For more than a decade, NewWork News has surveyed the world's news having to do with life and work in the revolutionary new world economy. Over all these years, we have not made a significant effort to distinguish between straight reporting and editorial comment.

Written by Gary Johnson, NewWork News each day is more like a newspaper or magazine column than a newspaper's front page. However, nearly every item is linked to at least one original story from somebody else's "front page" so as to enable our readers easily to examine the original story without deliberate interpretation or commentary.

Some NewWork News items are highly analytical. Several of these have been gathered together for presentation below. All have been written by Gary Johnson.

January 2006

The Earth can be expected to warm at about the same rate it has for a long time. Well, no, maybe not (Thursday, 1/26/06)
In fact, there are growing signs that our home planet may be warming up much faster than most people have been expecting. Here's more from Robert Cowen of the Christian Science Monitor on some of the recent studies.

It's possible that climate change may offer yet another example of a phenomenon that Ray Kurzweil, whom we've recently discussed at length, discusses in his latest book, The Singularity is Near: that many changes which are widely perceived to be linear really are geometric.

For example, global population remained relatively small and increased only slightly for tens of thousands of years, then suddenly hit the "knee" of the ogival curve, reaching 1 billion for the first time around 1840. In the lifetime of someone born in 1910 who died last year, world population went from 1.5 billion to more than 6 billion. That's in a single lifetime.

Population geneticist, Spencer Welles, has been remarking recently, based on his DNA studies, on how relatively quickly humanity spread throughout the world, becoming highly diverse in the process, after spending hundreds of thousands of years confined to Africa. Once again, things change slowly for a long time, then suddenly explode.

Will Earth become an unfamiliar planet within our lifetimes or those of our children? We don't know either, but it's a question that flows from more than idle curiosity.

Disney buys Pixar: Bob Iger, ask Gil Amelio why you had better watch out (Tuesday, 1/24/06)
It's final: The Walt Disney Company will acquire Pixar Animation Studios for $7.4 billion in a stock deal that will make Pixar CEO Steve Jobs one of Disney's largest stockholders and probably put him on the Disney Board of Directors.

Robert Iger is the new head of the Walt Disney Company, succeeding long-time CEO Michael Eisner, who was a veteran entertainment executive before he came to Disney, but with whom various people have had trouble relating, including Walt's nephew, Roy, and, of course, Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs.

Things began to fall apart for Eisner shortly after he published his triumphant autobiography, which brings to mind Dick Cavett, who published his memoirs while still in his 30s. It seemed premature at the time, but, as it turned out, maybe not.

At any rate, Mr. Eisner was forced into retirement after a controversial but nonetheless important tenure as Disney's chief executive. He wasn't able to reach a new agreement with Pixar's Steve Jobs, though, and it appeared for a time that Pixar really was going to find another distributor for its feature films after producing nothing but major hits for Disney.

However, now, Robert Iger is head of The Walt Disney Company, and he and Steve Jobs seem to get along just fine. In fact, the Disney board met yesterday and approved Iger's plan to buy Pixar, although not necessarily agreeing unanimously that Steve Jobs' animation company would be worth so much money.

The Disney-Pixar merger has been watched throughout the world because of its potential implications, not only for the entertainment business, but for other aspects of the global economy as well. For instance, James Doran of The Australian says that Steve Jobs is about to become an even stronger force in Hollywood than he's been since he drove Pixar to make the first animated feature film produced entirely by computer for Disney a decade ago.

Mr. jobs also is co-founder and CEO of Apple Computer Corporation, which, among other things, is responsible for the enormously successful iPod. Moreover, Jay Wrolstad reports that a full 14 percent of Americans who spend time on the Internet have visited Apple's ITunes site during the past year where music and major television series, such as big hits from ABC, which is owned by Disney, are available for sale. Moreover, higher education has been making increasing use of the iPod, and thousands of recorded books are also available for downloading to iPods. Expect corporate training programs to use the iPod as well. Even the video game industry is likely to be significantly affected by the Disney-Pixar merger.

Dawn Chmielewski of the Los Angeles Times reports that, in Steve Jobs, Disney may now have the "larger than life" character that it has needed to succeed Walt Disney and give the company a much needed boost of creativity.

For those who have followed the career of 50-year-old Stephen Jobs over the past three decades, it's hard not to remember that, in 1997, Steve Jobs managed to persuade Gil Amelio, who was then Apple Computer Corporation's CEO, that Apple should buy Jobs' NeXT operating system, which had been the core of the company Jobs formed after he was ousted from Apple by John Scully. Amelio later acknowledged that Apple probably paid too much for NeXT, but, then, they "also got Steve Jobs." Soon after, Amelio was a former Apple CEO, and Jobs was running the company again. A Disney executive has been heard to exclaim that the price paid for Pixar probably was pretty high, but, then, they "also got Steve Jobs." A principal difference this time seems to be that, unlike NeXT, Pixar is anything but a failure.

Around 1990 or so, five years before the Disney release of Pixar's "Toy Story," a prescient writer speculated that Steve Jobs might eventually come to dominate Hollywood as, well, say, as head of Disney.

Enough is enough (Monday, 1/23/06)
What do American coal miners and their families have in common with American combat soldiers and their families? All seem to be taking far more than their share of the risks and making far more than their share of the sacrifices, while the rest of America benefits. Vicki Smith says that political leaders at state and federal levels are beginning to push for mine safety legislation following two mine tragedies and the deaths of 14 miners within less than a month.

Here are some people who can't tolerate an interruption of their medications for ANY reason (Sunday, 1/22/06)
They're still commonly referred to as "mental illnesses," but conditions such as schizophrenia are really physical diseases just like so many others, except that, in this case, the part of the body that is not functioning properly is the brain, rather than heart, the lungs, the pancreas, or some other commonly dysfunctional organ. Some societies have come quite a long way since the days when the victims of these illnesses were simply persecuted, while most people lacked the slightest understanding of the reasons for the unusual behavior or experiences. Robert Pear writes from Hilliard, Florida about some of the people who are particularly vulnerable to interruptions due to the prescription drug fiasco from Medicare.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Google Earth (Saturday, 1/21/06)
When you step outside next time, you might want to wave skyward, in case your friends--or Uncle Sam--are watching. Google, which started out as a garage-based search engine about eight years ago, is still a search engine, but the enormously successful company seems to be getting into nearly everything else at this point as well.

For instance, Google Earth is an impressive feature that enables you to look at either large or extremely small parts of the earth from your personal computer with the help of some of the hundreds of man-made Earth satellites--if your computer is sufficiently powerful and suitably equipped, that is. At the moment, you'll need a fairly high horse power Macintosh or Windows machine to take advantage of Google Earth's capabilities. However, given that computers become largely obsolete in about three years, it won't be long before virtually everybody will have what they need. Apparently, the company would like to make it possible for you to view the earth--or the license plate number on a car parked down the street--from space in real time, as soon as that capability becomes available.

Google's corporate slogan is "Do no evil," which may or may not represent its real intentions and may or may not be consistent with its objective of making the world's information available to anybody who is interested.

During recent months, copyright holders have resisted Google's efforts to make other people's books available to everybody online, and Google's apparent policy of keeping a record of every Google search that has ever been performed seems to amount to an engraved invitation to government or anyone else with potentially malevolent motives to do evil of their own.

As this is written, the news is filled with stories about Google's resistance to government demands that it be given access to Google's records of what Americans have been searching for. So, it appears that the people running Google haven't been interested in making ALL information available to everybody. They seem to want to keep quite a bit of it for their own use, which is?

One might wonder why on earth they have been keeping those records in the first place. While it might be convenient to read the world's books online, if we forget, for the moment, that many of those books are the property of people who may not want to give them away, what possible good can come from keeping a record of people's searches? Intentionally, or not, Google's providing the means for anyone to keep track of what you're doing as well as keep an eye on you from space seem to strike at the heart of Constitutional privacy guarantees. There are signs that Google also wants to put your genome on the Internet as soon as it's possible to do so. Why? Before long, we should easily be able to tell how often you change your underwear. Just ask anybody.

Their intention to make the world's information widely available seems to be accelerating a fundamental process that's already going on over much of the world, the result of which is that nearly everything is connected to nearly everything else. One important consequence of this, of course, is that it erodes traditional structure and possibly prevents the development of new structure as well. It's probably important for us to think very seriously about whether an "atomization" of society and culture will really be in our best interest.

Incidentally, where did the two thirty-something grad students--sons of University of Maryland and Michigan State University professors, respectively--who started Google get its odd name? Not from the long-running post-World War I comic strip, "Barney Google," apparently. Instead, it seems that Larry Page and Sergey Brin were trying to make reference to "googol," the mathematical concept, while accepting the idea that most people are likely to feel like spelling it "google."

A "googol" is 1 followed by 100 zeros. It is a VERY large number, so large that it doesn't appear to have any identifiable use at this point, at least when counting. Possibly the only thing on Earth of which there may someday be a googol is the number of Google searches that have been performed through which people who are interested in what you've been doing can conduct "fishing expeditions" with high-speed, hi-tech equipment. In the meantime, be careful what you search for and consider wearing a large hat and dark glasses when you go outside.

Bad news for those who recognize that America's future depends on its willingness to commit more heavily to education (Friday, 1/20/06)
On average, the United States has been getting older while the gap between rich and poor has been widening. An indicator of these trends is that states are now spending more on Medicaid than on K-12 education. At what point will the big story of the day be that the once-wealthiest and most advanced country in the world has become the 21st century prototype of a third-world country?

Will Steve and Mickey together change the world? (Friday, 1/20/06)
Among the hot business stories of recent days is one which could have very broad and profound implications. It is the story about a possible merger between Pixar and Disney. If it happens as rumored, it would make Steve Jobs the largest individual stockholder at Disney and could earn him a seat on Disney's Board of Directors. Suddenly, the man who launched the iconographic computer interface, which became standard throughout the world, the man who was largely responsible for producing animated feature films with computers, and the creator of the fabulously successful iPod, could be helping to direct the company that owns Disney films, the Disney theme parks, the ABC television network, and ESPN.

Long-time Jobs watcher, Adam Engst, says that Steve Jobs, who heads both Apple Computer Corporation and Pixar Animation Studios and who is sometimes called the best CEO in the world, isn't propelled by money at this point--he's already a multi-billionaire--but, instead, wants to change the world. Moreover, he thinks the way to do it is to work though the popular culture. In addition, it's not unreasonable to expect that all this might also have something to do with Jobs' sometimes friendly, sometimes not so friendly rivalry with Bill Gates that goes back to their teens.

Gina Keating in Los Angeles examines the implications of a Disney-Pixar merger. Steven Levingston and Mike Musgrove look at implications too, while also examining the likelihood that it will happen.

Incidentally, both Stephen Jobs and Bill Gates finally turned 50 last year. It seems as though they should be about 150, because it seems that they've been around forever, already changing the world by the time they were 20.

As co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates purchased an operating system from little Seattle Computer Corporation which he made into MS-DOS--essentially a version of the then-dominant CP/M operating system that would run on Intel microprocessors--which he then sold to IBM on a non-exclusive basis. This enabled him to sell it to other computer makers too, and, before long, the great IBM was a minor player in the personal computer industry and Microsoft Corporation was the most powerful and important company in the world.

However, command-line interfaces such as CP/M or MS-DOS made computer users feel like the drivers of early automobiles, who not only had to carry a lot of tools with them, but also had to be amateur mechanics if they expected to go anyplace.

Nearly everybody wanted computers to be easier to use, and when young Steve Jobs took a tour of Xerox PARC and saw what Xerox was doing with the development of an iconographic interface, he thought that it was obvious that this would be the future of personal computing.

The Apple Lisa was his company's first effort along these lines, and it was not successful, in part, because it seemed to cost about as much as a house. However, in 1984, Apple released the first Macintosh, which seemed to many business users to be no more than an interesting toy. At the beginning, there were exactly two applications which would run on it, and neither was very useful in its original form: MacWrite and MacPaint. Steve got together with Bill Gates, and, before long, Microsoft released Multiplan, a spreadsheet program for the Mac, followed by Microsoft Word, a word processor for the Macintosh. Both were buggy at the beginning, leading many observers to suspect that this had not been accidental.

Microsoft released Windows 3.1 in 1992, its first operating system with an iconographic interface. It basically "sat on top" of MS-DOS, and was not very impressive, even though more than a million copies were sold within two months. Later, though, the company released Windows 95 on August 24, the anniversary of the explosion of Mount Vesuvius and the burial of Pompeii and Herculaneum. We thought at the time that this was amusing and significant.

Along the way, Apple sued Microsoft, claiming that Windows was simply a knockoff of the Mac, but Microsoft won. Microsoft certainly had not invented the iconographic interface, but Apple hadn't either. The original ideas came from Xerox, which, even though it was marketing CP/M-based personal computers of its own at the time, never brought the concepts to market itself.

Over the years, Apple produced a lot of interesting and elegant products, but, for a long time, it was a pitiable and very ineffective company--particularly during the years that Jobs was not running it. Meanwhile, Microsoft became the most influential corporation in the world, and, while Steve Jobs worked his way toward becoming a "poor billionaire," Bill Gates became the richest billionaire of all. For years now, he's been the wealthiest individual in the world.

For a brief period, before the Justice Department brought suit to break Microsoft up into a group of "baby Bills," and before the bursting of the dot-com bubble, Gates' net worth was about $100 billion. It's considerably less at this point, but, at least for the moment, Billionaire Bill remains the richest individual on the planet, with Warren Buffett following fairly close behind and Steve Jobs trailing somewhere nearer Oprah as a "poor billionaire" in the Fortune magazine rankings.

Things have been going Steve's way lately. Not only has an entire industry grown up around Apple's phenomenally successful iPod, but, also, the Macintosh computer has been gaining some market share again, in part, because of the iPod, but also, in part, because of its elegant "Tiger" operating system. Meanwhile, Microsoft has delayed the introduction of the latest version of Windows while continually trying to plug holes in the current versions that hackers have been exploiting mercilessly.

Is it possible that Steve Jobs could still displace Bill Gates after all these years as the wealthiest, and more importantly, the most influential force in the hi-tech revolution that is transforming work and life throughout the world? Stay tuned.

Why it's important to continue the search for intelligent life on earth (Friday, 1/20/06)
Curt Anderson in Fort Lauderdale, Florida presents evidence of mankind's capacity for being a predator who preys upon the weak. Throughout the United States, homeless persons are being attacked by people who apparently do it just because they can.

Does the federal government seem like some sort of hospital? (Wednesday, 1/18/06)
Business Week's Howard Gleckman discusses what he regards as a very small step in the direction of "tax sanity." He says that Pease and PEP are good examples of how goofy the American tax code has gotten.

Incidentally, historians seem to agree that very few American presidents have had good second terms. Moreover, it may be possible to build a pretty strong case for how, of the forty-two men who have occupied the presidency, the majority have been fairly limited, unremarkable, mediocre, or outright awful. In fact, it might appear that the likelihood of a president's being uninspiring has increased as the franchise has broadened.

During the country's early days, the U.S. was not so much a democracy as an oligarchy, with only white, male landowners able to vote. Many of the founders were remarkable individuals, and early presidents were chosen by and from a select group of American aristocrats, even though some, like Franklin, Hamilton, and even Washington, had undistinguished social origins. Demagoguery might not have played such a large role as when the "masses" of the population became able to vote. Nonetheless--and this seems very important--as the United States became increasingly democratic, it became an increasingly successful society. Public opinion isn't always right, but participation and a widespread sense of ownership are very important.

At the moment, according to polls, President Bush's approval rating among potential voters is quite low. However, the public seems to have even less regard for the Congress, and, when asked about the Republican or Democratic parties, approval falls into single digits.

Still, despite common public attitudes, overall, the American Congress seems absolutely righteous, compared to the Congress of decades ago. In politics, for many purposes, perceptions ARE reality, but, overall, in fact, perceptions are one thing, while realities can be quite different, and, of course, this is a REPRESENTATIVE democracy, so the greater number of voters tend to get the elected representatives that they want and deserve.

Do the Republicans' current problems mean that the Democrats will regain control of Congress in this fall's election and win the presidency in 2008? Maybe, but not necessarily. The whole thing might remind you of an old joke: Two campers wake up in the middle of the night because they hear a bear outside their tent. One of the campers hurriedly puts on his running shoes. The other says, "What are you doing? You know you can't outrun a bear." The other replies, that's right, but I can outrun YOU."

Incidentally, if you noticed that we said that forty-two men have occupied the American presidency, and wonder what all the "41" and "43" stuff is all about that the two Presidents Bush keep talking about, there is an answer. We're correct, but so are they. George W. Bush is the 43rd president, in a sense, but only 42 men have held the office, because Grover Cleveland had two NON-consecutive terms.

Is Medicare's prescription drug program turning into a Katrina-style debacle? (Monday, 1/16/06)
So far, it's taken only two weeks for the new drug program to turn into a mess for millions of individuals and lots of states. In fact, with health emergencies suddenly appearing all over the country, the Bush administration has stepped in to try to alleviate at least some of people's problems getting the medications they need. Here's more from Robert Pear.

Many older people who were bewildered by the range of choices when they were trying to sign up for the program are now finding that it probably didn't make much difference what they signed up for--the medications that they need probably aren't covered anyway. Nonetheless, the tremendous range of choices in America is complicating the lives, not only of older Americans, but people in general. Here's more from Sandra Block of USA Today.

Incidentally, if you've been hoping that Congress will fix the Alternative Minimum Tax problem before it hits you, there may be less chance of that now, given that Congress may have to scramble to fix Medicare's new prescription drug mess.

Penny wise and pound foolish; well, penny foolish too (Monday, 1/16/06)
Americans have an international reputation for saving too little, spending too much, and building up too much debt. Michael Liedtke writes from San Francisco that, with their their profligate use of credit cards, young adult Americans aren't giving nervous economists much reason to relax. Along related lines, Marilyn Gardner writes about how debt is limiting the futures of so many of the young.

However, it isn't only the young who seem to suffer from this malady, and there is good evidence that Americans of all ages could benefit from a bit more financial literacy. For instance, a new survey conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation finds that the majority of Americans feel that they wouldn't have much chance of accumulating net wealth of $200,000, while a fifth of those surveyed indicated that their best chance of becoming well-off financially will come from buying lottery tickets, according to a report by Andrea Coombes of Marketwatch.

Precisely the opposite is true, of course. Anyone with only a passing familiarity with multiplier effects and the magic of compounding will know that, by beginning fairly early and sticking with even a modest savings plan, the building of genuine wealth is nearly inevitable. Winning the lottery, on the other hand, is about as likely as being struck by a meteor.

We've pointed out for years that the world would be a different place if the majority of the population were simply to learn about descriptive statistics and its implications, even though it typically takes up no more than about 15 percent of most college introductory statistics textbooks. The great majority of texts covers inferential statistics. Moroever, while we hear most about the hi-tech revolution--because it's "sexy," and it IS changing the world, of course--the knowledge revolution in virtually all fields is leaving most individuals and most institutions further and further behind as well.

Finally, what is true of the part also seems to be true of the whole, in this case. It isn't only individual Americans who are spending more than they're bringing in. The federal government has been doing the same. Jeannine Aversa reports that a growing number of analysts are worrying about the impact of the federal budget deficit on the American economy. The greater the deficit, the more the federal government will have to borrow, meaning that it will be competing more with individuals and businesses for available capital. It also means that it will be borrowing more from foreign sources.

David Lague writes in the International Herald Tribune about increasing international concerns over China's burgeoning financial power, in part, due to its great accumulation of foreign exchange. China's reserves now are nearly as great as those of Japan.

How much are you willing to pay to be a stage actor? (Monday, 1/16/06)
Even if you're greatly talented, betting your future on success in show business can make Las Vegas seem like a benevolent place or it can make selling your house to buy lottery tickets seem like a rational thing to do.

The talent market routinely grinds up even gifted people, and it is not unusual for the very few who make it big in Hollywood first to spend fifteen years trying. That is, by the time many people decide that they don't have what it takes or that they're not going to make it, for whatever reason, it has become pretty late to be a beginner at something else.

Only a small percentage of Hollywood's feature films make money, and even well-known actors still struggle with a life of financial insecurity. Work doesn't become less competitive as one climbs the ladder of success, even for stars, but, instead, even more so. It's only the A-list stars who can make so much money on a single film that they'll never need any more who probably won't have to worry about long-term financial security. However, these people have to "build a moat around their lives" because of their tremendous visibility, and that's also very expensive.

If films, television, recording, or live touring are tough, these lines of work often pale by comparison to life in the theater, even for successes on Broadway.Here's more from Charles Isherwood of the New York Times.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The King Center (Monday, 1/16/06)
Even the smartest, most motivated, most conscientious person on earth isn't going to get everything right. People are complicated, and, paradoxically, imperfection may be part of the definition of a "perfect" human being. The idea has shown up in many cultures throughout the world throughout history. It's probably most familiar to many Westerners in the form of Christianity's concept of "original sin."

For instance, Thomas Jefferson was a flawed human being in many ways, and not just because he apparently carried on an affair and produced children with his slave, Sally Hemmings, who was also the half-sister of his dead wife. In addition, he was a hypocrite with respect to slavery, and he was a world-class spendthrift who managed to work his way from wealth to huge debt by the time he died in 1826. Despite his long and carefully-crafted reputation, it's likely that he was as much dilettante as "Renaissance man." He was a devious politician who, like so most other American presidents who have served two terms, might have had a better presidential record if he had left office after four years. Nonetheless, there is a large monument to him in Washington, D. C., and that probably isn't a mistake.

Winston Churchill was an unabashed colonialist, one of Ghandi's principal opponents, had attitudes toward women which today would make most persons in either the UK or the U.S. cringe, mindlessly put information in one of his books that helped the Nazis later, left most of his political contemporaries with the impression that he was a "loose cannon," and he certainly drank too much. Nonetheless, he was a great man, maybe the greatest in a thousand years.

John Kennedy is another example. Disclosures following his death in 1963 have taken a good deal of the shine off the "Camelot" myth. Nonetheless, he performed brilliantly in the Cuban Missile Crisis, helping the world to avert annihilation. However, judging from what he told New York Times columnist James Reston immediately following his first meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in Europe after becoming president, Kennedy seemed to recognize that he may have had a lot to do with creating the Cuban missile crisis in the first place. He felt that he left the Soviet dictator with the impression that he was not only young, but also naive and weak. If it had not been for that impression, Khrushchev might not have sent missiles to Cuba in the first place.

For several years during the 1990s, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich not only were opponents, but also each others' "protection," in a sense. For a time, the Republicans were unable to push ahead too vigorously over Clinton's personal flaws because they had Gingrich. Similarly, the Democrats were unable to call too much attention to Gingrich's personal flaws because they had Clinton. Many normal Americans might not want either of these men as next-door neighbors, or want them to hold high public office, once they've gotten to know something about their personal lives. Nonetheless, both are brilliant analysts, and we would be very foolish not to pay close attention to what either has to say about American or geopolitical issues. They have two of the most powerful political minds of the past century.

So, the fact that Martin Luther King apparently carried on extramarital affairs and that rumors about plagiarism relating to his doctoral dissertation at Boston University have been in the wind for decades do not diminish the fact that he was one of the most important figures in modern American history who could end up having a profound influence on world history during the remainder of this century and beyond.

He never saw his 40th birthday, but he would be approaching 80 now, if he had lived. Unfortunately, his family has been carrying on a major feud which, in part, has to do with whether the King Center should be turned over to the National Park Service.

Quick tax guide: 1) Add up all you've made, 2) Send it in to the IRS (Sunday, 1/15/06)
Well, okay, it isn't quite that bad yet, but it may feel like it, if this is the year you get snared by the Alternative Minimum Tax. The ATM was instituted more than 35 years ago to insure that rich people could not avoid paying any tax whatever, so, if you end up paying it, it may be the closest you'll ever be to feeling rich.

Also, don't feel left out if you avoid the AMT this time; if it doesn't get you this year, there's always next, or the year after that. For reasons which may mystify but not surprise you, Congress neglected to index the ATM to inflation, which is why non-rich Americans are suddenly having to think about the AMT at all. All it knows is that your income may seem to be five times what it would have been when men first walked on the moon. Never mind that, in terms of buying power, $5.00 isn't quite enough to buy what $1.00 could buy in 1969 when the AMT was passed into law. Five dollars isn't five times as much as a 1969 dollar; a five-dollar bill simply has become the new dollar bill.

How could the Congress be so neglectful as to pass a law that seems so monumentally stupid, you might ask, particularly when we seem to have many of the best representatives that money can buy?

No, it's unlikely that you will ask a question like that during a time when many older Americans are seeing the new Medicare subscription medication benefit simply as some sort of cruel trick to bewilder aging brains. Also, we're living in a time when FEMA has done it all over again following the devastation from the fires in Oklahoma, even though Michael Brown apparently is off running his consulting firm which intends to advise people on responding to disasters.

And, oh yes, there are those in Congress whose votes apparently have been swayed by whether or not super-crook, er, super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff bought them a meal or a plane ticket. Is it possible that there are people in Washington who are so amazingly petty? Isn't being a member of the great American Congress ENOUGH, for heaven's sake? Apparently, not. For some, it's worth doing only if the job comes with lunch. Isn't it only a very pathetic crook who would be willing to sell a vote for such a low price?

Many Americans are still falling behind on their credit card payments (Tuesday, 1/10/06)
A principal difference between borrowing money from your neighborhood loan shark and borrowing it from a credit card company is that the latter isn't likely to break your knees if you don't pay up on time. It's important to read the fine print before paying with plastic, though, because you may be committing yourself to interest rates that can be hard to believe.

Many Americans carry a lot of credit card debt, and may not realize that, if they make only minimum payments, they're essentially just paying the interest, and it could take most of the remainder of their lives to pay off the debt itself. Credit cards can be very helpful if you are trying to wreck your life. Most experts in personal finance suggest biting the bullet and paying them off as quickly as possible. Then, you should use a little of the money you will save on interest, buy a good scissors, and cut up all those pieces of plastic so that you'll never be tempted to use them again.

Too many Americans live on the edge most of the time, and, credit cards can help them fall off if any of their regular expenses increase only slightly. Martin Crutsingter reports that data from the American Bankers Associated indicates that the proportion of credit card accounts in arrears during the third quarter remained near the record high of the quarter before.

How can the U.S. hold its position with respect to innovation? (Tuesday, 1/10/06)
Americans have a tendency to assume that everything is better in the U.S., even though that hasn't been the case in many areas of life for many years. For instance, the gap between rich and poor has been wider in the United States than in many other countries for a long time, and, despite overall average prosperity, there continues to be seemingly intractable institutionalized poverty. Also, the U.S. isn't anywhere near the best on infant mortality.

In the tech area, the U.S. is about 16th in the world on Internet broadband access, and, in fact, what is called "broadband' in the United States really is "medium band." Internet access in places like South Korea or Singapore is so fast that it will make most U.S. so-called "broadband users" feel as though they've returned to 9600 baud dial-up.

Most American would not want to live in an America that is no longer in charge of "inventing the future." Nonetheless, competition for hi-tech leadership is heating up, and many U.S. trends are pointing in the wrong direction. For instance, Americans in general have exactly the wrong attitude toward science and technology, as well as their own need for at least minimal mathematical and technical competence. Moreover, the U.S. isn't producing nearly enough engineers, and public attitudes translate into political policies that seem wrong-headed and perverse in the extreme. Vivek Wadhwa has been thinking about what can be done to prevent Americans from turning the U.S. into some sort of third-world country.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Millennium Seed Bank Project (Sunday, 1/8/06)
If Ray Kurzweil is right about the disconnect between perceptions and reality--i.e., people tend to perceive historical changes as linear, when, in fact, they have been and continue to be geometric--the world as we know it and as previous generations have known it will be left behind very rapidly. The Millennium Seed Bank Project has this in mind as it attempts to preserve the current diversity of plant life for future generations of humans. Incidentally, it's possible for seeds and other plant life to survive for a very long time, as research at Pompeii and Herculaneum has shown.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: What You Should Know About the AMT (Wednesday, 1/4/06)
You could be forgiven for confusing the AMT with your ATM, because you may have to open up the latter to pay the former. AMT stands for Alternative Minimum Tax, and it wasn't intended for you, unless you're among the very rich.

Nonetheless, because Congress, in all its wisdom, didn't index the AMT to inflation, it could soon snare you anyway, unless Congress steps in to head it off. You can count on that, if you want, but, in the meantime, it's probably a good idea to get up to speed on what could soon turn out to be a very bad surprise for millions of Americans who never have felt rich. Here's what you should know about the alternative minimum tax from Kathy Krisof of the Los Angeles Times.

More on China's tremendous economic growth (Tuesday, 1/3/06)
The Chinese government-controlled Xinhua News Agency reports that the country's economic growth during 2005 was higher than initially thought, and that the Chinese economy is even larger than first reported. The Washington Post reports from Shanghai that China's economy grew by 9.8 percent last year.

The implications aren't all rosy, however. China's booming economy means that the Chinese government has been giving little priority to its growing environmental disaster. Moreover, China's voracious appetite for energy means, not only an alteration of geopolitical relationships, but also increased pressure on China's coal mines to produce. One consequence of the latter is that mine disasters have become so commonplace in China that it takes something really spectacular to attract international press attention and be regarded as genuine news.

Meanwhile, in the "how the world is changing" department, France's economy expanded by 0.7 percent during the third-quarter of last year, and that is taken as very good news. It wasn't long ago that France was a major colonial power and French was regarded as the must-learn language of international business and diplomacy. French is still being taught in large numbers of American high schools and colleges, but mostly because the schools still have people who can teach it. Of far greater use for life and work during the remainder of the 21st century, though, might be Mandarin or Arabic.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: International Association of Nanotechnology (Tuesday, 1/3/06)
We called attention to Ray Kurzweil yesterday, as well as Bill Joy. Both are among the people on Earth who know more about nanotechnology than most of the rest of us.

Both seem to agree that it will be "the next big thing," in fact, probably the biggest thing so far, altering, not only how the world conducts its economic affairs, but changing the nature of human life on the planet, and SOON. With respect to nanotechnology, they differ mostly in their attitudes toward what Dr. Joy calls the "balance of promise and peril." Dr. Kurzweil tends to be more optimistic; Dr. Joy tends to be more worried.

If you do research on nanotechnology, you might be interested in presenting a paper or speaking at one of the upcoming conferences sponsored by the International Association of Nanotechnology. On the other hand, if you're still wondering what all the fuss is about, you might want to visit the Association's site as well.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: A Brief Career Summary of Ray Kurzweil (Monday, 1/2/06)
Several of the most important minds in the world are carried around inside the heads of visionaries who have spent most of their time since graduate school in the private sector.

One is the great Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel Corporation. Another is Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore, perhaps best-known because of "Moore's Law." Another is Sun Microsystems co-founder, Bill Joy, and, of course, there is Ray Kurzweil, whom Fortune magazine and others have called the successor to Thomas Edison and one of the most influential thinkers of modern history. Here's a Brief Career Summary of Ray Kurzweil.

His latest book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, should be read by all government and corporate officials, as well as anyone else who is interested in the dramatically changed contexts within which all human activities will be carried on during the years immediately ahead.

Of course, two of the most influential minds of modern times were not listed above--Bill Gates and Stephen Jobs--because the term "since graduate school" doesn't apply to them. Bill Gates didn't finish college, and Steve Jobs earned no college credits at all.

You might be tempted to say that Mr. Jobs, who is CEO of both Apple Computer Corporation and Pixar in Hollywood, has done all this with "nothing but a high school education." However, the truth about him is the same as what noted organizational psychologist Carl Frost used to say about Victor Krause, who was responsible for redirecting Wolverine World Wide and inventing the "Hush Puppy" shoe: that he has everything, INCLUDING a high school education.

Gates and Jobs have been largely "self-created," both are thinkers AND doers, and both continue to have a tremendous effect on life in the modern world, including the rapidly evolving global economy.

Boom, boomer, bust, or buster? (Sunday, 1/1/06)
If you watch ABC's "Good Morning America," you may know that Mellody Hobson is the program's financial expert. Here are some of her predictions for the American economy of 2006.

Incidentally, this is the year that the huge American baby-boom cohort begins to turn 60, and many are wondering if they will be able to finance a "forever young" lifestyle once they stop working. That is, while Ms. Hobson is wondering if it will be boom or bust for the economy, many of America's "near-elderly" are wondering if retirement will be a boomer buster.

And, oh, yes, today not only is the first day of the rest of your life, it's also when the biggest expansion of Medicare in its history begins its roll-out. Kevin Freking has more from Washington on the new Medicare prescription medication benefit.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: China's Business Schools (Sunday, 1/1/06)
China contains nearly as many people now as the entire world contained in 1910 at the beginning of what has come to be known as the American Century, when U.S. population was only 92 million.

The world's most populous country has had the world's fastest-growing economy for several years now, and it suddenly appears that China's economy is the world's fourth-largest, behind only the U.S., Japan, and Germany. China will soon have more people on the Internet than any other country, and it is rapidly becoming one of the largest markets in the world for personal computers, television sets, and automobiles. It also appears that China now has as many cellular telephone users as the United States has total population.

All these may be among the reasons for expecting that the 21st and 22nd centuries could turn out to be like the many centuries before the Italian Renaissance started Europe and people of European ancestry on their way to global dominance.

Incidentally, China wasn't a democracy during those centuries either. China was the most advanced society on Earth, while most Europeans were living in mud huts, and no one in Europe knew about the existence of the Americas.

You might gather from all this that China also has an increasing need for people who know how to run businesses. They've thought of that. Business Week magazine has been compiling a great deal of information about China's business school explosion and why it is not only Chinese companies that will need the new generation of Chinese-trained manager