In Tokyo, you stay inside, too, but you have to wait for instructions. When the leader for your neighborhood comes around and announces that everyone has to leave, you must go along. There are two big problems in Japan that I don't think California has: for one thing, traditional Japanese houses (1) are framed with nice, burnable wood, (2) are shoehorned in in nice, fire-sharing proximity to each other, and (3) are roofed with nice, heavy clunkers of porcelain tiles. Such houses can still be in danger even if they seem fine after the first big quake, and I don't know whether retrofitting them is really even possible.

Buildings from the '80's on follow new, earthquake-proof design codes; in Kobe, they pretty much all survived intact. But even they can be in danger if they're on unstable ground, which is the other big problem. Tokyo is a filigree of old river and creek beds that have been filled in to make buildable real estate, and those areas have a proclivity for melting away underneath buildings in an earthquake (especially if the quake puts them into contact with water). The sections of the Shinkansen, major highways, and big water and gas lines that failed in Kobe turned out to have been, almost to a one, built on or into such infill.

BTW, the NHK special reported that a consultant for the Ministry of the Interior (or Ministry of Territory and Transportation, or however they Anglicize its new name) predicts 7000 deaths in the next big one to hit metro Tokyo. But there has to be lots of give in that figure. Kobe was unprepared for a major earthquake and had 6000 deaths, but it was apparently very lucky: the quake came at 6 a.m., when people were still asleep. A few hours later, the train stations and highways would have been filled with commuters. Imagine an 8.0 earthquake in Tokyo at 8 a.m. on a workday. Or better yet, don't.

Timing matters a lot to earthquake fatalities, at least in developed countries with good construction. The recent Hokkaido quake hit early in the morning, as did the 1994 Northridge quake in L.A. The 1989 San Francisco quake would have been even more devastating if the SF teams hadn't been playing in the World Series, leading people to leave work early. As a result, fewer commuters than usual were on the Bay Bridge and freeway overpasses when they collapsed.

First, many have noted that the problem of political barriers is greater in the humanities and, they might add, the softer social sciences. The usual assumption is that this is because of less rigorous fields have greater room for non-scholarly considerations. That may be true, but supply and demand also play an important role.

When I was in college, my professors advised me against pursuing an academic career, despite my excellent record. They knew nothing of my politics. They knew only that there were no jobs for English Ph.D.s. That was 20 years ago, but the humanities job market hasn't improved much. When supply vastly swamps demand, you get lower wages (all those adjuncts) and, when wages are sticky, you also get non-pecuniary rationing. If a department has hundreds of applicants to choose from, its members will choose the candidate they feel most comfortable with. Humanities departments have those kinds of applicant/job ratios; economics departments and business schools, which face competition from both private sector employers and non-academic government jobs, do not.

Second, it's true that conservatives may be drawn to fields like diplomatic history that are out of fashion. But it's not much easier finding a job if you're a feminist literary critic or material-culture scholar with a libertarian, rather than leftist, view of contracts, consumption, and consent. (As far as I know, there are no conservatives doing such work.) A diplomatic historian can cover some courses no one else wants to teach and otherwise be ignored. But if you're engaging the same questions as your leftist colleagues, you're a lot more likely to make them profoundly uncomfortable.

Levin and his allies have lately aimed their barbs at never-named "utopian libertarians" who don't cotton to Kassian ideas of regulating science to maintain classical notions of "natural norms." They are attacking straw men; indeed, the only libertarian biotech proponent Levin quotes is Ron Bailey, and then only to admit that Ron's no utopian. They use "utopian" the way some people use "nihilist"--inaccurately, and as a way to link their opponents to the 20th century's totalitarian butchers.

If anything, the Kassites are the utopians, aiming at a perfected version of humanity. They are the ones who believe we know exactly what human beings should be. And they are so determined to maintain humanity in a teleologically defined steady state that they apparently cannot grasp that biotech proponents imagine incremental progress, driven by the individual (and familial) pursuit of well-being.

That process is both modest, since it does not aim at an ideal, and dizzying, since it does not ever arrive at a final destination. Love it or hate it, the one thing such open-ended, incremental progress is not is utopian. It imagines no end point, no idea of perfection. It depends entirely on diverse individual pursuits of happiness.

Why do such smart people make such a dumb mistake? In Levin's case, at least, his training appears to be the problem. His intellectual history is marred by the typical Straussian omission of the pragmatic, skeptical, incremental, profoundly anti-utopian liberalism running from the Scottish Enlightenment through today's Hayekian libertarians--the omission, in other words, of the very intellectual tradition with which he is actually arguing.

If you want to uphold the idea that the world has been going downhill since Machiavelli, and that modernity has added nothing important to the wisdom of the ancients, it helps to leave out the tradition that created Anglo-American freedom, prosperity, and longevity.

Actually, NHK had a fascinating special on a few weeks ago about that very subject. It was the kind of thing you write about: how neighborhood groups with day-to-day knowledge of their own little parts of Tokyo--hospital administrators and fire companies and schools and such--were learning from Kobe and Sendai how to make sure they were better prepared for the next big quake here than the government-approved planning left them. One neighborhood changed its evacuation route after a drill that was aided by a model of how fires would spread, and so on. Of course, almost none of our power lines are buried, so a skein of live wires is going to collapse on our heads the minute we go outdoors after a quake, anyway.

The first rule of earthquake survival, at least in California, is stay inside. The buildings are built to stay up, and falling debris--never mind power lines--will get you if you go outside.

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Contrary to what some readers have feared, there does not appear to be any problem shipping s to an APO address. But I'll see how my order goes.

Reader Mitch Berkson writes, "Amazon is having a buy-two-get-one-free sale today on s."

[M]erchants such as Mazouri already are cashing in. Television sets, refrigerators and boxes of satellite receivers are stacked 10 feet high on the sidewalks of Baghdad's shopping districts. Shoppers who have waited for years to be able to spend their hoarded dollars are out in force.

''When I started in late April, I was receiving one container of DiStar goods per month,'' Mazouri says. ''Now, I am getting five to six containers.'' Each container holds about 270 television sets or 3,800 satellite receiver units. He says he is grossing $20,000 a day. ''All the sales are done in cash.''

There was plenty of pent-up demand. Sanctions imposed by the United Nations after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 kept a lot of goods out of the country. Before that, an eight-year war with Iran drained the life from Iraq's economy. For nearly 20 years, there was little to buy. And during three decades of rule by Saddam's Baath Party, virtually all companies were state-owned or state-controlled. In 2001, Iraq's gross domestic product was $27.9 billion, compared with $47.6 billion in 1980.

Since the collapse of Saddam's regime, police Officer Gailan Wahoudi, 31, has bought a new television, a refrigerator and an air conditioner. ''It is a new freedom I never had before,'' he says.

TVs, refrigerators, and air conditioners--Anna Quindlen won't like this news.

And everyone followed the usual script. A black student got mad and complained to the university, which shut down the protest while hypocritically declaring its support for free speech. Press coverage followed. Here's the Dallas Morning News account. Eugene Volokh weighs in here.

D Magazine's Tim Rogers explained why everyone involved got what they wanted from the little stunt--and suggests a smarter response than squelching free speech.

I'll be on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" on Monday and, for Angelenos, KPCC's Airtalk on Tuesday. Logistics willing, I'll also be visiting Hugh Hewitt in his secret studio. Stay tuned for more information.

Arnold didn't offer much substance, and I certainly came away from what I saw with no confidence that he could clean up the state's fiscal mess. But the contrast between his generalities and the wonky unelectability of McClintock and Comejo suggests that perhaps substance is too scary for California voters. A smooth operator like Arnold may be just what the electorate ordered.

Why lie about his height? Because, I suspect, that's what actors do. It's too petty to make much difference vis a vis gubernatorial qualifications, but it does make him look silly and insecure.

Chief Wiggles
CPA-C2, Debriefer
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Is the cup half full or half empty in Iraq?

Just as opinions about the war and its aftermath vary widely, reporters in Baghdad disagree about what it's like in Iraq these days.

Although some paint a picture of recovery, with U.S. armed forces making progress in getting the country going again, others sketch a bleaker scene, in which bombings, ambushes and looting are the rule, not the exception.

Reporters agree on this much: Bad news -- not good -- sells.''It's the nature of the business,'' Time's Brian Bennett says. ''What gets in the headlines is the American soldier getting shot, not the American soldiers rebuilding a school or digging a well.''

Read the whole article.

The bottom line: There's good news and bad news, not a single coherent narrative, and different reporters perceive the story differently--not because they're necessarily biased for or against U.S. efforts but because they have different experiences and weight different information differently. All of which explains why I don't, from my perch in the United States, opine on the "real" situation in Iraq. Like the "real" situation in the United States, it's complicated and contains many contradictions. Reporters on the scene owe their audiences the messy details, even when they won't fit into a neat narrative predicting either certain victory or an inevitable quagmire.

Employee pay raises are projected at about 3.6%, according to a September survey of 1,276 companies by human resource consultants Hewitt Associates. Salary increases in 2003 averaged 3.4% and were the smallest in 27 years.

''We would describe the picture as pretty bleak,'' says Ken Abosch, business leader at Hewitt. ''Organizations are doing everything in their power to keep a firm grip on pay expenses.''

Similarly, in a poll of more than 1,700 companies, Mercer Human Resource Consulting found average pay hikes in 2004 would be about 3.5%. That marks the third consecutive year that annual pay increases have fallen below 4%.

"The smallest in 27 years." How stupid are these people? Have they never heard of inflation, or the recent lack of same. In an environment where inflation is essentially nonexistent, a 3.5 percent raise is great. But the consultants are somehow nostalgic for the good old days when you'd get a 9 percent raise just to keep up with inflation. (I got a huge real raise out of that one, since a 9 percent cost of living increase was written into a WSJ union contract that didn't count on the Volcker Fed.) I tend to think the CPI is somewhat overstated, because of unmeasured quality improvements, but even taking the figures at face value, any intelligent assessment of raises has to assume that they'll be smaller when inflation is running below 2 percent than when it's running at, say, 5 percent--or, if you go back a generation, much higher.

As one American diplomatic official based in the region put it, "on both sides, actually, the alliance had become a little bit of poison, and both sides were glad to see it end."

California brings gay couples closer to equality with straight ones. But why the state income tax exception? More evidence, to my mind, that civil unions are no alternative to marriage and actually perpetuate cultural balkanization and civic inequality.

Alternatively, the state income tax exception--gay couples won't be allowed to file joint returns--demonstrates political clout. In a high-income, high-tax state like California, the marriage tax is significant. And, as I've noted before, research on the subject suggests that legalizing gay marriage would raise federal income tax revenue--by hitting those couples with extra taxes.

There are actually a host of questions raised by California's status as a community property state. From the news reports, it doesn't sound like the "split everything equally" rule necessarily applies to domestic partners.

Tom Carson's long Atlantic review of The Substance of Style is now online. If you want to know what my book is aboutm (not just toilet brushes), or just have a fun read, take a look.

Loyalist Labour MPs and ministers who backed the war in Iraq face a backlash from Muslim voters, say community leaders.

Ihtisham Hibatullah, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, said Labour's defeat in Brent on Thursday was a "clear warning" to other Labour MPs to change policy on Iraq and on their support for President George Bush.

Muslim activists are targeting a number of prominent MPs who hold seats with large numbers of Muslim voters, particularly the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, in Blackburn and the east London MPs Oona King, Jim Fitzpatrick and Stephen Timms.

The report is also incomplete. It never explains why Muslims object to the Blair policy in Iraq--presumably they're not just peaceniks--or asks why Britain should not support the war on terror. Do they sympathize with Saddam? Do they fear U.S. power? Do they support al Qaeda or, if not its methods, its goals? Are there important differences among British Muslims? On a story this potentially significant, reporters should ask the basic questions--and share the answers with their readers.

Two weeks ago, my hands stopped working, the result of too many hours spent at a laptop. Proper ergonomics, I soon learned, requires a separate keyboard and mouse.

At Digital Society, 60 East 10th Street (Broadway) in Manhattan, there were choices: utilitarian-looking keyboards and mice in beige plastic, and the Apple versions, in this year's signature white, afloat in clear plastic--deliriously beautiful, and at a premium. The Apple keyboard was $12 more than its beige counterpart; the mouse, $29 more. I waffled for a good 10 minutes. Guess which equipment I bought?

I'll be in NYC through Wednesday on my book tour. Blogging will most likely be light, as I've discovered it's hard to find the time and Internet access amid book activities. But I will try to post something daily.

Customers who bought this book also bought:

• The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress by Virginia Postrel, Virgia Postrel (Hardcover)
• Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens (Hardcover)
• Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism by Brink Lindsey (Author) (Hardcover)
• The Gallery of Regrettable Food by James Lileks (Hardcover)
• Mexifornia: A State of Becoming by Victor Davis Hanson (Hardcover)

You, dear blog readers, undoubtedly know the answer: These are all books purchased online by people who read blogs. Because a relatively small number of purchases can change which books overlap, Amazon purchasing patterns may--or may not--mirror more general book-buying patterns. When I interviewed Austan Goolsbee for my recent NYT column, he told me about a children's book he and a colleague often buy as a baby gift. From time to time, the Amazon recommendations on its page include not just children's books but titles like The Economics of New Goods, a (quite interesting and influential) volume put out by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Not exactly kiddie lit.

In New York State, it is against the law for individuals to sell apartment rental listings without a special "apartment information vendor" (AIV) license, which is separate from a general real estate broker's license. The AIV law was passed in the late 1970s to combat potential fraud in the rental market; for example, individuals might sell repackaged newspaper rental listings as original compilations. The AIV law places substantial burdens on legitimate businesses, however, such as mandatory refunds on request and a ban on advertising specific properties.

In 1992, LaLa Wang started MLX.com, an online multiple listing service (or MLS) for customers looking to rent apartments. In most markets, real estate brokers form an MLS to combine their individual listings into a single, shared database. The traditional MLS concentrates resources in the hands of the brokers. New York City, however, is one of the few major markets to lack an MLS (in part because New York's notorious rent control laws create an artificial supply shortage that make high-commission rentals too valuable a commodity for brokers to share with one another). Wang's service changed all that. Not only did MLX create a de facto MLS, it did so in a more open platform than a traditional service: Customers could directly access the MLX database via a password protected account.

New York officials, and their political allies in the traditional real estate industry, used the AIV law to try and shut Wang down. They claimed that Wang needs an AIV to operate her service. But the Internet-based MLX service is merely a forum to exchange rental listings, not the type of self-contained lists that were the intended target of the AIV law. Wang's service is no different than a newspaper that runs apartment listings, yet New York officials acknowledge newspapers do not need an AIV license to operate.

Read the whole thing.

All of which leads to my response to the NYT Vows page's insulting boilerplate "the bride will be keeping her name": I love my father, but I chose my husband. Plus I legitimately get the initials V.I.P.

Late last week, one of the other tenants told Denise that an inspector from the state cosmetology commission was on the premises. In her two decades in the field, it was the first time she'd ever seen of an inspector, but Denise wasn't worried. Her cosmetology license is up-to-date, and her facilities are immaculate. (She's a bit of a clean freak.)

Little did she know that the state requires an "independent contractor's license," which entails no additional qualifications, merely a $65 fee. This license is, as far as I can tell, purely a shakedown. You pay your money and give them your address. The license has nothing to do with either professional qualifications (that's the cosmetology license) or tax payments (that's another state department). But those $65 fees add up. And if you don't have the independent contractor's license, you get socked with a $500 fine--precious working capital Denise had planned to use for supplies. (Her landlord got hit with a $1,000 fine for each contractor who lacked the required license.) She is not a happy entrepreneur.

After a bit of rooting around, I managed to find some some mention of the independent contractor's license on the state cosmetology commission's website. But it would be very easy to overlook that information, which isn't featured on the home page. From a first glance, you'd think the commission was concerned with professional qualifications and protecting the public from bad perms and mangled manicures. But you'd be wrong.

This harassment is happening in business-loving, entrepreneur-celebrating Texas. It persists because this sort of petty bureaucratic hassle--and the associated hidden taxes--is so routine that it doesn't constitute "news" and hence never becomes a political cause. But it's stifling business expansion just when the economy most needs it, and it's punishing bold, productive people.

One price control on reimbursement rates that gets no discussion nationally is the FTC and DOJ's use of antitrust law to prevent physicians from organizing to negotiate with managed care plans. For example, if a group of pediatricians in a region get together and jointly negotiate with the dominant HMO to stop reimbursing them below cost for administering child vaccines (I'm taking this from a real case), the FTC would deem that an antitrust violation, since the doctors are not "competing" sufficiently.

Under a 1993 FTC-DOJ policy, physicians that wish to jointly assert their economic power in negotiations with managed care payors can use one of three options. One option, called withholds, is illegal in many states. The second option, capitation, always results in financial losses for physicians. The final option, known as the messenger model, is so ineffective even the FTC and DOJ can't tell you exactly how to comply with the requirement.

Obviously its nonsensical for a bunch of antitrust lawyers to decide there are only three lawful methods of "competing" in the managed care market. But that's the point--they don't want doctors competing; they want them losing money to help the managed care plans lower costs. The magic word in the FTC-DOJ policy is "risk-sharing"; if the doctors don't assume nearly all of the financial risk, they are presumed criminals in the eyes of the law for trying to harm the "free" market.

The other problem with this policy is that nobody knows what the "correct" market rate is. Most private managed care plans calculate their reimbursements as a percentage of the Medicare reimbursement level (a figure known as RBRVS). For example, an HMO might offer a physician group a contract for 120% of RBRVS. If the physicians get together and counter-offer 130%, the FTC will step in and prosecute the physicians for essentially price gouging. The government's policy is inconsistent, however, because it's unclear at what RBRVS level the FTC and DOJ will rule the prices too high.

One final note: Although this policy has been in place since 1993, the enforcement has only stepped up since Bush's FTC chairman took over two years ago. Right now we're seeing about one physician group a month "settle" with the FTC under this policy (the DOJ generally cedes this are to the FTC, but they did conclude one case last year). By our internal count, the prosecuted groups included more than 6,000 physicians. That's a lot of folks running around violating antitrust laws.

Setting the stage, Bryan Castaneda passes on this quote from Wired's October cover story, "Super Producers":

" 'Our attraction to equiment has a lot to do with the way it looks', says [Tim] Goldsworthy [one half of the duo DFA]. 'You're surrounded by this stuff all the time.' Aside from a Macintosh G4 and a sequencer, DFA uses mostly predigital gear. But technology still plays a role in shaping the pair's signature sound. 'Thank God,' says Goldsworthy, 'for eBay.'"

Todd Fletcher writes:

The Les Paul post reminded me of trends among the electronic instruments that I play.

I've been playing electronic music for 20 years. Here's a picture of the first synthesizer I bought, in 1984:

And here's my latest purchase, from few months ago:

It's becoming common for manufacturers to hire European design firms to create the front panel now, something that would have seemed bizarre in 1984. The trend for style began with a Sweedish company in 1995 or so when they made a very red keyboard (prior to that, the color shemes were designed by Henry Ford, as you can see in the first picture):

Now, I wouldn't buy a lousy sounding instrument that looks great, but a great-sounding instrument that also looks great has a much better chance of getting my money.

Exactly. When technical quality is consistently good, people look for other sources of additional value--and aesthetics often tops that list.

Finally, Martin McClellan tells a fascinating story about aesthetics and authenticity:

I had to write after reading your post about the Les Paul story. I managed a very large used-guitar shop here in Seattle for nearly 7 years. Two stories came to mind while I read the post:

1. An old timer came into the shop to get some of his guitars worked on. He told us about working at the Gibson factory in the 70's. One day he was shown a flat of Les Paul bodies with the necks already glued on. Some had finish sprayed on, some didn't even have the necks shaped and curved from the raw block. His boss told him that these were flawed guitars, and his job? Run them all through the band saw. He did, he said, crying the whole time at having to destroy something so beautiful.

2. Another day a guy came in to try some amps, and with him he a large, heavy road case--the kind designed to keep a guitar safe in any type of transit. He popped it up on the counter, opened the top, and sitting there was a '58 flame top Les Paul in pretty good shape. If this were a movie, rays of golden sunlight would have shot from the case with a chorus of angels "aaaaaahhhhhhh"-ing in the background. I asked gingerly if I could inspect the guitar, and he gave his permission. I picked it up, and looked it over head to toe. Now, in the vintage guitar world, authenticity is king. A fine guitar that has been refinished could be worth considerably less than its counterpart with badly damaged original finish. Also, guitar parts are a large part of the equation--not only for value, but dating the guitar, making sure it's authentic, stock, etc. I spent 10 minutes with this guitar, and it was perfect. Every part on it was stock, the serial number and stamping impression were right, the nitro cellulose finish aged exactly as it should. The pickups, the knobs, the tuners, the wood on the neck, the flame maple on the top, the fade of the sunburst--all perfect. I'll bet if I pulled the wiring harness and looked at the potentiometers they would have a the right date too. But then I looked up at the musician and he had a thin, wry smile. "It's a fake" he said, and unscrewed the back panel that holds the electronics to show us the stamp of the maker.

Turns out there is a guy in Canada making perfect reproductions of these guitars. He makes them, ages them and sells them to people who can't afford the real deal. His price? $5000. And he's backed up for a few years, from what this musician told me. You can get a lot of guitar for that price, but maybe not a real sunburst, and if you want the real deal, this is the next best option. I always had good radar for guitars that are fake, or have been altered, and this one sent up no warning bells. It was a dead ringer for the original.

But mostly, the idea that a secondary market for these guitars that have been priced out of the reach of most professional musicians is an interesting phenomena--certainly one we see a lot with cheap (and some not-so-cheap) factory knock-offs of famous guitars. Outside of the guitar world, I think of the mass printing of famous paintings as posters, but the interesting thing about the guitars is that these aren't necessarily replicas in the standard sense, they are as much a piece of art and craftsmanship as the original Les Pauls were. They are truly a labor of love, no matter the price. They are the work of a true artisan.

Thanks to everyone who wrote in. The great thing about the subject of TSOS is no matter how much I learn about it, there's still an unexplored area--in this case, the look and feel of musical instruments.

In this article from the NYT Sunday Styles section, I'm quoted on why fashion is no longer cool (or why, to put it another way, people like Patner are so unhappy these days):

"Traditionally, we thought of fashion as something that came from houses, editors, designers, experts, and that has very much gone by the boards," said Virginia Postrel, the author of "The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture and Consciousness" (HarperCollins), a book that examines the cultural obsession with aesthetics.

"Part of what made fashion seem like high school," Ms. Postrel said, was the existence of " `in' groups, `in' people, who knew and decided what was cool."

In other book news, columnist Suzanne Fields of The Washington Times writes of "women--and men--who rarely pause to accessorize crowd[ing] into the conference center at the American Enterprise Institute" for my talk. If New York is the land of style snobs, Washington is, stereotypically, the opposite. But the questions after my talk in fact indicated a keen interest in the subject--including not just the big economic and social questions but, inevitably, the color of my fingernail polish ("I'm Not Really a Waitress"). You can watch the talk here, assuming that, unlike me, you can get Microsoft's Media Player to work.

Also spinning off from the AEI talk, Arnold Kling applies aesthetic analysis to the changing economics of college educations.

A friend writes about Teller: "When I spent a year at Hoover, I remember asking his thoughts about the explosion of scientific genius that came out of Hungary (ie. Von Neumann, Szilard, Teller, etc.) His answer: 'First you had to have been a Jew, and second, you had to leave or be forced to leave Hungary.'"

Update: Rand Simberg posted a short item on Teller's death (and life). So did Jay Manifold.

Teller is one of the great scientists of our time and his scientific contributions as sure him a place in the history of physics. He is also a philosopher and a man who has had a decisive influence on the thinking of America's major political leaders since the end of World War II.

In Better a Shield Than a Sword, Teller deals with many subjects that have held his attention over the years. The nature of freedom has always been uppermost in his mind. He describes his experiences as a teenager in Hungary where, in quick succession, both fascist and communist tyrannies held sway. There is no doubt that these circumstances had a fundamental influence on Teller's life and he recognized early on that whatever the label, tyranny is al ways the same.

Teller has a deep understanding of the nature of freedom and the uncertainty and ambiguity that inevitably accompany it. it is because he understands freedom that he has been one of the staunchest de fenders of free debate and a vigorous opponent of secrecy in politics as well as science. Teller was one of the first to warn against extensive secrecy in government and that secrecy is ultimately self-defeating. Events definitely have proved him right.

Teller believed that a free society draws strength from the free flow of information and hurts its ability to defend itself when the government tries to lock up information, particularly scientific and technical knowledge. The Federation of American Scientists, not known for its ultrahawkish views, marked Teller's passing with a link to the 1970 report of the Defense Science Board's Task Force on Secrecy, of which Teller was an influential member. From the report:

Although the Task Force was composed of individuals whose backgrounds are in science and engineering, the group sought responses to its assignment from a broader viewpoint since it was felt quite strongly that the issue of classification and the way it is handled has a significant effect on the posture of our nation in the international community, particularly in relation to our ability to unite and strengthen the free nations of the world. To emphasize this point, one of the members quoted an opinion expressed by Niels Bohr soon after World War II that, while secrecy is an effective instrument in a closed society, it is much less effective in an open society in the long run; instead, the open society should recognize that openness is one of its strongest weapons, for it accelerates mutual understanding and reduces barriers to rapid development.

We believe that overclassification has contributed to the credibility gap that evidently exists between the government and an influential segment of the population. A democratic society requires knowledge of the facts in order to assess its government's actions. An orderly process of disclosure would contribute to informed discussions of issues.When an otherwise open society attempts to use classification as a protective device, it may in the long run increase the difficulties of communications within its own structure so that commensurate gains are not obtained. Experience shows that, given time, a sophisticated, determined and unscrupulous adversary can usually penetrate the secrecy barriers of an open society. The Soviet Union very rapidly gained knowledge of our wartime work on nuclear weapons in spite of the very high level of classification assigned to it. The barriers are apt to be far more effective against restrained friends or against incompetents, and neither pose serious threats.

Beyond such general matters, the Task Force noted that there are frequent disclosures of classified information by public officials, the news media and quasi-technical journals. While the reliability and credibility of such information frequently may be in doubt, the magnitude of leaks indicates that, at present, our society has limited respect for current practices and laws relating to secrecy. It would be prudent to modify the present system to one that can be both respected and enforced.

An interesting interview with Teller (video available) is here. The Amazon page for his memoirs is here. Check out the review from a 12-year-old who had to read a biography for a book report.

Addendum: Chuck Watson of Shoutin' Across the Pacific posted this item on Teller, which also noted the blogosphere's near-silence on his death.

At the end of June, the House and the Senate passed separate versions of a $400 billion plan to provide a prescription-drug benefit under Medicare. A committee of 17 congressional negotiators is now struggling to cobble together a compromise on the drug plan that can win the needed support of House conservatives and Senate moderates. And, by the way, virtually no one in Congress believes that this new benefit would actually ended up costing as little as $400 billion over 10 years.

Voters back home might assume that their legislators in Washington would be embarrassed to be creating a far-reaching new entitlement program at just the moment when the deficit is careening out of control. Such is the innocence of those unacquainted with the peculiar folkways of Congress. The $400 billion for the drug benefit has been already approved as part of the congressional budget plan. So in the bizarre way that Congress does arithmetic, the $400 billion is considered to have been already spent, even though the drug benefit would not take effect until 2006.

In Washington, creating this new entitlement is seen as a test of the president's political strength. Defeating it would be a defeat for the president. But the rest of us would be better off.

In mid-20th-century culturally uniform America, advocates of different styles struggled for the pre-eminence of their favorites. In early-21st-century culturally diverse America, all kinds of different people can have the styles they want.

The Substance of Style is a celebration of some of the wonders of our country in our time. Postrel points out that demands for aesthetically pleasing goods and services have created jobs by the many thousands for designers, craftsmen, nail salon workers--jobs that probably give their holders greater satisfaction than the grim clerical jobs in giant corporations that mid-20th-century theorists thought we would all be consigned to today. And she also points out that the profusion of aesthetic products has made them cheaper: Women today accumulate much larger wardrobes out of much smaller percentages of their earnings than they did in the conformist 1950s. Here we rub up against one of the limitations of economics: It is hard to estimate, and easy to underestimate, how much better off we are than previous generations. Product improvement and enhancement of aesthetics are not fully measured by our statistical indexes. Just as we get much more computing power for the dollar when we buy a computer than we did in the late 1970s, so also can we get (if we want it) a much more attractive computer than the utilitarian boxes of a quarter century ago. And for some of us, it's worth it. You get choice. This is a book about style--and about substance.

I'm through chapter three now and one thing keeps running through my mind as I've been going along. It's an example of style vs. functionality that kind of dove tails in with something you mention early on as well as a recent item in your web log. That would be the Les Paul guitar. I don't know if you're familiar with the details of that instrument but since I own about thirty guitars, including four Les Paul's I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable.

Anyway, the Les Paul model guitar (today known as the "standard") was first marketed by Gibson in 1952. The basic design featured a maple top on a mahogany body. From then until 1957 it was basically aesthetically the same. As you can see from the links below, while improvement in functionality included a better tailpiece design and pickups, it still retained the same gold sparkle finish on a light brown body and the same trapezoid inlay pattern on the fingerboard.

In 1958, however, a dramatic change took place. They did away with the gold finish and replaced it with a beautiful three-color sunburst finish that really showed off the lines in the maple top. Some of these guitars have amazingly gorgeous wood in them. The picture on the link doesn't do it real justice. Anyway, at the time, these guitars didn't really sell any better than the gold ones. BTW they retailed for about $250.00. As a result in 1961 Gibson did away with them and came out with a complete redesign without consulting Lester. He didn't really like the new ones, so in 1962 Gibson no longer offered a "Les Paul" model guitar and the new design became known as the "SG" or "Solid Guitar". Gibson would not offer a model by that name again until 1968. I should also note that in 1965 Gibson was purchased by Norlin which contributed to the decline in instrument quality but that's another story.

In the interim, as you well know, a certain musical invasion took place and guitars became very popular again. In the mid to late 60's certain guitar slingers with names like Clapton, Page, Beck, Richards and Jones began seeking out the 1958-60 model Les Paul guitars, which they had probably drooled over as poor kids in England, and playing them onstage, on TV, etc. As a result these guitars began to be sought after by other people as well thus creating what is now called the vintage guitar market. Since Gibson wasn't making anything like them anymore they became more and more rare.

In the early 70's Gibson introduced a "Les Paul Standard" guitar but it wasn't anywhere close to the quality, grade of woods, etc. that the old ones were. It wasn't until the mid 80's that somebody finally wised up and went back to the original specs to produce similar quality instruments. I first began pining for a 1958-60 sunburst in the late 70's. Around 1980 or so I had a shot at buying one for $3000.00 but couldn't get my dad to give me the money. That's right, I said $3000.00 and that was in 1980.

Today original sunburst 59-60 Paul's go for upwards or $75,000.00 to $100,000.00. The interesting thing to note is that the 57 gold top models go for much much less. It is the finish and wood grain that run up the price. Functionally the 1957 and 1958 models are practically the same. If you plug them both into the same amp with the same player it's difficult to tell the difference.

Also, in 1954 Gibson introduced the "Les Paul Custom" model which featured an ebony fretboard, mother of pearl inlay and gold hardware. It also had a black finish which showed no wood grain. This was supposed to be the "top of the line" Les Paul. The old customs, however, don't demand near the prices of the 58-60 sunburst models either. It's still that finish.

Over the years I have read and heard many people criticize this market for being so driven by color and appearance. I can remember a column in Guitar Play Magazine a long time ago in which George Gruhn lamented how people were paying three or four times as much for a 58 as a 57 "just because of the color! How ridiculous!" Granted there's more involved here than just the finish including the quality decline under Norlin, etc. but it's still that color and wood grain that fetch the big bucks.

He includes the following illustrative links:
1952
1954
1956
1957
1958-60
1954 Custom
1958 Custom
1961 SG

Doctor visits have become a social activity in this place of palm trees and gated retirement communities. Many patients have 8, 10 or 12 specialists and visit one or more of them most days of the week. They bring their spouses and plan their days around their appointments, going out to eat or shopping while they are in the area. They know what they want; they choose specialists for every body part. And every visit, every procedure is covered by Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly.

Boca Raton, researchers agree, is a case study of what happens when people are given free rein to have all the medical care they could imagine. It is also a cautionary tale, they say--timely as Medicare's fate is debated in Congress--for it demonstrates that what the program covers and does not cover, and how much or how little it pays, determines what goes on in a doctor's office and why it is so hard to control costs.

South Florida has all the ingredients for lavish use of medical services, health care researchers say, with its large population of affluent, educated older people and the doctors to accommodate them. As a result, Dr. Elliott Fisher, a health services researcher at Dartmouth Medical School, said, patients have more office visits, see more specialists and have more diagnostic tests than almost anywhere else in the country. Medicare spends more per person in South Florida than almost anywhere else--twice as much as in Minneapolis, for example.

But there is no apparent medical benefit, Dr. Fisher said, adding, "In our research, Medicare enrollees in high intensity regions have 2 to 5 percent higher mortality rates than similar patients in the more conservative regions of the country."

Read the whole thing. And remember the "solution" that kicks in when this near-infinite demand for care starts busting the federal budget: price controls on reimbursement rates. While seniors are lining up for specialists, internists and family practitioners are turning away new Medicare patients, because reimbursements are so low they don't cover costs. Because free supplies inevitably pump up demand, a drug entitlement will surely cost many times the current estimate, and then when sticker shock sets in we'll get price controls.

Ten years ago, Steve Hayward and Erik Peterson published this cautionary tale in Reason, describing how Medicare spending grew far beyond expectations:

The two primary lessons of Medicare are the chronic problem of woefully underestimating program costs and the impossibility of genuine cost control. A closer look at Medicare shows why these two problems are certain to plague a government-administered universal health-care plan.

The cost of Medicare is a good place to begin. At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $ 12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly "conservative" estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107 billion.

Not surprisingly, the researchers found that higher prices mean fewer sales. But the effects are notably different at the two sites. Both sites lose customers when prices rise, but Barnes & Noble loses a lot more.

A 1 percent price increase at BN.com pushes sales down 4 percent, making price rises a bad idea. By contrast, the same increase at Amazon reduces sales by only 0.5 percent--a net revenue gain.

Lots of interesting info for those in the book business, with implications for how all sorts of businesses might be affected by online competition.

Given the increased use of IEDs, what accounts for the decline in Coalition deaths? I'm going to take a wild guess based on nothing more than my own intuition and a single sentence in an article from the Wall Street Journal. The Coalition has begun to equip its military convoys with cellular jammers. Cellular jammers are widely available and can be portable. The Pentagon is known to have been working on large-scale cellular jammers back in August, but I've thought for some time that the threat from IEDs in Iraq could be defeated by the Pentagon simply issuing portable cellular jammers to its convoy passengers. An article from Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) strongly suggests that's exactly what the Pentagon has done.

Procurement accounts for a relatively small share, just $1.9 billion, including the purchase of 595 heavy mobile Army vehicles, kevlar body armor and electronic jammers to block terrorists from using cellular phones to trigger bombs near troops.

If IEDs can no longer be detonated by remote control, the Iraqi insurgents are going to have an even harder time inflicting casualties on U.S. troops. (I note that the most recent reported IED death does not give any indication that the targeted vehicle involved was traveling in a convoy). We'll know that jammers have come into widespread use when we begin to see increased uses of other methods of attack such as suicide bombings and truck bombings of stationary targets (which I think we've already seen). What we will not see more of is increased attacks on U.S. convoys using small arms such as rifles and RPGs, those attacks proved to be suicidal for the attackers and have now been largely abandoned by the insurgents unless they happen upon isolated vehicles as targets of opportunity.

Remember you heard it here first; cellular jammers are the newest U.S. weapon in Iraq.

Posted by Virginia at 10:27 PM