Saturday, May 31, 2008

Kahneman, Krueger develop happiness survey - The Daily Princetonian

Sleep again comes up in quality of life issues.

Sent to you by john via Google Reader:

Kahneman, Krueger develop happiness survey - The Daily Princetonian

via www.dailyprincetonian.com on 5/31/08

Kahneman, Krueger develop happiness survey

By Emily Stehr
Staff Writer

Published: Friday, January 14th, 2005

A national quality of life index based on a new research method may soon supplement indicators like the gross domestic product.

Noble laureate and Wilson School professor Daniel Kahneman and economist Alan Krueger were part of an inter-university team that developed the Day Reconstruction Method for measuring the emotional quality of people's daily experiences.

The Day Reconstruction Method requires survey participants to rank specific activities from the previous day on an "enjoyment scale."

Kahneman said he thought a new method of ascertaining people's quality of life was necessary because all previous surveys, such as the standard Experience Sampling Method, ask only "superficial, general questions."

As a result, "global evaluations are inaccurate," Kahneman said.

In their initial survey, 909 working women in Texas composed the sample population.

By analyzing the women's responses to their activities, the research team gauged whether people actually enjoy daily activities by getting their opinions directly after the events occurred.

And the surveyors found some interesting results. For example, people enjoy spending time with their relatives much more than they like to admit — and don't enjoy their children as much as they would like to think.

People also chose "intimate relations" as the most enjoyable activity while commuting ranked last.

Those surveyed also spent, on average, 11.5 hours each day working, doing housework and commuting — some of the least enjoyable activities, according to the research.

Events such as a poor night's sleep had a large impact on how people felt about what they did the following day. Variables like time, pressure at work and companions with whom tasks are accomplished also played a large part in shaping happiness.

According to the group's findings, more general circumstances such as whether each woman was married, single, wealthy, educated or felt she had job security did not have a significant effect on daily happiness.

Kahneman said he did not include men in the survey because he wanted a sufficiently large and specific survey population, but his team does not claim these results "stand for humanity" and didn't want to "generalize too much," he said.

Kahneman added that his team was really "proposing an approach" or "an instrument" that he thinks is necessary for measuring the "burden of disease" that results from the stress of daily life.

Because of the potential implications of the work, the National Institute on Aging, Wilson School, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and National Science Foundation are supporting the research.

Results from the study were published in the Dec. 3 issue of Science magazine.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to www.dailyprincetonian.com using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Monday, May 19, 2008

Emailing: hase trets.jpg

Your message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:
hase trets.jpg

Note: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your e-mail security settings to determine how attachments are handled.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change - New York Times

Sent to you by john via Google Reader:

McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change - New York Times

via www.nytimes.com on 5/12/08

May 13, 2008

McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change

By ELISABETH BUMILLER and JOHN M. BRODER

PORTLAND, Ore.—Senator John McCain sought to distance himself from President Bush on Monday as he called for a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States to combat climate change.

Mr. McCain, in a speech at a wind power company, also pledged to work with the European Union to diplomatically engage China and India, two of the world's biggest polluters, if those nations refuse to participate in an international agreement to slow global warming.

In the prepared text of his speech, e-mailed to reporters on Sunday night and Monday morning, Mr. McCain went so far as to call for punitive tariffs against China and India if they evaded international standards on emissions, but he omitted the threat in his delivered remarks. Aides said he had decided to soften his language because he thought he could be misinterpreted as being opposed to free trade, a central tenet of his campaign and Republican orthodoxy.

But he took a direct shot at Mr. Bush.

"I will not shirk the mantle of leadership that the United States bears," Mr. McCain said pointedly. "I will not permit eight long years to pass without serious action on serious challenges."

In speeches on the campaign trail, Mr. McCain frequently highlights the threat of climate change in speeches, but he has a mixed record on the environment in the Senate. In recent years he has pushed legislation to curb emissions that contribute to climate change, but he has missed votes on increasing fuel economy standards and has opposed tax breaks meant to encourage alternative energy.

In his address on Monday, the presumptive Republican president nominee renewed his support for a "cap-and-trade" system in which power plants and other polluters could meet limits on greenhouse gases by either reducing emissions on their own or buying credits from more-efficient producers.

Mr. McCain's break with the Bush administration means that the three main presidential candidates have embraced swifter action to fight global warming.

But the two Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination, Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, criticized the McCain plan as too timid. Leaders of a number of environmental groups were also sharply critical and noted his past Senate votes against incentives for energy conservation and alternative energy sources like wind and solar power.

Other environmental advocates offered qualified praise for Mr. McCain, who was among the first in Congress to introduce legislation to address the carbon emissions that scientists blame for the warming of the planet.

Mr. McCain said Monday that the problem demanded urgent national and international action.

"Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring," he said at a Vestas wind turbine manufacturing plant in Oregon, where the environment is a central issue for voters. "We stand warned by serious and credible scientists across the world that time is short and the dangers are great."

The senator's remarks were a clear criticism of Mr. Bush, who in his first term questioned the scientific basis for global warming and who has remained adamantly opposed to mandatory caps on emissions, which he says would be bad for the American economy. The administration also rejected the Kyoto protocol, which limits emissions of heat-trapping gases.

Mr. McCain's speech, a compilation and sharpening of many of his existing proposals, was most notable as a political document that sought to appeal to the independents he is wooing for November. It put Mr. McCain slightly to the right of center in the environmental debate.

Mr. McCain simultaneously released a television commercial in Oregon about his position on climate change, and startled audience members at his speech by praising and sharing the stage with Ted Kulongoski, the Democratic governor of Oregon who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton for president.

Mr. McCain is the only Republican presidential candidate this year to call for mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, but his target for reducing those emissions over time is lower than that of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, and even lower than that in a bill proposed by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia.

In his speech, Mr. McCain advocated cutting emissions 60 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050; Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama propose cutting them by 80 percent over the same period, while the Lieberman-Warner bills calls for a 70 percent reduction. Scientists say reductions of that magnitude are needed to slow and then reverse production of the gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, which are heating the atmosphere and causing long-term climate changes.

Mr. McCain said the United States must seek new, cleaner sources of energy to replace the burning of coal and oil, which produce the bulk of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for the warming of the planet. "As we move toward all of these goals, and over time put the age of fossil fuels behind us," he said, "we must consider every alternative source of power, and that includes nuclear power."

Mr. McCain has long advocated nuclear power as a way to cut emissions, and frequently promotes it in his campaign appearances as an alternative energy source. His view is shared by many utility executives and many Republicans in Congress, but it puts him at odds with Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, who have expressed skepticism about the cost and safety of nuclear power plants.

There are no incentives for building new nuclear plants in the Lieberman-Warner legislation now before the Senate that his Democratic rivals have endorsed, and Mr. McCain suggested Friday that he would not support the measure unless it included some nuclear power subsidies.

Mr. McCain's proposal in his prepared remarks to impose tariffs on industrializing countries like China and India is included in the Lieberman-Warner bill and reflects concerns by both industry and labor in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialized world. It would mandate punitive duties on products from any country that did not participate in global carbon-reduction system, to balance the lower cost of producing goods using dirty energy sources.

In another contrast with Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain also sought to persuade voters that he has a personal concern and first-hand experience with climate change, which has emerged as a major issue in the 2008 presidential race.

"A few years ago I traveled to the area of Svalbard, Norway —it's a group of islands in the Arctic Ocean," Mr. McCain said. "I was shown the southernmost point where a glacier had reached 20 years earlier. From there, we went northward for miles, up the fjord to see where that same glacier ends today, because all the rest, all the rest, has melted."

Reaction to Mr. McCain proposals from environmental advocates was lukewarm. A number of spokesmen for environmental groups said that his plan did not go far enough but they were grateful to hear a Republican recognizing what they consider an urgent problem and offering a detailed plan to solve it. But he came under considerable criticism for repeatedly opposing federal programs to encourage energy conservation and alternative fuel sources.

Daniel J. Weiss, who heads the global warming program at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic policy group in Washington, said that Mr. McCain had often voted with Democrats on environmental bills but that at other times he had taken contrary positions. The senator opposed a major 2005 energy bill because it included billions of dollars in federal money for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

"You can't count on him," Mr. Weiss said of Mr. McCain. "Sometimes he's good on things, sometimes he's not."

Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Portland, Ore., and John M. Broder from Washington. Kitty Bennet contributed reporting from Washington.

Home

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to www.nytimes.com using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better

Sleep is the elixir of life, or is that love...

Sent to you by john via Google Reader:

Lifehacker Top 10: Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better

via lifehacker.com on 5/11/08

Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better

Nothing kills your ability to get things done faster than a bad night's sleep. Studies show that sleep deprivation costs Americans significant work productivity; yawning employees can't stay alert, make good decisions, focus on tasks or even manage a friendly mood at the office. There are lots of ways to beat insomnia, increase the quality of your sleep, and master the power nap. Today we've got our top 10 favorite sleep techniques, tips and facts. Photo by dkaz.

10. Reduce Screen Time Before Bed
Stop checking your email or watching TV just before bedtime and you'll sleep better. A recent study shows that people who consume electronic media (read: stare at a backlit screen) just before bedtime report lower-quality sleep even when they get as much sleep as non-pre-bedtime screenheads. Lifehacker reader JFitzpatrick says this makes perfect sense:

Using a light-emitting device before bed like a flickering TV or computer monitor stimulates the brain in a different way than the way the body was intended to move towards sleep (gradually as the sun set) That's why it is so easy to waste sleepless hours flipping from channel to channel (or reading Lifehacker or Digg). The exposure to light stimulates the brain and creates a false alertness and stimulation.

9. Exercise to Enhance Sleep
You already know that exercising provides lots of good health benefits—a good night's sleep being one of them. But make sure you exercise in the morning or afternoon, not at night, to see the benefits while you dream. CNN reports:

The National Sleep Foundation reports that exercise in the afternoon can help deepen shut-eye and cut the time it takes for you to fall into dreamland. But, they caution, vigorous exercise leading up to bedtime can actually have the reverse effects. A 2003 study found that a morning fitness regime was key to a better snooze. Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center concluded that postmenopausal women who exercised 30 minutes every morning had less trouble falling asleep than those who were less active. The women who worked out in the evening hours saw little or no improvement in their sleep patterns.

Oh yeah, exercise enhances that other bedtime activity, too: sex. (But that's a whole other top 10.)

8. Eat to Enhance Sleep
Some foods are more conducive to a better night's sleep than others. You already knew about warm milk, chamomile tea and turkey, but Yahoo Food lists others, like bananas, potatoes, oatmeal and whole-wheat bread. You find yourself fighting off afternoon droopy eyelids at the office? Here are some pointers on eating a less nap-inducing lunch.

7. Master the Power Nap
Slowly but surely, the benefits of the classic, 20-minute power nap are getting more recognition, with big companies installing sleep pods at the office and more software applications like Pzizz helping to set the right power nap aural scene. Here's how to get the perfect nap from the author of Take a Nap! Change Your Life, and more on how and why power naps work.

6. Avoid the Soul-Shattering Alarm Buzzer
No one likes starting the day by getting ripped out of bed by that evil BEEP BEEP BEEP of the alarm clock, but some sleepyheads ignore anything gentler. Lifehacker reader Jason beats the buzzer with a dual clock radio system:

Put one alarm clock on your nightstand, the other across the room and make sure they're in sync. Set the alarm clock on your nightstand to go off at, let's say, 6:30 a.m., if that is when you need to get up. I set that one to use the radio, and make sure it is loud enough to wake me up, but not too loud (I don't want to wake my wife on purpose). The second alarm clock on the dresser is set to go off exactly one minute later, but using that dreadful buzzer. So, when my alarm goes off in the morning, it doesn't startle me like the buzzer. Then, I know I have about 60 seconds to get up and turn the other one off before I hear a buzzing sound. At that point, I am out of bed, and no buzzer.

Of course, some particularly talented sleepers can program themselves to wake up before the alarm clock goes off naturally. (The rest of us hate you.)

5. Solve Problems in Your Sleep
Wrestling with a tough decision, stuck in a creative rut or having a hard time solving a complex problem? Studies show that a little shut-eye can help you tackle problems and make tough decisions.

4. Beat Insomnia with Visualization
There's nothing worse than laying awake throughout the night, watching the clock tick away seconds knowing you'll be a zombie the next day. When insomnia's kicking your sleepy butt, use a self-directed meditative visualization technique to quiet the whir of a racing mind. Guest contributor Ryan Irelan runs down how to beat insomnia with "Blue Energy."

3. Shortcut a Long Nap with the Clattering Spoon
Artist and napper Salvador Dali had an interesting nap technique, based on the idea that your body benefits from just getting to sleep as much as a couple of hours worth of shut-eye. He purportedly used a spoon to wake himself up just as he lost consciousness. According to Question Swap (via 43F), here's what you do:

Lie down or sit in comfy seat holding a spoon in your fingertips. you should be holding it in a way that - when you loose consciousness (sleep) you drop it... the Clatter (put a big plate on the floor under your hand) will wake you.... and you get woken JUST as you enter the best "dreamy" bit of your sleep. Alternatively, hold a bunch of keys: same effect.

2. Take a Caffeine Power Nap

Need a turbo boost to beat the sleepy doldrums pinch? Try a cup of coffee followed by a quick 15-minute nap to reboot your brain and get you going again.

1. Teach Yourself to Lucid Dream
Arrive at school naked in that terrible dream last night? Turn nightmares around by knowing you're dreaming while you do it. Lucid dreaming opens up all sorts of possibilities for controlling where and how your dreams go. Teach yourself to lucid dream by keeping a dream journal and learning reality checks and dream extending techniques. (Some great comments here by lucid-dreaming readers, too.) Intrigued? Here are more lucid dreaming FAQs.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to lifehacker.com using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Saturday, May 10, 2008

May 11, 2008

Sadr City Bomb Squad: Looking for Trouble Before It Explodes

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

BAGHDAD — The bland job description is "route clearance," but it is one of the most unglamorous and dangerous missions in Iraq. Creeping along the scarred streets of Sadr City, the soldiers search for roadside bombs around the clock, using bright spotlights at night that make them a big, bright target.

"We are lit up like the sun at night," said Specialist Chance Guzman, a forklift driver in a St. Louis scrap yard before his National Guard unit, the 1138th Engineer Company, deployed to Iraq from Missouri.

He spoke after a night mission during which his platoon found two bombs, or improvised explosive devices, as they are known by the military, avoided the blast from a third bomb, took gunfire from an alley and eluded two mortar rounds.

The unit's mission was crucial as fighting continued last week between American soldiers and Shiite militias in Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite neighborhood. As they have done successfully to tamp down violence in other parts of Baghdad, American forces are erecting a massive wall that is to be a dividing line between the militia-controlled areas to the north and the safe zone American and Iraqi forces want to establish to the south.

Route clearance teams have been opening the way for the construction while working to keep the streets south of the barrier free of bombs that the militias keep trying to sneak into trash heaps, wedge against curbs or otherwise hide in the ample debris in the streets. Most of the time the soldiers find the bombs before they explode, but sometimes the bombs find them, producing powerful blasts that rock their armored vehicles and reverberate through the streets.

"Given where we are at, the amount of action we are seeing and the amount of detonations on the vehicles, we are amazingly fortunate," said Lt. Carter Job Roberts, the leader of the company's 27-member First Platoon.

Good fortune, however, is a relative notion in Baghdad. Several members of the platoon have already earned Purple Hearts, and one gunner was lost to a rocket-propelled grenade. "We're bullet magnets," said Specialist Michael Jason McMillan, a Missouri college student whose studies have been interrupted by two deployments to Iraq. He was hit by shrapnel in the arm and above the lip while manning the turret during a mission in October but was soon back on duty.

One night in late April, the bomb-clearing platoon set off on Al Quds Street, a four-lane thoroughfare where the wall is being built. The militias' bomb of choice is the explosively formed penetrator, or E.F.P., a devastatingly effective weapon, which can penetrate many types of armor and which American intelligence asserts is supplied by Iran.

But bombs are not the only worry. Armed with rocket-propelled grenades, small arms and mortars, militia fighters are often primed to attack when an American or Iraqi vehicle is stopped by a bomb blast.

Specialist Guzman carried a few talismans for an extra measure of protection: a religious pendant given to him by his father, the star from an old American flag that was sent by schoolchildren back home and an ace of spades playing card that was fixed to his helmet.

As the platoon drove along that night, it was not clear if his luck would hold out. A building in the distance was smoldering from a previous battle. It had been hit by an M1 tank after American soldiers concluded that militiamen were using it as a perch.

A Husky, an ungainly looking vehicle with a large mechanical arm, led the way on the north side of the road. The arm of the Husky is equipped with a camera, and the vehicle has an outsize blower to puff away trash that might conceal a bomb. It was driven by Specialist Paul Williamson, who was encased in a small armored cab.

The militias are well practiced at employing the bombs. One tactic is to place a bomb, or a decoy, in a visible portion of the road to distract the soldiers and divert them into the path of a powerful hidden explosive.

Constant attacks by Apache helicopters and Predator drones have taken their toll on the militia fighters, who often do not have enough time to carefully camouflage the bombs they try to sneak into the streets the Americans have already cleared.

"The ones that are hard to find are in the areas we have not been in yet," said Lieutenant Roberts, alluding to streets like Al Quds.

As the vehicles proceeded, Specialist Williamson spied an overturned wheelbarrow, which he flipped over with the Husky's mechanical arm, the soldiers recalled. Behind it was a block draped with a T-shirt. Wires appeared to be attached to the block, a telltale sign of an explosively formed penetrator set to be fired by a hidden triggerman.

The Husky pulled back, and members of an explosive ordnance team climbed out of their vehicle and placed a small robot on the ground to take a closer look. The robot was equipped with a camera, and the team members maneuvered it forward to confirm the find.

Gunfire erupted from an alley and the robot began zigging and zagging as a soldier responded with a .50-caliber gun. The robot survived the cross-fire, Specialist Guzman explained, and it was sent forward again, this time with a chunk of C-4 explosive, which it placed to destroy the bomb. The blast sent a shudder through Specialist Guzman's vehicle and splattered it with a cloud of dust.

But the night was far from over. A bomb exploded near the road-clearance vehicles to the rear, but it missed them. Then a large bomb was discovered to the front, hidden this time inside a green can that was covered with an empty sandbag. The explosive ordnance team again deployed the robot to destroy it.

As the soldiers were turning around to return to base, two mortar rounds landed with resounding booms, one of which was close enough to puncture a tire of one of the vehicles. It was a slow leak and the route clearance team managed to drive back without further incident.

In his civilian life, Lieutenant Roberts, 41, is the shipping manager for a nuclear reactor at the University of Missouri. The reactor is used for medical research, and he saw a parallel between his university work and his Sadr City mission of protecting American and Iraqi forces from roadside bombs.

"I get to go to work and know, if I have done my job right, people will be alive who probably would not be otherwise," Lieutenant Roberts said.

The next morning, the platoon set out again to check the main streets south of Al Quds Street. Specialist Manual Pavon, a construction worker in civilian life, was in front as the Husky driver.

His fellow soldiers consider him to be one of the luckiest men in the company. It was Specialist Pavon who was driving a RG-31 armored vehicle on the earlier mission in which the gunner was killed by the rocket-propelled grenade. The round flew through the turret and exited through a window on the driver's side of the vehicle. Specialist Pavon was hunched over the steering wheel when the attack occurred and was unscathed.

As Specialist Pavon searched for bombs he listened to music on his iPod. Country tunes are a good choice for Sadr City, he explained, because they are "a little calmer." Before long, a suspicious-looking item was found in an alley. It was blasted by a small charge, determined to be a decoy and the soldiers moved on.

The Husky is not equipped with a gun, but that did not seem to worry Specialist Pavon, who said the soldiers in the vehicle that trailed behind would take care of the threats. "They got me covered, and I look on the road for them," he said. "That is pretty much all it is."

Friday, May 9, 2008

The Conservative Revival - New York Times

Sent to you by john via Google Reader:

The Conservative Revival - New York Times

via www.nytimes.com on 5/9/08

Op-Ed Columnist

The Conservative Revival

E-Mail
Print

Save
Share

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: May 9, 2008

For years, American and British politics were in sync. Reagan came in roughly the same time as Thatcher, and Clinton's Third Way approach mirrored Blair's. But the British conservatives never had a Gingrich revolution in the 1990s or the Bush victories thereafter. They got their losing in early, and, in the wilderness, they rethought modern conservatism while their American counterparts were clinging to power.

Skip to next paragraph

David Brooks

Go to Columnist Page »

Today, British conservatives are on the way up, while American conservatives are on the way down. British conservatives have moved beyond Thatcherism, while American conservatives pine for another Reagan. The British Conservative Party enjoyed a series of stunning victories in local elections last week, while polls show American voters thoroughly rejecting the Republican brand.

The flow of ideas has changed direction. It used to be that American conservatives shaped British political thinking. Now the influence is going the other way.

The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, "the whole way we live our lives."

That means, first, moving beyond the Thatcherite tendency to put economics first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: "Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric." David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, makes it clear that his primary focus is sociological. Last year he declared: "The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival." In another speech, he argued: "We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society."

This has led to a lot of talk about community, relationships, civic engagement and social responsibility. Danny Kruger, a special adviser to Cameron, wrote a much-discussed pamphlet, "On Fraternity." These conservatives are not trying to improve the souls of citizens. They're trying to use government to foster dense social bonds.

They want voters to think of the Tories as the party of society while Labor is the party of the state. They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control.

As such, the Conservative Party has spent a lot of time thinking about how government should connect with citizens. Basically, everything should be smaller, decentralized and interactive. They want a greater variety of schools, with local and parental control. They want to reverse the trend toward big central hospitals. Health care, Cameron says, is as much about regular long-term care as major surgery, and patients should have the power to construct relationships with caretakers, pharmacists and local facilities.

Cameron also believes government should help social entrepreneurs scale up their activities without burdening them with excessive oversight.

This focus means that Conservatives talk not only about war and G.D.P., but also the softer stuff. There's been more emphasis on environmental issues, civility, assimilation and the moral climate. Cameron has spent an enormous amount of time talking about marriage, families and children.

Some of his ideas would not sit well with American conservatives. He wants to create 4,200 more health visitors, who would come into the homes of new parents and help them manage day-to-day stress. But he also talks about rewriting the tax code to make it more family friendly, making child care more accessible, and making the streets safer.

Some of this is famously gauzy, and Cameron is often disdained as a mere charmer. But politically it works. The Tory modernization project has produced stunning support in London, the southern suburbs, the Welsh heartlands and the ailing north. It's not only that voters are tired of Labor. The Conservatives have successfully "decontaminated" their brand. They're offering something in tune with the times.

Cameron describes a new global movement, with rising center-right parties in Sweden, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, California and New York (he admires Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg). American conservatives won't simply import this model. But there's a lot to learn from it. The only question is whether Republicans will learn those lessons sooner, or whether they will learn them later, after a decade or so in the wilderness.

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to www.nytimes.com using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

The Cost of Smarts - New York Times

The Cost of Smarts - New York Times: "Editorial Notebook
The Cost of Smarts

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: May 7, 2008

Research on animal intelligence always makes me wonder just how smart humans are. Consider the fruit-fly experiments described in Carl Zimmer’s piece in the Science Times on Tuesday. Fruit flies who were taught to be smarter than the average fruit fly tended to live shorter lives. This suggests that dimmer bulbs burn longer, that there is an advantage in not being too terrifically bright.

Intelligence, it turns out, is a high-priced option. It takes more upkeep, burns more fuel and is slow off the starting line because it depends on learning — a gradual process — instead of instinct. Plenty of other species are able to learn, and one of the things they’ve apparently learned is wh"

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

For the Elderly, Being Heard About Life’s End - New York Times

For the Elderly, Being Heard About Life’s End - New York Times: "e"

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? - New York Times

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? - New York Times
An intriguing article on the benefits of the plastic mind, change for brain's sake. Or change is the brain's sake.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Blocking the Transmission of Violence - Alex Kotlowitz - Gang Violence - Cities - Public Health - Epidemiology - New York Times

Prepping Robots to Perform Surgery - New York Times

Prepping Robots to Perform Surgery - New York Times
Drew does this threaten you?

evernote

Evernote Openbook: articles

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Sent to you by john via Google Reader:

Kahneman, Krueger develop happiness survey

Things you can do from here:

Monday, May 19, 2008

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Sent to you by john via Google Reader:

McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change

Things you can do from here:

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Sent to you by john via Google Reader:

Things you can do from here:

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Sadr City Bomb Squad: Looking for Trouble Before It Explodes

Friday, May 9, 2008

Sent to you by john via Google Reader:

The Conservative Revival

Things you can do from here:

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Monday, May 5, 2008

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Friday, May 2, 2008

Thursday, May 1, 2008

re quote of the day

john's shared items

Blog Archive

About Me