two for one

"For around a decade, a group of campaigners have been arguing that the public shouldn't have to pay to read the results of the scientific research which it has, through its taxes, financed. Feelings are particularly high when it comes to government-funded medical research. Patients' rights groups argue vociferously that it is ethically wrong to charge for access to the latest medical discoveries. (...) On Feb 3rd American's National Institute of Health (NIH), the world's biggest sponsor of medical research, announced that from May it wil expect the research work which it has helped to finance to be made available online, to all comers, and free, within a year of that research having been published in a journal. (...) A victory, then, for the open-access campaigners. But only a partial one. The NIH's announcement is actually a retreat from the proposal originally circulated last year, which was for open access within six months of first publication. The NIH appears to have backed down under pressure from commercial publishers, as well as from professional societies tht fund their activities by publishing journals." (The Eco, Feb 12th-18th 2005:83-84)

"Love me, love my dog
A few years ago, some researchers studying human mating patterns tried the following experiment. They took photographs of individuals in established relationships, mixed them together, and asked their experimentl subjects to pair up likely looking couples from the pictures. More often than chance, the photo-couples thus created were also real couples. This is an example of what biologists call assortive mating - that who chooses whom (and also who is willing to be thus chosen) - is to some extent predictable. But despite the corny observation that owners grow to look like their dogs, and vice versa, no one really expected the same rules to apply to people and their pets.
But it seems they do. (description of basically the same experiment as above. note that clothing is blanked out to not give a clue). As in the case of human couples, correct guesses were made significantly more often than chance. (Note that it only worked with pedigree, not with mongrel.). " (Id.)
Now I feel less bad that a Canadian customs officer once asked us if we were siblings.

"In America, Howard Dean was elected as chairman of the Democratic National Committee". everyone is speaking of the public regaining a hold of a party that was losing its popular base. the republicans seemed especially pleased at this 'unbred' leader. (The Eco, Feb 19th-25th)

"Is the MBA responsible for moral turpitude at the top?
(This one's for you, Sonia!)
In an extraordinary mea culpa, Sumantra Ghoshal, a respected business academic who died last yer, argued in a paper to be published shortly that the way MBA students are taught has freed them "from any sense of moral responsibility" for what they subsequently do in their business lives." (id.) The article then goes on to argue that the recently most corrupt execs often didn't have MBA's, and that business schools now have tons of ethics courses.
Still, there remains, I believe, a serious underlying issue of mistrust wrt MBAs, not least of which among engineers.

"Anti-Americanism
George Bush will encounter a more complex animosity than is often portrayed when he ventures abroad next week.
Most people's feelings about America are complicated. 'America', after all, is shorthand for many other terms: the Bush administration, a Republican-dominated Congress, Hollywood, a source of investment, a place to go to study, a land of economic opportunity, a big regional power, the big world power, a particular policy, the memory of something once done by the United States, a set of political values based on freedom, democracy and economic liberalism, and so on.
The incandescent third-world demonstrator, shrieking "Down With America!" in one breath and "Can you get me a green card?" in the next, has become a commonplace." (id.)
That's the trouble with this magazine. It chooses interesting topics, gets close to interesting remarks, and always sinks before the end into pathetic contempt for the world. arg.

And in the end, an article on education policy in the UK. But their argumentation is faulty. They place excellence and a drive for equality in opposition. But that only works if the old elites are the only ones ever to produce excellent minds, what about the potential of the others?

Oh I forgot a couple, let me append them here, starting with New York:
"The residents of just 20 streets on the east side of Central Park donated more money to the 2004 presidential campaigns than all but five entire American states. " wow.
"... the puzzle that the city seems to be a caring socialist republic of cut-throat capitalists. ... yet it is pretty much the most segregated city in America. ... although the place is famous for business and finance, plenty of New Yorkers work in jobs that come with a built-in social conscience." (we'll come back to that one as it's closely related to my thesis).

Did you know that the new hippies take a year off to go work at a call center in India, payed Indian wages? What a world (p. 70).

And, since I rarely miss an opportunity to complain about the absurd dominance of the US, some figures on the new passport standards mandated by the US. "In a trial conducted in December at Baltimore International Airport, three of the passport readers could manage to read the chips accurately only 58%, 43% and 31% of the time, according to confidential (no more) figures reported in Card Technology magazine (An official at America's Department of Homeland Security confirmed that "there were problems"). ".

that'll be it !