January 2007

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Grand Challenges For Engineering (Wednesday, 1/31/07)
Doing well in the new global economy depends upon hi-tech innovation, so it should concern all Americans that China and India are producing more engineers than the United States at this point.

Even the current Bush administration--as opposed to the previous Bush administration--which hasn't been known for a high degree of scientific and technological sophistication, is beginning to call attention to space issues again, now that several other countries, including China, Japan, and India, seem to be giving national priority to developing effective space programs.

Here's Grand Challenges For Engineering from the National Academy of Engineering, which addresses key questions such as where the great new ideas in engineering will come from and what they will be? The site contains a number of essays, including one by a former president who spent more time on active military duty than any other except Dwight Eisenhower. Also, he was trained as a nuclear engineer. He is Jimmy Carter.

The widely differing perceptions of employee benefits (Monday, 1/29/07)
A new study finds that employers and employees frequently disagree about how well workers are being treated and which benefits are most important to workers.

Basic research long has found that people tend to exaggerate the extent to which others share their interpretations of things they regard as important, with the exception that people tend to exaggerate the uniqueness of their own suffering.

This tendency may help account for the persistent popular attitude that if government REALLY wants to control crime, it should threaten would-be criminals with death. As one victimized former Enron employee said following Ken Lay's death, "Dying is easy; "poof" and you're gone." She was annoyed by his death, and probably not for the same reasons as his family regretted it. She seemed to feel that it would have been harder on him to spend several decades in a box. Saddam Hussein too, perhaps.

The death penalty is still widely understood to be the most frightening and severe punishment of all, even though there are between 30,000 and 40,000 "successful" suicides in the United States alone each year. Moreover, political entities--whether it be Japan during World War II or contemporary fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organizations--never seem to have much difficulty recruiting large numbers of people who are willing to sacrifice their lives for a cause or for their fellows. There is also considerable evidence that some people commit capital crimes BECAUSE they want government to kill them. You've no doubt heard about "suicide by cop," and it appears to be a reality

Despite these facts, traditional attitudes persist, perhaps because many people in power are generalizing and projecting their own attitudes. They may be exaggerating the extent to which others interpret things the way they interpret them. In corporate life, employers and employees seem to do that too. As we've said so many times, the knowledge revolution, interacting synergistically with the technology revolution, has left most individuals and most institutions far behind.

One of capitalism's main supports is eroding, according to Mr. Stein (Sunday, 1/28/07)
Ben Stein is a lawyer, economist, former presidential speech writer, and son of a former Chairman of the Council of Economic advisers, but you may know him best as an actor, comedian, or TV game show host. At the very least, he is a very smart and talented guy who can be very funny, but isn't simply funny. When he gets serious, it's very much worth our time to listen to what he has to say.

Even though he's one of capitalism's enthusiasts, he is not enthusiastic about some of the things that have been going on lately. For instance, if you want to really annoy him, tell him about how some CEOs apparently have been backdating stock options. The magic of capitalism depends on our being able to trust other people with our money, he says.

Which is more important: skin tone or education? (Saturday, 1/27/07)
New research from Vanderbilt University finds that if your skin tone is a shade lighter, it will be worth about as much as an extra year of formal education, so far as your earnings are concerned.

Travis Loller's headline says that skin tone affects earnings, which may be a reasonable interpretation of the findings under the circumstances, but may also reflect the need for many journalists to learn more about science and research, including what science IS.

For one thing, most journalists who report on research studies need to better understand the difference between "correlation" and "causation." Strictly speaking, despite Mr. Loller's headline, Professor Joni Hersch's research hasn't demonstrated that skin tone has a causal relationship to earnings. Why? Because she hasn't done WHAT IT TAKES to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship.

Instead, Professor Hersch's study provides evidence of a CORRELATION between skin tone and earnings. A causal relationship is much stronger and harder to demonstrate. This isn't a criticism of Professor Hersch; it's simply other people's responsibility to interpret her study and its results correctly.

It may not be an important distinction in this particular case, because there is ample evidence that discrimination based on appearance affects career outcomes. Nonetheless, it's a critical distinction overall and helps explain why there is so much public misunderstanding of what science is and what researchers do.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Child and Adolescent Health and Development (Wednesday, 1/24/07)
Yes, while we've been speculating about the existence of alien intelligence elsewhere in the universe, the latest research shows that we've probably been surrounded by it here on Earth all along.

The language research on the great apes, as well as Dr. Irene Pepperberg's work with Alex and other African grey parrots, suggest that at least some of the people who are concerned about animal rights probably are on to something. It is now clear that there is a grand continuity across nature, and that this includes humanity. We are very different from other creatures, but horses also are very different from chickens. In many cases, the differences are quantitative, not qualitative; i.e., matters of degree, not of kind.

Moreover, as we've been saying for years, the synergistic interaction of the knowledge and technology revolutions has left nearly all traditional institutions and most individuals far behind. Most of the beliefs that most people have about most things are simply wrong, or, at least, unjustified by the facts as we can best know them at present. Most people's traditional beliefs about themselves and the world around them need to be brought up to at least the 19th century or so.

Will humanity take questions about other species seriously? Probably not anytime soon. At the moment, we're still doing a highly inadequate job of guaranteeing the rights of human beings, and we're doing a particularly bad job of caring for humanity's young. Millions of children die each year from diseases that are highly preventable. We have the means, but we still lack the will.

Here's the World Health Organization's Child and Adolescent Health and Development site.

Restrictive visa policies threaten America's financial markets, some say (Tuesday, 1/23/07)
According to the New York Times, Macao already has surpassed Las Vegas as the world's most important gambling center, and there is fear that New York may soon lose its status as the world's principal financial market. According to some analysists, if the latter happens, it may have been helped along by America's restrictive H-1B visa policies.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Urban Age Institute (Tuesday, 1/23/07)
What to do about the world's cities? For one thing, many are far larger than they've ever been throughout most of world history; even far larger than any have been within the memory of many people still living. The problems of cities are serious, numerous, and highly varied, and, because of the geometric increase in complexity that comes with system growth, highly novel. The Urban Age Institute has been doing research on these issues for a number of years.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Travelers in the Middle East Archive (Monday, 1/22/07)
There are likely to be better places to vacation right now than many parts of the Middle East. This area has been troubled for centuries and has been a danger to the entire world for decades. During the Cold War period, it was feared by many that World War III or a life-ending nuclear exchange between the U. S. and the old Soviet Union could start there, much as World War I was precipitated by a few crazies in Sarajevo.

Now that all of the industrial democracies depend on Middle Eastern oil and now that whatever fragile equilibria there are in the region are in danger of being upset entirely, the world worries about the Middle East as never before. While the current American President did seem to pour gasoline into the toaster in 2003, without really understanding what he was doing, it doesn't necessarily mean that, if there had never been a President Bush II, everything in that region would be just dandy by now. Not hardly.

At any rate, over the decades, Western perceptions of the region have been greatly influenced by various travel guides, which you can access through Rice University's Travelers in the Middle East Archive.

New Orleans to the nation's employers: Help! (Sunday, 1/21/07)
The great old city of New Orleans, which has played such an important role in the past three centuries of North American history, contains only about half as many people now as before Hurricane Katrina slammed into it the region and broke the city's dikes during the final days of August 2005.

There is now a major New Orleans diaspora throughout the United States, and possibly beyond. Many of New Orleans' people would rather go home than live wherever they're living now, but vast regions of the city are still in ruins and probably can't be fixed. Housing is in short supply, even for those with money. However, even if there were places to live, large numbers of people can't go home again unless they have jobs waiting. Becky Boherer reports that the federal government is hoping that 100 major companies will answer the call to bring 100 jobs each to New Orleans.

Japan needs foreign workers, but it isn't easy for anybody involved (Sunday, 1/21/07)
It's relatively easy for newcomers in the United States to become Americans, feel like Americans, be thought of as Americans. For instance, it's highly unlikely that the current Governor of California, who was born in Austria and speaks English with a fairly heavy Austrian accent, feels like anything other than an American, nor is he likely to be perceived as anything other than American by most of the other people who live in the United States. Similarly with Henry Kissinger, who also speaks with a heavy accent, this time from the Nuremberg area of Germany, and Madeleine Albright, who was born in what is now the Czech Republic, both former U. S. Secretaries of State.

Not so in Japan. If you come from some other part of the world, you can live for decades in Japan and still be considered a foreigner, or "gaijin." The strong cultural currents complicate things during times when the Japanese economy needs to attract foreigner workers, and this is one of those times. Here's more from Joseph Coleman in Oizumi.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Office of Sustainable Fisheries (Sunday, 1/21/07)
What happens when the world's human population increases at a much faster rate than its fish population, and fish is a favorite foodstuff for humans? The fish supply is rapidly depleted, that's what.

Through all of the tens of thousands of years of human experience on this planet until about the 1840s, there were always fewer than a billion people on Earth. Now, there are about 6 1/2 billion, and that's a serious problem if you're a fish. It's a serious problem for people too.

NOAA isn't the guy with the ark. Instead, it's a U. S. government agency. Among many other things, it maintains the Office of Sustainable Fisheries.

Are you a "millionaire?" Will you be able to retire in luxury? Maybe not (Friday, 1/19/07)
A million dollars isn't what it used to be. In fact, because of the relentless bite of inflation, many "millionaires" feel very middle-class now and have to keep working and worrying about their retirement years. Here's more from Doug Short who, among other things, tells about how much less buying power current big winners on the "Millionaire" game show have compared to those when the program started in 1999.

Speaking of inflation, it remains a threat to the U. S. economy, according to officials at the Federal Reserve, despite moderate growth prospects for 2007, and even though inflation moderated last year.

What do Michigan and North Dakota have in common? (Friday, 1/19/07)
They tie for the highest score on United Van Lines' "outbound" scale. The study examines whether the company's customers are moving out or moving in and compares states. Of course, their research doesn't cover people who are moving their belongings themselves by making several trips with old pickup trucks, so there may be a socioeconomic bias. Still, their data may reflect gains and losses of high-value jobs which may portend good or bad for a state's future.

What do Venezuela and Iran have in common? (Thursday, 1/18/07)
Iran's President Ahmadinejad has visited Venezuela and appeared with President Chavez. Their countries are the fifth and fourth largest oil producers in the world, respectively, and both Presidents seem driven to increase their power and influence in their respective regions of the world.

Some years ago, it wouldn't have made too much difference what they did, because both countries needed to sell their oil, and the United States was the dominant market available. One way or another, Venezuelan and Iranian oil would find its way to the U. S., whether those two countries liked it or not.

However, times have changed. The Chinese economy's voracious appetite for energy means that oil-producing nations may have more leverage in influencing the U.S. China has driven world-wide demand and oil prices upward, and India is coming on strong too.

Nonetheless, the Christian Science Monitor's editorial board believes that Venezuela and Iran are isolating themselves from the world community, and are doing so to their own disadvantage.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Inflation Rate in Your Hands (Thursday, 1/18/07)
The price of everything, including labor, inflates over time, but at different rates at different times. Inflation wouldn't be a threat to an economy if everything got more expensive by exactly the same amount at exactly the same time. For example, if, at the stroke of midnight, a zero were added to all of the currencies, all of the amounts in financial records, the price of all of the items in all of the stores, and all of the paychecks, everything would go on as it had before.

However, it doesn't work that way. Instead, the prices of some things inflate faster than others, and a measure of inflation--such as the Consumer Price Index in the United States--is based on an average of prices of what is hoped to be a representative sample of items in the economy.

If you live in the UK, you can use the personal inflation calculator provided by the Office for National Statistics to help you determine if a particular product is increasing in price at a faster rate than the national average.

Is 65 the new 55? Well, maybe so far as planning to continue working is concerned (Sunday, 1/14/07)
Martha Hamilton writes in the Washington Post about people who have reached what once was considered retirement age but can't afford to retire.

For several decades, many American workers enjoyed various layers of "protection" from economic environmental forces that were provided by employers and/or labor unions. During recent years, however, more and more workers have had to take on a greater share of the responsibility and risk of responding to the ups and downs of markets as well as the consequences of globalization. A greater proportion of American workers are more on their own when it comes to healthcare or retirement, and, with respect to the latter, at least, many people are called on to make decisions when they really don't know what they're doing.

Along these lines, for older people, it's probably a particularly inconvenient time for mortgages to get far more varied, complicated, and puzzling. Here's more from Kirstin Downey of the Washington Post.

Vietnam makes it into the WTO (Friday, 1/12/07)
Vietnam has become the 150th member of the World Trade Organization. Frank Zeller has more from Hanoi.

If greater economic freedom necessarily leads to greater political freedom, as many American ideologues believe, it is necessary to explain Singapore.

Several Asian countries appear to be following Singapore's lead more than the American model, including China and Vietnam. However, Singapore is a city-state, which may mean that its success may not easily generalize to other sovereign states with very different attributes.

For example, China has a massive population spread over a huge land area. There is still very good reason to doubt that will be able to hold together as one country now that the have vs. have-not gap as well as great regional differences are being exacerbated by the tremendous economic growth that is occurring to a far greater extent in some regions of the country than in others. Centralized political control is getting harder as some regions achieve an increasing degree of autonomy in relation to the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

Vietnam doesn't have China's population or regional problems. It has both a much smaller population and a much smaller land area. Even though its economy has been growing at an impressive rate in recent years, its newly-achieved WTO membership will help even more. In all cases, stay tuned.

Tradition is still trumping policy in China (Friday, 1/12/07)
China has a very long history that continues to cast a very long shadow. Despite Mao's unification of the country in 1949 and the infamous "Cultural Revolution" a couple of decades later, which were intended to disconnect China from its solidly entrenched traditions, Chinese life still is very much influenced by traditional attitudes.

For instance, the Chinese have long preferred male to female children, so when the Chinese government, in an effort to gets its exploding population under control, instituted the "one-child" policy, it produced the unintended consequence of encouraging selective abortions, which modern technology has made easier. Despite its illegality, the practice has continued to such an extent that an historic gender imbalance is developing throughout the country. Here's more from Beijing.

What young people want (Friday, 1/12/07)
Well, some young people anyway. The people commonly referred to as "Generation Y" seem to most want wealth and fame, according to a new survey.

Social cycles probably are better represented metaphorically by some sort of spiral than by the pendulum. There is no good reason to expect that Generation Y's parents' attitudes toward themselves and their world will come back in identical fashion. Nonetheless, cycles come and go, and, already, there is an even newer generation of young people who seem to think that "Generation Y" folks are hopelessly old-fashioned and out of date.

The House passes the new minimum wage bill (Wednesday, 1/10/07)
If the bill also passes the Senate and is signed into law by President Bush, it will mean that the federal minimum wage will reach $7.25 per hour within 26 months.

While the bill was developed by Democrats in the House, insiders believe that Repubicans and Democrats will get together on this one and that the President will sign it. It would be the first increase in the federal minimum wage in a decade.

Critics say that a better way to help poor families would be to offer a tax credit. An increase in the minimum wage will help mostly privileged suburban young people with part-time jobs, they say. Still, Mark Trumbull writes from Oklahoma about what life is like for the poorest of America's working poor.

Retreat from Friedman? (Wednesday, 1/10/07)
Nobel Laureate George Akerlof attempts to move academic economics away from the free-market ideas of Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman. Here's more from the New York Times' Louis Uchitelle.

At any rate, many economists agree with Milton Friedman that an unfettered market does the most efficient job of distributing economic resources, and this works best for most people who are inside the system.

On the other hand, other economists would say that a growing number of the world's people seem to be permanently trapped outside the system, so that the market doesn't contribute to the quality of their lives.

Meanwhile, Dr. Charles Wheelan notes that income inequality seems to be increasing and explains why he thinks it makes a difference, and not only to the poor.

If you don't believe that inequality is on the increase in the United States, you will need to explain why, even with a less-than-impressive economy, the luxury auto market is flourishing.

Meanwhile, if you're not among those with lots of money who can't think of anything better to do with it than to buy a show-off car, you might want to consider getting rid of your car altogether and taking the bus. A new study says that you'll probably save more than $6,000 per year, to say nothing of the diminished wear and tear on your arteries during rush hour.

Incidentally, many people who have visited the Palace of Versailles return saying that they can better understand why there was a French Revolution. In the United States, a new study from the US National Alliance to End Homelessness says that there are almost 750,000 people without homes in the United States.

It's not what we have but what we do that's important, and this includes what we do with what we have.

What? A glut of ethanol plants already? (Sunday, 1/7/07)
Things can happen fast, particularly in free societies with free economies. It seems like a week ago Thursday that we were first hearing about corn-based ethanol as part of a complex solution to our dependence on foreign energy as well as the need for reducing greenhouse gasses. Now, Mark Clayton reports for the Christian Science Monitor that a new study indicates that we may soon have too many ethanol plants. In fact, the Earth Policy Institute says that ethanol could consume twice as much of the U. S. corn crop by 2008 as forecast by the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

The United States is still the biggest contributor to the production of CO2 in the atmosphere, which seems to be resulting in climate change, but China and India are gaining rapidly. In principal, democratic societies such as the U. S., India, and many European nations may be capable of policy changes that can reduce greenhouse gas production rapidly. When entrepreneurs learn that there are ways to make money doing it, China could climb on board as well, particularly given its own choking environmental problems.

However, what the world needs are effective technological means for repairing the atmosphere so that water in the polar regions begins freezing again and so that planet Earth, its atmosphere, and its oceans begin looking familiar again. We hear less about these issues, but given human ingenuity, the possibilities should not be ruled out. Current generations, among all those in the long history of humanity on this planet, certainly have the least reason for assuming that something cannot be done simply because it has not been done before.

Looming pay restraints may not dissuade people from wanting to become CEOs (Sunday, 1/7/07)
Research as well as common corporate experience indicates that the CEO is one of the principal factors determining the success or failure of large corporations. Since there are a limited number of persons who seem gifted at doing what successful CEOs do, competition for their services is fierce. Moreover, since it is the stockholders' money, a strong case can be made for their having the right to spend it anyway they like.

Dismal experience, particularly during the 20th century, has led many people to conclude that buyers and sellers should have a right to decide on a mutually-agreeable price for a product or service without interference from government or others; that something--or someone--is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it, not what some disinterested observer happens to feel is "fair." The market system results in ball players and movie stars being paid tens of millions of dollars too, but without as much public complaint as when CEOs are paid enormous amounts of money.

However, it appears that the system is "rigged" in some instances; that stockholders and corporate boards which are supposed to represent stockholder interests haven't been paying enough attention when deciding on how much money should go to Chief Executive Officers. What researchers call "confounding variables" abound.

For instance, in some cases, an executive serves on corporate board A which determines its CEO's pay, who may serve on corporate board B which, in turn, determines the first executive's pay for running the other company. In such cases, both executives represent their mutual interests, not the interests of the stockholders on whose boards they serve.

Mark Trumbull reports on changes that seem to be in the wind.

Why several countries aren't anxious to give North Korea a nudge (Sunday, 1/7/07)
If there were not so much competition in the world, it might be said that living in North Korea, the most regimented society on Earth, is the least fun of all. In fact, while the North Korean government certainly qualifies as a finalist for World's Most Repressive Regime and seems to be the last example of Stalinism on Earth, it may also be fairly vulnerable at this point. Of course, the collapse of North Korea's communist government has been predicted many times over the past several years. So far, it's still there.

However, as unstable as Kim Jong-il may be personally, the apparent policy or attitudinal shifts in that country may be more a matter of internal power struggles than Kim's labile moods. North Korea seems to have some generals who are at least sane. On the other hand, if it were entirely up to them, they would not necessarily be less inclined than Kim to sell nuclear weapons overseas to the highest bidder if they felt that they could use the money. Simply getting rid of Kim, like getting rid of Saddam, may not be the solution.

It might not take much to upset whatever delicate equilibrium still exists in North Korea, but then what? While the United States has good reason to hope for regime change in that miserable country, its experience in Iraq should give it pause.

Countries in North Korea's immediate neighborhood have their own special reasons for not wanting to work toward the disintegration of the North Korean state. Reason: it could mean a flood of refugees across their borders with which, like Japan, they may be presently unprepared to cope.

On the other hand, it's certainly not in the best interest of nations such as Japan, China, and South Korea for the present North Korean government or whatever comes next to possess deliverable nuclear weapons. Ironically, as North Korea moves closer to their full development, it may increase the motivation of nearby countries to cooperate more closely with the United States to bring more pressure to bear on the current government, while accepting the risk of disintegration and large numbers of North Koreans scattering in all directions.

Quakes rattle Internet in China too (Saturday, 1/6/07)
The Chinese government-controlled Xinhua news service claims that Internet users in China lost approximately 10,000 domain names because of the earthquakes that occurred near Taiwan about a month ago. Of course, given the mainland's long antipathy toward what the Chinese government regards as a wayward province, Chinese officials might be willing to blame crabgrass or eczema on events in Taiwan too. . Nonetheless, other parts of the world also experienced Internet problems following the earthquakes, suggesting that the world is becoming far more integrated and vulnerable than it used to be.

Also, Bruce Einhorn and Olga Kharif write in BusinessWeek about the growing enthusiasm in China for what many are referring to as "Web 2.0." The Chinese government seems particularly concerned about "social networking" web sites, incidentally, which shouldn't be surprising, given its antipathy in the past toward non-government-sanctioned organizing of any sort.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the entire city of San Francisco is about to go offer broadband wireless Internet access. Here's more from Miguel Helft in the "city by the bay."