What is the function of mathematics?

In a post of June 21 (I guess 1 + 1 no longer equals 2) I commented on a textbook entitled "Rethinking Mathematics" which advances the cause of ethnomathematics, a theory of teaching math that posits the idea that math is not a universal language but is a function of one's culture. Chapter titles seemed to be from a social science rather than math textbook, e.g., Chicanos have math in their blood.

Here's a quote from the authors of the textbook: "Shouldn't educators suggest that math can help solve poverty, the AIDS crisis, global warming, overreliance on fossil fuels, and so many other vexing problems?" You can substitute virtually any study - English, science, history - in that sentence and it would still be stupidity.

We need a solid education in many things if education is to help people solve the problems listed as well as the basic problem of man living with the other inhabitants of this universe.

Just the facts, maam

Here's a fairly unbiased review of the 'facts' mentioned in Bush's speech last night. FactCheck.org seems to be living up to its name.

Confidential no more

Time’s Editor-in-Chief, Norman Pearlstein, in an editorial in a recent issue of Fortune, wrote, “We believe that we must protect our sources when we grant them confidentiality, an obligation we do not take lightly. We also believe we must resist government coercion.”

It looks like Time’s editor-in-chief will be overridden by Time’s lawyers and businesspeople as there are reports that their attorneys will be turning over to the government documents which reveal the confidential sources used by Matthew Cooper in the Valerie Plame case. This will set a precedent that most journalists and civil libertarians think dangerous.

Fortunately, the NY Times has not yet considered caving into the government’s demands. But, still, Time is a major force in American journalism and to have them cave is not a good sign.

Every day brings another surprise

The other day it was Newt Gingrich that surprised me. Today it’s William Safire. In an op-ed piece in today’s NY Times he mounts a very forceful defense of Judith Miller. You may recall that Miller has not been charged with any wrongdoing and, in fact, has written nothing about Valerie Palme. But she learned about the story from a confidential source and the government wants to know who that source is. Although Robert Novak actually wrote a story about Palme using confidential sources, the government has been silent about Mr. Novak.

In at least one way this ‘investigation’ reminds me of the Starr pursuit of Clinton – lots of money, time and talent wasted. Doesn’t the government have more important issues to work on?

This guy might be president?

I still can’t figure out what Governor Romney has done in his 2+ years in office in Massachusetts. I know he’s spoken out for his definition of American values, i.e., opposing gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research; you know the really important problems the state of Massachusetts is facing. He can ignore things like job losses, the demise of the state as an economic force as all of its signature companies are bought by outsiders, the impossibility of buying a house for something people can afford; you know the trivialities of life.

Now he’s established an office for faith-based groups and appointed his wife to head it. I don’t criticize him for following his president in forgetting about the separation of church and state on which this country was based for 200+ years. Nor do I fault him for establishing the 27^th state office for faith-based groups trying to milk the federal coffers (to which non-faith-based people contribute). Nor do I carp about the fact that his wife will earn no salary. I worry that this country has reached a point where such an idiot as Romney can be considered a possible presidential candidate for even one minute. But, then again, can we get any worse than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Figures don't lie?

Would you believe that OPEC does not publish any ‘official’ figures as to its production? Any production and reserve numbers you see come from a company called Petrologistics. Its headquarters are over a grocery store in Geneva. It claims to get its numbers from spies in every OPEC port. Now, it helps a little bit in decision-making if you know what reality is. But, it appears as though we don’t know how much oil really exists in so-called proven reserves.

Can we believe the Saudis, who supposedly possess 25% of the world’s ‘proven’ reserves, that they can supply 20 million barrels of oil a day for the next 50 years? Interestingly, 90% of their production comes from fields discovered almost 40 years ago; all of these fields require extensive water injection to keep pumping at a good rate, which is a sign of old age in the oil field business.

If their numbers are wrong, what does that say about the energy situation going forward?

Find the Failed States Index

The failed states index can be found here. It's now up to 76 countries.

Newt and I

I never thought that I'd agree with Newt Gingrich on many things. But, if he really believes what he said on "This I Believe" on NPR, I'll have to change my opinion.

Here's what he said, "The gap between our civilization, our prosperity, our freedoms and all of those things is the quality of our leaders, the courage of our people, the willingness to face facts and the willingness to work for solutions -- solutions to energy, solutions to the environment, solutions to the economy, solutions to education and solutions to national security. We have real challenges, we have a wonderful country. We need to keep it, and to keep it we're going to have to learn these kinds of lessons. That's what I believe."

It's the unwillingness to face facts that is the fundamental problem in this country today.

Another impact of the CNOOC offer

It may have appeared elsewhere in the mainstream media but I haven’t seen it. That is, the words that I have been preaching in this blog for several months: “the US is no longer the only economic powerhouse”. But those words appeared in yesterday’s editorial in the New York Times. The editorial pointed out that China bashing will not reduce China’s economic importance in the world. We have to take actions to make sure we stay prosperous, safe and healthy, actions like reducing our dependence on oil, living more within our means, educating our kids better. You know, the common sense things that made this country great.

Now when will the Times also start editorializing about the growing economic power of India and Brazil?

A sign of the times?

Almost all of my male cousins served in WWII. While they were all proud of their service and of their country's participation in the war, they seldom spoke of their experiences in that war. Most of them had seen quite severe combat as teenagers, but you wouldn't know it from their conversations.

Not surprisingly, they have been dying off over the past several years and none of them has had a military funeral (i.e., military personnel play taps, fold the flag and present it to the veteran's survivors). Yesterday, I went to the funeral of another of these veterans and was surprised to see that it was a military funeral. Walter was as quiet as my other cousins with regard to his war service. While politically conservative, he was by no means jingoist. Yet, his coffin was draped with the flag and taps were played.

I wonder whether other veterans of all our wars also have a military funeral now. Is this another artifact of our times - i.e., the war against terror, the us vs. them mentality that this country is developing?

Biden at Brookings

Some conservative commentators think that Senator Biden’s speech at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday was overly political and negative. I wonder if they have read it. Biden seems to me an American who really wants us to succeed in Iraq. I’ve long held that the way to success is:

• Acknowledge your problems


• Figure out a strategy to overcome these problems


• Measure the success of your strategy and be prepared to change if the strategy is not working.

And Biden was taking the first two steps – problem acknowledgement and planning – and laying out a unit of measure for the third step.

Some illustrations of the problem:

• Only 3 of the 107 Iraqi battalions being trained are completely independent of our troops and another 27 are on the verge. 77 are not capable of acting on their own or in concert with us.


• Only $6 billion of the $18.4 billion authorized for reconstruction in 2003 has been spent, almost two years later and 40% of that has been spent not on reconstruction but on Iraqi security forces.


• Sewage is all over the place.


• The American public is losing faith in the war.

It is not enough for Biden to acknowledge the problem. It is imperative that the Administration do so and let the people know that they realize America has a problem. To quote Biden, “Tell them the truth, tell them what you need, tell them how hard it will be and they, if they believe you’re leveling with them, will give you the resources to have a shot at getting it done.”

Biden thinks we need to get results in four areas – security, governance and politics, reconstruction and burden-sharing. He feels we should accept the offers of help that have come from France, Germany and NATO and make sure that the pledges of $13 billion in aid made in 2003 come through.

The recommendation that has caused the most consternation is the establishment of benchmarks and the periodic reporting of progress towards those benchmarks. A basic management axiom is “You can’t manage if you don’t measure”. I know this is the world of politics, not business, but common sense applies in both spheres. Let’s hope our government starts using a little common sense.

Another $300 million

Yesterday was not a good day for Morgan Stanley. They were ordered to pay Perelman $123 million in interest on the $1.45 billion award. And they settled with Parmalat for $188 million to get rid of charges that Morgan Stanley knew that Parmalat was on the ropes even as they helped the company raise money here and abroad.

What year are we living in?

Today's Boston Globe echoes a feeling I've had for quite a while - we are living in a version of Orwell's 1984.

Cut and Run? No

David Brooks in today’s NY Times argues against leaving Iraq now. Despite my belief in the errors leading to this war, I think he’s right. But, we need to get straight information from the administration. Here’s how he concludes his column:

“Biden's speech brought to mind something Franklin Roosevelt told the country on Feb. 23, 1942: "Your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart. You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us." (my emphasis)

That's how democracies should fight, even in the age of polling.“

Abstinence or Public Broadcasting?

I guess today is the day when the House votes on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) budget. If I heard right, the president (certainly not the chairman) of CPB would be happy with the restoration of a planned $100,000,000 cut. In federal budget terms this is chickenfeed. Heck, it’s half of what is being planned for our government’s abstinence program. If one were comparing ROIs (returns on investment), deciding between PBS and abstinence for teenagers would be a no brainer. The $200 million to keep teenagers ‘pure’ is, in my judgment, money wasted; whereas PBS really meets the needs of a heck of a lot of people - liberal, conservative and in between. In fact, the listeners of PBS are just about equally divided among these three camps.

I’ve received several e-mails asking me to join the campaign to maintain the budget of CPB. The problem is that I live in Massachusetts. I know my Congressman, Bill Delahunt, and my Senators, Kennedy and Kerry, will do the right thing. Perhaps, if you live in a state where your representatives are on the fence on this issue, you’re calling them might have an effect.

Dawn is coming?

Gee, some people are beginning to wake up. The Energy Secretary, Sam Bodman, wants to convene the Committee for Foreign Investment in the U.S. to look at the bid by Cnooc, the smallest of the state-owned Chinese oil companies, to buy Unocal, whose board has already agreed to be acquired by Chevron. Today the Senate Finance Committee is holding hearings on our economic relationship with China.

Of course, not a word was said when Lenovo bought IBM’s PC business earlier this year or when Haier put in a bid for Maytag last week. Is it only if the deal is above $15 billion (Cnooc is offering $18.5 billion) or is in the oil industry that the government will realize there is a problem looming here in our changing world?

This latest and largest bid moves China from a passive investor in bonds of our government to an active investor in some of our vital industries.

What ever happened to rainbows?

When I was a kid, we'd see at least a couple of rainbows each month in the summer. Today I saw my first rainbow in years. Why do you suppose that is?

Failed States Index

Foreign Policy Magazine and the Fund for Peace have just published an index of Failed States. The index is based on 12 indicators - demographic pressures, refugees and displaced persons, group grievance, human flight, uneven development, economic decline, delegitimization of state, public services, human rights, security apparatus, factionalized elites and external intervention. These states, which are in danger of collapsing, are a direct threat to their own and the world's health and safety. About 2 billion people (one-third of the world's population) live in the 60 countries listed in the index.

To no one's surprise, the nations that make the top 10 are largely from Africa. But there are some surprising names on this list of 60 countries: Bhutan, Guatemela, Paraguay, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Bahrain and Russia.

Some of these countries have been on the verge of collapse or have actually collapsed before and come out of it. However, the World Bank found that half of the countries that had come back from a collapse were down again within five years.

Of the 12 indicators used, two are most common: uneven development and delegitimization of the state. By uneven development they are referring to economic inequality even in countries, like Venezuela, which you would not normally classify as an impoverished nation. Delegitimization refers to situations where the state is corrupt or simply incapable of providing basic services.

And, of course, we have limited attention spans and tend to be insular. So that, we seldom hear of the nations such as Ivory Coast, Somalia and Congo where the risk of failure is highest.

I can't imagine where the senior Bush got his kids

Now Jeb Bush wants to find out whether Michael Schiavo was negligent in reporting his wife's collapse, which occured long ago when the brothers Bush were not in politics. Why can't the Bush kids accept reality? The woman is dead. She was in a permanent vegetative state. Another investigation will not bring her back. Does he think she was killed by her husband?

Bush pere seemed to accept reality. Why won't his kids?

I thought I was back in Canada

I had been driving for more than 40 years when we moved to Canada in 1994. In all my years driving in the states I had never heard of tires flying off trucks. I found that in Canada this phenomenon occured at least once annually, but, when we returned home, I was convinced it would not happen here.

Well, I was wrong. Today driving on the Massachusetts Turnpike, I saw a Greyhound bus traveling a little ahead of me; flames were coming from underneath it due to the metal wheel scraping the ground as the tire was traveling across and up the road. The tire must have traveled a quarter to a half mile before hitting the guard rail and crossing the road once more to finally land in the shoulder.

Fortunately, the driver was able to bring the bus to a halt by the side of the road. It's doubtful that anyone was severely hurt. But, it certainly caused me and other drivers to really slow down as we followed the tire.

Greyhound is facing some major competition on the Boston - New York run. I wonder whether they've skimped on maintenance as one way to cut costs to meet the competition.

Afghanistan is getting warmer

First, it was the recent increase in attacks. Now, they’ve started up the propaganda war. Mullah Akhtar Esmani, a leading Taliban commander, appeared on Pakistani TV and proclaimed, “We will engage the US allied forces in combat everywhere in Afghanistan.” His TV appearance was the first by a major Taliban figure since our victory in 2001.

A little bit different view on the deficit

Felix Rohatyn, a financial eminence gris, has an interesting op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal. It’s a kind of why-didn’t-I-think-of-that article relative to the deficit. Rohatyn's proposal is very simple: establish a government trust fund to develop our capital assets, such as infrastructure, education, scientific research, etc. The trust fund would be funded by very long term (50 years?) bonds.

He refers to history for support - Eisenhower and the Federal Highway Act, Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, Lincoln and land grant colleges, FDR and the GI Bill – all of which were investments (and very significant ones) in this country and all of which have paid off enormously.

And he makes a point I’ve tried to make often. We can compete with China “only by fighting tooth and nail for supremacy in education, intellectual capital and R&D” and the government, state and federal, must play a role.

Back to the '50s?

In the 1950s there were a couple of guys who earned their living making sure that only true Americans (in their definition) appeared on radio and television. Are we reverting back to those days? It seems that Ken Tomlinson, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, entered into a contract with one Fred Mann to pay him almost $15,000 to monitor the political leanings of the now-defunct Bill Moyers “Now”.

What are we becoming? PBU24

My mind is made up

Scott McClellan reported todat that the results of the Schiavo autopsy will "not change the president's position on the Schiavo case". I guess this is called determination.

It's a different world

In Pakistan the local council sentenced a girl to be gang raped for a 'crime' committed by her 12-year old brother, although there is even a question as to whether he was a criminal or a victim. When, after she had 'served' her sentence, she was invited to the US to speak, the government arrested her and prevented her leaving the country to speak in the US.

In India the local council decreed that since her father-in-law had raped her, she had to marry the father-in-law.

In the first case international PR caused Pakistan to change its mind and allow the girl to leave the country. In the second case, national courts overthrew the decision.

How to conduct an executive search - not!

Whether or not they actually believe or practice it, almost all boards of directors specify the kind of person they are looking for when seeking a new CEO; no one is automatically ruled out. Morgan Stanley is different. They’ve specified who will not be considered: just about anybody who disagreed with Purcell, the current CEO. You wonder where there brains are.

Purcell will not be suffering as he leaves with at least $63,000,000. Not bad, but a trifle compared to the $1.45 billion the firm owes Perelman, largely for Purcell’s arrogance.

Fallows again

Okay, his current article in the Atlantic Monthly, "Countdown to a Meltdown", is a bit over the top in an attempt to warn us of the folly of our current strategies. The real meat is in the footnotes, which detail some of the history of the past several years.

Unsurprisingly, he nails Bush's tax cuts as a prime mover in our downward path. The Congressional Budget Office in January of this year reported that 48% of the increased deficit over Bush's first term could be attributed to the tax cuts. The tax cuts have lowered the federal government's share of GDP to 16%, a level not seen since 1959 and significantly lower than the 17.5% to 20% they consumed from 1962 to 2002. The GAO warns that if the tax cuts are made permanent, by 2015 we would barely cover our fixed costs.

Of course, the problem is not simply the tax cuts. We just don't save very much any more; our savings rate has gone from 8% of disposable income in the 1950s to virtually zero today. So, we are not buying bonds to finance our government, China and other foreign governments are, making us vulnerable to the needs and wishes of these foreign governments. We are placing a very big bet on these foreign governments' willingness to finance our deficit.

Fallows has an interesting take on the oil situation with regard to China and India. He claims they are using their oil for their factories, we are using our oil for our cars. And he has some numbers to back up his claim about our use. In 1973 we used 35 quadrillion BTUs of oil. In 2003 that number had grown to 39 quadrillion, but consumption by industry has been flat, and two-thirds of the oil is being used for transportation.

Did you know that Gwinnett County in Georgia imported 27 teachers from Hyderabad in 2004? Or, that England outsourced grading of high school exams to India? I would have thought that education would always be a local affair. I guess I was wrong.

Our phenomenal growth over the past 200+ years has been based on savings, investment, education and innovation. We've talked about the savings problem. Here are some footnotes apropos to investment, education and innovation.

In 2005 the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a grade of D to our infrastructure - roads, bridges, etc.

One third of our high schools students fail to graduate on time.

California, a leader in public education in the post WWII world, now spends less on education than the average of other states and is now just above Arkansas.

In 2003 Shanghai opened a 'maglev' train system in which the trains averaged 267 mph and were on time 99.7% of the time. (Is the Acela back in service yet?)

What will people think of Fallows' article in 2016, his dateline. Will we miss the opportunities we have today? Will we return soon to the principles and actions that made this country great? Will we heed the Cassandras of today?

A Narrative of Scandal

In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, Mark Danner proposes a 'narrative of scandal', i.e., a life cycle that American scandals since Watergate follow: revelation, investigation and expiation. In the current Iraq scandal, we can't seem to get beyond the revelation stage. We all know that this war has been marked by scandal; as the Downing Street memo shows, the scandal began even before the war began. It manifested itself with Abu Gharaib. And continues to this day with our sending detainees to other countries and having them do our dirty work.

There has yet to be an investigation, by the courts or Congress, to tell the story of what happened or an expiation where sentences are handed down and the bad guys punished, so that we can finally return to a state of grace.

We can't get to the investigatory phase because words no longer have meaning.

"Something's wrong with the system"

So sayeth Donald Rumsfeld with reference to our weapons building process.

"We're No. 1 in the world in military capabilities, but on the business side, the Defense Department gets a D- giving them the benefit of the doubt." sayeth the GAO.

The problems:

• Overly expensive technological requirements that are far beyond current capabilities.


• Gross under-estimates of anticipated costs.


• Lack of oversight by the Pentagon; the contractors are expected to police the contract.


• Unrealistic testing


• Costs are hidden under a cloak of secrecy


• Congress approves weapons the military doesn't want.

The costs of new weapons is growing faster than the defense budget. But, are we any safer? Or, our troops better prepared? Or, is it that I should invest in defense contractors, where the ordinary rules of business and common sense do not seem to apply?

June 9, 1954

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?" With these seven words 51 years ago today, Joseph Welch, a Boston lawyer, put the finishing touch to one of the most shameful periods of the 20th century in the US. These seven words really encapsulated the McCarthy era. I wonder whether they will also come to encapsulate the current era, in which words are used with the same disregard for the truth as they were then.

Back then, it didn't matter whether what you said was true or false; it mattered whether you defended your position without regard to the merits of that position. The present times are becoming more and more like those days. Eventually, everybody will become a 'Red', McCarthy's term for his enemies.

Copenhagen Consensus

In 2002 the Environmental Assessment Institute, a Danish organization, had a rather novel idea: given that there is a finite amount of money in the world, how can it best be spent in an economic sense. They formed an organization called the Copenhagen Consensus and recruited leading economists from around the world, including some Nobel Prize winners, to answer that question. Papers were presented in Copenhagen in 2004, but for some unknown reason, word of the conclusions these economists reached has only now been made available in this country by that bastion of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal.

Of course, you have to agree with the basic premise that economic analysis of rates of return is a good way to establish priorities for the use of resources to solve basic problems. Some may not agree, but, if you have limited money, you have to prioritize, you have no choice. And rate of return – i.e., what are the expected and realistic benefits to be gained from my investment – is a good way to set the priorities.

The work of the consensus is available on the web. Here’s a summary of their conclusions:

Very good projects:
Control HIV/AIDS
Provide micronutrients to combat malnutrition
Liberalize trade
Control malaria

Good projects:
Develop new agricultural technologies
Improve water and sanitation on a small scale to enable people to earn money
Enable communities to manage their own water supply and sanitation
Lower the cost of starting a business

Fair projects:
Lower barriers to migration of skilled workers
Improve infant and child nutrition
Reduce the prevalence of low birth weight
Improve basic health services

Poor projects:
Guest worker programs for the unskilled
Optional carbon tax
Kyoto protocol
Value-at-risk carbon tax

There are some interesting conclusions here, particularly the low payoff of projects to counter global warming. It behooves further study.

An honest and realistic man?

Can you imagine a bush appointee saying that we "are not doing well" in convincing the Iraqi people that we are not interested in their oil or in otherwise screwing them? It happened yesterday. That's what Zalmay Khalilzad told the Senate committee interviewing him.
I knew there was one honest man in the Bush administration.

Where are they now?

At lunch today one of the guys was reminiscing about the cars of his youth - Austin, MG, Triumph, Austin Healy. These are all English cars that have passed on into car heaven. I wonder whether our kids will have a similar conversation about Buick, Lincoln, Mercury, Dodge, etc. Both GM and Ford are in bad shape and Chrysler is no longer really an American company. GM just announced what I think will be the first of many job cuts; 25,000 GM employees will lose their jobs over the next three years. We've come a long way since Engine Charlie Wilson could claim, "What's good for GM is good for the country."

Will Bush become a believer?

The science academies of the G8 nations, which includes the US, are urging prompt action to combat global warming. Will Bush now believe that there is a problem? Or, will he remain in his closed world, saying "I think I can, I think I can" indefinetely wishing away problems?

The basics and the FBI software failure

Today’s Washington Post has another article on the failed FBI software project to automate case files. It’s based on a report by the Survey and Investigations Staff of the House Appropriations Committee. The highlights of that report are the failure of the FBI to notify SAIC, the contractor, of problems they had found and the FBI’s spending $17,000,000 testing a system they knew would be scrapped.

There are many reasons why this project failed, but I think two are central. According to an audit by the NRC the application development process did not include any users. How in the Lord’s name you can build something without getting input from the people it is to be used by boggles the mind?

The other is a failure to ask the obvious questions as described by Michael Schrage of MIT in this article. Quoting Schrage,“For example, the FBI never addressed how its agents currently used technology to manage their cases, and how the new software would modify and improve that process.” The frequent changing of specifications is one indication that there was no basic description of the problem and how it was to be resolved. The groundwork for this is usually an overall enterprise architecture, which, as the NRC found, did not exist at the FBI.

Some movement re Sudan

At the behest of the UN, the International Criminal Court has started an investigation into war crimes in Sudan, even though Sudan will not cooperate. Surprisingly, the US did not veto the UN's referral of the case.

Smuggling by Apron

Australian Customs stopped a woman when they heard 'squishy' noises emanating from her. It seems that someone had gone to a fair bit of trouble and created a special apron. The apron had 15 waterproof pockets in which Customs found 51 tropical fish.

World Environment Day

Some interesting views of our world , courtesy of the BBC and the UN. And more tales of the oceans getting warmer.

The Draft Redux

I can’t say that you heard it here first, but I’m just about convinced that the draft will return. It may not return with Bush in charge, as he is loathe to act where reason is concerned; but return it will.

Most people don’t want to willingly risk their life and will not willingly join the armed services when the chances of death or dismemberment are not zero. Consider that this current war has now go on longer than all but two of our wars – WWII and the Civil War – and it looks like we’ll have troops there for a long while yet, certainly until the next congressional election and maybe even the presidential election of 2008. More soldiers have left the Army this year than last and the rate of leaving has significantly exceeded the Army’s expectations. How many are willing to join today as opposed to September 12, 2001? What happens if another area of the world explodes and we need troops there?

I’ve been lucky in that my children have, thus far, not had to fight in a war. I’m less optimistic that my grandchildren will be as lucky.

He lit one little candle

In what often seems like a cruel place, every so often something good happens. This is the case for the Safe Blood for Africa Foundation. It was started by Jeff Busch in 1999. He was working in Africa, saw the devastation wreaked by AIDS and recognized that a lot of the problem arose from blood transfusions. Blood donors were not being screened and blood was not being tested before being transmitted; as a result infected blood was being passed from one to another.

His foundation trains people to screen donors and test blood. A fairly simple idea, but the results have been so good (e.g., the amount of blood suitable for transfusions in Botswana has increased by 80% in one year) that China, Brazil and India want to set up similar operations.

We frequently castigate “big business’, but the foundation gets 70% of its funding from business. Companies such as Exxon Mobile, Merck, Johnson & Johnson have contributed. And the Gates Foundation is involved here as well as US AID and the World Bank.

Bush is no Nixon

The brouhaha about Deep Throat naturally brought back some memories of the Nixon era and started me thinking about the differences between the Nixon administration and that of Bush II. I think the primary differences between the two are Nixon’s willingness to act against type and the caliber of another branch of government, the legislature.

The Men
We all know that Nixon “went to China”, but, unless you were alive when he was hunting “Communists”, you really can’t appreciate how much against type this trip was. And it was not his only action against type; the first SALT Treaty was signed in Nixon’s administration. He was willing to act to try to turn around a sagging economy, even though his attempt at wage and price controls failed. He introduced revenue sharing with the states, sought to protect the environment and started the first Consumer Product Safety Commission. He had the gumption to get out of Vietnam. I was never a fan of Tricky Dick, but you have to give him credit for being willing to act counter to his historical beliefs in an attempt to improve the world.

Contrast the above actions with those of a fellow liar, a more sophisticated one, Bush (we seem to be moving more and more to Orwell’s world of 1984). Dogma seems to override common sense. Inaction is preferred to action. The environment is not something to be preserved, but to be used. He’d rather share mandates with the states, rather than provide the funds to implement the mandates. And we all know, George started a war as opposed to finishing one.

The Legislature
No one outside New Jersey had heard of Peter Rodino before Watergate. Then, his strong hand running the Judiciary Committee made his name a household word. The Republicans – and the Democrats – on the Committee were nowhere near as doctrinaire as the current crop of legislators. Six of 17 Republican members of the committee voted to bring the impeachment articles to the floor of the House. Howard Baker, Barry Goldwater and other leaders of the GOP were instrumental in convincing Nixon to resign. Sam Ervin was like an old-time prophet lamenting the sinfulness of the administration.

Where do you see today’s legislators acting in the nation’s interest and dealing with serious matters, not such tripe as gay marriage and the Schiavo case?

I guess she's a very big lady in more ways than one

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when hospitals go out of their way when a famous person becomes a patient, but I must say supplying eight hospital rooms to Kylie Minogue kind of goes beyond the pale. Apparently, the hospital also made it difficult for other patients to be visited. One claims she was escorted out of the hospital when trying to visit her mother; she had no problem visiting before Ms Minogue was admitted.The hospital had to ensure that Ms Minogue's security was preserved. Hmm.

And Sinopec makes three

Another Chinese oil company has bought into the Alberta oil-sands. China Petroleum & Chemical, known as Sinopec, is the third Chinese company to take a stake in oil properties next door to us. With the high price of oil today and likely for the foreseeable future, the high costs of extracting oil from the tar sands of Alberta has become affordable.

Why is it the Wall Street Journal reports all the oil deals China has made, but seldom reports deals we have made. Is it because we are not making deals? Or, is it because we are so focused on conservation and alternative energy that we don’t need to make deal?

Is it my imagination?

Or, have the number of attacks by the Taliban been on the increase over the past few months? Today comes a report of a suicide bomber killing at least 20 people, including a police chief, in a mosque in Kandahar.

And, by the way, just how well is the reconstruction of Afghanistan going? Is the opium market down this year?