The battle for brainpower
http://www.economist.com/surveys/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3D7961894
Oct 5th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Talent has become the world's most sought-after commodity, says Adrian
Wooldridge. The shortage is causing serious problems
IN A speech at Harvard University in 1943 Winston Churchill observed
that "the empires of the future will be empires of the mind." He
might have added that the battles of the future will be battles for
talent. To be sure, the old battles for natural resources are still
with us. But they are being supplemented by new ones for talent-not
just among companies (which are competing for "human resources")
but also among countries (which fret about the "balance of brains"
as well as the "balance of power").
The war for talent is at its fiercest in high-tech industries. The
arrival of an aggressive new superpower-Google-has made it bloodier
still. The company has assembled a formidable hiring machine to help it
find the people it needs. It has also experimented with clever new
recruiting tools, such as billboards featuring complicated mathematical
problems. Other tech giants have responded by supercharging their own
talent machines (Yahoo! has hired a constellation of academic stars)
and suing people who suddenly leave.
Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06evangelical.html?pagewanted=3Dall
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their
teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves.
Anti-U.S. Attack Videos Spread on the Internet
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/technology/06tube.html?ref=3Dus&pagewante=
d=3Dall
By EDWARD WYATT
Videos showing attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq have migrated to
Internet video-sharing sites like YouTube.
Atomic Pioneers Gather Again to Recall Manhattan Project
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/us/06project.html?ref=3Dus
By DAN FROSCH
About 50 veterans of the Manhattan Project gathered in Los Alamos,
N=2EM., as part of three days of events to commemorate their work on the
atomic bomb.
Priority Numero Uno
Everyone wants to get a piece of (ideally, all of) the growing Hispanic
voting bloc, and the community isn't being subtle about what they want.
Priority Numero Uno
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=3D278
By Sarah Wheaton
Everyone wants to get a piece of (ideally, all of) the growing Hispanic
voting bloc, and the community isn't being subtle about what they
want. The League of United Latin American Citizens met at the Capitol
to talk to lawmakers today about education, health care and immigration
(though, in most cases, only staffers were still around) and announce
their policy agenda for November. Though the group talked a lot about
education as a top priority during its press conference, immigration
still appears to be a major driver.
The Latino community wants "comprehensive" immigration legislation,
said Brent Wilkes, L.U.L.A.C.'s executive director. It's about more
than whether or not a lawmaker wants a fence at the border. "It
depends on how the issue is characterized," he said. Support of
enforcement is O.K. with Latino voters, but "demagoguery," or
appealing to anti-Hispanic sentiment or fear, is not.
Making uranium while the sun shines
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8001282
Oct 5th 2006 | TEHRAN
From The Economist print edition
Iran's ruling clerics are too pleased by their good fortune to seek a
deal
WHEN it comes to throwing dust into the eyes of competitors, and
rosewater over a favourite, the Iranians are world-beaters. On October
3rd, as the five permanent members of the UN Security Council steeled
themselves to think about imposing sanctions on Iran for failing to
suspend its uranium-enrichment programme, the Iranians proposed, out of
the blue, that one of the five, France, lead a consortium to enrich
uranium on Iranian soil. In Iranian theory, such a scheme would allay
the suspicions, shared by America, the European Union, Israel and many
others, that Iran plans to use enrichment technology to make bombs. In
practice, distrust of Iran's intentions runs far too deep for such a
scheme to work.
Britain, France and Germany, the countries that have invested most in a
tortuous negotiation process that started in 2003, have been here many
times before. Last winter months were lost to Iranian humming and
hawing after Russia proposed that it enrich uranium on the Iranians'
behalf. They eventually said no.
Who wants a new classroom?
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8001103
Oct 5th 2006 | BRISTOL
From The Economist print edition
Rebuilding schools turns out to be a good way of forcing through
changes to how they are run
ASK pupils what they would like to see changed about their schools and
they will come up with a surprisingly modest list. They want roofs that
don't leak, chairs with four legs apiece, graffiti-free lavatories and
no hidden spaces where bullies can lurk. The more daring will then
start talking about the snooker rooms, cinemas and coffee bars you
might have thought would be top of their wish lists.
Over the next 15 years visions both modest and ambitious will be
realised as the government indulges in an orgy of wrecking and
rebuilding. Under a programme known as "building schools for the
future", half of England's 3,500 state secondary schools are to be
knocked down and replaced, and the rest remodelled and refurbished.
Private companies will stump up half the cash with the other half
coming from the public purse.
Lifting the bonnet
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8001774
Oct 5th 2006 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
From The Economist print edition
The e-commerce giant wants to be more than just a retailer
WHAT kind of company is Amazon.com? It is usually described as an
internet retailer. But it has fingers in many other pies, too. There is
A9, its search engine, and Unbox, a video-download service. It operates
online stores for other firms, such as Target. It was a pioneer in
developing "collaborative filtering" software to make
recommendations to shoppers. And last week Jeff Bezos, Amazon's boss,
was out stumping for three of its "utility computing" offerings:
Simple Storage Service (S3), which provides cheap access to online
storage; Elastic Compute Cloud, which lets programmers rent computing
capacity on Amazon's systems; and Mechanical Turk, which connects firms
with people who perform small tasks that are difficult to automate.
When Mr Bezos talks about these services his firm no longer sounds like
a retailer at all.
In order to cope with the Christmas rush, Amazon has far more computing
capacity than it needs for most of the year. As much as 90% of it is
idle at times. Renting out pieces of that network to other businesses,
such as SmugMug, an online photo site that uses the S3 service, is a
way to get extra return on Amazon's $2 billion investment in
technology. Amazon is renting out its physical infrastructure too. Last
month it announced Fulfillment by Amazon, which allows other firms to
use Amazon's staff and warehouse space to send out goods and handle
returned items. It also introduced WebStore by Amazon, which provides
access to all of Amazon's back-end technology, including the ability to
offer third-party products.
Unity and diversity
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7995205
Oct 5th 2006
From The Economist print edition
New insights into the origin of species suggest that biologists
disagree less than they thought they did
MANY physicists are engaged in the search for a "theory of
everything". Biologists, smugly, think they have found one already.
Organisms that survive long enough to reproduce and are attractive
enough to find a mate pass their genes on to the next generation. Those
that do not are evolutionary cul-de-sacs. But the details-how you go
on from the basic principles of evolution to explain large-scale
patterns in biology-are more divisive. Scientific camps form. Their
leaders step onto soap boxes. And only rarely do people concede that
their own theories and those of their opponents are not always mutually
exclusive.
Since the early 1970s, the two grandest patterns of life-how species
are arranged in space and how they are arranged in time-have divided
their opposing camps quite neatly. Those who squabble over space
disagree about why there are more species in the tropics than anywhere
else. To them, the tropics are either where species are more often born
(cradles of diversity) or where they tend not to die (museums of
diversity). By contrast, biologists concerned with patterns in time
tenaciously debate whether new species come into being in a smooth and
gradual manner, or whether the history of life is actually a series of
bursts of change that are interspersed with periods when nothing much
happens.
The same to you, with knobs on
Oct 5th 2006 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
The mid-term mud starts to fly
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8001477
"THE facts are that since Bob Humpty went to Washington, more than
350m people around the world have died from various causes, including
disease, famine, earthquakes and machete attacks. Coincidence? Not
according to these realistic-looking headlines." That attack ad was
dreamed up by Dave Barry, a comedian. But are the real ones much
better?
Their logic is often equally strained. For example: "During Deborah
Pryce's congressional tenure, gas prices have more than doubled," one
learns from a website called www.badpryce.org. Deborah Pryce is the
Republican representative for Ohio's 15th district. Oil traders rarely
cite her influence when trying to explain why prices go up or down, but
you never know.
Cross-eyed and clueless
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D8001225
Oct 5th 2006
From The Economist print edition
A new book lays the administration's weaknesses bare
SIR ISAIAH BERLIN liked to say of his Oxford college, All Souls, that
the Fellows changed but the guests were always the same. This is even
truer of Washington, DC. Presidents and their entourages come and go.
But the guests at the political feast-from the talking heads to the
lobbyists-stay the same.
There is no more illustrious guest than Bob Woodward. Ever since he
helped to defenestrate Richard Nixon in 1974, Mr Woodward has been a
sort of super-reporter-employed by the Washington Post to cultivate
high-level contacts and churn out bestselling books. This week Mr
Woodward described his work as "just reporting-I've done it for 35
years and sometimes it has an impact and sometimes it doesn't." His
latest book, "State of Denial", is undoubtedly having an impact.
Military misjudgment
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7997005
Oct 5th 2006
From The Economist print edition
The Pakistani leader's memoir may be a bestseller, but it does him
little justice
THERE are good things to be said about General Pervez Musharraf,
Pakistan's president and army chief, and he is, as he might put it,
proud and unstinting in his resolution to say them, over and over, in
his clich=E9-ridden and boringly boastful autobiography, "In the Line
of Fire".
General Musharraf-and there are enough phrases familiar to those who
have followed his career to prove that he wrote quite a lot of
it-comes across as humourless, vain and insecure. Sentences as smug
as, "My career was now well on course, given all my qualifications
and achievements", are spattered across almost every page. There are
many references to the president's (allegedly) fine musculature. Any
less than glorious event in his life, after at least a refreshingly
sinful youth, is blamed on some less worthy individual, a dull superior
or jealous peer, whom the author is all too happy to name. And yet,
painful though it is to read, this is a quite remarkable book, about
dramatic events and, as the occasional sentence lets slip, an
interesting and impressive man.
As with whist, so with politics
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3D7963498
Sep 28th 2006
From The Economist print edition
LAME from birth, yet with a talent for landing on his feet, Charles
Maurice de Talleyrand-P=E9rigord was for cartoonists a natural. As
statesman and diplomat, he was at or never far from the centre of power
through every upheaval that shook France-and Europe-between the
fall of the Bastille and the collapse of the restored Bourbon monarchy
in 1830.
The "prince with six heads", as one caricature nicely pictured him,
was a bishop in the ancien r=E9gime, revolutionist in 1789, diplomat for
Napoleon, minister to Louis XVIII and lastly-by which time he was
already in his late 70s-ambassador in London for Louis Philippe, the
"citizen king". Such frequent shifts inevitably won him many
enemies. But with each turn of the carousel, former foes would become
friends again. Talleyrand rose late, dressed slowly and played a lot of
whist. He took a similar approach to politics, using time and delay to
advantage.
How the Democrats Can Step Up
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR200610050=
1574.html
By David Ignatius
Friday, October 6, 2006; Page A23
It's too late for the Democrats to forge coherent positions on Iraq or
tax policy before the November elections. But fortune has presented
them with a mission that can be summed up in a simple sentence: They
must be the party of accountability and reform.
The pollsters report that nearly two-thirds of the country now believes
that America is heading in the wrong direction. The events of the past
several weeks offer a devastating argument for the Democrats of why
that is so. With the Republicans in control of the executive and
legislative branches, arrogance has become a way of life. In a series
of widely disparate cases -- from ignoring the ethics problems of
former House majority leader Tom DeLay to refusing recommendations to
fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to covering up the egregious
conduct of Rep. Mark Foley -- the Republican leadership's instinct has
been political self-protection rather than accountability and effective
government.
Apple Of the Times
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR200610050=
1550.html
By Richard Holbrooke
Friday, October 6, 2006; Page A23
R=2EW. "Johnny" Apple, who died Wednesday at age 71, was the best
political reporter of his era. He was also the best food writer, the
best wine writer, the best travel writer and the best architecture
critic, and he could have been the best garden and sports writer if he
had wanted to be. I know all this because he told me so. He was
probably right.
Wherever journalists congregate this week, they are surely telling
Apple stories. Anyone who ever encountered him will have a few. This is
a personal tribute to Johnny, not from a fellow journalist but from a
sometime government official -- a view, if you will, from the other
side.
GOP Bigotry That Backfired
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/05/AR200610050=
1548.html
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, October 6, 2006; Page A23
Let's deal with the circumstance that dares not speak its name: How
much of the Mark Foley scandal's impact is due to the fact that he's a
gay man who preyed on young boys?
The basic story line -- powerful man exploits children -- would be the
same if Foley were straight and underage girls had been the subject of
his lurid attentions. But would the intensity of the scandal be the
same? Would there be all this unseemly finger-pointing and hand-washing
among the House leadership? Would Dennis Hastert be fighting to keep
his job; would Christian conservatives be so apoplectic; would the
whole Republican Party look as if it were on the verge of a nervous
breakdown?
Blaming the veil is wrong
Rajnaara Akhtar
October 6, 2006 10:14 AM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rajnaara_akhtar/2006/10/jack_straw_miss=
es_the_point.html
Why oh why can't we Muslims just take some constructive criticism for a
change? We live in ghettos, we can't accept that terrorism is our
fault, our Mosques are recruiting centres for jihadis and now Jack
Straw has "sensibly" pointed out that women who cover their faces are a
hindrance to social cohesion, we're up in arms again ...
On the face of it, the response of Muslims to Mr Straw's suggestion
seem extreme, especially as the only thing he said was that failing to
show the mouth and nose was "a visible statement of separation and of
difference." An innocent comment surely, and an invitation to engage in
dialogue with members of the Muslim community?
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