TCS Daily : December 2002 Archives
Belief, Not Medicine
A new study in the December issue of Contemporary Pediatrics recommends the use of acupuncture to treat children with chronic pain or nausea, claiming to have evaluated the effectiveness of acupuncture for children by examining its use in adults. However,...
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The Missile Shield Gap?
Somewhat surprisingly, President Bushs announcement that the U.S. was planning to begin deployment of a limited missile defense system in 2004 has drawn only muted criticism from Russia. In large part, the Russian government already understood that the construction
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Time Tripps Up
Over a week has passed since Time's cover eulogized three whistle blowers as Persons of the Year. To date, there has been no press commentary to the effect that there are whistle blowers and then there are whistle blowers. Some...
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Looking Ahead
As we pass from 2002 into 2003, the new millennium doesn't look especially bright. With smallpox once thought eradicated, we're now talking about mass smallpox vaccinations. Terrorists are clearly anxious to acquire weapons of mass destruction of pretty much any...
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Establishing Religion
Have you heard about the latest controversy swirling around PBS? Even before "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet," aired on December 18, the camel dung had been hitting the fan. But once the mess is cleaned up, the source of the...
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Bloodshot Eyes in the Sky
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that develops and operates America's spy satellites, faces a crucial challenge in the showdown with Iraq. The challenge, of course, is to monitor Iraq's military movements and weapons of mass destruction. But it.
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Clone Rangers
"Bush administration supporters are preparing a fresh effort to pass legislation that would outlaw all forms of human cloning," the Washington Post reported last week. This news follows a move last month by the United States to block an initiative...
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SUV: Our Savior
Ravaged by guilt, I was about to cancel my order for a new, three-ton, fly yellow, 300-jillion horsepower, gas-swilling Hummer H2 and spec out a Chinese-built, 20-speed Mountain Bike. But Whoa! Wait a minute! Hold on I'm keeping the Hummer...
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Dealing With Kim
Quick, name a world figure who within the last few decades has successfully plotted the blowing up of passenger aircraft, the killing of another country's cabinet officials, the murder of his own people, and the acquisition of nuclear-weapons materials to...
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Year of the Blog
2001 was the year that weblogs burst into the national consciousness in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. But 2002 was the year in which weblogs became part of the mainstream, even while remaining outside it. And 2003 -...
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Driven to Drink
Last week, the American Medical Association took new evidence that alcohol affects young brains worse than it does adult brains and used it to call for further restrictions on alcohol advertising. "We've known for years that alcohol makes kids dead,"...
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Betting Against Convergence
For the past decade, pundits have been predicting media convergence. As Nicholas Negroponte wrote in Being Digital, we can represent audio, video, and text as bits. Therefore, the convergence hypothesis goes, we do not need devices that specialize in one...
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TechNoSchool
On a recent "Leave It to Beaver" rerun, the Beav was excused from school to appear on a TV show called "Teen Age Forum." The principal wheeled a TV set into the classroom so students could watch, but Beaver wasn't...
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Wall Street Thug
Tony Soprano is an unsavory character. He breaks the law. He lies. He intimidates. He makes his own rules, and he gets what he wants. And yet he remains a very popular guy. Eliot Spitzer is also a popular guy,...
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Law and Horror
By coincidence on December 14, I received two documents addressing the famine in southern and eastern Africa - the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) statement on hunger in Africa and the Report of Zambian scientists to His Excellence the President...
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Celebrate Bad Times, C'mon!
One year has passed since Argentina spiraled into an economic meltdown and there doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel. The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates Argentina's GDP has contracted by 13% over the past year,...
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A 'Doofus' Position
The Wall Street Journal's editorial page is the best in the world. But even the best make embarrassing mistakes - which is the nicest thing I can say for the Journal editorial that appeared Tuesday under the headline, "Telecom Meltdown,...
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Yes, Virginia, There Is Missile Defense
At long last. It's been nearly 20 years since President Ronald Reagan unhinged the chattering class by observing that Mutually Assured Destruction - MAD, for short - wasn't so smart. That protection was better than obliteration. That developing SDI...
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Big Idea, Bad Idea
Is it possible to catalogue every human idea? Japan-based researcher Darryl Macer thinks so, and last month he proposed in the journal Nature to count the number of human ideas and map them. This plan, while a clever attention grabber,...
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Dizzying Diet News
Almost every day brings a new study on the human diet. Most of them contradict each other ("for the last time, does fiber prevent colon cancer or not?!"), leaving readers perplexed about what and how much they should be eating....
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New Media, New Power
I was out of the country, and in a place where Internet connections cost a couple bucks a minute to use. That's my excuse for only learning through the Miami Herald's Caribbean edition on Tuesday Dec. 11 of Senate Majority...
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Diplomatic Delusions
One of the many surprises attendant to the ongoing sociopolitical turmoil in Iran is the relatively little comment it has garnered from the United States government. Many observers believe that this is attributable to the State Department's desire to achieve...
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Economic Jump-Start Won't Do
Now that President Bush has named his new economic team, he's expected to turn his attention to a stimulus package. I hope not. Growth, yes. Stimulus, no. "Stimulus" implies a goose to the economy - or, more politely, the quick...
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The UN's Bizarre War on Biotech
The United Nations' abject failure to get Iraq to adhere to the Security Council's post-Gulf War resolutions might lead to a war that is costly to the United States and its allies and devastating to Iraq. But for a large...
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Smallpox Martyrs, American Style
The Bush Administration is going ahead with a massive smallpox vaccination campaign - a radical step, given that smallpox was officially eradicated decades ago. President Bush will even receive the vaccine, a step probably meant as much as a response...
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10 Stock-ing Stuffers
In January 1995, I started offering readers a list of 10 stocks to consider for the year ahead, making my selections from the choices of market pros whose opinions I value. In five years of this exercise, my lists returned...
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Brick by Brick
Recent newspaper headlines underscore the need for an effective missile defense. The shipment of North Korean missiles bound for Yemen confirms the proliferation of missile technology. Nations like Iran, Iraq and North Korea are acquiring such technologies, may alr
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Brains vs. Asphalt
Seventy-four members of the Estonian parliament introduced a bill this week that would set September 14, 2003 as the date for referendum on joining the European Union. Having a referendum in a tiny, post-socialist country may seem like a mere...
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Perils of Gridlock
Thomas Friedman, the highly-respected, award-winning foreign policy wonk for New York Times is, like the rest of his fellow liberal staff members, fretting about our dependence on Middle-Eastern oil. It is a concern, one might be reminded, that has drifted...
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The Greediest Generation
Social Security is falling off a cliff, taking baby boomers down with it. There are two ways to avoid a hard landing: We can deploy a financial parachute, or we can soften the impact by landing on our children. Social...
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Spread the Wealth
At a time when the press and politicians are fretting about investors losing confidence in stock markets, new information provided to the SEC offers reassuring evidence about the speed and fairness of transactions. But, by shedding new light on the...
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Tricky Al
The congressman-turned-senator-turned-two-term vice president had just lost a presidential election, but he was still a young and vigorous man. And because he was defeated by the narrowest of margins - many in his party thought he had been robbed of...
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A Bridge to the Next Tech Boom
The venture capital industry, which bankrolled the dot-com euphoria of the most recent technology boom, shows relatively few signs of returning to its former prominence anytime soon. Total VC investment has now declined for nine consecutive quarters, and threatens
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Phase Out Medicare
With the recent shake-up in the Bush Administration's economic team, some pundits are clamoring for a bolder economic policy. That got me to start thinking about how I would respond if someone were to ask me for a bold, specific...
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Putting People Before Profits
Recently my family and I awoke to four inches of sewage in our basement. While we have many close fiends, we didn't call them for help. No doubt some would have interrupted their plans and come over. But we didn't...
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Economists Against Israel
Israel has cost the U.S. around $1.6 trillion since 1973, or more than $5,700 per person (twice the cost of the Vietnam war), according to economist and consultant Thomas Stauffer. Israel is currently pursuing $4 billion in new aid and...
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The Innovator's Decision
Tom Daschle tried to turn the election into a referendum on the economy, blasting the Bush administration for "the worst performance in terms of real economic growth that we have seen in the last 50 years." However hyperbolic, he...
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Transformation and Risk
In November, TCS published an article by Melana Zyla Vickers that misses both the forest and the trees. In "Dominance Lite" Ms. Vickers wrote: Those who thought the "arms are for hugging" school of foreign policy went out of fashion...
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Voice of the Future?
What might spur the next tidal wave of growth and use of the Internet and broadband? Well, how about something old fashioned - like a long distance phone call. As The Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 5, broadband connections are...
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Labels and Trade Wars
This week the Environment Committee of the European Parliament met to discuss the traceability of genetically modified (GM) food and its labeling. With some luck Parliament will base its decisions on sound science. But it got no help or guidance...
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Blogs 1, Reinhardt 0
This past week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals-which enjoys the dubious reputation of having had more of its decisions reversed by the United States Supreme Court than any other circuit-unburdened itself of a 69-page magnum opus written by Circuit...
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Who Is In Denial?
The Bush Administration last week finished a three-day conference on the science and potential risks posed by climate change. The Administration's critics wasted no time. They pounced Monday and called for the U.S. to push ahead with the Kyoto Protocol...
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Edge Power
The Internet lowers the cost of the tools of communication and creativity, making them affordable to individuals and small businesses. This phenomenon might be called Edge Power, because it increases power around the "edges" of the network, in contrast with...
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Hi-Tech vs. Low-Tech Threats
The Bush Administration has repeatedly raised the specter of evildoers armed with exotic weapons - from Al-Qaeda's "dirty bombs" to Saddam's biotoxin-spraying unmanned planes. But the recent attacks in Kenya underscore a simple truth, defense experts say: terrorist
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Gateway to Heaven?
Nevada's state ballot this year included Question 9, which called for the legalization of marijuana for both sale and use. Drug Czar John Walters visited the state twice to argue against the initiative. He was quoted in the Boston Globe...
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Remember With
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For Richer, Not for Poorer
A recent TCS column discussed the dark side of double taxation. In a nutshell, it demonstrated how this quirk of our tax code makes the stock markets more volatile, increases the number of bankruptcies, and chokes off dividend payments to...
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The Energy of Stars
There he goes again. Robert Redford, the famed movie star, has criticized what he believes is excessive American energy use. Writing earlier this month in the Los Angeles Times, he says our present policies cause too much dependence on foreign...
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Media Feudalism Under Siege
One of the reasons that feudalism thrived during the Middle Ages is that it was expensive to be a knight. The cost of a horse and armor exceeded what most peasants made in several years. Add to that the extensive...
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Sad For Us Humans, But True
My favorite curmudgeon, the Scrooge of Stocks, is a former National Geographic photographer named Charles Allmon. He lives in Potomac, manages about $100 million for clients, and is the founder and editor of Growth Stock Outlook, now in its 38th...
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Judicious Generosity
It's easy this time of year to get carried away with the spirit of giving, to exceed the bounds of our generosity, to give more than we have to give. And not just for our lesser brethren, but every friend,...
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The Myth of the Man
The disclosure of the illnesses and medications relating to John F. Kennedy set off a great gasp in the press - front page stories everywhere. Of course, much, if not most, of this information was available to the press at...
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Open Agnosticism
Julian Sanchez characterizes me as an "enemy" of Open Source (OS). "Open source agnostic" would be a better term than "enemy." Opposition to proposals for government preferences are not necessarily based on enmity for the Open Source movement, which has...
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Note From Brussels: Free to Choose?
For many people, the car is a symbol of freedom. Arthur Seldon recalls in Capitalism how at age 11 he made a silent promise that when he grew up and had acquired a car, he would return to the East...
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Open Source and Its Enemies
It should surprise nobody to learn that Bill Gates is not a fan of Linux or open source software [OSS], for roughly the same reason that light bulb manufacturers might resent sunny days. What ought to be surprising is that...
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The Alternative Universe
It is time for Congress to defund the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM.) After ten years of existence and over $200 million in expenditures, it has not proved effectiveness for any "alternative" method. It has added to...
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Greenspan for
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It Ain't Beanbag
OK, politics is a rough game. But sometimes it's rougher than it has to be. Larry Lindsey just learned that the hard way. The White House insisted, not too insistently, that Lindsey and Paul O'Neill "resigned." That was Ari Fleischer's...
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Cosmic Pro-Lifers
Questions about extraterrestrial life - whether it exists, what it would be like, how to look for it - generate very little scientific consensus. Some scientists enthuse over the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which listens for radio signals from alien..
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Outlaws and Databases
A folk song that was popular in my childhood describes a utopia of ineffective jails and crippled policemen. "In the Big Rock Candy Mountain the cops have wooden legs" --"The Big Rock Candy Mountain" (attributed to Harry McClintock, popularized by...
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Splice of Life
It made page one of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Yet it had nothing to do with terrorism, Iraq, nor even "American Idol." Instead it was a vaccine made by splicing a protein into...
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Faith No More
Back in April, Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) gave a speech on the Senate floor expressing her views on U.S. energy policies. She opposed development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to boost domestic oil production. After a sympathetic nod...
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Raining on the Parade
The November/December issue of Harvard Magazine features a cover article entitled "The Great Global Experiment." The article claims that climate models predicting increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (CO2) suggest there will be a warming and drying of the e
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Justice as Warfare
The deaths this year of the philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick closed one of the more significant chapters in the history of American political philosophy. Imagining American philosophy and political theory today without Rawls and Nozick is like imagining...
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Demolition Men
What is the meaning of life? It's a tough question. While there may not be a broad consensus about the specifics, there is definitely more to life than just breathing. Lives are not simply measured in years. Neither John F....
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When Activists Win
Today data are released from PhRMA, the pharmaceutical lobby group, which show that AIDS drugs in development are in shocking decline, down by 33% over the past 5 years. What the industry is unwilling to admit is that drug activists...
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A Call for ELP
Back in the 1960s, claim processors at Ford had strict time guidelines for repairs done by dealers for warranty work. Strict times, that is, except for one thing - wiring problems. For them, dealers could take as long as they...
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Money for Nothing,
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Burn These Flags
Earlier this year, Silicon Valley was outraged at a proposal to prohibit the sale of almost any technology unless it contains copy protection standards endorsed by the federal government. While that proposal is unlikely to become law, there's a similar...
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The Future of Internet Speech
Some states have laws that give special protection to some forms of media - in particular, by protecting them from libel liability if they promptly publish a retraction (or if the plaintiff fails to demand such a retraction). Should Internet...
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All Aboard
I was delighted to learn that the Dick Tracys who man our airport security checkpoints confiscated 16,000 knives over the Thanksgiving weekend. Of course a vast majority of those weapons were not Bowie knives, machetes, stilettos or switch-blades, but rather...
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Time to Kill, Not Coddle
With phony profits now expected to top $9 billion, WorldCom, Inc, the Mississippi-based telecommunications company, has earned the distinction of committing the worst accounting fraud in American history. As a result, investors have marked down WorldCom's stock to
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Payback Time for Schroeder
The perennial favourite German children's story Emile and the Detectives begins with our eponymous hero falling asleep on the train while travelling across Berlin and having the money his mother had given him stolen. Much of the rest of the...
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Pleading the Fifth Column
Maybe Al Gore ate some bad tofu. The Earth-in-the-Balancer has taken time out from his two-book media tour-which has given him fawning face time with Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, and just about every other major-media maven-to go "off message" and...
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Regime Protection
The Bush Administration wanted UN inspections of Iraq the worst way possible. Well, that's how it's gotten them so far. All the lovey-dovey cooperation in Iraq last week masks D-Day "Decision Day" this week - when President George W. Bush...
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Gore Gets OutFOXed
Al Gore got a lot of grief for his comments about the media in a recent New York Observer interview. But while it may be hard for most people to believe that the media are tools of a Vast Right-Wing...
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Altitude Sickness
If Saddam Hussein has the bomb, plus the ability and desire to use it, what will he do? He might target a concentration of U.S. forces in the Gulf region, or perhaps Tel Aviv. Either would have the potential to...
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Vacillating Between Neglect and Derision
Although you might not know if you follow the American medias coverage of the War on Terrorism, the fact is that in addition to the Europeans in carnival gear populating the streets of affluent capitals to fight for peace, there...
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Facts Are in Fashion in Milan
World delegates are assembling at the city of Milan from December 1 through 12 for the ninth session of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP-9) meeting. The official agenda of COP-9 ranges from the...
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'Tis the Silly Season
So, we are now fully in the throes of the holiday eating season, during which time, in this era of obesity obsession, we will receive 18,332 warnings, admonishments and friendly pieces of advice to watch what we eat and drink....
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Looking for a Fight
My buddy Bill doesn't follow politics and international affairs that closely. He owns a small business here in my hometown in rural Pennsylvania and, like most Americans, he tends to focus more on local issues. But the other day he...
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Embracing 'Imperialism'
Many observers of the continuing demonstrations by the Iranian people against the Islamic regime argue that the United States should stay out of Iran's domestic politics. Citing the commonly expressed Iranian belief that the United States is a "Great Satan"...
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Trading Places
President George W Bush has just scored a significant public relations victory against the European Union as Washington jostles to reclaim the moral high ground of world trade liberalization from Brussels. The timing of a US proposal for a major...
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Are You High? Def
For many years, High Definition TV (HDTV) appeared to be a problem in search of a solution. Consumers were never consulted on whether or not they wanted HDTV, and the gestation period seemed endless. And yet, surprisingly, the near term...
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'What Causes Prosperity?'
I had a friend once and he was asked to chair a commission, an international committee, and the title of it was What Causes Poverty. He declined. He said I will do it but on one condition. The condition is...
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Mutual Failure
Despite the miserable performance of the stock market in recent years, the number of Americans owning mutual funds continues to rise. At last report, 48 million families owned stock funds. That's roughly half of all U.S. households - up from...
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Are We There Yet?
Nanotechnology deals with the creation of valuable commodities fabricated one atom at a time. The ultimate dream of nanotechnology is to create legions of inexpensive self-replicating microscopic machines that can be directed to fabricate or modify virtually anythi
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Prepackaged Coasters
Before you purchase your next CD, be sure to read the fine print. You may be buying an overpriced drink coaster. In an effort to curb music piracy, the recording industry is releasing compact discs with manufacturing flaws. These flaws...
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Nuclear, Free!
At 4 A.M. on March 28, 1979, the Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2 nuclear power plant malfunctioned. The reactor suffered a partial meltdown, but it could not compare to the one suffered by news media, anti-nuclear activists and public...
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Race From the Cure
How many times does an average child burn himself on the stove? For most kids, once is enough to learn the lesson: Be careful near the stove to avoid getting burned. The recent stock market decline burned many investors. Long...
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