Slashdot Mirror

Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Full story here There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998.

Dr Sherwood argues that it is not. In particular, changes in radiosonde design intended to reduce the original problem of over-heating have not always been accommodated by reductions in the correction factors for more recently collected data. Those data have thus been over-corrected, reducing the apparent temperature below the actual temperature.

Dr Sherwood and his colleagues hit on a ruse to test this idea. Because weather stations around the world release their balloons simultaneously, some of the measurements are taken in daylight and some in darkness. By comparing the raw data, the team was able to identify a trend: recorded night-time temperatures in the troposphere (night being the ultimate form of shade) have indeed risen. It is only daytime temperatures that seem to have dropped. Previous work, which has concentrated on average values, failed to highlight this distinction, which seems to have been caused by over-correction of the daytime figures.

researchers at the University of Karlsruhe are developing Quaero's voice-recognition and translation technology, with funding from the European Commission. [...] In addition, speaker-identification software will allow users (via computer microphones) to search the internet for audio clips recorded in their own voices, or those of other speakers.

As an IT admin, I communicate with all levels in the company. In general, picking on anyone's personal style is offensive to them (and often to the surrounding people). However, I agree that corporate speak is often annoying. Euphemistic language should only be used if there is a serious legal risk involved with being too direct (the ideal world is separate from the legal world!). Things should be spoken/written using the fewest and most concise words possible to convey the message. It saves everyone time. For generally great advice on clear writing (which also applies to speaking), look no further than the Economist Style Guide.

“Of course feeding ten billion will not be trivial. It will require at least 35% more calories than the world’s farmers grow today... That will mean either better yields or less rainforest--which is why fertilisers, pesticides and transgenes are the best possible protectors of the planet.”

--

The story of wheat

Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The story of man’s staple food

[Image] (Still Pictures)

IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.

Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.

It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.

The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.

People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?

“Of course feeding ten billion will not be trivial. It will require at least 35% more calories than the world’s farmers grow today... That will mean either better yields or less rainforest--which is why fertilisers, pesticides and transgenes are the best possible protectors of the planet.”

--

The story of wheat

Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The story of man’s staple food

[Image] (Still Pictures)

IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.

Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.

It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.

The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.

People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?

Snarky headlines are entertaining and help create a feeling of superiority among the readers who get the joke. This is probably some of the appeal of http://economist.com/index.html, which often even uses witty headlines and even obscure double-entendre photographs to illustrate their softer pieces.

On the cover of an issue headlining corporate mergers a couple of years back they had a full-cover photo of copulating camels---a memorable low point for bad taste, IMO.

red ink
n.
A financial loss in business.
The condition of showing a fiscal deficit: a firm drowning in red ink.

[From the use of red ink to record debits and losses in financial records.]
(Dictionary.com)

“The trouble is, the evidence does not back up this litany. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so since the Club of Rome published ‘The Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving.”

“Human beings may be the only creatures that have fewer babies when they are better fed. The fastest-growing populations in the world over the next 50 years will be those of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen. All except in Yemen are in Africa. All are hungry. All remain untouched by Borlaug's green Revolution: all depend on primarily organic agriculture.”

--

The story of wheat

Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The story of man’s staple food

[Image] (Still Pictures)

IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.

Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.

It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.

The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.

People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a

“The trouble is, the evidence does not back up this litany. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so since the Club of Rome published ‘The Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving.”

“Human beings may be the only creatures that have fewer babies when they are better fed. The fastest-growing populations in the world over the next 50 years will be those of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen. All except in Yemen are in Africa. All are hungry. All remain untouched by Borlaug's green Revolution: all depend on primarily organic agriculture.”

--

The story of wheat

Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The story of man’s staple food

[Image] (Still Pictures)

IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.

Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.

It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.

The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.

People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm? story_id=6740040 MMkay, lets find something else to divide up about. Gingers vs. nongingers debate anyone? Gingers are the supreme race!

The Economist agrees with you, for what it's worth: "This makes races pathetically predictable: 98% of congressmen are re-elected, a ratio Leonid Brezhnev might have admired (though even the Soviet fixer would surely have felt the 100% outcome for California's incumbents in 2004 was a tad too obvious). It also drives politicians to the extremes, as they court their real electors, party activists in the primaries."

It was Jefferson, IIRC, who envisioned the Senate as a moderate, intellectual, even patrician counterweight to the whims and passions of the House of Representatives. On the whole, it seems to be working--look at the various proposals coming from the two houses of Congress on the illegal immigration debate. All that talk about a 700-mile wall with Mexico, for example, is coming from the House, not the Senate.

BTW, technically speaking, the term "Congress" refers to both the House and the Senate, even though everyone knows what you mean anyway.

The french government is as protectionist has it gets. The only level field they play on is one slanted twards themselves. I surely didn't intend to sound redneck. Read more here:

http://money.cnn.com/services/tickerheadlines/djh/ 200603241445DOWJONESDJONLINE000969.htm
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id =5476736
http://www.e-nough.hmdnsgroup.com/archives/001024. html

The firm's first product is a goldfish that is genuinely gold, not the shade of orange that currently passes for that colour in ichthyological circles. To create this animal required two things. The first was the introduction of a gene for a genetically modified version of haemoglobin which Paolo Fril, GeneDupe's boss, has dubbed haemaurin. The second was the introduction of a gene for a synthetic enzyme that he calls aurinase.

Unlike haemoglobin, which has an atom of iron at its centre, haemaurin contains an atom of gold. The haemaurin circulates in the fish's blood until it reaches the skin. There, it is degraded by the aurinase, and metallic gold is deposited in the animal's pigment cells. (This also opens up a lucrative sideline for GeneDupe, since its so-called RealGold fish must be fed with a special fish food that contains traces of the metal.)

The short, superficial answer is: yes, because we won.

The invasion was, as advertised, a very successful 21st century Blitzkrieg. The objective of a Blitzkrieg is to bypass and isolate pockets of resistance while making a dash for the capital city. The major danger of the strategy is that of outrunning your supply lines and leaving them relatively unprotected. Saddam's regime was toppled in only three weeks and most of his military didn't even fight.

However, as you indicated, the occupation was poorly planned, undermanned, and IMHO, ended far too soon. (Iraq is a soverign country with a democratically elected government (of thoroughly corrupt officials)). Bush needed to double- or triple-down as the jihadists gained momentum, but he didn't want to and the ankle-biters back home wouldn't have allowed him to anyway.

But the question is, did we win because the U.S. military is so much better than the Iraqi military, or because Saddam did some incredibly stupid things?

One of the reasons Saddam didn't sabotage his own country is that he expected his buddies France and Russia to prevent an invasion.

What do we lose? A portion of a global pie of openly-available information.

We go from having a truly-globalized free-market and free-trade of ideas and opinions, one in which the collective wisdom is available for everyone else in that global crowd, to a protectionist trade of information, in which you have to be a member of some elite, local club and know people to get in and gain access.

I'm thinking of so many parallels in computing and economics this subject makes my head spin; obviously I've started with a clear economics analogy. But what about the analogies from the computing world?

* Warez groups -- You have to know people and gain their trust to get in to some groups and trade with them. They have, in a sense, "regionalized" some of their content that would otherwise be made available (were it not illegal under copyright laws. That's another issue, although related in terms of the protectionist regulation that IP law imposes).

* Businesses -- Want access to internal corporate data? Hack one of their boxes (exploit stupid users with a bot you've written that is attached to an email claiming to have naked pics of Maria Sherapova, although, this assumes the spam filter doesn't detect and discard the message, and that the heuristics of the virus-scanning software doesn't detect your bot as a trojan); social engineer your way to a username/password combo (i.e. play con-artist); or become employed there. Businesses have cordoned-off their proprietary information from the public-at-large, except for product information.

* For-pay websites -- Many newspapers (such as The Economist and the NYTimes) require you to have a subscription to access premium content. They have compartmentalized their proprietary information into a pay-to-play region they've defined.

* Microsoft vs. F/OSS -- What better example for Slashdotters? :-) On one side, you have a closed, proprietary vendor who sections-off their OS code, etc. from the outside, and only if you are a super-player (e.g. a government of a highly-developed nation) can you gain access, and then only under restriction. The OSS world of software, by contrast, is open for all to see. MSFT closes off (regionalizes) their information to the rest of the world; OSS is open to the whole world. One is protectionist about their code; the other, free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech free-traders of information.

Those are some present-day examples of what happens when information is sectioned-off from the rest of the world.

Now imagine that being the case with *ALL* information, of all kinds -- not just corporate or proprietary information. Medical information; university research; open-source software; statistical data about a variety of subjects; the list goes on and on.

I began by saying this is a scaling problem. It is, and to make my case clearer from the computing side, answer this simple question: how much combined data do you have on your LAN at the moment?

In a private residence of just one or two people, you might have, at most, a couple TBytes -- and that's if you're recording TV shows and movies all day (legitimately, I assume!). Even on a large engineering university's LAN, you might have no more than a couple PBytes (I'm guessing; my last experience on a uni LAN was in 2001, when there were some 6 TBytes indexed by our unofficial file-share indexer, on a LAN with 26,000 students, plus who knows how much storage space the university's depts. officially had).

Now compare that to the rest of the the 'net 532,897 TBytes, and that was way back in 2002.

There is no reason or excuse for outright political/legislative *bans* on the flow of information on the Internet. Period. Restricting the rates at which that information travels (perhaps by way of packet-shaping), or restricting the access to

A lot of the International media has more interesting, or at least more colorful, reporting. Right-wing columnist Mark Steyn writes his often hilarious and always insightful column for publications in Canada, the UK, Israel, the US and probably a few other countries I'm not remembering right now. He's a great writer and I'm happy to see him around.

If you want someone on the radical left, there's always good ol' blood and guts Robert Fisk of the Independent, also out of the UK, although you have to pay to read him nowadays. Be warned that although his writing is colorful, his predictive ability's a bit off; he thought our army would be facing tens of thousands of casualties in the Afghan war, for example.

The British press overall seems better written and more enjoyable to read than that in the US. Take The Economist on the center right and the Guardian on the left. So you can see news from every perspective and political viewpoint without even leaving your computer.

On a more positive vein, many nerds, who are complete losers in love in the US, might want to consider a Filipina wife. Once in the Philippines, you change magically into the biggest winner on the planet. International communications and relatively cheap flights makes this something worth thinking about for many.

Filipinas are not subservient, unlike what you may hear, but they do center their world around you, wanting to make you happy. You won't be happy with one if you want a slave, but if you want someone who really cares about you and will support you in what you do, my personal experience says a Filipina wife is just what a lonely nerd needs.

Needless to say, without an International internet, I would not have found out about this and I'd still be thinking my romantic potential was just about zero.

I'm planning to move to the Philippines permanently, due to the low cost of living and the potential happiness from finding a good girl. And of course that makes me hungry for news of the Philippines. Google news aggregates it, but I notice most of it comes from an interesting, diverse set of countries. Of course the local Philippines press is represented, but I also see myself commonly checking out news sources from China, India, and other locations too numerous to mention.

In short, if you look at where I get my news and even where I plan to get my future wife, you can see I'd lose a lot of the net were no longer an International place. And I'm lousy with foreign languages; it doesn't matter since most of these services are either English in origin or translated into English.

D

What Microsoft is doing pales in comparison to what the Korean people and their own businesses are doing in South Korea. Chaebols routinely engage in cartel-like behavior to fix prices for goods and services in South Korea. Worse, these chaebols are responsible for wiping out the ship-building industry in the United States.

In the midst of this nonsense, the Korean government says that Microsoft is a "problem"?

Here's a translation from Korean speak into English. "We Koreans do not like the fact that a non-Korean company is dominating a certain industry (in this case, the software industry) in South Korea. That domination belongs to the Korean brotherhood. We intend to reduce Microsoft to a mere shadow of its former self and to serve the remains to the chaebols".

Yeah sure, It is on the economists website: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id =E1_VVSTVQQ - you need a subscription to view the article, but you can get a day pass by watching an advertisment on their homepage [http://www.economist.com/%5D. The article is titled "Not just a flash in the pan" - it appeared in their technology quarterly a couple of weeks ago. Good read with many pictures and graphs to illistrate the trends. "And as the price per gigabyte of both technologies falls, the fight shifts to ever higher capacities"

Yeah sure, It is on the economists website: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id =E1_VVSTVQQ - you need a subscription to view the article, but you can get a day pass by watching an advertisment on their homepage [http://www.economist.com/%5D. The article is titled "Not just a flash in the pan" - it appeared in their technology quarterly a couple of weeks ago. Good read with many pictures and graphs to illistrate the trends. "And as the price per gigabyte of both technologies falls, the fight shifts to ever higher capacities"

Numerous reputable journals have published articles detailing the strangling anti-free-market regulations in India. "The Economist" recently published one such article titled "Reform in India -- Democracy's drawbacks".

Numerous reputable journals have published articles detailing the strangling anti-free-market regulations in India. "The Economist" recently published one such article titled "Reform in India -- Democracy's drawbacks".

“[N]ot only are the Japanese living longest in the world, they are also living the healthiest. So with longevity come sharply reduced odds of being bedridden for long at the end of your life. Elderly Japanese go in great numbers to pokkuri dera: temples dedicated to the idea of going to sleep never to wake up. That, increasingly, is how the Japanese are dying.”

[In need of transformation: Workforce forecast, % of total population]

--

The grey market

Hey, big-spender
Dec 1st 2005 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition

Japan leads the world in developing new products for the elderly

[Image] Granny’s companion, a Snuggling Ifbot (AFP)

BY 2015, one in four of all Japanese, or 30m, will be over 65. Already, more than 25,000 Japanese are over 100, and that number is going to rise fast. After all, average life expectancy, now 82, is growing by almost 2.5 years every decade, while Japan’s big baby-boom generation is just about to start moving into retirement. It is all causing a good deal of hand-wringing among policymakers contemplating a growing burden for the state and for a shrinking workforce. But it is also causing a good deal of hand-rubbing among businessmen, who see older Japanese as a source of profit.

One of the biggest challenges will be providing affordable care for more elderly, including the great majority still able to live at home, but no longer with their children. Bringing in cheaper, foreign nurses and carers is not an option in a political climate that is so averse to immigration (a proposal to allow Filipina nurses and helpers sets the annual quota at no more than 200--though the government was last year happy to grant more than 80,000 “entertainment” visas to young Filipinas). So Japanese businesses, true to form, are developing suitably high-tech responses.

For instance, one Nagoya-based company, Synclayer, which makes and integrates cable television and local-area networks (LANs), has developed a means for old people still living at home to use a device that takes basic medical measurements, such as blood pressure and temperature, and sends them to a local health database. The medical services can then act if anything seems amiss. Synclayer also makes a sensor that can be placed, on (for example) the fridge door; every time the door is opened, a message is sent over the LAN to the database, and from there health workers or family members can be alerted if there is no fridge-going activity.

The pioneer in bringing peace of mind to family or neighbours is Zojirushi, Japan’s biggest maker of rice cookers and electric kettles, which in Japan keep water hot all day for tea or miso soup. Zojirushi’s iPot, developed with NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu, has a wireless device which transmits a message to an NTT server when the water-dispensing button is pressed. Then, twice daily, the usage record is sent to the designated mobile phone or e-mail address of family or friend.

A lot of work is being done on interactive robots that talk to the elderly. Those on the market now are chiefly for comfort and stimulation: for instance, the Snuggling Ifbot, which lives in an astronaut suit, chats about the weather, sings and plays quiz games. Primo Puel, an interactive doll, has become an unexpected hit with elderly single women: it was originally designed for another group of lonely people, boyfriendless young girls.

But, increasingly, the development work on robots is designed either to assist the old with physical functions such as bathing or lifting things, or to monitor health and well-being. A government report this year guessed that annual demand for “service robots”, ie, those not used for manufacturing, could top ¥1 trillion ($8.4 billion) by 2015

“[N]ot only are the Japanese living longest in the world, they are also living the healthiest. So with longevity come sharply reduced odds of being bedridden for long at the end of your life. Elderly Japanese go in great numbers to pokkuri dera: temples dedicated to the idea of going to sleep never to wake up. That, increasingly, is how the Japanese are dying.”

[In need of transformation: Workforce forecast, % of total population]

--

The grey market

Hey, big-spender
Dec 1st 2005 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition

Japan leads the world in developing new products for the elderly

[Image] Granny’s companion, a Snuggling Ifbot (AFP)

BY 2015, one in four of all Japanese, or 30m, will be over 65. Already, more than 25,000 Japanese are over 100, and that number is going to rise fast. After all, average life expectancy, now 82, is growing by almost 2.5 years every decade, while Japan’s big baby-boom generation is just about to start moving into retirement. It is all causing a good deal of hand-wringing among policymakers contemplating a growing burden for the state and for a shrinking workforce. But it is also causing a good deal of hand-rubbing among businessmen, who see older Japanese as a source of profit.

One of the biggest challenges will be providing affordable care for more elderly, including the great majority still able to live at home, but no longer with their children. Bringing in cheaper, foreign nurses and carers is not an option in a political climate that is so averse to immigration (a proposal to allow Filipina nurses and helpers sets the annual quota at no more than 200--though the government was last year happy to grant more than 80,000 “entertainment” visas to young Filipinas). So Japanese businesses, true to form, are developing suitably high-tech responses.

For instance, one Nagoya-based company, Synclayer, which makes and integrates cable television and local-area networks (LANs), has developed a means for old people still living at home to use a device that takes basic medical measurements, such as blood pressure and temperature, and sends them to a local health database. The medical services can then act if anything seems amiss. Synclayer also makes a sensor that can be placed, on (for example) the fridge door; every time the door is opened, a message is sent over the LAN to the database, and from there health workers or family members can be alerted if there is no fridge-going activity.

The pioneer in bringing peace of mind to family or neighbours is Zojirushi, Japan’s biggest maker of rice cookers and electric kettles, which in Japan keep water hot all day for tea or miso soup. Zojirushi’s iPot, developed with NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu, has a wireless device which transmits a message to an NTT server when the water-dispensing button is pressed. Then, twice daily, the usage record is sent to the designated mobile phone or e-mail address of family or friend.

A lot of work is being done on interactive robots that talk to the elderly. Those on the market now are chiefly for comfort and stimulation: for instance, the Snuggling Ifbot, which lives in an astronaut suit, chats about the weather, sings and plays quiz games. Primo Puel, an interactive doll, has become an unexpected hit with elderly single women: it was originally designed for another group of lonely people, boyfriendless young girls.

But, increasingly, the development work on robots is designed either to assist the old with physical functions such as bathing or lifting things, or to monitor health and well-being. A government report this year guessed that annual demand for “service robots”, ie, those not used for manufacturing, could top ¥1 trillion ($8.4 billion) by 2015

“[N]ot only are the Japanese living longest in the world, they are also living the healthiest. So with longevity come sharply reduced odds of being bedridden for long at the end of your life. Elderly Japanese go in great numbers to pokkuri dera: temples dedicated to the idea of going to sleep never to wake up. That, increasingly, is how the Japanese are dying.”

[In need of transformation: Workforce forecast, % of total population]

--

The grey market

Hey, big-spender
Dec 1st 2005 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition

Japan leads the world in developing new products for the elderly

[Image] Granny’s companion, a Snuggling Ifbot (AFP)

BY 2015, one in four of all Japanese, or 30m, will be over 65. Already, more than 25,000 Japanese are over 100, and that number is going to rise fast. After all, average life expectancy, now 82, is growing by almost 2.5 years every decade, while Japan’s big baby-boom generation is just about to start moving into retirement. It is all causing a good deal of hand-wringing among policymakers contemplating a growing burden for the state and for a shrinking workforce. But it is also causing a good deal of hand-rubbing among businessmen, who see older Japanese as a source of profit.

One of the biggest challenges will be providing affordable care for more elderly, including the great majority still able to live at home, but no longer with their children. Bringing in cheaper, foreign nurses and carers is not an option in a political climate that is so averse to immigration (a proposal to allow Filipina nurses and helpers sets the annual quota at no more than 200--though the government was last year happy to grant more than 80,000 “entertainment” visas to young Filipinas). So Japanese businesses, true to form, are developing suitably high-tech responses.

For instance, one Nagoya-based company, Synclayer, which makes and integrates cable television and local-area networks (LANs), has developed a means for old people still living at home to use a device that takes basic medical measurements, such as blood pressure and temperature, and sends them to a local health database. The medical services can then act if anything seems amiss. Synclayer also makes a sensor that can be placed, on (for example) the fridge door; every time the door is opened, a message is sent over the LAN to the database, and from there health workers or family members can be alerted if there is no fridge-going activity.

The pioneer in bringing peace of mind to family or neighbours is Zojirushi, Japan’s biggest maker of rice cookers and electric kettles, which in Japan keep water hot all day for tea or miso soup. Zojirushi’s iPot, developed with NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu, has a wireless device which transmits a message to an NTT server when the water-dispensing button is pressed. Then, twice daily, the usage record is sent to the designated mobile phone or e-mail address of family or friend.

A lot of work is being done on interactive robots that talk to the elderly. Those on the market now are chiefly for comfort and stimulation: for instance, the Snuggling Ifbot, which lives in an astronaut suit, chats about the weather, sings and plays quiz games. Primo Puel, an interactive doll, has become an unexpected hit with elderly single women: it was originally designed for another group of lonely people, boyfriendless young girls.

But, increasingly, the development work on robots is designed either to assist the old with physical functions such as bathing or lifting things, or to monitor health and well-being. A government report this year guessed that annual demand for “service robots”, ie, those not used for manufacturing, could top ¥1 trillion ($8.4 billion) by 2015

You're probably thinking of this article.

Japan’s humanoid robots

Better than people
Dec 20th 2005 | TOKYO
From The Economist print edition

Why the Japanese want their robots to act more like humans

HER name is MARIE, and her impressive set of skills comes in handy in a nursing home. MARIE can walk around under her own power. She can distinguish among similar-looking objects, such as different bottles of medicine, and has a delicate enough touch to work with frail patients. MARIE can interpret a range of facial expressions and gestures, and respond in ways that suggest compassion. Although her language skills are not ideal, she can recognise speech and respond clearly. Above all, she is inexpensive. Unfortunately for MARIE, however, she has one glaring trait that makes it hard for Japanese patients to accept her: she is a flesh-and-blood human being from the Philippines. If only she were a robot instead.

Robots, you see, are wonderful creatures, as many a Japanese will tell you. They are getting more adept all the time, and before too long will be able to do cheaply and easily many tasks that human workers do now. They will care for the sick, collect the rubbish, guard homes and offices, and give directions on the street.

This is great news in Japan, where the population has peaked, and may have begun shrinking in 2005. With too few young workers supporting an ageing population, somebody--or something--needs to fill the gap, especially since many of Japan’s young people will be needed in science, business and other creative or knowledge-intensive jobs.

Many workers from low-wage countries are eager to work in Japan. The Philippines, for example, has over 350,000 trained nurses, and has been pleading with Japan--which accepts only a token few--to let more in. Foreign pundits keep telling Japan to do itself a favour and make better use of cheap imported labour. But the consensus among Japanese is that visions of a future in which immigrant workers live harmoniously and unobtrusively in Japan are pure fancy. Making humanoid robots is clearly the simple and practical way to go.

Japan certainly has the technology. It is already the world leader in making industrial robots, which look nothing like pets or people but increasingly do much of the work in its factories. Japan is also racing far ahead of other countries in developing robots with more human features, or that can interact more easily with people. A government report released this May estimated that the market for “service robots” will reach ¥1.1 trillion ($10 billion) within a decade.

The country showed off its newest robots at a world exposition this summer in Aichi prefecture. More than 22m visitors came, 95% of them Japanese. The robots stole the show, from the nanny robot that babysits to a Toyota that plays a trumpet. And Japan’s robots do not confine their talents to controlled environments. As they gain skills and confidence, robots such as Sony’s QRIO (pronounced “curio”) and Honda’s ASIMO are venturing to unlikely places. They have attended factory openings, greeted foreign leaders, and rung the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange. ASIMO can even take the stage to accept awards.

The friendly face of technology

So Japan will need workers, and it is learning how to make robots that can do many of their jobs. But the country’s keen interest in robots may also reflect something else: it seems that plenty of Japanese really like dealing with robots.

Few Japanese have the fear of robots that seems to haunt westerners in seminars and Hollywood films. In western popular culture, robots are often a threat, either because they are manipulated by sinister forces or because something goes horribly wrong with them. By contrast, most Japanese view robots as friendly and benign. Robots like people, and can do good.

The Japanese are well aware of this cultu

“IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers’ access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone.”

“It is increasingly clear that, when it comes to bridging the ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor, the mobile phone, not the personal computer, has the most potential.”

--

Mobile phones and development

Calling an end to poverty
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Mobile-phone firms have found a profitable way to help the poor help themselves

[Image] (Still Pictures)

ALL eyes are on what governments can do to end poverty, with aid, debt relief and trade top of the agenda at this week’s G8 summit. But what about the role that business can play--and, in particular, technology firms? It is increasingly clear that, when it comes to bridging the “digital divide” between rich and poor, the mobile phone, not the personal computer, has the most potential. “Emerging markets will be wireless-centric, not PC-centric,” says C. K. Prahalad, a management scholar and author of “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”, a book that highlights the collective purchasing power of the world’s 4 billion poorest people and urges firms to try to profit from it.

Mobile phones have become indispensable in the rich world. But they are even more useful in the developing world, where the availability of other forms of communication--roads, postal systems or fixed-line phones--is often limited. Phones let fishermen and farmers check prices in different markets before selling produce, make it easier for people to find work, allow quick and easy transfers of funds and boost entrepreneurship. Phones can be shared by a village. Pre-paid calling plans reduce the need for a bank account or credit check. A recent study by London Business School found that, in a typical developing country, a rise of ten mobile phones per 100 people boosts GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points. Mobile phones are, in short, a classic example of technology that helps people help themselves.

But despite rapid subscriber growth in much of the developing world, only a small proportion of people--around 5% in both India and sub-Saharan Africa--have their own mobile phones. Why? The price of handsets is the “biggest obstacle” to broader adoption, says Alan Knott-Craig, boss of Vodacom, which runs networks in five African countries. Azmi Mikati of Investcom, which runs networks in Africa and the Middle East, estimates that the number of users would double in those markets if the cheapest handset cost $30 instead of $60.

Ringing the changes

Handset-makers earn most of their profits from fancy phones sold to consumers in rich countries, where on average a handset costs around $200 (before operator subsidies). But as markets have become saturated in the rich world, manufacturers have started to realise that their future growth depends on catering to the needs of developing nations. As a result, they have been working with operators to develop new extremely cheap handsets and to boost adoption in the poor world.

Several operators from developing countries teamed up earlier this year under the auspices of the GSM Association, which promotes the use of GSM, the world’s dominant mobile-phone standard. They invited the handset-makers to bid for a contract to supply up to 6m handsets for less than $40 each. The contract was won by Motorola. Delivery of handsets began in April. The low cost is not due to cross-subsidy from high-margin handsets or “corporate social responsibility” funding, insists David Taylor of Motorol

“IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers’ access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone.”

“It is increasingly clear that, when it comes to bridging the ‘digital divide’ between rich and poor, the mobile phone, not the personal computer, has the most potential.”

--

Mobile phones and development

Calling an end to poverty
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Mobile-phone firms have found a profitable way to help the poor help themselves

[Image] (Still Pictures)

ALL eyes are on what governments can do to end poverty, with aid, debt relief and trade top of the agenda at this week’s G8 summit. But what about the role that business can play--and, in particular, technology firms? It is increasingly clear that, when it comes to bridging the “digital divide” between rich and poor, the mobile phone, not the personal computer, has the most potential. “Emerging markets will be wireless-centric, not PC-centric,” says C. K. Prahalad, a management scholar and author of “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”, a book that highlights the collective purchasing power of the world’s 4 billion poorest people and urges firms to try to profit from it.

Mobile phones have become indispensable in the rich world. But they are even more useful in the developing world, where the availability of other forms of communication--roads, postal systems or fixed-line phones--is often limited. Phones let fishermen and farmers check prices in different markets before selling produce, make it easier for people to find work, allow quick and easy transfers of funds and boost entrepreneurship. Phones can be shared by a village. Pre-paid calling plans reduce the need for a bank account or credit check. A recent study by London Business School found that, in a typical developing country, a rise of ten mobile phones per 100 people boosts GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points. Mobile phones are, in short, a classic example of technology that helps people help themselves.

But despite rapid subscriber growth in much of the developing world, only a small proportion of people--around 5% in both India and sub-Saharan Africa--have their own mobile phones. Why? The price of handsets is the “biggest obstacle” to broader adoption, says Alan Knott-Craig, boss of Vodacom, which runs networks in five African countries. Azmi Mikati of Investcom, which runs networks in Africa and the Middle East, estimates that the number of users would double in those markets if the cheapest handset cost $30 instead of $60.

Ringing the changes

Handset-makers earn most of their profits from fancy phones sold to consumers in rich countries, where on average a handset costs around $200 (before operator subsidies). But as markets have become saturated in the rich world, manufacturers have started to realise that their future growth depends on catering to the needs of developing nations. As a result, they have been working with operators to develop new extremely cheap handsets and to boost adoption in the poor world.

Several operators from developing countries teamed up earlier this year under the auspices of the GSM Association, which promotes the use of GSM, the world’s dominant mobile-phone standard. They invited the handset-makers to bid for a contract to supply up to 6m handsets for less than $40 each. The contract was won by Motorola. Delivery of handsets began in April. The low cost is not due to cross-subsidy from high-margin handsets or “corporate social responsibility” funding, insists David Taylor of Motorol

Intuitively I'd agree (as a U.S. citizen, too!) but surprisingly, the data disagree: "America boasts 17 of the world's top 20 universities, according to a widely used global ranking by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. American universities currently employ 70% of the world's Nobel prize-winners, 30% of the world's output of articles on science and engineering, and 44% of the most frequently cited articles. No wonder developing countries now look to America rather than Europe for a model for higher education." Here's the full article.

I don't disagree that the current administration seems to be doing everything in its power to cripple American innovation, research, and creativity.

“The trouble is, the evidence does not back up this litany. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so since the Club of Rome published ‘The Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving.”

--

The story of wheat

Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The story of man’s staple food

[Image] (Still Pictures)

IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.

Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.

It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.

The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.

People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?

“The trouble is, the evidence does not back up this litany. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so since the Club of Rome published ‘The Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving.”

--

The story of wheat

Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The story of man’s staple food

[Image] (Still Pictures)

IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.

Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.

It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.

The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.

People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?

“The trouble is, the evidence does not back up this litany. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so since the Club of Rome published ‘The Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving.”

--

The story of wheat

Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The story of man’s staple food

[Image] (Still Pictures)

IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.

Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.

It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.

The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.

People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?

“The trouble is, the evidence does not back up this litany. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so since the Club of Rome published ‘The Limits to Growth’ in 1972. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world’s population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving.”

--

The story of wheat

Ears of plenty
Dec 20th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The story of man’s staple food

[Image] (Still Pictures)

IN 10,000 years, the earth’s population has doubled ten times, from less than 10m to more than six billion now and ten billion soon. Most of the calories that made that increase possible have come from three plants: maize, rice and wheat. The oldest, most widespread and until recently biggest of the three crops is wheat (see chart). To a first approximation wheat is the staple food of mankind, and its history is that of humanity.

Yet today, wheat is losing its crown. The tonnage (though not the acreage) of maize harvested in the world began consistently to exceed that of wheat for the first time in 1998; rice followed suit in 1999. Genetic modification, which has transformed maize, rice and soyabeans, has largely passed wheat by--to such an extent that it is in danger of becoming an “orphan crop”. The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome. And with population growth rates falling sharply while yields continue to rise, even the acreage devoted to wheat may now begin to decline for the first time since the stone age.

It is time to pay tribute to this strange little grass that has done so much for the human race. Strange is the word, for wheat is a genetic monster. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid--it has six copies of each gene, where most creatures have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people. It is derived from three wild ancestral species in two separate mergers. The first took place in the Levant 10,000 years ago, the second near the Caspian Sea 2,000 years later. The result was a plant with extra-large seeds incapable of dispersal in the wild, dependent entirely on people to sow them.

The story actually starts much earlier, around 12,000 years ago. At the time, after several warm millennia, a melting ice sheet in North America collapsed and a gigantic lake drained into the North Atlantic through the St Lawrence seaway. The torrent of cool, fresh water altered the climate so drastically that the ice age, which had been in full retreat, resumed for a further 11 centuries. The Scandinavian ice sheet surged south. Western Asia became not only cooler, but much drier. The Black Sea all but dried out.

People in what is now Syria had been subsisting happily on a diet of acorns, gazelles and grass seeds. The centuries of drought drove them to depend increasingly on wild grass seeds. Abruptly, soon after 11,000 years ago, they began to cultivate rye and chickpeas, then einkorn and emmer, two ancestors of wheat, and later barley. Soon cultivated grain was their staple food. It happened first in the Karacadag Mountains in south-eastern Turkey--it is only here that wild einkorn grass contains the identical genetic fingerprint of modern domesticated wheat.

Who first replanted the seeds and why? For a start, he was probably a she: women have primary responsibilities for plant gathering in hunter-gatherer societies. The time was certainly ripe for agriculture: the ability to make tools and control fire (cooking makes many plants more digestible) was already well established. But was it an act of inspiration or desperation? Did it perhaps happen by accident, as discarded grains germinated around human settlements?

What the hell? That's just so outright wrong, I don't even know where to begin. Just so no one gets misled by your specious assertions, I'm going to link a starting point for your education. To summarize, the sex ratio isn't due to infanticide; it's a combination of (a) selective abortion, and (b) parents choosing to have another child after having a daughter, because they want a son. Don't even try to pretend like neither of these happen here in the West (though not as extensively, I'll grant you).

I've got friends from Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong whom I met in college. Having grown up in Ohio, living and talking with people with different perspectives really enlightened me as to what life is actually like for Chinese citizens today. I also happen to read a lot, and pay attention to a diverse set of media. I find The Economist particularly illuminating--read the articles in that section, and you can come away with a pretty good sense of what it's like to live in China.

BTW, what makes you think I hate America? I do know enough about China to know that I'd prefer to live here in New York, where the culture is much more tolerant. And thanks for "foe"-ing me for daring to challenge your preconceptions of China. How open-minded of you.

Mobile phones and development

Less is more
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Mobile phones can boost development in poor countries--if governments let them

[Image] (iAfrica)

IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers' access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone. Not surprisingly, people in the developing world are clamouring for them, and subscriber growth is booming. The fastest growth rates are to be found in Africa, albeit from a low base. Already, 80% of the world's population lives within range of a mobile network; but only about 25% have a mobile phone.

The primary obstacle to wider adoption is the cost of handsets. In the rich world, these typically cost around $200 (though most pay less than this thanks to subsidies from network operators), or less than 1% of the average income per person. In the developing world, in contrast, a $50 handset would account for 14% of the annual income of someone earning $1 a day. So the first step in promoting the adoption of mobile phones, say operators in developing countries, is to reduce the cost of the handsets. Several such schemes are under way: in particular, several operators in developing countries have joined together to aggregate their buying power, and Motorola, the world's second-largest handset-maker, has agreed to supply up to 6m handsets for less than $40 each (see article). There is already talk of prices falling below $30 next year.

Industry observers believe cheaper handsets could expand the market by as many as 150m new subscribers a year. As well as boosting economic development in poor countries, this will help to close the "digital divide" between the communications-rich and communications-poor. Governments, you would have thought, would be doing everything in their power to promote the spread of mobile phones.

But rather than treating mobile phones as an important tool for development, many governments see them instead as an opportunity to impose hefty taxes and milk a fast-growing industry for all it is worth. In both Turkey and Bangladesh, for example, anyone buying a new mobile phone must pay a $15 connection tax. Many countries slap large import duties on handsets and impose special taxes on subscribers and operators. In many cases, these taxes double the cost of acquiring a mobile phone. As handset prices fall, such taxes will become an ever more prominent obstacle to wider adoption.

Governments should reduce these taxes at once. Indeed, by doing so, they can both speed adoption and increase revenues. High import tariffs discourage legal imports of phones and encourage people to buy them on the black market instead. Reducing such tariffs would boost revenues as legal imports increased. Lower taxes on phone calls would encourage adoption and increase the tax base. It can be done: both Mauritius and India have recently reduced their taxes and tariffs.

Mobile phones have created more entrepreneurs in Africa in the past five years than anything else, says the boss of one pan-African operator. Promoting their spread requires no aid payments or charity handouts: handset-makers, acting in their own interest, are ready to produce low-cost phones for what they now regard as a promising new market. Mobile operators across the developing world would love to sign up millions of new customers. But if developing countries are to realise the full social and economic benefits of mobile phones, governments must ensure that their policies help, rather than hinder, the wider adoption of this miraculous technology. :::

--

Mobile phones and development

Calling an end to poverty
Jul 7th

Mobile phones and development

Less is more
Jul 7th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Mobile phones can boost development in poor countries--if governments let them

[Image] (iAfrica)

IMAGINE a magical device that could boost entrepreneurship and economic activity, provide an alternative to bad roads and unreliable postal services, widen farmers' access to markets, and allow swift and secure transfers of money. Now stop imagining: the device in question is the mobile phone. Not surprisingly, people in the developing world are clamouring for them, and subscriber growth is booming. The fastest growth rates are to be found in Africa, albeit from a low base. Already, 80% of the world's population lives within range of a mobile network; but only about 25% have a mobile phone.

The primary obstacle to wider adoption is the cost of handsets. In the rich world, these typically cost around $200 (though most pay less than this thanks to subsidies from network operators), or less than 1% of the average income per person. In the developing world, in contrast, a $50 handset would account for 14% of the annual income of someone earning $1 a day. So the first step in promoting the adoption of mobile phones, say operators in developing countries, is to reduce the cost of the handsets. Several such schemes are under way: in particular, several operators in developing countries have joined together to aggregate their buying power, and Motorola, the world's second-largest handset-maker, has agreed to supply up to 6m handsets for less than $40 each (see article). There is already talk of prices falling below $30 next year.

Industry observers believe cheaper handsets could expand the market by as many as 150m new subscribers a year. As well as boosting economic development in poor countries, this will help to close the "digital divide" between the communications-rich and communications-poor. Governments, you would have thought, would be doing everything in their power to promote the spread of mobile phones.

But rather than treating mobile phones as an important tool for development, many governments see them instead as an opportunity to impose hefty taxes and milk a fast-growing industry for all it is worth. In both Turkey and Bangladesh, for example, anyone buying a new mobile phone must pay a $15 connection tax. Many countries slap large import duties on handsets and impose special taxes on subscribers and operators. In many cases, these taxes double the cost of acquiring a mobile phone. As handset prices fall, such taxes will become an ever more prominent obstacle to wider adoption.

Governments should reduce these taxes at once. Indeed, by doing so, they can both speed adoption and increase revenues. High import tariffs discourage legal imports of phones and encourage people to buy them on the black market instead. Reducing such tariffs would boost revenues as legal imports increased. Lower taxes on phone calls would encourage adoption and increase the tax base. It can be done: both Mauritius and India have recently reduced their taxes and tariffs.

Mobile phones have created more entrepreneurs in Africa in the past five years than anything else, says the boss of one pan-African operator. Promoting their spread requires no aid payments or charity handouts: handset-makers, acting in their own interest, are ready to produce low-cost phones for what they now regard as a promising new market. Mobile operators across the developing world would love to sign up millions of new customers. But if developing countries are to realise the full social and economic benefits of mobile phones, governments must ensure that their policies help, rather than hinder, the wider adoption of this miraculous technology. :::

--

Mobile phones and development

Calling an end to poverty
Jul 7th

My sig says "evil is as evil does". I don't care what the economists says they are about, I don't care they profess to believe in, I don't care what they see when look in the mirror. I only care about what they say and do. From where I sit the economist has been the biggest cheerleader for this war in the world. To me advocating a war and making excuses for GW is not about free trade. If anything it's the opposite of free trade, it's waging war to invade and occupy a nation and taking control of their natural resources.

Fair enough. You and The Economist, disagree about the merits of the Iraq invasion.

You don't disagree about President Bush. The Economist endorsed John Kerry in the most recent US Presidential election. The headline was "The incompetent [Bush] or the incoherent [Kerry]?"

I have no idea when their coverage changed from the unquestioning agreement, that caused me to stop reading the publication, to their traditional (dryly humourous) analysis but I started reading again around the time of the EU Constitution debate and feel their coverage is balanced.

At the end of the year they produce a "The Year In..." publication that predicts the possible changes of the next twelve months. In one of these, I forget which, a retiring Economist journalist gave her thoughts on changes in the world and The Economist during her career. Part of the article dwelt on the passionate disagreement there was within The Economist at the time I stopped reading. Memory tells me it was something like "...too close to the current administration..."

The only one that comes to mind is "The Economist" (they state quite often that they are "a conservative newspaper.").

Disclaimer - I subscribe to The Economist's online edition, and I think it's a very good publication. (The FT's probably better.:) )

If by 'conservative' you mean ' [USA] conservative republican', I think you're mistaken. The Economist is primarily a 'free trade' supporter. That very often leads to common cause with the political right, but the allegiance is to 'free trade'

Another Disclaimer - I let my print subscription to The Economist lapse during the early part of President GW Bush's first term as US President as I thought they had lost sight of this, and their USA coverage was offering fawning paeans to the White House, rather than the [wry] analysis I was paying for.

The quote below is taken from The Economist's website, so it's their philosophy in their own words.

What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position." That is as true today as when Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as--more recently--gun control and gay marriage.

Lastly, The Economist believes in plain language. Walter Bagehot, our most famous 19th-century editor, tried "to be conversational, to put things in the most direct and picturesque manner, as people would talk to each other in common speech, to remember and use expressive colloquialisms". That remains the style of the paper today.

Established in 1843 to campaign on one of the great political issues of the day, The Economist remains, in the second half of its second century, true to the principles of its founder. James Wilson, a hat maker from the small Scottish town of Hawick, believed in free trade, internationalism and minimum interference by government, especially in the affairs of the market. Though the protectionist Corn Laws which inspired Wilson to start The Economist were repealed in 1846, the newspaper has lived on, never abandoning its commitment to the classical 19th-century Liberal ideas of its founder.

The Corn Laws, which by taxing and restricting imports of corn made bread expensive and starvation common, were bad for Britain. Free trade, in Wilson's view, was good for everyone. In his prospectus for The Economist, he wrote: "If we look abroad, we see within the range of our commercial intercourse whole islands and continents, on which the light of civilisation has scarce yet dawned; and we seriously believe that free trade, free intercourse, will do more than any other visible agent to extend civilisation and morality throughout the world - yes, to extinguish slavery itself."

Wilson's outlook was, therefore, moral, even civilising, but not moralistic. He believed "that reason is given to us to sit in judgment over the dictates of our feelings." Reason convinced him in particular that Adam Smith was right, that through its invisible hand the market benefited profit-seeking individuals (of whom he was one) and society alike. He was himself a manufacturer and wanted especially to influence "men of business". Accordingly, he insisted that all the arguments and propositions put forward in his paper should be subjected to the test of facts. That was why it was called The Economist.

Well, as of this week, the state of tabletop fusion is... not hopeful. The guy who claimed to have achieved fusion via acoustic cavitation (that bubble thing) is, if not faking his results, behaving rather suspiciously around colleagues attempting to reproduce the experiment, and allegedly screwing with their equipment.

You've just spent $207 million on a movie (King Kong remake) you want some return. Specifically, you've just spent $270 millon on a trilogy and you would really like to $3 billion in gross revenues (LOTR). That's the target, but it rarely happens.

These grosses are further inflated because movies have become events in themselves. When the original KK came out, there was at least one big showing where all the glitz came alone. Starwars Ep1 had a world-wide release on the same day(sic!).

So todays film dynamics are larger, bigger, greater. The returns, when the sweet-spot is hit, is equally inflated. The problem is that to aspire to the giddy heights of LOTR requires a lot of faith and hope and risk-taking. That's the crevasse down which most films fall. You've just spent $207 million on a movie but it has a dark ending. Leave the punters feeling good, and they'll return. So play it safe, ditch the dark ending, insert a romantic thread, insert action for story. A crap movie is born.

http://www.economist.com/diversions/displaystory.c fm?story_id=5283197

Actually, he's right (mostly). Our productivity may be the strength of our economy, but is not the sole strength of the dollar itself. The fact that everyone uses dollars to complete oil trades means that dollars are always in demand on the exchange markets. It's almost tautological to point out that dollar-denominated trades, colloquially, thus prop up the dollar. Check out the bulk of this article, e.g.

Were Gulf countries suddenly to refuse U.S. dollars in exchange for oil, you're right that trades would in a simplistically theoretical model be no different in the long run; unfortunately, that long run would never happen, since shit'd be hitting fans in the meantime.

Natural selection is the phenomena of being removed from the gene pool prior to reproduction. Anything else that happens will allow your genes to carry on, which is how evolution works.

A 2002 Economist article looked at the pebble bed reactors, they described the process as

One advantage of the PBMR is that it can be refuelled continuously. As the fuel burns, the pebbles gradually shuffle down the core, like bubble gums in a sweet dispenser. They drop out of the bottom of the core at a rate of about one a minute, and can then be reinserted at the top if they still contain useful fuel, or replaced if they do not. Eskom say the reactor could be kept running non-stop for six years in this way, unlike a PWR, which has to be shut down every so often for refuelling. Another advantage of the pebble-bed reactor is the helium coolant. Helium conducts heat well--making the reactor efficient--and, unlike water, is not corrosive. Also, it can be fed directly into a turbine, rather than having to pass its energy on via a heat exchanger.

I agree that nuclear energy is probably one of the best choices for the future as coal, natural gas and oil run out, but it's got a lot of obstacles to overcome.

The obstacles are essentially political, in the UK they seem to have been overcome.

A year or 18 months ago the idea of new nuclear investment was politically dead. The future was seen to be gas & renewables (principally wind). But the change of the UK to a nett importer of oil/gas as the North Sea fields taper off, coupled with some worrying examples of the perils of relying on imported energy sources, have given nuclear a new lease of life, and currently it looks like the political argument has been won, largely thanks to Russia's very public use of natural gas supplies as a political bludgeon.

I agree that nuclear energy is probably one of the best choices for the future as coal, natural gas and oil run out, but it's got a lot of obstacles to overcome.

The obstacles are essentially political, in the UK they seem to have been overcome.

A year or 18 months ago the idea of new nuclear investment was politically dead. The future was seen to be gas & renewables (principally wind). But the change of the UK to a nett importer of oil/gas as the North Sea fields taper off, coupled with some worrying examples of the perils of relying on imported energy sources, have given nuclear a new lease of life, and currently it looks like the political argument has been won, largely thanks to Russia's very public use of natural gas supplies as a political bludgeon.

"[N]o amount of spin will make locking people up indefinitely without trial at Guantánamo Bay look compatible with American principles of justice. Mr Rumsfeld retorts that 15 detainees who had been released went back to the battlefield to try to kill Americans. A sad statistic, but a lot more than 15 hearts and minds are turned against America every day Guantánamo stays open. And exactly the same argument goes for the Bush administration's insane attempts to reserve the right to torture people."

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm? story_id=E1_VVQRTTV

--
The war on terror
Why it will take so long to win

Feb 23rd 2006
From The Economist print edition

A speech by Donald Rumsfeld shows that the administration still doesn't get it

[Image] (Reuters)

IN A century's time historians may well ponder why it took America so long to win the war on terror, especially given that the world's foremost democracy was battling against opponents who would rather have dragged society back to the Dark Ages. If so, they may well find part of the answer in a speech Donald Rumsfeld gave last week on the role of the media at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In one way, the speech marked a step forward for the defence secretary, because it concentrated on the need to win "hearts and minds". Until recently he plainly regarded such a focus on "soft power" as, well, soft--part of "Old Europe's" appeasement of terrorism. No matter that his generals, allies and counter-insurgency manuals told him that it was impossible to defeat fanaticism without changing public opinion; the master of military transformation would "drain the swamp" in Iraq (and the wider Muslim world) through superior firepower, high-tech intelligence and incarceration. When people--even trenchant supporters of America, like this newspaper--harped on about such details as due process, the Geneva Conventions or the importance of explaining his policies personally to critics, it was proof of our weak-mindedness.

Now something--was it, one wonders, Abu Ghraib? Or Guantánamo? Or the torture memos? Or the fact that China now lectures America on human rights? Or the tragic decline in sympathy for America around the world?--seems to have prompted a meagre mental adjustment on Mr Rumsfeld's part. His recent Quadrennial Defence Review confessed that "victory in the long war depends on strategic communication" and even issued a plea for "considerably improved language and cultural awareness". His speech in New York was an attempt to flesh out this strategy. Yet it ended up illustrating how completely the defence secretary still fails to "get it".

Mr Rumsfeld's thesis was that al-Qaeda and other extremist groups had managed to poison the Muslim public's view of the West by somehow "out-communicating" America. A group of fanatics, whose leaders live in caves and dare not use cellular phones, has apparently been much better at mastering the modern internet age than the most sophisticated government in the world. A good part of his speech was focused on how with slicker PR America could win the propaganda war: there would be more media training for military personnel, 24-hour media operation centres, and so on.

In narrow terms, these prescriptions make sense. More controversial were Mr Rumsfeld's swipes at the media. He grumbled that the mockery of journalists had mucked up his crass scheme to pay for articles to be placed in Iraqi newspapers; that they jeopardised security (in a television interview, he claimed that al-Qaeda people had been tipped off by the disclosure that their phone calls could be listened to); and above all that his critics did not play fair, giving more space to America's transgressions (like Abu Ghraib) than to those of its

"[N]o amount of spin will make locking people up indefinitely without trial at Guantánamo Bay look compatible with American principles of justice. Mr Rumsfeld retorts that 15 detainees who had been released went back to the battlefield to try to kill Americans. A sad statistic, but a lot more than 15 hearts and minds are turned against America every day Guantánamo stays open. And exactly the same argument goes for the Bush administration's insane attempts to reserve the right to torture people."

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm? story_id=E1_VVQRTTV

--
The war on terror
Why it will take so long to win

Feb 23rd 2006
From The Economist print edition

A speech by Donald Rumsfeld shows that the administration still doesn't get it

[Image] (Reuters)

IN A century's time historians may well ponder why it took America so long to win the war on terror, especially given that the world's foremost democracy was battling against opponents who would rather have dragged society back to the Dark Ages. If so, they may well find part of the answer in a speech Donald Rumsfeld gave last week on the role of the media at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In one way, the speech marked a step forward for the defence secretary, because it concentrated on the need to win "hearts and minds". Until recently he plainly regarded such a focus on "soft power" as, well, soft--part of "Old Europe's" appeasement of terrorism. No matter that his generals, allies and counter-insurgency manuals told him that it was impossible to defeat fanaticism without changing public opinion; the master of military transformation would "drain the swamp" in Iraq (and the wider Muslim world) through superior firepower, high-tech intelligence and incarceration. When people--even trenchant supporters of America, like this newspaper--harped on about such details as due process, the Geneva Conventions or the importance of explaining his policies personally to critics, it was proof of our weak-mindedness.

Now something--was it, one wonders, Abu Ghraib? Or Guantánamo? Or the torture memos? Or the fact that China now lectures America on human rights? Or the tragic decline in sympathy for America around the world?--seems to have prompted a meagre mental adjustment on Mr Rumsfeld's part. His recent Quadrennial Defence Review confessed that "victory in the long war depends on strategic communication" and even issued a plea for "considerably improved language and cultural awareness". His speech in New York was an attempt to flesh out this strategy. Yet it ended up illustrating how completely the defence secretary still fails to "get it".

Mr Rumsfeld's thesis was that al-Qaeda and other extremist groups had managed to poison the Muslim public's view of the West by somehow "out-communicating" America. A group of fanatics, whose leaders live in caves and dare not use cellular phones, has apparently been much better at mastering the modern internet age than the most sophisticated government in the world. A good part of his speech was focused on how with slicker PR America could win the propaganda war: there would be more media training for military personnel, 24-hour media operation centres, and so on.

In narrow terms, these prescriptions make sense. More controversial were Mr Rumsfeld's swipes at the media. He grumbled that the mockery of journalists had mucked up his crass scheme to pay for articles to be placed in Iraqi newspapers; that they jeopardised security (in a television interview, he claimed that al-Qaeda people had been tipped off by the disclosure that their phone calls could be listened to); and above all that his critics did not play fair, giving more space to America's transgressions (like Abu Ghraib) than to those of its

The war on terror
Why it will take so long to win

Feb 23rd 2006
From The Economist print edition

A speech by Donald Rumsfeld shows that the administration still doesn't get it

[Image: Reuters]

IN A century's time historians may well ponder why it took America so long to win the war on terror, especially given that the world's foremost democracy was battling against opponents who would rather have dragged society back to the Dark Ages. If so, they may well find part of the answer in a speech Donald Rumsfeld gave last week on the role of the media at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

In one way, the speech marked a step forward for the defence secretary, because it concentrated on the need to win "hearts and minds". Until recently he plainly regarded such a focus on "soft power" as, well, soft--part of "Old Europe's" appeasement of terrorism. No matter that his generals, allies and counter-insurgency manuals told him that it was impossible to defeat fanaticism without changing public opinion; the master of military transformation would "drain the swamp" in Iraq (and the wider Muslim world) through superior firepower, high-tech intelligence and incarceration. When people--even trenchant supporters of America, like this newspaper--harped on about such details as due process, the Geneva Conventions or the importance of explaining his policies personally to critics, it was proof of our weak-mindedness.

Now something--was it, one wonders, Abu Ghraib? Or Guantánamo? Or the torture memos? Or the fact that China now lectures America on human rights? Or the tragic decline in sympathy for America around the world?--seems to have prompted a meagre mental adjustment on Mr Rumsfeld's part. His recent Quadrennial Defence Review confessed that "victory in the long war depends on strategic communication" and even issued a plea for "considerably improved language and cultural awareness". His speech in New York was an attempt to flesh out this strategy. Yet it ended up illustrating how completely the defence secretary still fails to "get it".

Mr Rumsfeld's thesis was that al-Qaeda and other extremist groups had managed to poison the Muslim public's view of the West by somehow "out-communicating" America. A group of fanatics, whose leaders live in caves and dare not use cellular phones, has apparently been much better at mastering the modern internet age than the most sophisticated government in the world. A good part of his speech was focused on how with slicker PR America could win the propaganda war: there would be more media training for military personnel, 24-hour media operation centres, and so on.

In narrow terms, these prescriptions make sense. More controversial were Mr Rumsfeld's swipes at the media. He grumbled that the mockery of journalists had mucked up his crass scheme to pay for articles to be placed in Iraqi newspapers; that they jeopardised security (in a television interview, he claimed that al-Qaeda people had been tipped off by the disclosure that their phone calls could be listened to); and above all that his critics did not play fair, giving more space to America's transgressions (like Abu Ghraib) than to those of its enemies (such as Saddam Hussein's mass graves).

Some journalism is indeed indefensible: witness the disgustingly anti-American and especially anti-Semitic fare in many Arabic television stations and newspapers. And Mr Rumsfeld has every right to point out that the western press makes mistakes--though some of them are at his bidding. He correctly attacked American TV networks for not showing pictures of Saddam's abuses. But they were also wrong to hide some pictures of American abuses at Abu Ghraib--which have now emerged on Australian television, sparking off fresh problems in the Muslim world.

The most unnerving thing about Mr Rumsfeld's remarks is that he still seems to think that winning hearts and minds is just a question o

This is what happens to whistleblowers