April 2006

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Best of the Humanities on the Web (Wednesday, 4/26/06)
Some goofy things have been going on in American education recently, in part, as a response to its overall condition in relation to 21st century needs. However, some solutions can be worse than original problems, particularly if they come from people who know nothing about education or the development of effective individuals.

There's little doubt that some of U.S. education needs fixing, but we're hoping that efforts to repair what needs repairing will not damage or destroy the best of K-12 education in the United States, or, for that matter, the idea of public schools with their goal of educating everybody. Some school districts are truly lamentable, but others provide excellent service and even are attracting students from affluent families away from high-priced private schools.

"Home schooling" might be a viable alternative to the worst of American schools, if nothing else, simply in order to protect children from toxic influences. But, unless parents are professional educators, there's little chance that simply keeping kids at home for instruction will result in their being better prepared than sending them to the best of American public schools. Parents who have convinced themselves that they are better at teaching than top professional educators may think they can conduct family surgery themselves too. Also, kids learn a great deal at school that is not included in their classes--like how to interact with people outside their families, for instance.

The "No Child Left Behind" program has resulted in a tremendous emphasis on testing, which means that somebody with political power either has a lot of confidence in standardized tests, or, more likely, knows nothing whatever about the underlying statistical issues. In addition, the testing has narrowed the focus of educators, not only to reading and math, for the most part, but also to the task of preparing students to do well on the tests, rather than creating competent, educated persons who are well-prepared for life and work in the new world of knowledge, technology, and economics.

A major neuroscience expert on the Charlie Rose TV program the other night said that recent data suggest that, in addition to the role of the arts in humanizing society, de-emphasizing them in favor of so-called "core curricula" may be counterproductive, because excellence in the arts does seem to depend on some of the same aptitudes as excellence in science and math. It's not uncommon to find musicians who have a very strong technical streak, in large part, because music theory is a subset of physics theory, and knowing what you're doing and why in music requires an understanding of mathematical relationships. All of the arts have strong technical components. It shouldn't be a surprise, for instance, that Albert Einstein was a fairly competent cellist, or that he was interested in the first place.

We even worry a bit about the influence of three-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, now that 2 million copies of his hugely successful and increasingly influential book, The World is Flat, are in print.

He's right in asserting that "outsourcing" is not simply a matter of a "race to the bottom." In fact, the shipping of low skill jobs overseas has become very old news, and, for the most part, already has happened. Nearly everybody is aware that China and India, with their exploding economies, want a hegemonic relationship to the high-value jobs too, and they're already producing far more engineers and other technical people than the United States.

We worry because, even though we believe that the brilliant Mr. Friedman is correct in calling for a dramatic increase in technical interest and technical preparation for American young people, if the U.S. is to retain its creative edge, we're afraid that, if he is successful in influencing public attitudes and policy, it might result in our emphasizing education for work even more at the expense of education for living and education for citizenship.

This is important in a society in which large numbers of people already believe that education is "practical," only if it provides preparation for one's first job, or, at most, for a career and earnings, not if it provides preparation for an entire life or contributes to the quality of life in an entire society.

It's also important because most of the beliefs that most Americans have about themselves and their world are simply unsupported by the the sum of current knowledge. That is, many Americans and their leaders have a mostly goofy and distorted view of reality, and, according to Emeritus Professor Carl Frost of Michigan State University, effectiveness depends on the 1) quality of our contact with reality as well as 2) appropriate responses to that reality. Individually and collectively, it will be very difficult to respond appropriately to a reality that we misperceive or misinterpret in the first place.

"Education" is something very different from "training." The latter prepares people for specific kinds of work tasks, and it's certainly true that there has been a tremendous escalation of the kinds of skill sets required by good jobs in the new global economy.

However, modern societies need highly-developed persons as well as quality personnel. The current age has been defined largely in terms of science and technology, but the humanities also play a critically important role in determining the quality of individual, family, and societal life. As John Kennedy once remarked, the humanities seem to have more to do with our ends than our means. Here is the Best of the Humanities on the Web.

From Washington to Washington to Riyadh (Saturday, 4/22/06)
China's President Hu Jintao first stopped in Washington state to visit with Bill Gates, Boeing officials, and others, then went on to Washington, D. C. for lunch with President Bush, and, finally, on to Saudi Arabia, where he may have expected the most fruitful discussions of all.

If crude oil goes to a hundred dollars a barrel, as some worry may be about to happen, the Saudis will be able to finance even more terrorism directed toward the West and Iran will be able to cause even more trouble in Iraq and elsewhere.

Also, if, as Tom Friedman suggested on the Charlie Rose TV program the other night, $100-per-barrel crude would bring about a massive change of behavior on the part of Americans, thus diminishing the American market for oil, the Chinese market might be particularly important to the Saudis and Iranians, and they may be willing to pay nearly anything for it.

Could it be that the Chinese might eventually end up indirectly financing international terrorism carried out by radical Muslims toward the West? It's one thing to be fairly gleeful that people in the Middle East, Western Europe, and the United States are managing to distract themselves from 21st century issues by resurrecting the conflicts of the Middle Ages, but quite another to spur them along by paying for them.

Incidentally, China's President Hu seems to be getting most of what he seems to want from the rest of the world, a sign of China's growing economic as well as geopolitical power.

As he and President Bush were meeting in Washington, the U.S. government announced that Chinese citizens received the greatest number of U.S. visas last year. The timing may have been coincidental, but, maybe not.

Also, the sequence of "amateur hour" events in Washington may not have impressed the Chinese President that he's dealing with a very formidable adversary. It was reminiscent of the poor impression that John Kennedy made on Khrushchev in Vienna only about six months into his administration, which may have helped the Soviet dictator decide to move missiles into Cuba.

Neither the announcer's introduction of the "national anthem of the Republic of China" nor the New York physician's three-minute heckling of the Chinese President made the TV news back home--not to worry--but these events did put the President of the United States in a position of having to apologize to the leader of one of the most brutal and dehumanizing regimes in the world.

On the other hand, several of Silicon Valley's leading hi-tech firms already are assisting the Chinese government in its censorship efforts, so President Hu may have felt that he was in friendly territory in both Washingtons. Powerful people can find sycophants in the oddest places.

It all brings to mind Lincoln's concerns--still very relevant--about whether "government of the people, by the people, for the people" may perish from the earth after all.

G7 meets about oil prices, and includes guests (Friday, 4/21/06)
As the price of crude oil hits another record high, worried finance ministers from the G7 are meeting today, but are including China and oil-exporting nations in their talks.

Until recently, at least, the G7 has been one of the world's most exclusive clubs made up of the richest industrial nations. However, with its tremendous economic growth rates recently, there is talk that China's economy already has become the fourth largest in the world, which may justify its having a permanent seat at the table during G7 meetings. Is it fair to call a country "industrial" that includes hundreds of millions of people who, instead of working in industry, are still trying to scrape a meager living out of rice paddies with water buffalo?

China is nearly everything. It has the world's largest national population, probably the greatest number of people living in poverty, maybe the greatest contrast between rich and poor, the world's fastest-growing, energy-hungry and raw materials-hungry economy, a large proportion of the world's new rich, and already is one of the world's largest markets for consumer products.

Actually, the G7 frequently is referred to as the "G8" anyway, which is intended to include the seven richest industrial nations, plus Russia. Russia certainly isn't rich, but the world has learned from painful 20th century experience that it is probably in its enlightened self-interest not to isolate or exclude the big Russian bear.

Still, there is good reason to expect that China will have a greater influence on the world during the remainder of this century and beyond than Russia. In fact, if Americans, including their governmental leaders, spend ALL of their time worrying about terrorism or the Middle East, they may miss something VERY important.

Hu's on first (Thursday, 4/20/06)
Then, Bill Gates is on, followed by the President. Actually, it may or may not be significant that China's President met with Billionaire Bill in the Seattle area before meeting with the President of the United in Washington. Nonetheless, it appears that Chairman Gates made slightly more progress on his intellectual property rights concerns than President Bush did on his trade concerns. Basically, though, it appears that the Chinese President reflects his country's growing confidence in having things their way as China becomes more and more powerful and increasingly influential in most of the world's affairs.

Will it make Katie Couric seem less like a next-door friend if you know that CBS intends to pay her more for anchoring each 22-minute newscast than your family earns in a year? (Thursday, 4/13/06)
For whatever reason, Marcy Gordon reports for ABC News that many big-time media organizations would like to conceal how much they're paying their stars.

It's been widely reported that CBS intends to pay Katie Couric about $15 million per year to leave NBC's Today Show in order to anchor the CBS Evening News. No one other than those directly involved in contract negotiations knows for sure, and that includes us. However, if she will be paid that much, it's probably important to remember that NBC pays Jay Leno far more and that CBS apparently pays David Letterman even more than Leno, even though Leno's ratings typically are greater than Letterman's.

Meanwhile, Hollywood's A-list stars are often guaranteed as much for one movie as television's biggest stars make in a year, and, for movie stars, it may amount to working only three to four months during filming.

These things have nothing to do with virtue or who "deserves" to make what. They have only to do with the supply-demand relationships that determine the price of anything in a free economy.

Commercial television, for instance, makes money by "renting" audiences to advertisers, so, if an individual performer, for whatever reason, can attract and hold the attention of large numbers of viewers in the desirable demographic categories long enough so that they will see the commercials, that performer can demand big pay days.

In fact, a television news anchor, for example, doesn't necessarily even have to be important to viewers in order to make a difference in ratings. For instance, research into factors determining the commercial success of local television news programs finds that competing news shows can be so evenly matched that the smallest thing can make the difference in determining which one a viewer typically watches. The anchor may be like the slightest force that tips a pencil balancing on its tip in one direction or another. Even so, s/he can make a big difference, because, once the "pencil" falls, it's not easy to reposition it.

Incidentally, the millions apparently paid to major television personalities such as Katie Couric, Jay Leno, or David Letterman pale in comparison to what satellite radio organization Serius apparently is paying Howard Stern to do his X-rated program, which apparently attracts mostly young males with "testosterone poisoning" by offering vulgarity in heavy doses. People who walk through his studio may feel like boiling their shoes afterwards.

According to news reports, Serius is paying Stern $500 million for five years. A few weeks ago, it appeared that as much as 70 percent of his old audience had not followed him to the satellite service, which requires a monthly fee. Now, though, it appears that the decision to throw an unprecedented amount of money in Mr. Stern's direction may have been been a good business decision on the part of Serius after all. For the first time, Serius has attracted more listeners than XM, its principal competitor.

We've always felt that the tendency to refer to X-rated media material as "adult" involves a misuse of language. It seems far more adolescent than adult. People who are attracted to this sort of material seem to have leveled off in their development at around age thirteen or so, although this probably unjustifiably slanders genuine thirteen-year-olds. Anyone who has overhead the conversations of some middle-school students will know what we mean, though.

The fact is that it is not possible for any of the body's parts or functions to diminish the specialness or dignity of a human being. It isn't possible because none of the body's parts or functions are "dirty" or obscene in any way. Efforts to make them appear this way, however misguided or vicious, may themselves be obscene. They emphasize people's parts rather than whole persons and assault a person's humanity by threatening the wholeness that is the essence of a human being. Howard Stern, as well as much advertising in the so-called "mainstream media," relies on the kind of "psychological dismemberment" that can easily bring to mind people like Jeffrey Dahmer.

Howard Stern is a very wealthy man, but this alone doesn't make him interesting. His radio act isn't shocking and it isn't funny. It's only immature and, well, stupid.

What to do about CEO pay? (Tuesday, 4/11/06)
Nothing, if stockholders--the owners of the company--freely choose to use their own money to pay a person to lead them, no matter how much it is. In a free market economy, something is worth what somebody is willing to pay for it, and buyer and seller are free to agree on a price. Nobody else, including the government--maybe PARTICULARLY the government--is in a better position to determine the value of either products or services than the buyer and seller who are directly involved in the transaction.

Ironically, it was the Republican Nixon administration that attempted wage and price controls only a few years ago, and they didn't work, to put it mildly. Moreover, the failure of the old Soviet Union, Maoist China, and catastrophic economies such as that of North Korea should have settled once and for all the question of how well centralized economies work in which somebody with political power determines the "value" of products and services.

Moreover, research demonstrates that the CEO is a critical factor in determining a corporation's success or failure, and this helps to explain the huge incomes enjoyed by many heads of corporations. It appears that the supply of people who are really good at this type of work doesn't nearly equal demand, and, in a free economy, this kind of situation drives prices up.

However, problems arise when stockholders are not freely choosing how much to pay their CEOs. One type of difficulty can arise when mutual back-scratching occurs among people who serve on multiple corporate boards and help determine each other's pay. That is, suppose the executive who heads Corporation A is on the board of Corporation B, while the executive that heads Corporation B is on the board of Corporation A. Both can influence each other's level of remuneration. Opportunities for corruption seem to be magnified in this sort of situation.

Another kind of problem can arise when "independent consultants" really aren't all that independent, as Gretchen Morgenson reports.

The solution in each case seems to be greater activism on the part of the company's owners. Stockholders DO own the company and have a right to exercise ultimate control over its board as well as policies and key personnel. In recent years, many problems with corporations have arisen because of "sleepy" boards supported by equally sleepy stockholders.

Protests and strikes pay off in France (Monday, 4/10/06)
French President Jacques Chirac has announced that he intends to "replace" the law that has been the cause of massive marches and demonstrations. Here's more from Christine Ollivier in Paris. Richard Fisher and Michael Cox say that the public reaction to the law that would have made it easier to fire workers under 26 reflects the depth of public misunderstanding of the new global economy.

Meanwhile, Anabelle Garay writes about the massive demonstrations in the United States on behalf of immigrants, legal and illegal, which may have had something to do with persuading Members of Congress to get out of town after only two weeks of work in the Capitol following their St. Patrick's Day break.

It all brings to mind speculations about the conditions under which massive numbers of people in the streets can threaten lawfulness and subvert due process.

However, it appears that nearly all institutions are experiencing great pressures and fumbling to some extent in response to historically novel conditions. During the past several years, the news media have been filled with stories about corruption and failures in the Administration, the Congress, the major political parties, the healthcare system, religious institutions, the military, corporations, the news media, and big-time commercial sports. Virtually all American institutions have been foundering and failing in a variety of ways.

Our NewWorld Trends project will examine the extent to which institutions throughout the world are being left far behind by the synergistic interaction of the knowledge and technology revolutions.

Despite the huge numbers, if you live in China, you're probably being watched (Sunday, 4/9/06)
Hi-tech and its ability to quicken and broaden the flow of information are threats to highly centralized political systems. In fact, along with Pope John Paul, Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Ronald Reagan, the lowly old low-tech copy machine probably deserves at least a little of the credit for setting in motion processes that led to the disintegration of the old Soviet Union.

However, high-technology makes it easier to turn a government into Big Brother too. In fact, during the past three years, China's government has managed to gather information on all but about 500 million of the country's 1.3 billion people. Moreover, 30,000 Web police are watching the behavior of 110 million Chinese who are on the Internet.

There have been many recent news stories in the United States about how American hi-tech companies have been assisting the Chinese government in its censorship efforts. It brings to mind the role of Krupp in Germany during the Nazi period, which, incidentally, did business before the Nazis and has continued to do business since.

In fact, it isn't necessary for the leaders of a corporation to have a political agenda in order to assist those who do. All that is required is that corporate leaders sufficiently feel the pressure to produce profits that they don't allow politics, however unsavory, to interfere with business.

For example, even though there is evidence that media mogul Rupert Murdock personally prefers libertarian politics, it isn't necessary to assume that he is trying to influence politics in the United States by developing a largely right-wing cable news network that selectively interprets events as a matter of corporate policy.

Murdock built much of his early fortune with tabloid newspapers that frequently ran outrageous stories with outrageous headlines. It wasn't necessary to assume that he had to believe the headlines in order to run them.

He is a very sophisticated Oxford-educated Australian who seems to be most interested in exploiting market opportunities, whatever the political consequences. He saw the success of right-wing talk radio in the United States and accurately concluded that there are more people in the general population committed to traditional and familiar than to novel and unfamiliar ideas and attitudes, and saw a major potential market for a cable television news channel that would tell millions of people what they like to hear. There's no good reason to believe, if, instead, the majority of Americans were politically "liberal," that Fox News would not be a left-wing cable news operation as a consequence.

In this sense, Murdock, Jerry Springer, and Howard Stern may be kindred spirits. It appears that they're all educated, sophisticated but cynical people who are willing to put nearly anything into the mass media in order to make money.

Will a fancy, expensive college teach you how to cope with your accumulated student debt? (Thursday, 4/6/06)
Dante Chinni writes that it isn't necessarily clear anymore that attending one of America's most famous colleges will pay off as you might expect. Of course, it might help your career if you are able to share a dorm room with a Kennedy at Harvard or a Bush at Yale, but for reasons having little to do with what you might learn in your classes.

If you you think of "higher education" as referring mostly to which school you have attended, whose approval you have obtained, and what certificates you can display, whether or not you really know anything and whether or not you really can do anything, it's probably important to choose carefully so that you can brag to others about how much money college has cost you. Problem is, that seems a bit like those people who buy books to display on their shelves without caring what, if anything, is contained on their pages.

On the other hand, if you consider "higher education" to refer to learning and the actual acquisition of knowledge and competence, it's important to remember that, with sufficient commitment and diligence, you can still obtain an excellent education for nothing at the public library. In fact, learning resources are more accessible now than ever before. While it used to be necessary to go to a college or university campus in order to learn about most important topics, we're approaching a time when really serious learners will be able to learn about nearly anything nearly anywhere.

China's Great Firewall (Tuesday, 4/4/06)
The half-hour network TV news programs are really less than a half-hour long, because several minutes have to be set aside for the commercials. Moreover, those who expect to get all their news from these programs may be disappointed to learn that the entire editorial content on one of these shows would fit into only a part of one column of the New York Times. Nonetheless, the length of these programs is fixed, so there always has to be the same amount of news each day, no matter what, if anything, has happened.

You might also be annoyed to learn that there are similar limitations on the political comedy or satire programs, such as John Stewart's "The Daily Show" or "Real Time with Bill Maher." They also have a fixed amount of time to fill each time. As a consequence, they always have to spend the same amount of time making fun of politicians or political events, no matter what has been going on. It's not quite the same as having to wait until something happens that genuinely deserves ridicule.

Some of us have spent long periods of time writing and doing comedy on radio or in live performance and know how easy it is to do cheap shots. For instance, it would be easy to say that Republicans have been claiming for decades that anything done by the government is done inefficiently, ineffectively, and clumsily, and the Bush administration has been trying to demonstrate the truth of this assertion once and for all. Similarly, we could emphasize the facility that Democrats seem to have for forming circular firing squads, or that, while Republicans are governmentally incompetent, Democrats are politically incompetent, and, then, provide selected examples in support of either assertion.

The problem is that wisecracks, while often amusing to people whose attitudes already are in line with them, typically rely on stereotypes or caricatures, which, by definition, are distortions of reality. Political reality, like other aspects of reality, is greatly complicated. Anyone who believes that the answers to political questions are obvious and simple are likely to be experiencing the simplicity within their own minds. They're telling us much more about themselves than the objects of their attitudes.

Still, the incessant self-serving political jokes, the strident radio talk and TV shout shows, the highly polarized, selective partisan rhetoric, the reprehensibly dishonest political ads during heated campaigns, while annoying and disappointing, particularly in relation to easily imagined life in Shangri-la, are really part of the sweet music of a free society.

If you doubt this, consider how great the stakes are and what life would be like in a society without something resembling the American Constitution with its First Amendment. Consider how similar most American "liberals" and "conservatives" really are, compared to ideologues in societies with very different political histories and institutions.

For instance, consider that, in China, the government is recording every keystroke generated by people who are online in Internet cafes, and it isn't doing this simply in order to pass the time.

In Singapore, where foreign tourists constantly are told how "clean and green" and well-behaved this society is, it might be easier to forget that this prosperous city-state, unlike the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, and many Western European countries, has no resemblance to a liberal democracy. Until you recall that this is a society in which individuals are held in check by the threat of draconian punishments for what most people in the West regard as minor offenses, that is. Moreover, Singapore's government is now warning people who post political commentary on the Internet that they may be liable to prosecution.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Sacred Destinations (Saturday, 4/1/06)
The world's cultures have been filled with different religions throughout human history, and there is evidence that people invented a multiplicity of religions during the much longer period of prehistory as well. During the tens of thousands of years that modern humans have been on the planet, religious cultures have existed largely in isolation from one another; but, now, increasingly, geographical distance is becoming irrelevant.

We've remarked previously about how millions of people throughout the world are responding to the fundamentally new conditions of life on Earth as well as to breathtaking changes of many kinds by more vigorously asserting ancient ideas and traditions. We can see examples of this phenomenon in each days news throughout the Muslim world as well as within Christian communities within the United States. This effort to cope may work psychologically for individuals for a while, but it also seems to exacerbate some of the major conflicts of our times, and, sooner or later, people will have to face the new realities, assuming that we don't destroy each other before that happens.

While waiting to see how it all shakes out, you may be interested in examining a few of the thousands of places on Earth which have been regarded as sacred by people within a variety of religious cultures over recent centuries or millennia. Holly Hayes's Sacred Destinations site contains information on about 1,500 of them.