Read this post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=213560&cid=17362976

  and, if by any chance, you think that whoever is rating it "overrated" is abusing their authority, you might point this out.

I just got back from Ohio's 15th where I was working with my Aunt's congressional campaign.

  The race is very close, she has to carry better than 55 or 60% of the remaining ballots in order to win, which given the demographics of the provisional ballots is about how well I'd expect her to do, so we'll see.

I'll be extending this as I assemble it. This is just an outline. Suggestions are appreciated.

1. Crisis in the Middle East - Disengagement is the only moral option.

2. The "Clash of Civilizations" - or, why the Right is giving Osama what he wants.

3. Justice Reduces the threat of Terror - what we learn from Northern Ireland.

4. Violence emboldens the radical element - what we learn from Lebanon in 2006.

5. The facts in Iraq - our presence is making things worse, not better.

6. The truth is important - why the powerful want to stay in Iraq.

7. How much worse it could be - the real consequences of total war with the Muslim world.

8. Justice is ours if we want it - or, how did we end Apartheid?

Ooh! A MEME! Okay, I have to rank them. Gr.... I hate doing this:
1) Live
2) New Pornographers
3) The Rolling Stones
4) REM
5) The Beatles
6) Pearl Jam
7) Dead Kennedys
8) Van Morrison
9) Peter Gabriel / Genesis
10) Sting / The Police
  Which means that I'm missing Springstein, Johnny Cash, The Allman Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bjork, Nirvana, the Cure^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSteppenwolf,
AC-DC, They Might be Giants, I could go on. Oh, and Joe Cooker, wouldn't have thought of him but he should definitely be on the list. This is why I dislike top ten lists.

What was the first song you ever heard by 6?
Jeremy, I think.

What is your favourite album of 2?
Mass Romantic.

What is your favourite lyric that 4 has sung?
"Hey, that's me in the spotlight." (or something like that.)

How many times have you seen 5 live?
Heh. Never.

What is your favorite song by 7?
My favorite Pink Floyd song is "The Wall Pt. 2", so there. My favorite Dead Kennedys song is "Holiday in Cambodia".

What is a good memory you have involving the music of 10?
When I was four I would sing "Fortress around your heart" on the bus.

Is there a song of 3 that makes you sad?
You know, not really. I like to listen to "Paint it Black" when I'm down, but it makes me feel better, actually.

What is your favorite lyric that 2 has sung?
"You told me I could order the Moon, Babe, just as long as I shoot what I want."

What is your favorite song by 9?
I hate to be conventional, but "Solsbury Hill".

How did you get into 3?
I was probably exposed to it in the womb.

What was the first song you heard by 1?
Lightning Crashes, I believe. On MTV, just before they stopped playing music altogether.

What is your favorite song by 4?
Stand.

How many time have you seen 9 live?
I don't think I ever have, actually.

What is a good memory you have involving 2?
I found them on the internet..... nothing much comes to mind here.

Is there a song of 8 that makes you sad?
Nope.

What is your favorite album of 5?
Yellow Submarine.

What is your favorite lyric that 3 has sung?
Gah. "Goodbye, ruby tuesday, who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day, still I'm gonna miss you."

What is your favorite song of 1?
Top.

What is your favorite song of 10?
Love is the Seventh Wave

How many times have you seen 8 live?
I'm not really much for live pop music, to be honest. Live classical or jazz, sure.

What is your favorite album of 1?
Throwing Copper.

What is a great memory you have considering 9?
When I was, what, 9 or 10, I thought the video for "Big Time" was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

What was the first song you heard by 8?
Brown Eyed Girl, maybe? I'm not sure.

What is your favorite cover by 3?
I'm going to say my favorite cover of a song *by* 3 - Devo's cover of Satisfaction. It cannot be denied.

Heh. I got a 14.

  Firstly, autism is not a real trait. It is a classification we use when discussing a family of (probably completely unrelated) traits with similar outcomes in terms of making people behave like Rainman. Even Asperger Syndrome is classified exclusively on the basis of behavior - if there is a syndrome there, we don't have a fraction of the depth of understanding needed to know what it is.

  Now, you can still make an argument that this class of autistic traits has been, or will be, selected for in the human population. In both cases, we can only speculate.

  I maintain that human beings have been selected for intellectual diversity. A tribe of humans would survive best if it had some members who were cautious, some who were bold, some who were more capable of abstract thought, some who were more sociable, and so forth. In some cases there is a tradeoff, due to the engineering limitations of the human nervous system.

  It is also possible - as is the case with Cystic Fibrosis, for example - that there are genes associated with autistic traits that have some beneficial effect when present in single copy. This is total speculation, however - our understanding of the relationship between human genetics and human intellectual diversity is shallow, at best. It is entirely possible that the spectrum of autism-like disorders are very rarely caused by genetics and mostly by environmental factors - the fact that they show some indications of heritability not withstanding (see child rearing practices below).

  At present, the majority of selective pressure on human beings is cultural. Will we wipe ourselves out as a species? That's a big one, not a genetic question.

  For individual humans, the question is becoming not "am I fit to reproduce?", or "am I rich enough to reproduce?", but "do I *want* to reproduce?"

  The obvious effect of the wide availability of birth control is that people who just want to have sex without having children are now absolutely free to do so, and they will. This may have some impact on the frequency of genes that impact, for example, the strength of parent-child bonding one way or the other.

  However, the overwhelming effect is going to be on child-rearing practices. If you have child-rearing practices that give you children who do not, in turn, want to have children - those child-rearing practices will die out. This is another form of cultural selection.

> What is your position regarding efforts to organize graduate students?

> You have often in the past remarked that societies with strong unions are generally more free and civilized. Assuming that you meant to imply causality, do you think that the same effect could be expected in academia?

> We (Columbia-UAW) are hosting a conference of graduate student union organizers from around the country this weekend, which is why I ask. It is my understanding that there is no appreciable TA/RA-unionization effort at your institution; as you may not know, a recent NLRB decision has made efforts to organize at private universities very difficult.

I think one can make a good case for it, particularly these days, with the increasing corporatization of universities and consequent reliance and cheap, exploitable, and expendable labor. I think the generalization you mention is correct, and that the causal relations go in both directions; that is, the phenomena are mutually reinforcing. The effects in academia are hard to predict; many special circumstances. But I'd guess it would be generally healthy. I don't know of any efforts at MIT, and as you say, it might be very difficult after the NLRB decision.

> Firstly, a previous poster suggested that it might be preferable to have the private sector foot the bill for high tech research, since they are reaping the benefits. It seems to me that you generally raise "public subsidy for private profit" as a counter-example to the assertions of market-fetishists, but there is an implied critique. Could you expand on what is actually wrong with such a system, if anything? Do you think limited steps (regulation of industries, forced licensing of patents, etc.) can address any faults?

The critique is more than implied. It's quite explicit.

First, there is the matter you raise. The standard doctrine -- preached by Alan Greenspan, any number of economists, and commentators commonly -- that the marvellous "new economy" is a tribute to "entrepreneurial initiative," "consumer choice," and other free market wonders does not stand up to even a casual look, let alone careful analysis. And furthermore, business leaders understand very well that high-tech industry cannot survive in such an environment, and "the government must be the savior," as the business press explained after World War II. There are more specific matters: e.g., the illusions that Reagan was a free-marketer -- in fact, he broke new postwar records in import restrictions and pouring federal funds into the economy to "reindustrialize America" and compensate for failures of American management. That extends to just about every area of the economy, including the pharmaceutical issues that are among the most serious problems of the domestic economy in the coming years. These are matters of essential significance, which large-scale human consequences, and it is important to understand them, not to be deluded by self-serving slogans.

Furthermore, these delusions are constantly used as a weapon against the weak, at home and abroad: THEY must be "liberated" from the "cycle of dependency," as Gingrich and others like to put it, while the rich and privileged huddle under the protection of the nanny state. All of this resumes processes that have been underway for centuries, a large factor in the current division between the North and the South, and its domestic analogue. These are not small matters.

The explicit critique goes well beyond. The whole system is a radical attack on democracy. The military cover (and others like it) excludes the public from decisions about economic development, clearly crucial questions for people in any society, certainly any society that pretends to be democratic To be concrete, suppose that in the 1950s the public was given an informed choice about whether to devote its taxes to the eventual development of computers, internet, etc, which would someday be handed over to huge private tyrannies to develop further and market after the basic costs and risks of R&D had been socialized, or whether to devote those funds to other ends: education, health, livable communities, protection of an environment for their children, and innumerable other social goals. The military cover and other pretexts exclude the public from such decisions, which are the essence of a functioning democracy. Maybe an informed public would have made the same decisions as the planners in the state and business, but they plainly did not want to take the chance -- a realistic judgment on their part, I think. These too are not small matters.

There are also particular issues, of the kind you mention, like the onerous and unprecedented patent regimes imposed in the grossly misnamed "free trade agreements," which guarantee monopoly pricing rights to private tyrannies for work largely funded in the public sector. For the pharmaceutical corporations, the most profitable industry for some time, the effects have been studied by economist Dean Baker, who estimates that if the public share of R&D were to rise to 100% (thus undercutting the pretense that high costs reflect R&D expenses) and the corporations were forced to sell on the market, the savings to consumers would be extraordinary. But those issues too do not enter the arena of public discussion, in a "failed state" with democratic forms that function only in limited ways. And it goes well beyond that. The "free trade agreements" deny to the "developing countries" the methods that were used by every current rich society to reach its present state -- what was called "kicking away the ladder" by the 19th century economist Friedrich List, who generalized Alexander Hamilton's principles about state intervention in the economy, which underlie US economic development from the earliest days (as Britain before it), to a more general theory of economic development, which has been largely confirmed by the general course of economic history.

> You mentioned, I'm having trouble finding these references, parallels between the development of information technology and automation. In particular, you mention that automation did not need to be implemented in the form it took (disempowering laborers)? You suggested work by someone in particular; I think you said he was refused tenure because of his politics. Anything you could recommend on the topic, I'd appreciate it.

There shouldn't be any problem finding references. The person you have in mind is presumably David Noble, who has published extensively on the topic. There is a mass of other material on the development of computers, the internet, government industrial policy, antecedents back to the development of the core of the modern mass production system in government armories, in naval gunnery (primarily UK and Germany), the success of pacifist Andrew Carnegie in putting together the first billion dollar corporation thanks in large part to naval expenses, and a great deal more. I've cited plenty of it in writings of mine, for many years. If you have trouble finding the sources, contact me offline.

> While it is not ideal, it seems to me that IT has developed in a way that is relatively empowering to the user-base. Certainly, it need not have come out that way. On the other hand, might the presumption of internet anarchy plays the same role as the presumption of media liberalism within the doctrinal system?

IT developed very largely at public expense, hidden from the public, and was only recently handed over to private power in ways that remain obscure. It has potential for control and domination, and for liberation. Right now, that is an important terrain of struggle, about which there is also a good deal of discussion and literature. Work by Robert McChesney and Edward Herman, for example. In general, technology itself tends to be rather neutral. The question how it will be used depends on the interplay of social forces, a matter that Noble discussed in some depth in his important work on computer-controlled machine tools. But these are questions that are quite separate from the earlier ones you raised.

> I'm interested in the question of how someone involved in the fundamental research might act to shape newly emerging technologies so that they do not become instruments of domination and control. Beyond the truism that activism is always preferable to apathy do you think there is a useful contrast between these two cases? Anything else I could read that might shed some light on the question?

It is very hard for those engaged in fundamental research to influence how their discoveries will be used -- whether by systems of concentrated power that are parasitic on the public sector, or by popular organizations seeking to promote peace and justice. Sometimes choices can be made, but typically not. It is not really a matter of the choices of individual researchers, beyond narrow and mostly technological areas (e.g., should I work on new types of nuclear weapons?). The problems have to do with the nature of the society in which scientific discoveries will be developed further and put to use: who decides? under what conditions?

>1) Should research funded at public expense by patentable
by the university or individuals doing the research?

I don't think so. In fact, there are very serious
questions about patents and copyrights altogether.

>2) For privately funded research that depends heavily on
the products of government funded research or other public
subsidies, should the same conditions apply?

If one looks closely, I suspect that virtually all
"privately funded research" depends heavily on public
funding. In this case, on basic biology, for example. Same
in electronics, etc. The state sector has played a
crucial role in developing the high tech economy, and in
fact the story goes back very far.

>3) Would the public be better off if the government funded
all the research presently funded by private parties, and
placed the research products into the public domain?

There are some careful studies of this in the case of the
pharmaceutical industry, particularly by economist Dean
Baker. He worked out the effects of increasing public
funding of R&D from its present (very high) level to 100%,
and then requiring pharmaceutical firms that market them to
do so in a "free market." Savings to consumers are
colossal.

>4) Does private investment at any stage (research and
development, testing, production, distribution or delivery
of the medicine) produce more/better/sooner treatments?

I'm sure it does. But that really doesn't answer the
question. For one thing, because the "private investment"
is only partially private, for another, because it is a
political decision, not a law of nature, that the public
institutions don't carry development through to the
distribution stage. Thus the NIH could develop drugs to
that stage instead of handing over testing, marketing, some
improvements and modifications, etc., to the "private"
corporations -- "private" in a very odd sense of the term,
considering their reliance on the state sector, that is,
taxpayer subsidy and risk-taking.

>It is accepted wisdom that a second term President is not responsive to public pressure, making any achievements by activism especially difficult. Most discourse on Presidential decision-making (e.g. Profiles in Courage) is useless cheerleading can you recommend serious work on this topic? Do you think the accepted wisdom is true? Do you expect this administration to disregard public pressure, even more in this second term than in their first?

Accepted wisdom is often wrong, in this case too. Elections are portrayed to us as personalized gladiatorial contests. That's part of the massive efforts to excluded the population from the political arena. They are not. They are basically conflicts between various power sectors, and those persist. Both will run again. Both have to be responsive to public pressure. My advice is not to waste time on "Profiles in Courage." If you are interested in serious work on how politics works in the US, I'd suggest rather Thomas Ferguson's "Golden Rule," as a good start.

>How do you judge the prospects for unified international opposition to US policies? Alternatively, over what time frame might India, China and/or a unified Europe be in a position to challenge US hegemony? Is it moral to support power structures, themselves exploitative, that might return us to a state in which other nations might pursue neutrality in relative safety? Given the accompanying risk of world war, is it even desirable for other states to be a in a position to challenge the US militarily?

Right now at the heart of the US establishment hopes are being expressed that China will lead a coalition of peaceful states to counter US militarism and aggressiveness. Those proposals, which are utterly without precedent, reflect a feeling that the American political system barely exists. And such coalitions are indeed forming. Not only have Russia and China both sharply increased offensive military capacity in response to Bush programs -- a serious threat to survival -- but they are also engaged in complex interactions with others. The China-EU relationship is very strong and growing fast. No one wants to challenge the US militarily. That would be asking for annihilation of the species, virtually. But the military dimension is only one of many.

>A few weeks ago I heard your colleague Prof. Nancy Hopkins give the Holtzman memorial lecture, talking about sexism in the academy. As a story of personal growth and empowerment I found it rather inspiring. Are you familiar with the oversight committees that she has set up at MIT? As she told the story, the higher-ups in the administration were cooperative or supportive. Do you think that institutional reforms of this kind (assuming that you agree it's been successful at MIT) will succeed in the face of institutional indifference or opposition? Do you think that the vitriol directed against President Summers has been justified? Did you know Stephen Jay Gould?

Hopkins is very reliable, and knows a lot more about it than I do. To my much more limited personal knowledge, what she says is correct. The administration at MIT has been very supportive of these efforts, and has taken a lot of initiative on them. I knew Steve Gould very well. I have no doubt that he was and would have continued to be a strong advocate of overcoming these barriers at Harvard. Naturally, it's harder in the face of institutional indifference or opposition, but students and faculty can overcome that. The universities are very different in these respects from what they were 40 years ago. That's overwhelmingly the effect of mostly student pressures, from the 60s, part of the general civilizing effect of the activism of those and subsequent years.

>Our University president, Lee Bollinger, gave a talk on academic freedom a few days before that (at the New York bar association). You've commented some on the attacks by the far right on members of Middle Eastern studies departments - unfortunately, President Bollinger's talk was a study in spinelessness, although he gave a nice preamble. He asserted that outside pressures on academia (e.g. WWI era loyalty oaths, McCarthyism) were bad, but that it was okay for the community of scholars to police itself (or words to that effect), which ought to cover his anatomy regardless of what action, if any, he decides to take. What actions, if any, do you think the University ought to take? I recall you've commented that academics outside of regional studies departments are generally highly indoctrinated (my recollection may be mangled); could you expand on that point?

I didn't hear his talk, so can't comment. I can't comment here on the indoctrination of academics. Have written reams about it, and can only refer you to that. There is a margin of exceptions (and some fields, like Latin American studies, are quite different), but scholarship (meaning, academic departments) is not very different from media and intellectual commentary in obedience to doctrinal constraints -- not very surprisingly. Again, there is plenty of documentation. Judge for yourself.

What should universities do? They should try to resist very strong outside pressures from the basic institutional structure of the society -- the corporate-state nexus of domination -- and try to stay honest in scholarship, teaching, and other activities. That's never easy. If anyone were serious about universities "policing themselves," including Columbia, they'd be proposing measures to deal with the overwhelming conformism of the academic profession -- which appears to be well to the right of the majority of the population on a great many crucial issues of social, economic, and political policy. Of course, no one talks about that. Columbia happens to be under attack by dedicated totalitarians who are not satisfied with overwhelming dominance and insist on something like 100% conformism. That would not be hard to show. E.g., take the claims that Columbia faculty are anti-Israel (if not anti-Semitic). Easy to check. Take a poll asking whether they believe that Israel should have all the rights of any state in the international system. My guess is that the result will be about 100% Yes, which is why the poll is not undertaken by the totalitarians conducting the attack. A second poll might ask whether Israel should have even more rights than any other state -- like recognition of its "right to exist," something that no state has, or its right to carry out actions that the World Court has recently unanimously -- including the American Justice -- condemned as illegal. It would not reach 100%, but would probably be very high. Easy to continue.

  >In light of my defense of the MEALAC faculty, I worry that my position on President Summers (that he should be dismissed immediately) is hypocritical. If we, in the spirit of Voltaire, defend the right of free speech of everyone, including especially the right of academics to unfettered expression of ideas we find distasteful, and if we demand similar consideration from our ideological adversaries, can we then call for the dismissal of the President of Harvard?

Summers is an employee of the trustees of Harvard. If he were to come out with support for the Nazis, denial of the Holocaust, condemnation of US-Israeli policies in the Israeli occupied territories, condemnation of the appointment of a condemned international terrorist to the chief counterterrorism position in the world -- and on, and on -- he'd probably be fired tomorrow, and there'd be no protest, except for those few of us who believe in the spirit of Voltaire -- so few that they can probably fit into a phone booth.

Personally, I wouldn't call for him to be dismissed for his ridiculous comments -- the full range of them is quite remarkable. And I don't think that's what has been at issue. His comical performance at that faculty meeting were something of a last straw, I understand, after a record of abrasiveness and contempt for the faculty that had aroused plenty of resentment. That's within the scope of his role as Trustee-appointed college president.

>I would say that as Summers is not (exclusively) an academic but also an administrator the head of a powerful institution - he does not enjoy the same protection regarding his position. On the other hand, he clearly meant his comments to be taken in an academic context; while Harvard has a worrying history of sexism (and every other sort of discrimination) I could not reasonably say that Summers promotes the intellectual inferiority of women as a matter of policy. There are significant parallels with that French holocaust denier (I can't remember his name). Are you familiar with the case of Professor Thomas Klocek at DePaul University in Chicago? I cant find reliable information on the case, but its claimed that he was fired for something he said to some Arab students outside of class.

I don't know enough about Summers to comment on his attitudes and actions in this regard. There are not even slight parallels with Robert Faurisson (who I presume you are referring to). He was suspended from the University on grounds that he could not be defended against violence after he had privately published some obscure monographs denying the existence of gas chambers, then brought to court, later sentenced, for Falsification of History, in a judgment that granted the Holy State the right to determine Historical Truth and punish deviation from it, a judgment that Stalin and Hitler would greatly have admired. There has been huge falsification about this, and though he is a very famous figure in the US, I suspect that virtually no one has read a word he has written, or would even know where to find it -- not that it would matter to the defenders of freedom of speech in that telephone booth. Again, there isn't even a remote parallel to Summers.

Never heard of Klocek. However, racist anti-Arab diatribes are very common in high places -- distinguished Harvard faculty, for example. Merely to illustrate, I'll report a personal experience. After Summers launched a ludicrous and utterly dishonest campaign about anti-Semitism at Harvard, I was asked by the Anthropology Department to talk at a racism seminar on the topic. I said I thought it was too ridiculous to discuss and wouldn't do it, but finally agreed. I began by recalling that there had been plenty of anti-Semitism at Harvard into the early 1950s, giving illustrations (which are well known), but that there had been a significant change through the decade, and by the 1960s it had effectively disappeared and Jews were, in fact, highly privileged. I then ended by saying that one no longer reads distinguished Harvard professors writing such things as ..... -- giving actual quotes from distinguished Harvard professors, but replacing "Arab" or "Palestinian" by "Jew." There were gasps in the audience. I then added that I had misled them, and read the actual racist writings about Arabs and Palestinians. There was an audible sigh of relief, and then the Q&A went on with the usual hysteria about how everyone hates Jews and Israel, etc.

Tells one a lot about racism at Harvard. But though the faculty members in question would have been severely censured, maybe removed, if the comments had been about Jews, there is no such thought in this case -- rightly of course.

These, however, are the real issues. Not just about the rampant anti-Arab racism.

>Why is it, do you think, that regional studies specialists are less heavily indoctrinated than seemingly closely related disciplines (history, sociology and political science)? In my own experience I've found that archaeologists and cultural anthropologists are not heavily indoctrinated either, but this may reflect a select group whom I have known well and not the fields more generally, in which I am not broadly read.

These are, of course, broad and subjective generalizations. But I think there is some truth to them, and sometimes there is substantial, if indirect, evidence. Take Latin American studies. There's a professional association (LASA) and many outstanding specialists. In the 1980s, Central America, particularly Nicaragua, was the Big Story. After all, we even had a National Emergency called by the brave cowboy Leader hiding in the White House in panic because the Nicaraguan army was only two days driving time from Harlingen Texas. Typically, when the Leader declares priorities, it reflexively becomes the Big Story for the media. That reflects the internalized understanding that the task of "objective media" is to serve power interests, not popular interests. A very dramatic example today is Social Security vs Health care. The Dear Leader has declared that destroying (called "reforming") Social Security is the priority, so the media declare it the "hot topic," and focus on it, reflexively. They read the polls that show that health care is by far the most serious popular financial concern, with an "astounding" 6% (the word is that of the quite conservative Gallup analysts) saying they are satisfied with it. But that doesn't matter -- though it takes scarcely a moment to understand Bush administration priorities, adopted reflexively by the media (which, to be sure, allow some criticism, but that is hardly the point).

Same in the 80s. Central America, particularly Nicaragua, was the "hot topic." There was a spectrum of opinion allowed. In the national press (where the studies are in print, if you want to check), the spectrum for Nicaragua ranged from hawks (step up the war and destroy the devils who don't follow orders) to doves (violence isn't working well, so we have to turn to other means to restore "regional standards" and return Nicaragua to the "Central American mode" -- that is, the standards and the mode of the US-run terror states that were carrying out vast slaughters, torture, and every imaginable form of barbarism). Usually, when some region becomes the "hot topic," the media can turn to the universities for "experts" who will say what is required. In this case, it didn't work. The scholarly profession knew too much about the topics, and commonly had concern for the people they worked with and studied. So they were mostly frozen out, and the media and journals of opinion had to create a new cadre of "experts" who would say the right thing -- sometimes in rather comical ways. The leading Nicaragua scholar, Thomas Walker, sent op-eds regularly to the NYT. None appeared. That continues, when he distributed an op-ed on the recent ludicrous claims about the "democratic elections" in El Salvador. Frozen out. To take one interesting example, the official pronouncement from Washington was that there was no election in Nicaragua in 1984, by doctrinal fiat. The press reflexively went along. It therefore had to freeze out the report of a LASA delegation consisting mostly of specialists with direct experience in Nicaragua, who did a detailed on-the-spot investigation of the background and the election, and agreed with international observers (including the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, a very hostile Dutch government delegation, etc.) that the election was quite fair by general Latin American standards, and the most carefully observed in history. All had to be suppressed, because there couldn't have been an election -- obviously, or the US terrorist war and rejection of diplomacy would not be "legitimate." All of this remains totally suppressed, as we have just witnessed during the appointment of a condemned international terrorist, John Negroponte, to be the first counter-terrorism Czar, eliciting no ridicule, even attention. This is only one of many examples of the phenomenon, in the case of Latin American studies.

In Middle East studies, there has been a complicated mixture, but it is somewhat the same. That's why the profession is under such severe attack by dedicated totalitarians who are not satisfied with near-total control and insist that it rise to 100% (in the name of "academic freedom," the typical totalitarian gambit, satirized by a long line of commentators from Pascal to Orwell). The claim is that the profession is biased against Israel. That's very easy to test: run a poll asking whether faculty in the field believe that Israel should have all the rights of any state in the international system. I suspect it would approximate 100% Yes, which is why the studies aren't undertaken: they would give the game away. For the totalitarian state-worshipping mentality, "anti-Israel bias" means unwillingness to adopt the US-Israeli claim that Israel should have vastly greater rights than any state in the international system, including an abstract "right to exist" -- a notion apparently concocted in the 1970s to bar diplomacy, when the US and Israel were alone in blocking international efforts to reach a diplomatic two-state settlement in which Israel would be granted "only" the rights of every other state.

There are other cases, but by no means all. Depends on the particular history of the profession, its relation to power systems, state and private, and many other factors.

Take archaeologists, who you mention. Biblical archaeology began as an effort to demonstrate the historical validity of the Biblical record. After a very long period, these efforts began to crumble, in substantial measure the result of work of Israeli archaeologists. That has led to plenty of turmoil in, and around, the field, with slanderous denunciations of scholars as anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, etc.

I think one can detect tendencies, which are not too hard to explain: insofar as regional studies involve engagement with the populations, it's quite likely that they'll depart from doctrinal orthodoxies imposed by power systems. But these are tendencies. There's a lot of variety.

>Coming at the question from another angle, you've commented on the lack of indoctrination in the natural sciences; the reasons you've given are non-controversial, as far as I'm aware. Why then, let me know if I mischaracterize your position, do you see a comparable spirit of genuine inquiry in regional studies? Is this a recent development (since the 1960s)? It is not my impression that a turn of the century English Egyptologist would be expected to champion the right to self-determination of the Egyptian people, but I could certainly be mistaken.

The reasons are different. The sciences will die unless they encourage independent inquiry, challenge to established beliefs and authority (in particular, by young people), and concern for truth. Those factors exist, but with less force, as we move from the hard sciences to disciplines where understanding is more shallow and human affairs are more directly involved, so outside pressures of institutional power structures play a greater role. The Pentagon was quite content to sponsor researchers who were organizing resistance against the Vietnam war and facing possible long prison sentences, because they understand, as the saner (and often most reactionary) parts of Congress do, that a free enterprise economy has to be avoided as strictly as democracy, and that costs and risks of R&D have to be socialized with eventual profits (maybe after decades in the dynamic state sector) transferred to private tyrannies. That's one illustration of how external pressures are often much less in the sciences -- but that's a more complex story too, as we see clearly as the mix of R&D shifts from science towards engineering: direct military R&D is the clearest illustration.

As for English Egyptologists, as far as I am aware they were mostly apologists for empire a century ago, just as even the most outstanding figures -- like John Stuart Mill -- often were. An interesting history is American anthropology, which did not really begin to recognize the enormity of the crimes committed against the indigenous population, or even elementary truths about them, until quite recently: probably a result of 60s activism, as you suggest. Worth a careful study (probably there are some).

>Do you think this is a potentially fruitful line of thinking, pardon the awkward phrasing, towards improvement of the quality of discourse in the academy more generally?

Very much so.

>On a largely unrelated note, what do you think of Harvard and Columbia's respective expansion efforts? There was a NY times article on Columbia's backdoor efforts to use eminent domain (paying to have buildings condemned) and an article in the Boston Globe on the tactics Harvard had been using to buy up land (in Allston, was it?)

The few examples I've had personal experience with are pretty rotten. I have little doubt that the general story is an ugly one. There are, to be sure, conflicting demands, but the way they've been resolved is rarely attractive. How many cases do you know where university expansion has been combined with affordable housing and livable communities for those displaced?

>We're likely to see legislation proposed here in New York City that will make the property-tax-free status of the Universities (this includes their rental properties, such as the building in which I live, a fact which is not widely publicized) conditional on their adherence to good labor practices - of which the recognition of graduate student unions would be of most interest to me at present. Given that Universities should act less like businesses and more in the public interest, do you think this is a reasonable avenue to compel them to do so? In other contexts, legislative pressure on the academy (chiefly regarding the teaching of evolution) has been very troubling.

Legislative intrusion on universities is a very hazardous course, for just the reasons you indicate. Academic freedom is always fragile, under attack from without and within, and it's critically important to protect it, at least for anyone concerned with a decent society. Universities should certainly abide by good labor practices, but so should business generally. By law, in fact, though it's mostly on paper, particularly since Reagan effectively informed the business world, greatly to their public joy, that the laws would not be enforced.

  >Any comments on the Blair debt relief plan? I see it asserted that the debt relief is grossly insufficient and also that it is conditioned on continuing neoliberal programs. Both of these accusations are entirely plausible but are they in fact true?

They clearly seem to be true. There is an explicit call for IMF-style conditionalities: privatization, etc. On the "insufficiency," it's worth bearing in mind that the debt is more an ideological construction than an economic fact. On conservative capitalist principles, much of it -- maybe almost all -- would not exist.

>The other claim is that it is an effort to distract the public from Iraq, which I find a little implausible. In any event, even if the plan is some sort of ploy, is it offered in response to public pressure? As far as I'm aware, no one in the States, outside of activist and business circles, knows about what is happening in Africa - is it more of a public issue in Britain? Does the issue have more public traction here in the States than I had thought?

It's more of a public issue in Britain, for a lot of reasons. One is the colonial past in Africa: huge for England, restricted to Liberia for the US. In fact, when George Kennan was assigning each part of the world its "function" in 1948, he recommended that Africa should be handed over to the Europeans to "exploit" for their reconstruction -- apparently regarded as natural, in the light of several centuries of hideous history; at least, I've never seen a comment on it in the scholarly literature.

>It seems to me unlikely that the US will successfully interfere with events in Bolivia - good news for the situation there? Have you heard anything to the contrary? Thoughts on their interim president or other recent developments (since you last fielded a question on Bolivia)? Comments on the press coverage?

The US may try to interfere, but I agree with you that it's unlikely to be successful My own guess at the time of the invasion of Iraq was that it would be a walkover, and the US would then turn to military intervention and subversion in the Andes. I didn't count on the extraordinary incompetence of Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-etc in Iraq. The catastrophe they've created in what should have been one of the easiest military occupations in history has significantly clipped their wings, I think.

On the internal situation, I don't know enough to comment sensibly. Maybe others can insert their two cents.

Press coverage? Haven't really investigated. Might be worth doing.

Four jobs you've had in your life: Grocery Clerk, Teaching Assistant, Tutor, Research Assistant (that was a hard one).

Four movies you could watch over and over: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Raiders of the Lost Ark... gee, this is a tough one.

Four places you've lived: Brookline, MA; Davis, CA; Berkeley, CA; Manhattan.

Four TV shows you love to watch: Arrested Development, Law and Order, The Boondocks, The Daily Show

Four places you've been on vacation: The Bay of Fundy, The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Mesa Verde.

Four websites you visit daily: www.penny-arcade.com , news.google.com , www.slashdot.org , www.wikipedia.org .

Four of your favorite foods: Saag Gosht (Lamb), Butternut Squash, Trout Provencal, Scallops.

Four places you'd rather be: San Francisco, San Francisco, San Francisco, San Francisco. Actually I picked New York City, San Francisco would be cool, I'm also considering Hong Kong, Singapore, maybe somewhere in Brazil.

Four albums you can't live without: Mass Romantic (New Pornographers), UP (Peter Gabriel), Demon Days (Gorillaz), Throwing Copper (Live).
  I hardly listen to any albums, so I had to find which albums had the songs I really like.

My Mom is a member of the american chemical society - and this is the e-mail she just got. The link is dead now, though. This was rejected as a story.

Dear ACS Colleague,

I have recently posted a letter to ACS members regarding recent communications with NIH on the issues surrounding PubChem.

( http://acswebcontent.acs.org/PDF/PubChem_open_letter3.pdf)

ACS has been engaged in dialogue with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) regarding their new small molecule database called PubChem. ACS is seeking to clarify the scope of PubChem and to understand its impact upon very similar ACS database services and the long-term quality and accessibility of scientific information. For nearly a year ACS has been working with NIH leaders and other relevant policymakers to encourage NIH to avoid unnecessary duplication and competition with private databases. Recent discussions lead us to be optimistic about an interim resolution of this issue this year.

Because this issue is important to both our organization and our science, it has been covered in C&EN and in letters I've posted to the ACS Web site ( http://www.chemistry.org). This email is an additional way to keep members better informed of developments. We look forward to any input you may have on this matter, and you can contact me at president@acs.org. As discussions progress update letters will be available at www.chemistry.org.

Best regards,

Bill Carroll

ACS President, 2005

I've been in a choir for some years myself - and I'm not very good, really, but I know enough to know that these people are. I have a nasty cold right now, and I blame these people for making me laugh to hard I'm in physical pain.

This is funny

Pfah. What a load of bullshit.

  Certainly what he says, on factual questions, is perfectly true - you could use this information to make a lethal virus and, given sufficient resources, release it. He might underestimate the technical difficulties somewhat but that's aside from the point, and genomes to other lethal viruses are already available - virii is utterly incorrect Latin, but by-virtue-of-usage it is correct English, so use it if you wish.

  Firstly, there is the question of principle, and it is important: we are scientists, we do not keep secrets. That is the basis for the demand of Science magazine, and it is a sound basis.

  Secondly, the single most likely source for any genetically engineered nasty is presently uncle Sam, now that biopreparat is ... how do you say Kaput in Russian?

  Therefore, in order to ensure that the international community has all of the relevant information to protect themselves from a rogue state (the US) they need the full sequence data. It may not be obvious to this journalist (who is a nitwit popular science author) what useful things you might be able to do with the additional Data - it isn't obvious to me and I'm getting a PhD in this. But we won't know what people have a use for until we make it available.

  Thirdly, security through obscurity is simply a stupid policy decision, as in software so also in biotech. If you know every detail you are potentially prepared for every eventuality - otherwise only the nasty people who figure stuff out with an intention of killing people have all the facts.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

  How can you have better conservative credentials than that?

So, on the advice of one of y'all - I forget who, but I expect an apology - I friend SolemnDragon and start reading her stuff. Not at all bad.

  One sample of my contextual humor - not my best stuff, but I will make an affirmative claim here - it is funny - and she foes me (meaning I can't post stuff in her journals.) Don't give me any of the subjectivity bullshit, I don't want to hear it. This is hardly the first time something similar has happened - I've stopped posting jokes under actual slashdot stories a) because the mods arrive randomly, distributed by people who may have read a description of what a sense of humor is but have no first hand experience of it (mangled Pratchett quote) and b) because the war against elevated discourse has been won so completely that I and my fellow partisans are left baffled and confused, purposeless now that our struggle has been won - when the drinking fountain is an open sewer, there is hardly any thrill in defecating in it.

  There's no fun whatsoever in reading slashdot journals if you can't post in them.

  Some people have no sense of humor. Maybe she secretly hates Cheech Marin. Many creative types are just hypersensitive - I say we pump her full of psychotherepeutics until that creativity is nice and dead so I can post dirty limmiricks in her journal without fear of reprisal. She'll probably be able to get a job writing for a sitcom or something, to boot. Everybody wins.

I've known this dude since I was, what, 2 months old? Our parents were in the same radical commune back in the 60s/70s. He's smarter even than I, but he has no good sense. When he flubbed the paperwork on his med-school applications (delaying him a year - he got the 97th% on his MCATS so he can go wherever he wants) he decided he'd take advantage of the time off to go volunteer to help Katrina victims.

  Now, of course, he is enjoying the second hurricane from the lovely vantage point of Gulfport, MS.

  Here's his livejournal if anyone wants to know what it is like on the ground: http://www.livejournal.com/users/franksmail/

It is true, I am essentially quoting Noam Chomsky, that we, priveleged Westerners, have great power to end our governments participation in crimes in Africa, and ought to do so.

  We have, furthermore, great power to help remediate present circumstances - epidemic disease, famine - and an obligation to do so, given the past complicity of our civlization.

  However, the people of Africa are not themselves powerless or hopeless, although the risks are of course far greater. The failures and setbacks have been numerous (for example, Patrice Lamumba) but to paint a picture of Africa in which agents for progress, peace and autonomy are completely absent is not accurate, either.

  And this is essentially the picture of Africa painted by both Lord of War and the Constant Gardener.

  Brief reviews - Lord of War is more fun (if you like black comedy), but the Constant Gardener is better.

  Lord of War is a skillful comedy with social implications. The comedy comes first and the social implications are second. Nonetheless, the social implications are real, and fairly well represented. Lord of War has a complete lack of sympathetic African characters, apart from the postcardesque victims. The violence does not seem real - it is movie violence, not real violence, so even though there is a lot of it, it's like a John Woo movie. Surrealist. To be fair, the nonviolent parts of the movie are surreal also.

  The Constant Gardener is propoganda. The underlying points of the propoganda are entirely true and correct, but it remains propoganda. It is also packaged with extreme empathy and cinematic skill, so it is not preechy, but it is clear that the plot is constructed around the social commentary, not the reverse. The cloak and dagger escapades, which are the least realistic aspect of the film, are still well done and enjoyable if you like spy movies. The violence in the Constant Gardener is very real, even though there is considerably less of it. There are several sympathetic African characters, and the victims seem much more like real people.

  Lord of War is to the Constant Gardener as Pulp Fiction is to Fargo. Lord of War is a bit of a downer, but not really intense enough to bother a modern, jaded teenager. The Constant Gardener is relatively tame (no drug abuse, sex is more wholesome and there is less sex, less violence) in a sense, but the nature of the craftsmanship translates to far more human impact.

I believe that I may have put it together, but PLEASE disagree with me and show me why I am wrong.

  make money for their subcontractors with FEMA
  When I heard the new FEMA director say (pardon this is not an exact quote) that they had delivered so many millions of meals in NO, it clicked.
  Those meals where delivered by a private contractor, established by Bush's first term (pre homeland security rearrangement) FEMA director.
  IF the bush administration had allowed the red cross, national guard emergency relief units, and private relief agencies to deliver water and meals to the people of NO, that private contractor would not have made any money.
  This explains why the trucks full of water from Wal-Mart, the red cross relief efforts, etc. were turned away.
  They wanted their private contractors to do it but the private contractor didn't really have the capability to deliver in a timely fashion.

  place the national guard under federal control
  The Bush administration deliberately allowed the situation to worsen so that they could place the national guard under federal control.
  This is why the bush administration blocked the mobilization orders from neighboring governors and then, complaining that the national guard wasn't mobilized, tried to seize federal control of the entire guard.

  an ongoing pattern of arrogance and stupidity
  This is a continuation of the sort of policies that destroyed Iraq. They couldn't help but profiteer from the situation, and when they were messing up they arrogantly underestimated the extent of the disaster that would result (when they said no-one could have expected the levees to burst, what they meant was that THEY didn't expect the levees to burst). Then, they try to shift the blame onto others.

  I don't think it's going to work this time.