Week of February 12, 2001
[Note: Some now-dead links have been removed from archived items.]

ENVIRONMENTAL HATE, CONT'D: Environmental hate groups continue to get a dribble of media attention, with a recent article in USA Today. Meanwhile, Arizona prosecutors are trying to subpoena records from New Times, the alternative weekly that ran an interview with a self-described arsonist. The newspaper has been denounced for running the story, on the assumption that putting this arrogant criminal on the record is tantamount to condoning his crimes.

To the contrary, the real problem is a common journalistic attitude that downplays the story. Too many journalists regard environmental hate groups either as completely detached from normal environmentalist agendas or as brave dissenters who aren't that bad. For the latter attitude, consider this statement from James W. Carey of the Columbia Journalism School (a.k.a. Al Gore's new employer), recounted New Times columnist Jeremy Voas: "'The fact that it takes arson to get the attention of the elites of the community--the city fathers and the developers--so ideas can be expressed says something desperate about the state of local politics,' Carey says. '. . . the channels of information and discussion and debate are so closed off now.'" The end--driving out new homeowners (in the old days, hate groups burned crosses on the front lawn, not the whole house)--justifies the means. In defense of publishing the interview, Voas writes that "Often, the worst characters have the best information." He's right about that--as the interview with Carey proves. [Posted 2/16.]

PAGLIA INTERVIEW: I know from emails that many Scene readers are big fans of Camille Paglia and wish she'd write more often. To relieve the drought between Salon columns, read the long version of Newsweek's interview, posted here. There's also a substantial, if bad-link-ridden, Paglia archive at this German site, which can't decide whether to mock her or worship her. [Posted 2/16.]

NEXT RENAISSANCE: Thanks to Jeff Taylor of Reason Express for finding a news item that just about moves me to tears. (OK, I'm a little weird.) Technology developed at Brigham Young University has made it possible to read a huge archive of Greek and Latin texts buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. According to a report in the British Independent newspaper, the archive includes the lost works of Aristotle. The lost works of Aristotle! Imagine. That alone would be a miracle. But wait, there's more--"scientific works by Archimedes, mathematical treatises by Euclid, philosophical work by Epicurus, masterpieces by the Greek poets Simonides and Alcaeus, erotic poems by Philodemus, lesbian erotic poetry by Sappho, the lost sections of Virgil's Juvenilia, comedies by Terence, tragedies by Seneca and works by the Roman poets Ennius, Accius, Catullus, Gallus, Macer and Varus." It's the Renaissance all over again.

We can thank Mormon devotion for this amazing application of "multispectral imaging," which uses different parts of the spectrum to take digital images of materials that have been obscured by fire damage (as in the case of the Greek scrolls) or later application of paint (as in Maya ruins). For an interesting discussion of the technology and its religious context, see the address by Daniel C. Peterson, director of BYU's Center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts. And don't worry that CPART might lock up the Greek manuscripts the way the Dead Sea Scrolls were locked up for decades. This center is responsible for making the Dead Sea Scrolls available to scholars in a searchable electronic database. [Posted 2/16.]

CLOSING TIME: After Wednesday's congressional hearings on the networks' election night coverage, I heard many a TV pundit suggest that the no-brainer reform is to close polls simultaneously across the country. We will know this is a serious idea when its advocates realize that Hawaii is part of the United States and synchronize poll times in a way that accepts the real geography of the country--on, say, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mountain Time. If that means the polls run 10-9 Eastern so be it. The country does not end at the Hudson. [Posted 2/16.]

HEALING PLASTIC: "Biomorphic plastic" takes on a meaning beyond Karim Rashid's curvy trash cans. By emulating bodily healing, polymer researchers have figured out how to get plastics to repair themselves. As The Washington Post's Guy Gugliotta reports, "any polymer repair method had to marry two elements humans take for granted: Healing had to occur automatically, and it had to be site-specific--'if you cut your finger, only your finger is going to be healed.'" Potential applications range from prostheses to circuit boards. This is cool. [Posted 2/16.]

HAPPY PEOPLE: Good news from Gallup: In a poll taken about a month ago, "83% of Americans reported themselves to be in a good mood at the time they spoke to Gallup interviewers, while 9% described their mood as "neither good nor bad," and just 7% said they were in a bad mood at the time." The happiest group, with 88 percent "good mood" replies, were "DINKs"--dual-income couples with no kids. So much for the neocon gospel that "happiness eludes the modern woman" if she doesn't have children. More good news: USA Today reports that workers are still optimistic about their job prospects, despite the slowing economy. Among the reasons: better networking, less stigma to being laid off, constant upgrading of skills, and a "free agent mindset." In other words, American workers have become resilient. [Posted 2/16.]

DEATH OF DEATH TAX CUTS? I've thought for some time that Bush might need to drop the abolition of the estate tax to keep his across-the-board rate cuts. Abolishing the death tax is popular, for reasons Whoopi Goldberg explains well (see "Death and Taxes" here), but the dollar value is large and the number of people affected low. Now the L.A. Times says that might happen. If we could get fast, big cuts in income tax rates across the board, and possibly a cut in payroll taxes to appease the left, I'd personally be willing to stick with the status quo on estate taxes, as unfair as it is.

Still, it's disgusting to see greedy charities and enormously wealthy people who've sheltered their billions from the death-tax collectors emerging as the main opposition to Bush's cuts. Warren Buffett opposes inheritances, sure, but he plans to give away his money to various population-control groups, not leave it to the U.S. Treasury. I doubt that many of his fellow ad-signers are planning for their fortunes to go to general revenue either. The current tax system doesn't require them to sacrifice their personal preferences for the general good. Certainly Bill Gates Sr. (actually Jr.; his son is III) has no reason to worry about leaving his money to his kids, and George Soros's favorite causes aren't kids but his various charities.

For insight on cutting estate taxes, there's no better source than the son of two blue-collar textile workers (one of whom eventually went into business as a mechanic)--my friend Charles Oliver of Investor's Business Daily, who notes the coincidence of the anti-tax cut petition with news from the latest trial involving alleged gold-digger Anna Nicole Smith and her 60-something stepsons. "Warren Buffett said it was wrong to end the estate tax," Charles writes me. "It would be like picking the winners of the 2020 Olympics by choosing the sons of the winners of the 2000 Olympics. Yet as [Smith's deceased husband] J. Howard Marshall showed, rich people can leave their money to someone other than their children. And does anyone really think that Anna Nicole's grandchildren will be worth $450 million? She's going to burn through that money pretty damn quickly. And I'll bet that she won't be giving much of it to charity, no matter what happens to the estate tax." In other words, human quirks make wealth distribution a lot less static than the pro-tax petitioners suggest. [Posted 2/15.]

THE BIG NEWS: It's hard to exaggerate the importance of the news that the human genome has been sequenced--a couple of years ahead of the original schedule, thanks to the spur of competition. For those who want to read the primary documents, Science and Nature, which generally restrict most of their content to subscribers only, rightly have made the full text of all the relevant articles available online. I have little to add to Ron Bailey's take on this advance, which concludes, "It truly is a new era when people can seriously worry about what drug companies will do after they've cured cancer." I was, however, struck by all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the discovery that people don't have that many more genes than worms. To me, that makes both genetic combinatorics and human character--and variety--all the more amazing. (Be sure to read the Times account of grad student James Kent's herculean programming effort, which made the public-sector consortium's results possible.) [Posted 2/15.]

CREATIVE MOBILITY: The Calder Foundation has announced that Philadelphia will be the new site of a museum devoted to Alexander Calder's works. I'm a fan of Calder's work, but beyond that I find it amazing that he was able to invent an entirely new form of art, without new technology, at this late date in human history. Can you imagine the world without mobiles? Before Calder, they did not exist. [Posted 2/15.]

I'M BACK: After spending a long day enjoying our nation's socialist airport system, I'm back from Washington. Thanks for your patience and double thanks to those who made payments via Amazon despite the absence of new material here.

I hadn't been in DC since January 2000, my longest absence from the capital in a decade. Absence makes you notice little things:

1) Most DC cab drivers listen to talk radio--C-Span, NPR, black-oriented shows--rather than music, which is unusual.

2) Washington reporters and think tank denizens spend a huge amount of their time gossiping about other reporters and think tank denizens and almost none discussing ideas or policy. The likelihood that someone will gossip--or more precisely, will gossip with me--decreases with the power or prestige of the person speaking. (There are a few brilliant but less-well-known exceptions to this second rule.)

3) Judging from the people in the streets, Washington professional women are incredibly dowdy and in no position to be dissing Hillary. Visiting Washington from Dallas, land of the perfectly coiffed and accessorized, and staying in a hotel occupied by hip-hop fashion plates (apparently attending the NBA all-star game) made this eternal verity all the more obvious. Washington women appear to live in terror that someone will notice their bodies. Washington men, by contrast, seem to live in terror that someone will notice them at all. Hence the blue-suit uniform. I got asked a lot of questions about my red nail polish. (Do not take any of this as a claim to live up to Dallas Woman standards. I am just a nerd with fingernail polish and a couple of Armani jackets.)

The excuse for my visit was the American Enterprise Institute's annual dinner, a.k.a. "the prom," at which Clarence Thomas spoke on the importance of courage in public life. One interesting aspect of his speech was that by praising the virtue of speaking one's mind he avoided the question of the content of one's views--a good idea in a crowd of uneasy allies who disagree fundamentally on many important issues. The left does not have a monopoly on ostracizing, calumnizing, or distorting the views of those who depart from orthodoxy.

Unlike Thomas, whose experience certainly justifies his conclusions, I don't think the primary deterrent to active participation in public life these days is fear of being treated badly. To be denounced you first have to get people to pay attention to you, which is increasingly difficult. It's hard to believe that any public intellectual, or even any officeholder, can make a significant difference in a world where competition for attention is so intense. As one of those rare brilliant and ungossipy Washington writer friends said to me, "I used to do this because I wanted to change the world. Now I do it because it's an interesting way to make a living." (Or words to that effect.) But we agree that the world in which it's virtually impossible to be heard is a much better world than the world we grew up in--freer, more diverse, and less politically dangerous. [Posted 2/15.]

Buy Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies in hardback or paperback.