America’s stocks of crude added almost a dollar to the oil price during trading on Wednesday, leaving OPEC rather upstaged.

The organisation’s current willingness to lift quotas counts for less than its hesitance to invest in new wells and fields. The number of wells drilled by cartel members last year fell by 6.5% from the year before, according to an OPEC report. This reluctance is partly explained by fear: members recall the lessons of the early 1980s, when overcapacity in the industry flooded the world with oil and threw the cartel into disarray.

Complacency is also a factor. OPEC’s nationalised oil companies make their exploration and drilling decisions on fiscal, not commercial, principles. As long as their oil revenues are keeping the government’s budget in surplus, they see no need to expand.

The situation should improve this year and next. Two new oilfields in Saudi Arabia will be ready to pump 800,000 bpd by the end of September, according to the kingdom’s oil minister. These new developments were commissioned to replace ageing facilities elsewhere, the retirement of which may now be postponed. Both Kuwait and Algeria will also inflate OPEC’s supply cushion by the end of the year, according to their oil ministers.

But the new fields and wells touted on Wednesday will still fall short of what is needed to restore OPEC’s power over the oil price. By its own calculations, it would now need more than 3m bpd of spare capacity to function as a genuine swing producer, able to hold the price down as well as push it up. Until then, the physical limits on OPEC’s oil production will bite before the cartel’s quotas do.

If supply does not catch up with it, oil demand may falter?high prices tend to have that effect. The world economy is already slowing. China’s demand for oil, 6.5m bpd in the second quarter, is forecast to slip to 6.3m in the third, according to the IEA. America’s petrol consumption, seasonally adjusted, fell by about 200,000 barrels a day between April and July. The soft patch America’s economy is currently suffering is due “in large measure” to the steep rise in energy prices, Mr Greenspan has said. He has also given warning that the future balance between supply and demand in the oil market will remain “precarious”. OPEC-watchers, tired of poring over the cartel’s empty pronouncements, should perhaps mark the Fed chairman’s words instead.

The Kremlin's control freak

2004-09-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

Sep 16th 2004 From The Economist Global Agenda

In the wake of the Beslan bloodbath, President Vladimir Putin has announced a batch of measures that enhance his power and make life harder for his opponents. Is Russia inching back towards dictatorship?

“WHAT country will we wake up in tomorrow?” demanded a banner headline in Komsomolskaya Pravda, a daily that was once the official organ of the Soviet Communist youth movement. The best answer anyone can give, in the light of President Vladimir Putin’s latest political moves, is that tomorrow’s Russian state might look uncomfortably like yesterday’s one. More clearly than at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the spectre of absolute dictatorship seems to be inching closer, not fading away.

On Monday September 13th, Mr Putin stunned liberal opinion both in Russia and abroad by announcing a series of measures that will enhance the Kremlin’s power and make life harder for dissenting voices. Inevitably, he justified them by citing the need to improve security after hundreds of adults and children had died in the school taken hostage by terrorists in Beslan.

However, western leaders remain to be convinced that the Russian president’s motives are pure. On Wednesday, President George Bush urged Mr Putin to “uphold the principles of democracy” as he fights terrorism. This followed criticism of the proposed reforms from Colin Powell, America’s secretary of state, and Chris Patten, the European Union’s commissioner for external relations. Russian ministers’ reaction to such expressions of concern has been a firm “Mind your own business.”

Under the new measures, the governors of Russia’s 89 regions will be chosen by the president (and then confirmed by local assemblies), instead of being directly elected. Mr Putin also plans to abolish the first-past-the-post contests that currently fill half the seats in the parliament (Duma). In future, the entire Duma will be made up from party lists, which will squeeze out independent legislators. To many, Mr Putin seems to be exploiting Beslan to satisfy his appetite for power.

The trend of strengthening the Kremlin’s control has been obvious ever since Mr Putin became president in 2000. He had already trimmed the wings of the governors by removing them from the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament; by appointing presidential emissaries to watch over them; and by centralising the appointments of regional police chiefs, prosecutors and security-agency heads. As for the Duma, it is already dominated by pro-Kremlin parties.

As more details about the Beslan story emerge, it is becoming clear that the lessons of previous hostage crises had not been learned. Local troops and authorities, including the FSB security service, were largely left to fend for themselves, with almost no federal officials lending support or experience. A haphazard approach to crisis management meant that under-equipped troops lost control of the situation to armed civilians. According to one report, some troops had to ask the civilians for spare bullets. Some federal orders fell on deaf ears.

Does the president understand these weaknesses? Some other steps he is taking are designed to give the impression, to Russia and the world, that he does. He promised an inquiry into Beslan. He also promised a nationwide crisis-management system; a budget increase for the army and security services (an extra $1.7 billion had already been pledged last month, after two aircraft were blown up by suicide bombers); stiffer punishments for corrupt officials who give out false passports; a nationalities ministry to keep an eye on ethnic issues; and a federal commission for the northern Caucasus, whose main job will be “the improvement of the standard of living in the region”.

To Putin-watchers, the last item does signal a shift. Though he still blames foreign terrorists for stirring up trouble in the northern Caucasus, he also admitted in this week’s speech that “the roots of terror lie in the continuing massive unemployment in the region, and the lack of an effective social policy”.

“Maybe he is only now realising that the poverty and social problems are the roots of these conflicts,” says Fiona Hill of America’s Brookings Institution. Moreover, says Ms Hill, Mr Putin and his advisers understand how corruption has rotted the security services to the point of uselessness; they talk in private as well as in public of the need to “clean things up at the local level”. But there is no plan for how to do it. “This is an opening for the West,” she believes.

Indeed, to her and some others, Mr Putin’s barrage of measures is an instinctive reaction of a leadership that fears it has lost control. Many of his moves look like frantic window-dressing. The nationalities minister will be Vladimir Yakovlev, an ex-governor of St Petersburg and one of Mr Putin’s political foes. “He couldn’t have chosen someone who knows less about the subject,” says Rustam Arifjanov, editor of Natsional, a magazine about Russia’s ethnic groups.

Without a real anti-corruption strategy, says Alexander Belkin at the Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, a Moscow think-tank, “making changes to the structure of command at the top is worthless.” Mr Putin is trying to regain the upper hand in the northern Caucasus by sending his own Kremlin chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak, to oversee the region and the new federal commission. But Mr Kozak was also in charge of a grand plan for government administrative reform, and that now risks falling by the wayside.

As for the changes in the political system, they could eventually prove counter-productive, as well as irrelevant in the fight against terror. The more that Mr Putin consolidates power, the more he becomes the only person to blame when things go wrong. Muscovites are admittedly not a balanced sample of the country at large, but it says something that, in an opinion poll after Beslan by the Moscow-based Levada Centre, just a third of those questioned thought the terrorists “bear responsibility first and foremost” for the attack, with the rest split almost evenly between blaming the security services for being unable to prevent it, and “Russia’s leadership, for continuing the war in Chechnya”.

If Russia’s spooks know anything, it is how to keep unpopular regimes in power. But woe betide the country if ever-more-draconian measures became Mr Putin’s only way of staving off ever-growing public discontent.

Bush vs. Kerry on Science

2004-09-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

By Daniel S. Greenberg from DISCOVER Vol. 25 No. 10 October 2004

Without Washington’s billions?about 126.5 of them this year?America’s university laboratories and a vast network of federal research centers would wither, if not collapse. Science in the United States runs on tax dollars, and if the dollars decline, so too will the nation’s national security, health, and prosperity.

Despite that, science rarely becomes part of big-league politicking. This year?with such blockbuster issues as jobs, Iraq, domestic security, taxes, and the rising cost of health care?is different only to the extent that President George W. Bush’s stem cell research policies have made headlines.

Examining the positions of both Bush and challenger John Kerry might appear to be easy because both have track records. But feints, winks, and oratorical extravagance are the daily tactics of politics. What’s said and seen do not necessarily become policy and lawmaking. A president can loudly support a big research project, then fail to push it in Congress. The House and the Senate can make a show of an appealing program by passing an authorization bill, then somehow fail to pass the appropriations bill that pays for it. Often the impression of battle comes from firing blanks. To see where both the bullets and the blanks are being fired, let’s examine the major issues of science policy in 2004 and see where the candidates stand.

RESEARCH SPENDING

BUSH: The president can claim that research and development have prospered under his administration. Funding is up 44 percent since he took office. Dollars for basic research have increased 26 percent, and the budget for the National Institutes of Health completed a planned doubling?to $28 billion yearly?that began in the Clinton administration. That sum exceeds the biomedical research spending of all other nations combined. For the 2005 fiscal year, the Bush White House requested a 4.3 percent increase in overall research and development. If Congress passes it un-touched, the new budget would be $132 billion, a record high.

BUT: The president’s research numbers are sizable, but their distribution is skewed toward military and domestic security spending. During the Clinton administration, the Pentagon’s dominance of federal research funds was throttled back to about a fifty-fifty balance with civilian studies. Under Bush, the military share has climbed to 57 percent of the total and is budgeted for further growth. Defense is scheduled to get another $4 billion, while homeland security will rise to $1.2 billion. About $2.5 billion is slated for the antiterrorism Project BioShield. Pentagon funding includes $10 billion a year for the first phase of the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars. (That would bring Star Wars spending since 1985 to a total of $80 billion.) All other federal research programs will lose some funding. To make up for a federal deficit of more than $400 billion, the White House has ordered most civilian research agencies to prepare for major budget reductions in the 2006 budget, including cuts for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

KERRY: The senator has a solid voting record for science spending. This is hardly surprising: He represents a state with universities that thrive on research grants. MIT received $304 million in federal research money in 2000?2001, while Harvard University took in $300 million and Boston University got $150 million. Kerry says he would provide additional research money by auctioning off parts of the broadcast spectrum, and he has proposed major cash prizes to stimulate scientific discoveries. Kerry backed the five-year doubling of the National Institutes of Health budget and recently supported a whopping 9.2 percent boost for the institutes when Bush proposed a 2.6 percent increase. He also backed a doubling schedule for the National Science Foundation. “Our country needs a renewed commitment to investment in basic research and the hard sciences, such as physics and chemistry,” Kerry wrote on his Web site. In a June speech he said he would be “a president for science.”

BUT: Where’s the money to come from? Bush’s warning that research agencies should prepare for budget reductions reflects real economics. And it may be hard to undo Bush initiatives. Kerry is opposed to deploying Star Wars, but with lucrative contracts spread around the country, it’s politically entrenched. Bush’s combination of tax cuts, escalating costs in Iraq, and rising financial requirements for domestic security have already put pressure on science, education, veterans’ benefits, and other popular programs. Despite Kerry’s support, it is difficult to see how the government can sustain the recent growth in science spending.

ENERGY

BUSH: The White House proposes to meet rising energy demands by increasing the supply. The president wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling, a move blocked by public outcries and congressional opposition. If reelected, Bush is likely to return to this issue. Nuclear power also has a place in the administration’s energy portfolio, along with hydrogen power, which is budgeted for more than a billion research dollars in the coming years. Overall, the president relies heavily on marketplace mechanisms to promote energy efficiency.

BUT: Even with the help of the marketplace, America’s thirst for oil will continue to create economic and strategic difficulties. Suppose, for example, that drilling were allowed in domestic oil fields now out of bounds. The nation would still continue to increase its dependence on foreign imports, most from politically unstable regions. Moreover, the administration has resisted imposing higher mileage standards on new vehicles. Although faint signs of a nuclear revival have emerged, there is little prospect that safety and waste-disposal concerns could be addressed anytime soon. The hydrogen option has evoked conflicting assessments of feasibility, and no one expects to see hydrogen-powered vehicles hit the road in significant numbers within a decade.

KERRY: The senator has proposed “a new Manhattan Project to make America independent of Middle East oil in 10 years” by increasing the use of alternative fuels like ethanol and insisting that standards for auto mileage be raised. He has opposed Arctic drilling and strongly advocated tax credits for fuel-efficient vehicles. He backs the development of hydrogen-powered autos and a transition to a “hydrogen-based energy economy.” In April he joined with 50 other senators of both parties to appeal for a budget increase for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the focal point for most of the government’s energy research. Like Bush, the senator puts great reliance on marketplace mechanisms and tax incentives for achieving energy goals. However, when a conflict between increased oil production and environmental protection arises, Kerry has usually opted for the latter.

BUT: Kerry is cautious about energy politics. He favors nuclear power but insists that problems of waste disposal, nonproliferation, and plant safety must be dealt with first. A decade ago, when gasoline was about $1 a gallon, Kerry spoke favorably of a federal tax of 50 cents per gallon to discourage use. He never introduced legislation or talked up the idea, but Republicans have exhumed the proposal for campaign purposes. Kerry has said nothing about raising gasoline taxes in the campaign and very little about ending dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Recently, he said: “I don’t propose that we immediately stop burning coal, oil, and natural gas to address climate change or other environmental issues. Instead, I advocate a gradual transition from heavily polluting energy to clean energy at a pace that is technologically viable and economically beneficial.”

Environment

BUSH: The president has reversed many environmental policies established by the Clinton administration. Upon taking office, Bush set off a political storm by rejecting Clinton’s plans to reduce the levels of arsenic in drinking water. An eruption of indignation inspired a retreat. The matter was bucked back for further study to the National Academy of Sciences, which had recommended the reductions. Then a raucous row arose over releasing the names of participants in a task force convened by Vice President Dick Cheney to develop a national energy policy. Environmental organizations contend the task force was a cozy cabal of energy-industry representatives meeting in violation of federal sunshine laws. Cheney countered that private meetings were necessary, and permissible, to assure candor. A federal district court initially ruled against Cheney’s position but was ordered in June by the Supreme Court to reconsider. In May 2001, based on that task force’s work, the administration issued a national energy policy containing 105 recommendations. Few have been implemented. When the Environmental Protection Agency sought to relax standards on industrial smokestack emissions, environmentalists erupted again, and the administration ordered a retreat. In July Bush reversed Clinton’s ban on road building in nearly 60 million acres of national forest. In most cases the administration insists on cost-benefit analyses.

BUT: Worship of cost-benefit analysis leaves unanswered whose costs and whose benefits. While expenditures for an environmental program can be precisely stated, potential benefits often stretch far into the future. The long-term downside of delays in protecting the environment are often unclear until the costs for cleanup become overwhelming.

KERRY: The League of Conservation Voters says Kerry supported 96 percent of environmental legislation since he entered the Senate in 1985 and rates him “the strongest environmentalist in the field.” In his presidential campaign, Kerry issued a “Conservation Covenant,” in which he pledges to create “cleaner and greener communities.” He says he will establish an EPA task force to identify toxic dangers and that he will pep up the lagging Superfund cleanup program. He is committed “to improving our parks and taking on traffic congestion” as well as reversing what he calls Bush “rollbacks” of environmental regulations. In accord with the Clean Water Act, the senator promises to make America’s waters “drinkable, swimmable, and fishable.” He assigns a high priority to “environmental justice,” citing studies that show poor people and minorities bear a disproportionate share of the nation’s pollution costs.

BUT: While Kerry’s voting record on environmental causes is solid, he never won approval of a major environmental law during his nearly two decades in the Senate. That is not for lack of trying. Over the past 15 years, he has introduced or cosponsored some 40 environmental bills and amendments. In his early years in the Senate, he lacked the seniority that brings legislative influence. And for more than half his congressional career, the Senate has been under Republican control. If elected he could very well run into similar political obstacles, especially if the Senate and the House are controlled by Republicans.

CLIMATE CHANGE

BUSH: Shortly after taking office, the administration shocked the environmental movement by renouncing the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international agreement that established long-term limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The administration argued that the protocol would impair American economic growth while exempting China, India, and other developing nations from emission reductions as they sought to catch up. The White House also discounted warnings of global climate change induced by greenhouse gases, contending?contrary to near-unanimous findings by U.S. research agencies and international scientific bodies?that climate change was an unproven hypothesis. The administration called for more research and created the Climate Change Research Initiative to concentrate on areas of uncertainty about the scope, pace, and effects of climate change. The initiative, parceled out to the Department of Energy, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and five other federal agencies, has experienced rapid budget growth, from $41 million in fiscal 2003 to a presidential request for $238 million in 2005. To guide the efforts, Bush created a cabinet-level global change committee headed by the secretaries of energy and commerce in collaboration with the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. And the administration’s plans for expanding research on global climate change have passed muster by a review committee convened by the National Academy of Sciences.

BUT: Increased research is widely regarded in the scientific community as a diversion from the serious steps needed to reduce CO2. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “the Bush administration has done absolutely no analysis to substantiate its claim that the Kyoto Protocol or domestic policies to reduce carbon dioxide pollution from power plants would seriously harm the U.S. economy.”

KERRY: Kerry participated in the 1997 Kyoto conference. In 2001, when Bush repudiated the Kyoto Protocol, Kerry took to the Senate floor and attacked the move. In his speech, Kerry noted that the president “has repeatedly questioned the underlying science of climate change and attempted to reignite the debate over whether the threat is real.” Kerry pointed out that Bush’s position conflicted with the findings of distinguished scientific bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “a scientific panel founded at the behest of his own father.” Kerry introduced the Global Climate Change Act in 2001 to restrain and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. With the Republicans in command of Congress and the White House, the legislation was stillborn.

BUT: In 1997 Kerry joined 94 other senators in support of a nonbinding resolution that undercut the Kyoto Protocol by insisting that developing nations agree to emissions reductions in the same time frame as the United States. The resolution also specified that the agreement not cause serious harm to the U.S. economy. Although merely advisory, the resolution created the impression that the treaty might be rejected by the Senate. Apparently embarrassed by his vote, Kerry later explained that “the prospect of human-induced global warming as an accepted thesis with adverse consequences for all is here, and it is real.” He conceded that he would have “worded some things differently” in the resolution but said,“I have come to the conclusion that these words are not a treaty killer.”

STEM CELLS

BUSH: After consulting religious leaders, physicians, scientists, and ethicists, the president issued a Solomonic decision on August 9, 2001. The 78 stem cell lines in existence would qualify for government-financed research, he said, but no additional money would be provided for additional cell lines. The decision was seen as an effort to mollify the religious fundamentalists at the core of Bush’s political support who are ideologically opposed to deriving the cells from frozen embryos in fertility clinics and scientists and patients who hope that the cells could be used to help patients with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, spinal-cord injuries, and diabetes.

BUT: Although scientists initially regarded the decision as better than expected, they soon had concerns. About three-fourths of the stem cell lines were found to be unsuitable for research, and many if not all the lines were contaminated with mouse feeder cells. Among the protesters was Nancy Reagan. Referring to her late husband’s long affliction with Alzheimer’s disease, the former first lady urged the president to provide unhampered government support for embryonic stem cell research. Bush did not yield. Demands of patients and supporters continue to arouse support on Capitol Hill. The pressures may be rising to the point where an adroit political retreat will be in the offing.

KERRY: Kerry has said he would cancel Bush’s stem cell edict. A strong supporter of human embryo stem cell research, the senator joined with hundreds of legislators from both parties after Ronald Reagan’s death in a renewed plea for Bush to remove restrictions. The statement raised hopes for a White House turnabout. Kerry’s involvement dates back at least to July 2001. At that time, Kerry and 57 other senators urged the president to recognize the need for federal support. Kerry and his colleagues emphasized that embryos in excess of fertility needs at in vitro clinics are routinely destroyed. “We ought to realize their promise of life,” the senators wrote, “rather than lose it altogether.”

SPACE

BUSH: The president set ambitious goals in space, starting with the completion of the troubled International Space Station by 2010, a base on the moon as early as 2015, and “human exploration of Mars and other destinations.” The cost of sending humans to Mars was not stated, and unofficial estimates range up to a trillion dollars.

BUT: At this stage, talk is cheap. It takes many years to ramp up spending for big space endeavors. The first major payments would not be due until at least a decade from now, long after Bush leaves office. The president’s latest budget calls for a 5.2 percent increase in NASA’s budget next year, to $16.2 billion. But his plans also cancel or revamp many existing NASA programs. Given the depleted state of the Treasury and a long record of public indifference to space programs, doubts about fulfillment of the moon-Mars plans are abundant on both sides of the political aisle.

KERRY: The senator is a member of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which has jurisdiction over the authorization of NASA’s budget. “I’m excited by potential advances in pharmaceuticals that microgravity could lead to,” he told Space News in June. He said the space program is “an engine of innovation for the entire country,” adding that the benefits are enormous. Although they are difficult to quantify, he says, they are “even harder to discount.”

BUT: The senator’s legislative involvement with space issues has been negligible, and he has fewer specific programs for space exploration than his opponent. On the campaign trail, he has sniped at Bush’s moon-Mars ambitions, charging that the goals far exceed the funding available, thus compelling such decisions as abandoning the Hubble telescope. “The most critical element of our space program,” Kerry told Space News, “should be reducing the costs and increasing the reliability of transportation to and from low Earth orbit,” goals he says the president has neglected.

INTEGRITY

BUSH: The administration denies allegations that it has employed ideological “litmus tests” to screen candidates for appointments to federal committees on environmental and health issues, that it has suppressed reports that offend its antiabortion backers, and that it has politicized science. John H. Marburger III, the president’s science adviser, says critics have conjured up conspiratorial patterns from isolated incidents involving advisory appointments and policy decisions at the Department of Health and Human Services and the EPA. “Even when the science is clear?and often it is not?it is but one input into the policy process,” Marburger argued last April. Marburger, a Democrat, was backed by a predecessor in the White House science post, D. Allan Bromley, adviser to the first President Bush. Responding to a bill of particulars against the administration by 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, Bromley scoffed, “You know perfectly well that it is very clearly a politically motivated statement.”

BUT: No one can ignore that the number of scientists who say research is being influenced by right-wing ideology is increasing. Although an editorial in the journal Nature last year recalled that prior administrations have also been accused of tinkering with scientific independence, it noted that “some of the recent developments are disturbing.” The plain fact is that the scientific community is fired up as never before, and very few scientists have spoken out in Bush’s favor.

KERRY: The senator strongly seconds the accusations against the White House, denouncing Bush as the head of “one of the most antiscience administrations in our nation’s history,” and accusing him of abusing scientific independence to pander to his right-wing backers. Kerry says his administration would always judge scientific advice on its professional merits, and not by ideological standards.

BUT: All presidents seem to favor advisers who share their political and ideological preferences.

INNOVATION

BUSH: Bush is on record as strongly supporting government assistance for innovation in manufacturing. In February Bush directed heads of federal agencies to assist technological enterprise through a long-standing government-wide program that subsidizes private-sector research under the Small Business Administration. The programs were launched by Congress during Ronald Reagan’s first term and can be found in virtually every congressional district, making them politically untouchable.

BUT: At the same time, Bush tried to abolish another program with the same aim, the Commerce Department’s Advanced Technology Program, a Clinton administration favorite that provides government funds for consortiums of private firms, sometimes in collaboration with universities or government laboratories, to work on common industrial problems. What’s the difference between the two programs? Not much in content. But politically, they’re worlds apart. Clinton’s ambitions for his program drew the fire of Newt Gingrich and his Republican budget-cutting revolution and never came close to the billion-dollar level he wanted. This year, the Clinton plan is budgeted for $184 million and will drop to zero if Bush has his way. Republicans traditionally oppose giving money to private businesses for research, which they are quick to call corporate welfare.

KERRY: In the last several years, the senator proposed or backed several multibillion-dollar programs to promote industrial innovation, in-cluding $10 billion for research to develop a system that uses hydrogen as a fuel. He says he will also support additional funding for the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and NASA. “Research funded by the federal government,” Kerry says, “can pave the way for new innovation and advancements in high-growth fields.” Among the original sponsors of the Advanced Technology Program, the senator has been a strong supporter, arguing that it can produce high-payoff research when venture capitalists are not willing to risk an investment. In speeches and statements during his senate career, Kerry has often stressed the importance of government-supported research for stimulating economic development and job creation. Massachusetts, with its many high-tech firms and university-backed start-up companies, is a beneficiary of government research support aimed at economic development.

BUT: In these matters, as in others where Kerry or Bush promise more support for science and technology, a provocative question remains: Where will the money come from?

Shaq raps and blastsKobe, Ben Wallace

2004-09-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press Updated: 7:29 p.m. ET Sept. 11, 2004

LOS ANGELES - The way Shaquille O’Neal sees it, he soars higher than Kobe Bryant, and he’s got the rap to back it up. And the Miami Heat center isn’t crazy about Detroit Pistons center Ben Wallace or the rapper Skillz, either.

O’Neal, when not dominating NBA games, has dabbled in hip-hop over the years. His latest effort is a collaboration with DJ Vlad on the CD “Hot in Here Part Five.”

On “You Not The Fightin’ Type,” O’Neal sets out to even scores with several people: Bryant, who he believes got him traded from the Los Angeles Lakers; Wallace, whose Pistons defeated the Lakers for this year’s NBA championship; and Skillz, whose rap “The Champs is Here” celebrated the Detroit victory.

“I heard your little interview and what Ben Wallace said. I ain’t got no response for spider-web head,” O’Neal raps.

“Even with wings you never as fly as me,” he continues. “You remind me of Kobe Bryant trying to be as high as me ... but you can’t ... even if you get me traded ... wherever I’m at, I’m Puffy; you Ma$e and you’re still hated.”

The latter line is an apparent reference to rapper P. Diddy and his former protege Ma$e, who left hip-hop several years ago to become a minister and criticized the music as violent and sexually degrading. Ma$e returned to the fold this year with a new album featuring clean lyrics.

O’Neal and Bryant led the Lakers to three straight championships from 2000-02. Bryant says he was not responsible for O’Neal’s trade to Miami.

“That upsets me. That angers me. That hurts me,” Bryant said in a story posted on ESPN.com this week. “They did what they had to do. That had nothing to do with me.”

2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5972261/

Relax ? Yao isn't going anywhere

2004-09-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

(By Sean Deveney (Sporting news) Updated: 3:35 p.m. ET Sept. 13, 2004)

The Lakers, with a handful of moves, could create some cap space by the summer of 2006.

The Warriors already have made moves that will leave them with as much as $20 million in cap space in 2006. The Clippers, of course, always have cap space.

This is significant because Rockets center Yao Ming could be a free agent in the summer of 2006. Every three months or so, a rumor pops up that one of the West Coast teams is keeping space open to make Yao a maximum-dollar contract offer. The logic is simple -- Yao is an odd fit in Texas, and he would rather be in a market with a sprawling Asian community, where he would be more comfortable and could maximize his marketing potential. Thus, the Lakers, Warriors and Clippers are the usual suspects.

If those teams secretly are hoping to land Yao, they probably should start making other plans. Yao is not going anywhere.

The Rockets have the advantage of being able to sew up Yao in the summer of 2005 ? a team is able to sign a player to an extension after his third year in the league, before the player becomes a free agent. Expect the Rockets to make Yao a maximum offer next summer.

And expect Yao to accept it. One of the reasons is Carroll Dawson, the Rockets' general manager and one of the most modest and affable guys in the business. Dawson has done a commendable job not only making Yao feel at home with the organization and in Houston, but in bringing Yao's group of novice advisors ? known as Team Yao ? into the fold.

The bulk of Team Yao is made up of University of Chicago business school students and faculty, primarily deputy dean John Huizinga and student Erik Zhang, Yao's cousin. This is their first foray into NBA business, and Dawson has treated them well.

Dawson won't exactly say whether the team will offer Yao a maximum contract next summer ? he would not be much of a negotiator if he did. But he does say, "He is a treasure. The Chinese look on him as a treasure. Just try walking through an airport with him. Certainly, we're going to do everything we can to keep him in Houston."

Another reason Yao will be off the free-agent list by the end of next summer is Tracy McGrady. Had the Rockets not traded guards Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley (two players who just could not figure out how to take advantage of Yao's size and skill) for McGrady, Yao would have been more reluctant to stay. With Francis and Mobley, the Rockets were a pretty good team, but one with no shot at a title.

Whether McGrady will fit better than Francis and Mobley is yet to be seen, but Houston has upgraded its talent. In Houston's second year under coach Jeff Van Gundy, the Rockets should pile up more than last season's 45 wins, even in an ever-tougher Western Conference. And that, ultimately, is what Yao wants. It showed during the Olympics. Yao was third in scoring (20.7 points per game) and first in rebounding (9.3) among all players. He dominated in China's 67-66 win over Serbia and Montenegro, with 27 points and 13 rebounds, including four clutch free throws down the stretch. It was the biggest win in the history of Chinese basketball.

During that game, and throughout the tournament, Yao was forceful and emotional. He nearly was in tears after the Serbia and Montenegro win. "He was incredible," Dawson says. "He was mature, he was forceful. He was a presence. You could see this is a guy who hates to lose. All the great ones had that quality."

Combine that quality with a 7-6 frame, a knack for passing and a consistent shooting stroke, and you have a player that you just don't lose as a free agent. Other teams might be longing to lure Yao away, but he's staying put.

2004 The Sporting News

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5992116/

THE END OF THE AGE OF OIL

2004-09-13T13:02:00.000-07:00

By David Goodstein. From Caltech website.

In the 1950s, it was not Saudi Arabia but the United States that was the world’s greatest producer of oil. Much of our military and industrial might grew out of our giant oil industry, and most people in the oil business thought that this bonanza would go on forever. But there was one gentleman who knew better. He was an oil exploration geologist named Marion King Hubbert.

In about 1950, Hubbert realized that the trajectory of oil discovery in the continental United States was going to be a classic bell-shaped curve, for the decades from 1910 to 1970, in billions of barrels per year (see figure 1, facing page). He also saw that there would be a second bell-shaped curve that would represent production, or consumption, or extraction. The oil industry likes to call it “production,” but the industry doesn’t really produce any oil at all. It does, however, reflect the rate at which we use the oil up. Perhaps you could call it supply.

Hubbert realized that using what he knew in 1950 about the history of discoveries, along with what was already known about consumption, and a little mathematics, he should be able to predict that second bell-shaped curve. And so he did (see figure 2, facing page). The red, bell-shaped curve is the kind of curve he predicted. The black points are the actual historical data, and the uppermost point represents what has come to be known as Hubbert’s Peak. Obviously, he was doing something right.

The situation worldwide is a little less well-determined. A third graphic provided by the energy conglomerate BP, shows what the world’s known crude oil reserves are (see figure 3, left-hand graph, facing page). The amount that we have now is a trillion barrels of oil. So people in the industry might say, we have a trillion barrels just sitting there waiting to be pumped out of the ground; we’re using it up at a rate of about 25 billion barrels a year, and so we have 40 more years to go?there’s nothing to worry about. But as Hubbert has shown us, that’s the wrong way of looking at it .

Before we leave that curve, though, I want to point out that a sudden jump of 300?400 billion barrels of oil in OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) reserves occurs in the late 1980s (see figure 3, left-hand graph, facing page). But there were no significant discoveries of oil in OPEC countries during that period. What happened instead is that OPEC changed its quota for how much each country could pump on the basis of what it claimed in reserves, and politicians discovered 400 billion barrels of oil without ever drilling a hole in the ground! This helps us to understand how undependable these numbers are for worldwide proven oil reserves.

As you can see, the curve that traces the historic record of oil discovery peaks around 1960. In other words, Hubbert’s peak for oil discovery came and went 40 years ago.

The curve for oil usage, as you can see, is a rising curve and will become a bell-shaped curve eventually. Note that for the last quarter century, we’ve been using oil faster than we have been discovering it. World reserves should have decreased during that time by about 200 billion barrels. Instead, as we’ve seen, they’ve increased by 400 billion barrels. In any case, it should be possible, given this much information, to make a prediction similar to the one that Hubbert made for the continental United States for worldwide oil production.

One such estimate was published in 1998 in Scientific American. It predicts that we will have a worldwide maximum in oil production just about now?around the middle of the decade 2000?2010. What will happen when we reach that peak we don’t really know. But we had a foretaste in 1973 and ’79 when the OPEC countries took advantage of the supply shortage in the United States and shut down the valve a bit. What happened, as you may recall, is that we had instant panic and despair for the future of our way of life, and mile-long lines at gas stations.

We don’t know what’s going to happen at the next peak, but we do know that those past peaks were artificial and temporary. The next one will not be artificial and it will not be temporary.

However, we have to use caution in evaluating these types of predictions. One crucial quantity that goes into making such an estimate is knowing how much oil Mother Nature originally made for us?that is, how much oil was in the ground before we ever started pumping it. The Scientific American estimate used 1.8 trillion barrels of oil as the baseline number. Today it looks like 2.1?2.2 trillion barrels might be more accurate. That number?the total amount of oil that ever existed?tends to increase with time for a variety of reasons.

First, new technology and new discoveries have exactly the same effect?they both make more oil available. Secondly, as oil becomes scarcer and the price goes up, more oil becomes available at the increased price, because you can invest more capital into pulling it out of the ground. And finally, these estimates depend to some extent on those proven reserve numbers and, as we’ve already seen, those numbers are not very reliable. Nevertheless, the central idea of the Hubbert Curve is certainly correct: the supply of any natural resource invariably rises from zero to a maximum point, and then it falls forever. Oil will behave in the same way.

In 1997, Kenneth Deffeyes, a former Shell Oil geologist who’s now an emeritus professor of geosciences at Princeton, published a book he entitled Hubbert’s Peak?The Impending World Oil Shortage. In it, Deffeyes said he knew that Hubbert had been right and that the peak for domestic production had been reached when he saw this sentence in 1971 in the San Francisco Chronicle: “The Texas Railroad Commission announced a 100% allowable for next month.”

To demystify that sentence, the Texas Railroad Commission was the quaintly named cartel that controlled the U.S. oil industry by making strategic use of the excess capacity for pumping in Texas. When the commission said, “100% allowable for next month,” it meant that there was no longer any excess capacity. They were pumping flat-out, and therefore Hubbert’s Peak had been reached.

Ever since reading this, I’ve thought that the signal that the worldwide peak had been reached would be when we found out that Saudi Arabian production had peaked. For the last few decades, the Saudis have been using excess pumping capacity to manipulate the world oil market in exactly the same way the Texans once did.

Well, on February 24 of this year, a story appeared on the front page of the New York Times entitled “Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields.” Among other things, the article said that Saudi Arabia’s oil fields are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world’s thirst for oil in the coming years.

This is a New York Times story, so it’s very long, as many Times stories are, and it’s written in a style in which each successive paragraph is contradicted by the next paragraph. This is called “balanced reporting.” Sure enough, much farther down in the article, we find these words: “Some economists are optimistic that if oil prices rise high enough, advanced recovery techniques will be applied, averting supply problems.” But here comes the contradiction in the next paragraph, “But, privately, some Saudi oil officials are less sanguine.”

I don’t know whether we will look back years from now and say that this was the beginning of the end of the age of oil. We’re much too close to it to tell, and our figures are, overall, much too uncertain. But, to those people who are aware of the Hubbert’s Peak predictions, as the writer of this article apparently was not, this was a chilling report.

Economists tell us that there can never be a gap between supply and demand because the process is regulated by price. That’s never been true in the case of oil, because it has always been controlled by cartels, first in Texas and later by OPEC. However, once the peak occurs, OPEC will lose control of the situation, and the price mechanism will kick in with a vengeance. But the supply can keep up with the price only if there is something to supply.

I’m sometimes asked, what about replenishing our oil reserves through deep-ocean exploration? I’m already factoring in close-to-shore oil production, but the deep oceans are essentially unexplored and, it’s true, we don’t know whether there’s any oil out there. Over the last hundreds of millions of years, oil typically has been manufactured in places that are rich in life, which deep oceans are not. But the landmasses have moved around over geologic time, so there may be deep-ocean oil reserves.

Even so, deep oceans are technically extremely difficult places to drill for oil. That leaves us with only two remaining reservoirs?the South China Sea, which currently has seven countries claiming mineral rights to it; and Siberia, which has very bad access problems. And those resources, of course, are finite also. So let’s see what else there is to use, aside from oil.

The word “oil” covers more than just the conventional light crude that we’ve been pumping up to now. It also covers heavy oil, oil sands, and tar sands. Heavy oil is essentially what’s left behind in the field after you pump the light crude away. And, of course, if you put more money in?that’s the price mechanism?you can usually squeeze a little more oil out of any field. But it’s both more costly and more time-consuming to get that oil out. And the more you pump out, the heavier it gets.

Natural gas could be a very good substitute for oil. Cars that are not very different from those we drive today can run on compressed natural gas, and it’s a particularly clean-burning fuel. But if we turn to natural gas in a major way to replace diminishing supplies of oil, it will only be a temporary solution. The Hubbert Peak for natural gas is only a decade or so behind Hubbert’s Peak for oil.

Oil was created when so-called source rock, full of organic inclusions, sank deep within the earth. The inside of the earth is heated by natural radioactivity, and the deeper you go, the hotter it gets. This source rock sank just deep enough into the heated interior for the organic matter to get cooked into oil. Rock that sank deeper got overcooked and became natural gas. Rock that sank to a more shallow level became shale oil, which is essentially unborn oil that can be made into a fuel by strip-mining, crushing, and heating the rocks until you generate a usable liquid. People who have invested many millions of dollars into trying to exploit this resource have come to the conclusion that it will probably always be energy-negative, meaning that you will always have to put more energy into acquiring and processing it than you will ever get out of it.

Methane hydrate is a solid that looks like ice, but that burns if you ignite it. It consists of methane trapped in a sort of cage of water molecules and it gets created when methane comes into contact with water under very high pressure at very low temperatures close to the freezing point of water. Nobody has any idea of where all it is, how much there is, whether it can be mined, or how it could be used?all we know is that this stuff exists.

Finally, there is coal. We are told that there is enough coal in the ground for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, at the present rate of use. The fact that these estimates range over a factor of ten tells you immediately that nobody has the foggiest notion of how much coal is actually available. But even those projections might be considered reliable, compared to the second part of that optimistic sentence: “at the present rate of use”! We’ll get to that in a moment.

The largest coal deposits are in the United States, and China and Russia have very large reserves as well. Coal can be liquefied and made into a substitute for oil. That was done in Nazi Germany during World War II, and in South Africa under apartheid. That alone should tell you that you have to be fairly desperate to do it, but it can be done.

But, coal is a dirty, dirty fuel. It often comes with nasty impurities, including mercury, arsenic, and sulfur. The mercury that accumulates in the bodies of tuna or swordfish?and which has led to FDA warnings to limit our consumption of these fish?originates in coal-fired power plants in the United States. We use now about twice as much energy from oil as we do from coal, so if you wanted to mine enough coal to replace the missing oil, you’d have to mine it at a much higher rate, not only to replace the oil, but also because the conversion process to oil is extremely inefficient. You’d have to mine it at levels at least five times beyond those we mine now?a coal-mining industry on an absolutely unimaginable scale.

And even that doesn’t take into account the world’s increasing population, or the fact that nations like China and India want to have a higher standard of living, which means burning more energy. Finally, it doesn’t take into account the Hubbert’s Peak effect, which is just as valid for coal as it is for oil. Long before we have mined the last ton, we will have started to deplete our ability to get the stuff out of the ground. So, it’s a very good bet that the governing “rate of use” number I mentioned earlier is not hundreds or thousands of years, and that no more than one-tenth of that timeframe represents a realistic estimate.

What all this suggests is that if we accept the economists’ solution and just let the marketplace do its thing as we make use of all the fossil fuel we can, we’ll start running out of all fossil fuels by the end of this century.

So, what does the future hold? Well, for one thing, there will be an oil crisis very soon. Whether that means it has already begun or won’t happen until later in this decade or sometime in the next decade, I don’t know. In my view, the numbers are not dependable enough for us to say. However, while the difference between those estimates may be very important to us, it’s of no importance at all on the timescale of human history. Either we, our children, or perhaps our grandchildren, are in for some very, very bad times. If we turn to all the other fossil fuels and burn them up as fast as we can, they will all probably start to run out by the end of the 21st century. Assuming that our planet remains habitable after such a vast consumption binge, we will have to invent a way to live without fossil fuels. (See sidebar “Too Hot To Handle?”)

How about hydrogen? Both President Bush and California governor Schwarzenegger have publicly embraced hydrogen as a solution to our fuel problems. But there are only two commercially viable ways of making hydrogen. One is to make it out of methane, which is a fossil fuel. The other is to use fossil fuel to generate the electricity that you need to electrolyze water and get hydrogen. The economics of doing that are such that you end up using the equivalent of six gallons of gasoline to make enough hydrogen to replace one gallon of gasoline. So this solution is not a winner in the short run. In the long run, if the problem of harnessing thermonuclear fusion can be solved and we have more power than we know what to do with, you could use that form of energy to make hydrogen for mobile fuel. I’ll get to that a little later.

There is also wind power, which many now see as a viable energy alternative. And it is, but only to a limited extent. In regions like northern Europe, where fossil fuels are very expensive and the wind is really strong, wind power will someday come to rival hydroelectric power as a source of energy. But there are relatively few places on earth where the wind blows strongly and steadily enough for it to be a dependable energy source, and people don’t really like wind farms?they’re ugly and they’re noisy. Wind power will always be a part of the solution. But it’s not a magic bullet. It’s not going to save us.

In recent years, the debate over nuclear power has revived, with proponents maintaining that we can find environmentally sound and politically acceptable ways to deal with the waste and security hazards. But even assuming that to be true, the potential is limited. To produce enough nuclear power to equal the power we currently get from fossil fuels, you would have to build 10,000 of the largest possible nuclear power plants. That’s a huge, probably nonviable initiative, and at that burn rate, our known reserves of uranium would last only for 10 or 20 years.

As things stand today, the only possible substitutes for our fossil-fuel dependency are light from the sun and nuclear energy. Developing a way of running a civilization like ours on those resources is an enormous challenge. A great deal of it is social and political?we’re in the midst of a presidential election, and have you heard either party say a word about this extremely important subject? But there are also huge technical problems to be solved. So, you might well ask, what can Caltech do to help?

The ultimate solution to our energy problem would be to master the power of controlled thermonuclear fusion, which we’ve been talking about doing for more than half a century. The solution has been 25 years away for the past 50 years, and it is still 25 years away. Beyond those sobering statistics, there are at least five or six schemes for harnessing fusion energy that I know of. One of them, called the spheromak, is studied here at Caltech in an experimental program run by Professor of Applied Physics Paul Bellan and his research group.

In the spheromak, electric currents flowing in a hot ionized gas?otherwise known as a plasma-?interact with magnetic fields embedded in the plasma. As these fields and currents push the plasma around, new fields and currents are created. There’s a sort of self-organizing interaction occurring. You can see in this sequence of snapshots at the right, starting from the top, that the plasma is organizing itself into a jet and then a kink develops in the jet. This is something that happens all by itself, and it’s not something that happens only occasionally?the gas always self-organizes like that. After the kink develops, it breaks away from the body of the jet as a doughnut. If you can find a way to maintain that doughnut and keep it going?that is to pump in enough energy to keep it from decaying?the doughnut has the perfect geometry required for containing a hot plasma undergoing thermonuclear fusion.

But attaining this objective is far off. The existing apparatus is much too small to reach the hundred million degree temperatures needed to generate power. The Bellan team is studying the fundamental physics of the self-organizing process in the hope it can be used to create and sustain the desired fusion plasma confinement geometry in a reliable, controlled manner.

There’s another group at Caltech whose efforts are aimed largely at the other alternative?solar energy. Their program is called Power the Planet: Caltech Center for Sustainable Energy Research. Members include applied physicist Harry Atwater, chemists Harry Gray, Nathan Lewis, and Jonas Peters, and materials scientist Sossina Haile.

Furthermore, our former provost Steve Koonin recently stepped down from the provostship and took a leave of absence from the Caltech physics faculty to become chief scientist at BP. BP, formerly British Petroleum, is one of the largest energy companies in the world, and so he now has one of the most important energy positions in the world.

The fact that these and similar scientific and technical efforts are under way at Caltech and elsewhere are encouraging, but they are not enough. What we really need is leadership with the courage and vision to talk to us as John F. Kennedy did in 1960, when he pledged to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. It’s the same kind of problem. We understand the basic underlying scientific principles, but we have huge technical problems to overcome.

If our leaders were to say to the scientific and technical community, “We will give you the resources, and you?right now, even before it becomes imperative?will find a way to kick the fossil-fuel habit,” I think that it could be done. But we have to have the political leadership to make it work.

Judge seals Kobe criminal case files for now

2004-09-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

((From MSNBC) The Associated Press Updated: 7:16 p.m. ET Sept. 9, 2004)

DENVER - Attorneys for Kobe Bryant have won the first round in their bid to permanently seal documents and evidence from the sexual assault case against the NBA star.

In a ruling late Wednesday, District Judge Richard Hart approved an emergency request from defense attorney Pamela Mackey, who said Bryant would “suffer real, immediate and irreparable injury” if the records were released.

At least six requests had been filed seeking access to the records after prosecutors last week dismissed the case at the request of the 20-year-old alleged victim, Mackey said. Among those requests was one from The Associated Press.

The evidence includes recordings and transcripts of Bryant’s interview with sheriff’s investigators the night after the alleged attack at a Vail-area resort last summer and several hundred sealed court filings.

“No member of the public or media should be permitted to manipulate and abuse for salacious and other improper purposes the evidence, audio recordings and other materials in this case,” Mackey said. “This case is over. Mr. Bryant is innocent. He should be permitted to move on with his life.”

The Los Angeles Lakers star still faces a civil lawsuit seeking unspecified damages filed by the accusers attorneys in Denver federal court.

In granting a temporary restraining order, Hart prohibited various agencies and attorneys from disclosing any documents or other items related to the criminal case. He said the temporary order would remain in effect until Sept. 18 or he rules on Mackey’s request.

2004-09-09T10:57:00.000-07:00

Hot Camping ~ (From National Geography)

2004-09-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

Bear in Yellowstone

How big was the bounce?

2004-09-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

(Sep 9th 2004 WASHINGTON, DC From The Economist print edition)

George Bush is probably pulling ahead in the presidential horse-race, though not for the reasons you might think.

SINCE John Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination this spring, the presidential race has pretty much been a tie. This week, plenty of Republicans were cock-a-hoop and many Democrats crestfallen. Both thought that George Bush had broken away. Looking at the polling numbers as the race rounds into its final lap, they may be right.

The most dramatic polls were those published immediately after the Republican convention. Among likely voters, a poll by Gallup for CNN and USA Today found Mr Bush seven points ahead; Time put the lead at 11 points; a Newsweek poll gives the same lead among registered voters. No challenger has overcome a deficit that size after Labour Day and come back to win.

All three polls need to be handled with care. Both Time and Newsweek conducted their research while the Republican convention was still going on; so whatever they were measuring, it was not the impact of Mr Bush's acceptance speech, or the convention as a whole.

The Time and Gallup polls surveyed likely voters (likely in the opinion of pollsters). But polls of registered voters are usually regarded as more accurate. The margin among registered voters was lower: eight points according to Time and one point according to Gallup. Newsweek's poll, also among registered voters, used an odd sample?38% Republicans, 31% each for Democrats and independents, when current party registration has Democrats with 33% and Republicans with 29%. All three measures may exaggerate the size of Mr Bush's lead. But they do not invent it. Other polls from the same period show the president ahead, albeit in a much closer race?by two points, according to Zogby, and one, according to both the American Research Group and The Economist's own poll, conducted by YouGov, a British polling firm.

The “bounce”?that is, the difference between Mr Bush's level of support before and after his convention?is also there, again modestly. In our poll and Gallup's Mr Bush increased his vote by two points. That is better than Mr Kerry's non-bounce (his vote actually fell after his convention).

Our poll, the first taken in the week after the convention, uses a different technique from the others. It is conducted essentially by e-mail, not by phone or face to face. That produces an unusually large sample (2,300). It may also make the results less vulnerable to a problem that pollsters have long recognised: people who feel the winds of public opinion shifting in their direction are more confident about telling pollsters what they think than those who don't.

This offers both good and bad news for Mr Kerry. On the plus side, traditional polls may be underestimating Mr Kerry's level of support because Democratic voters are descending into a “spiral of silence”: the more they feel isolated, the quieter they become. But it also carries a negative implication: plenty of Mr Kerry's own side now think he is going to lose.

This crisis of confidence seems to have infected the Kerry campaign. The past two weeks have seen a shake-up in the high command. Three of Bill Clinton's aides have come in: his press secretary, Joe Lockhart, his political director, Doug Sosnik, and a senior policy adviser, Joel Johnson. Also drafted in was John Sasso, who had been in charge of campaigning at the Democratic National Committee.

The change in personnel?rarely a good sign?seemed to presage a change in strategy. Mr Kerry made two phone calls soliciting advice from Mr Clinton, who was lying in a hospital bed awaiting quadruple bypass surgery. Mr Clinton apparently told Mr Kerry to concentrate more on the economy and to step up his attacks on Mr Bush. That has not stopped John Edwards being warned on the campaign trail by loyalists, “They're going to run you right over and make you look like idiots.”

Given that on some measures the national race is statistically tied, that might seem a little negative. It is not. State polls seem to have turned Mr Bush's way: according to new numbers from Gallup, for instance, he now has double-digit leads in both Missouri and Ohio, which he won last time, and a tiny one-point lead in Pennsylvania, which Al Gore won. And on the national level, the size and longevity of Mr Bush's lead is less important than the mere fact of it. As Andy Kohut of the Pew Research Centre says, Mr Bush showed at his convention that he could move the needle, while Mr Kerry could not.

Over the next few weeks, the underlying trends may help the president further. Traditionally, the best barometers of opinion in the final stages have been presidential approval ratings and the “right track/wrong track” measure (those who say the country is going in the right direction compared with those who say it is on the wrong track). Not this year. Even after Mr Bush's recent rise, his approval ratings are generally just above 50%, poised between the ratings of sitting presidents who have won re-election and those who have fallen short. Most pollsters reckon that, after September 11th 2001, the right track/wrong track indicator no longer has its old salience. Since it is an indicator of public morality, or economic success, it is less important in a foreign-policy election.

Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute argues instead that there are three groups of voters to watch: those who identify themselves as independents or say they might change their minds; non-Latino Catholics; and “some college” voters (those with a year or two of university education). These groups, which overlap, each comprised over a quarter of the electorate in 2000. They are also the closest to swing voters this election has (“undecideds” don't count because they may well not turn out). Add in the particular importance of Catholics in Pennsylvania and “some college” voters in Ohio, and you see why both sides are tracking them.

Mr Kerry is not doing well with these three groups. He leads by three points among independents, but on the eve of his convention he led by 12. According to Zogby, Mr Bush leads among Catholics for the first time. According to Pew, “some college” voters preferred Mr Bush to Mr Kerry by 49% to 43%?and that was before the Republican convention. Looking at the horse-race numbers, the Kerry campaign may feel anxious; looking at these, alarm would be more justified.

This is the first presidential contest since the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and the first since 1972 to take place at a time of war. Normally, elections that take place at a time of war or foreign crisis produce a decisive victory. Until now, the contest has been tied. The question from the polling evidence is whether that may be beginning to change. A big Bush victory, while still not the most likely outcome, has become a real possibility.

2004-09-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

TETON 山水甲天下~

2004-09-08T14:06:00.000-07:00

Shooting!

Caltech Physicists Achieve Measurement on a Single Magnetic Domain Wall

2004-09-08T13:58:00.000-07:00

(From Caltech website)

Physicists for several years have been predicting a new age of semiconductor devices that operate by subtle changes in the orientation of electron spins. Known as "spintronics," the field relies on an intricate knowledge of the magnetic properties of materials and of how magnetic moments can be manipulated.

Now, scientists at the California Institute of Technology have developed a novel method of measuring the resistance of "domain walls," which are the nanoscale boundaries separating areas of a magnetized material that possess different magnetic alignments, or a "twist" of magnetic spins. Reporting in the September 2 issue of the journal Nature, Caltech physicists Hongxing Tang, Michael Roukes, and their colleagues show that their approach leads to an unparalleled precision in isolating, manipulating, and trapping domain walls one by one.
The authors have been able to trap individual domain walls between electrical probes for periods longer than a week. During that time, they are able to carry out extremely sensitive electrical measurements to identify the tiny amounts of resistance generated by this trapped single magnetic domain wall.

"We have demonstrated how a single magnetic domain wall can be monitored as it is made to traverse a patterned array of electrical probes in a microdevice made from single-crystal manganese-doped gallium arsenide," says Professor Roukes. Manganese- doped gallium arsenide belongs to a new class of ferromagnetic semiconductors that isexpected to have great potential for new spintronics devices.

This work also resolves an issue that has puzzled scientists for some time, according to Tang. Many physicists have thought that domain walls were a natural barrier to electron transport and that they cause positive resistance--in other words, the magnetic moments with different alignments created a natural opposition to the flow of charge from one side of the wall to the other. However, the new results show that the resistance is actually negative, which can be attributed to quantum effects in the locale of the domain wall itself. The very fact that the resistance is negative means that electrons can flow more easily under certain conditions, manifesting quantum mechanical origin in this novel phenomenon.

"We are certain that both this result and our new measurement methodology will be of interest to those working on future semiconductor devices based on spintronics," Tang says.
Understanding the dynamics of magnetic domain walls is crucial for magnetic storage devices such as magnetic hard drives, and for future magnetic memories. The methods have the potential to significantly alter the theoretical and experimental research for some time to come.
The work has been made possible through the Caltech team's earlier discovery of a phenomenon dubbed the "giant planar Hall effect." To reach the ultra-high resolution required to resolve the resistance of a domain wall, the authors advance a nanofabrication process for precise alignments of materials at the microscopic level and deploy an innovative way of manipulating domain walls.

"Using these advances, we have made careful measurements on many devices having domain walls of varying lengths and thicknesses," says Roukes. "All show negative resistance at the domain wall."

In addition to being a professor of physics, applied physics, and bioengineering at Caltech, Roukes is also founding director of Caltech's new Kavli Nanoscience Institute. Dr. Hongxing Tang is a senior research scientist at Caltech. Other authors of the paper are Sotiris Masmanidis, a Caltech graduate student in applied physics, and Roland Kawakami and Prof. David Awschalom, both of the UC Santa Barbara department of physics.

Interesting user reviews of Hero

2004-09-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

My response to the critics (by gemusan918 )

The negative reviews for this movie are quite amazing to me. It seems like there are 4 main complaints:1) The storyline is confusing or there's no story at all.2) The fights are too unrealistic or borrows from "Matrix".3) Not enough action.4) Subtitled and you can't keep up with the reading.

Here are my response to the complaints:

1) The story is very rich and effective and reminds me of Rashomon by Akira Kurosawa, one of cinema's all time best movie. It's a story told 3 times. Once from Nameless, who's lying to get close to the king. Once from the king who think he has the real truth. And the last time it was told by Nameless, it was the truth. If you can't even follow a storyline this simple... go watch AVP or something...

2) If you complain about the unrealistic fights in the movie, you obviously don't know anything about Chinese culture. Martial artists in both modern or historical Chinese novels possess powers that makes them almost demi-gods. I don't see a problem with this premise, since our culture readily accepts talking dogs that catches criminals (Scooby-Doo if you can't figure it out) or a guy who got bit by a spider and becomes a superhero. Seems like our assumption of what's "normal" is pretty silly in itself.The Wakowski brothers were big fans of eastern cinema and Japanese anime. The special effects in Matrix were borrowed mainly from Hong Kong martial arts movies. All the fights were designed by a Hong Kong fight cordinator. So Matrix is the movie that borrowed from eastern cinema, not the other way around.

3) Gotta blame this one on Miramax. This movie is not an action film. It's a drama with some action. Watch the trailer again after you've seen the movie... it has nothing to do with the plot of the movie. If you want mindless Hollywood action films, go watch AVP. You might lose a few brain cells in the process though.

4) I don't exactly read fast, but following the subtitles was easy. If you have trouble keeping up with the sub, maybe you need some reading classes... and quick! You'll fail your SATs if you don't get your reading speed up!

This is an excellent movie in every aspect. The cinematography is breathtaking. The story is interesting and full of philosophical ideas. Acting was top notch, well maybe not Jet Li, who was mainly expressionless throughout. The music is a welcome change from American pop music. It was also quite effective in setting the mood. Lastly, you get some awesome, albeit over the top, fight scenes. The entire package totally takes you away from your theater seat and place you in the middle of a fantasy world. Isn't this what movies are supposed to do?

Awesome!!!!!!!! (by kingchichow)

I saw this movie about 2 years ago. I have watched it 2 more times since then, and I'm still visually stunt by the amazing cinematography. Most movie goer would compare Hero with Crouch Tiger, Hidden Dragon. To me, Hero is by far a much better movie. My only complaint would be the emporer in the movie was portraited as a good emporer and in fact he was one of the most brutal emporers ever lived. Nevertheless, this movie does deserve to be called a "Masterpiece".

A deep and very philisophical movie (by noahleavitt555)

This movie has been one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. Most people walked out of the theater, and I realized sadly that they missed out on the biggest aspect of the film. "The action was really cool, but I didn't get it." This is not an action movie, it is artistic. It isn't mindless at all, and it takes a great deal to understand the messages of the film. The visuals are amazing and beautiful to watch, while the characters and acting drive you to fully indulge in the storyline. You care for all, and have to understand the poetry of this movie to fully realize it's greatness. The story progresses as starting with a great "hero" coming to claim the deaths of three assassins, and that now the emperor can rest easy. *Warning spoilers*

He is venerated, and is honored by being able to take certain steps towards the emperor for each kill, leaving 10 paces between them. However, as he tells his story of these assassin's deaths to the emperor, the emperor suspects otherwise, and gives his account of what he believed actually happened, and that Jet Li's character is in fact an assassin. His character's name is "nameless", confused? This is because there is so much symbolism in the movie. His character represents the audience, he's anonymous, and therefore, he represents the one watching the movie, who learns what a true hero is. At first, Nameless's account of what happens is false, and all scenes are done in the color red. The emperor's account is done in blue. Finally, Jet Li says the Emperor thinks to highly of these assassins and depicts the truth, and everything is done in white, and another's account is done in green. This progression of colors depicts what is later described as "mastering the sword". "Broken Sword" is an assassin, who finds through calligraphy how to express his heart truly, and that killing the emperor long ago was a bad idea due to the fact, that there will be suffering and faction wars forever if China is not united. He tries to tell Nameless this, and Nameless has proceeded with a plan to get within ten paces of the emperor to kill him. Now, the question is, does he kill him or not? The emperor tells him about mastering the sword, and you discover that each story done in a different color represents this progression, to the final one, learning to put down the sword entirely, and not killing anyone at peace with yourself, the color white in the last scene. Being a Hero is about sacrificing yourself for an ideal, love, etc. and Nameless learns of this, that he is not a hero, and how to become one. That you have to care for other people's suffering rather then your own.

See this movie if the Matrix disappointed you, it's the most fantastic I've seen, but know the philosophy and the messages involved with the poetry.

The road to Beijing

2004-09-08T13:30:00.000-07:00

(Sep 2nd 2004 From The Economist print edition)

A phrasebook for the 2008 Olympics

"LET'S drink to the success of the Olympic Games! Cheers!" This, it seems, is what the Chinese government wants to hear from foreigners, and in flawless Chinese, too. To that end, it has drawn up a handy new phrasebook "Basic Chinese 100 for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games", which will allow novice Chinese speakers to render such phrases, not to mention praises.
The phrasebook is China's latest propaganda tool: colourful, slick and heavily subsidised. The book, edited by the Beijing Organising Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad and the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, will be distributed globally to promote a conveniently stripped-down version of the Chinese language for visitors to the games.
Judging by the tone of the book, China is expecting to blow the world away with its Olympic extravaganza. After careful study of its pages, sentences like "the sports facilities are very good, everything is exceptionally well organised and the service is great" should simply roll off the tongue.

Phrasebook users will get up to speed on the lingo through the adventures of an American tourist called Mike. From simple greetings to room service, public transport to poetical observations ("The sky is bluer, the water is clearer and Beijing is becoming more and more beautiful"), millions of Mikes will be equipped to say just the right things. As with Orwell's Newspeak, dissent is impossible, since there are no words in which it could conceivably be expressed.

Beijing's city authorities have already started teaching English to taxi drivers, policemen, and ordinary citizens to ensure the communication effort goes both ways. With Athens now over, the world is turning its attention to Beijing, and there is no time to waste.

The next Olympics will crown 30 years of economic reform in China, and the government hopes they will be recognition of its pretentions to be a great power. By 2008, China aims to have spent $37 billion on the games, dwarfing the $8.7 billion spent by Greece. Small wonder that the organisers assume that Beijing 2008 will be a success, well worthy of a florid toast.

I did it my way - and I’ll do it again

2004-09-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

(Sep 3rd 2004 From The Economist Global Agenda)

George Bush accepted the Republican nomination for the presidency on Thursday night. He defended his record, and promised much the same in his second term. John Kerry was quick to respond with a speech that suggests the campaign is about to get even nastier.

WHATEVER else he does, George Bush does not run from who he is. To rapturous cheers and applause, he accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for re-election on Thursday September 2nd. Repeating not only themes from past speeches but also a brace of campaign-tested lines, he made a simple pitch: at home and abroad, America needs more of what he has shown in his first four years as president.

Many, to put it mildly, would disagree from the hundreds of thousands that protested this week in New York, where the Republican convention is being held, to the ranks of the Democratic Party, unusually united this year in its desire to send Mr Bush into retirement. The Democratic challenger, John Kerry, returned to the campaign trail less than an hour after Mr Bush’s speech, giving a sharply critical talk of his own in Ohio, a crucial battleground state.

The president began his speech by dealing with his domestic record and plans. He touched briefly on themes that are close to the hearts of social conservatives, such as his opposition to abortion and gay marriage. But he also reiterated his 2000 campaign theme of “compassionate conservatism”, and added a new theme: the “ownership society”. Broadly speaking, he wants to cut taxes and put more decision-making (and risk) in individual hands by encouraging saving for retirement, health care and home ownership.

More controversially, Mr Bush also revived his call for a partial privatisation of Social Security, the cornerstone federal pensions programme. Social Security is facing huge deficits once the baby-boom generation retires. The president advocates individual accounts, into which workers would put part of their pay cheques, to be invested in assets of their choosing. Mr Bush sold this as a way to guarantee benefits. But with a stockmarket slump and corporate scandals still fresh in the memory, peddling investment accounts as a guarantee against insecurity may be a tough sell.

Unsurprisingly, the nasty fiscal situation that Mr Bush would face in a second term went unmentioned, though it loomed over his speech like a ghost at the banquet. Big deficits?caused by a combination of an economic downturn and Mr Bush’s tax cuts are expected to last at least ten years. The cost of switching to Mr Bush’s Social Security plan is estimated at about $1 trillion. He cannot push this plan, extend his tax cuts and follow through with other new domestic programmes announced on Thursday (including more spending on housing and higher education) without plunging the budget further into the red. He described Mr Kerry as a “tax-and-spend” type, but his plans seem to show him as a “cut-taxes-and-spend” type, not obviously a superior breed.

Funding the baby boomers' retirement is a long-term worry, which will really begin to bite only after the winner of this election finishes his four-year term. Finding jobs is a more immediate concern, which has been gnawing at Mr Bush for the past four years. Hiring was strong in the spring adding almost 300,000 workers per month to the payrolls on average but dismal in June and July. In his speech, Mr Bush blamed foreign oil and frivolous lawsuits, and promised to set up “American opportunity zones”, whatever they may be. The morning after his speech, the Bureau of Labour Statistics brought him some small comfort. Firms added 144,000 workers to the payrolls in August, and the figures for July and June were revised up a little. The unemployment rate fell a notch, to 5.4%, largely because 152,000 people dropped out of the labour force. The summer job market turned out to be far worse than the president had expected in the spring, but better than he may have feared on Thursday night.

The second half of Mr Bush’s speech, devoted to foreign policy, was rhetorically stronger and drew bigger cheers. The president, of course, defended his decisions to go into Afghanistan and Iraq, and said that “the wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom”a far cry from his goal of a “humble” foreign policy in the 2000 campaign.

After nearly a week of criticism of Mr Kerry, the delegates nonetheless revelled in every one of Mr Bush’s attacks on the Massachusetts senator. As often before, the president derided Mr Kerry for voting against an $87 billion package to fund post-war operations in Iraq and then explaining the decision as “complicated”. “There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat,” said Mr Bush.

While he defended his assertiveness, however, Mr Bush offered no new plans in foreign policy. He had nothing to say about reform of the intelligence services. Iran and North Korea did not figure either. Nor, unsurprisingly, did the still-at-large Osama bin Laden. With nearly 140,000 American troops tied down in Iraq, there is simply little room for new threats against America’s enemies. Mr Bush’s speech was more a plea to trust him for what he has done in the past than a signal of what he hopes to do in the future.

Not standing pat

No sooner had the red, white and blue balloons settled on the floor in Madison Square Garden than the Democratic challenger returned to the campaign trail, giving a tough late-night speech in Springfield, Ohio. Mr Kerry has been hurt in polls by advertisements claiming that he exaggerated his heroism and his wounds in Vietnam. Some Democratic strategists have criticised his campaign for not fighting back early, or angrily, enough.

That may be changing. Mr Kerry’s speech explicitly compared his volunteering for Vietnam with “those who refused to serve when they could have”. This not only hits at Mr Bush. Mr Kerry noted that Dick Cheney, the vice-president, received five draft deferments. Mr Kerry also slammed his opponent as the first president since Herbert Hoover to see payrolls fall during his tenure, attacked the administration for awarding no-bid contracts in Iraq to Halliburton, Mr Cheney’s old firm, and accused Mr Bush of depending on the Saudi royal family to control the oil price.

Election day is two months away, and the Democrats seem to be showing that they can punch as low as the Republicans. Negative campaigning is nothing new in American politics, but the enthusiasm for it at the Republican convention, and the vigour with which the Democrats are responding, will make this election campaign a particularly nasty one.