IF SCIENTISTS STILL BELIEVED IN THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD...:

Science’s dead end: Never has so much money poured into scientific research—yet the results add up to surprisingly little. Have we finally come to the end of what science can tell us? (James Le Fanu, 21st July 2010, Prospect)

[T]he best of times—but also the worst. Pose the question, What does it all add up to? and the answer, on reflection, seems surprisingly little—certainly compared to a century ago, when funding was an infinitesimal fraction of what it has become. In the first decade of the 20th century, Max Planck’s quantum and Einstein’s special theory of relativity would together rewrite the laws of physics; Ernest Rutherford described the structure of the atom and discovered gamma radiation; William Bateson rediscovered Mendel’s laws of genetic inheritance; and neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington described the “integrative action” of the brain and nervous system. The revolutionary significance of these and other discoveries were recognised at the time, but they also opened the door to many scientific advances over succeeding decades.

By contrast, the comparable landmarks of the recent past have been rather disappointing. The cloning of a sheep generated much excitement but Dolly is now a stuffed exhibit in a Scottish museum and we are none the wiser for the subsequent cloning of dogs, cats and cows. It will no doubt be a similar story with Craig Venter’s recent creation of “artificial life.” Fabricating a basic toolkit of genes and inserting them into a bacterium—at a cost of $40m and ten years’ work—was technologically ingenious, but the result does less than what the simplest forms of life have been doing for free and in a matter of seconds for the past three billion years.

The practical applications of the massive commitment to genetic research, too, is scarcely detectable. The biotechnology business promised to transform both medicine and agriculture—but in the words of Arthur Levinson, chief executive of the pioneering biotechnology company Genentech, it has turned out to be “one of the biggest money-losing industries in the history of mankind.” There are promises that given 30, 40 or even 100 years all will become clear, that stem cell therapy will permit the blind to see and the lame to walk and we will have a theory of everything—or, as Stephen Hawking puts it, “know the mind of God.” But they remain promises.

More than a decade ago, John Horgan, a staff writer for Scientific American, proposed an explanation for the apparent inverse relationship between the current scale of research funding and scientific progress. The very success of science in the past, he argued in his book The End of Science (1996), radically constrains its prospects for the future. We live “in an era of diminishing returns.” Put simply, the last 60 years have witnessed a series of scientific discoveries that taken together rank among the greatest of all intellectual achievements, in permitting us for the first time to hold in our mind’s eye the entire history of the universe from its inception to yesterday.

THE GOP COULD HAVE A WORSE STRATEGY...:

Sen. McConnell: ‘We Can Do Business’ with Obama if He Moves to Center (Rick Klein, 9/02/10, ABC News)

“I think I'll be seeing a lot more of him in the future,” McConnell, R-Ky., said today on ABC/Washington Post’s “Top Line.” “And I think if we have a larger number of Republicans, it will hopefully move him to the political center, which is the way he ran in '08, but not the way he's governed since then. And hopefully, if he moves to the center or the right of center, we can to do business.”

McConnell said there are several big areas where Republicans can work with a Democratic White House.

“We're interested in cutting spending and debt. If he becomes interested in that, I think he'll find us a willing partner,” he said. “He says he's for trade agreements. We'd like to ratify trade agreements. He says he is for nuclear power. We'd like to do that. He says he is for clean coal technology. We'd like to do that. I mean, there are areas where we'd ought to be able to work together for the good of the country.”

SWEET HOME:

A Dream House After All (KARL E. CASE, 9/02/10, NY Times)

[F]or people with a more realistic version of the American dream, buying a house now can make a lot of sense. Think of it as an investment. The return or yield on that investment comes in two forms. First, it provides what is called “net imputed rent from owner-occupied housing.” You live in the house and so it provides you with a real flow of valuable services. This part of the yield is counted as part of national income by the Commerce Department. It is the equivalent of about a 6 percent return on your investment after maintenance and repair, and it is constant over time in real terms. Consider it this way: when Enron went belly up, shareholders ended up with nothing, but when the housing market drops, homeowners still have a house. And this benefit is tax-free.

The second part of the yield on investment in a house is the capital gain you receive if it appreciates and you sell the house. Gains are excluded from taxation if the property is a primary residence and the gain is less than $250,000 for a single filer or $500,000 for a married couple filing jointly.

Consider a few other bonuses of buying a home today. You can deduct the interest you pay on the mortgage. Interest rates are about as low as they can get. And, don’t forget, home prices are down by 30 percent on average from the peak. The mortgage-interest deduction and the tax-free income from housing cost the government at least $200 billion a year.

During this recession the government has been doing even more on behalf of the American dream. It offered a tax credit of $8,000 to first-time buyers, and eventually $6,500 to other qualified buyers. Not only did the Federal Reserve continue to keep the short-term interest rates it sets at essentially zero, it purchased $1.4 trillion in mortgage-backed securities so that lenders could keep mortgage rates low.

Do the math. Four years ago, the monthly payment on a $300,000 house with 20 percent down and a mortgage rate of about 6.6 percent was $1,533. Today that $300,000 house would sell for $213,000 and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with 20 percent down would carry a rate of about 4.2 percent and a monthly payment of $833. In addition, the down payment would be $42,600 instead of $60,000.

THE CRUSADES ROLL ON:

Baltimore priest who served in Iraq ready to become a bishop (George P. Matysek Jr., 9/01/10, CatholicReview.org

On one of the bloodiest days of the Iraq War – April 9, 2004 – Father F. Richard Spencer became the link between this world and the next for many of the mortally wounded. [...]

Father Spencer is about to expand his service to U.S. military men and women around the world.

In May, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him to be the next auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese for U.S. Military Services. The 59-year-old Baltimore priest will be installed Sept. 8 during a 2 p.m. liturgy at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

Remaining on active duty, the Alabama native will become the first auxiliary bishop for the U.S. military archdiocese able to enter war zones. He will have unprecedented access to military personnel serving in most difficult circumstances.

LIKEWISE...

Stephen Hawking: God did not create the universe (Evening Standard, 02.09.10)

In The Grand Design, extracts of which were printed in The Times today, Prof Hawking concludes: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."

TOOK FOLKS LONG ENOUGH TO REALIZE HE WAS A TORY:

Tony Blair, New Tory, Defends His Reign: The former Labour leader sounds a conservative note in his memoir (Robert Hutton, 9/02/10, Business Week)

The most startling section deals with Blair's rejection of "the whole package of massive Keynesian deficit spending," as he writes in the book. "If governments don't tackle deficits, the bill is footed by taxpayers, who fear that big deficits mean big taxes, both of which reduce confidence, investment, and purchasing power." Sounds like a line from the office of Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. The current Tory PM, who has startled the world with his vows to shrink government spending massively, is doubtless pleased to get support for his plans from a three-time election winner: His aides put choice sentences from Blair's memoir on Twitter throughout the day of publication.

Blair, now a millionaire and an adviser to JPMorgan Chase (JPM), also comes out against taxes on the rich and defends the big banks in the wake of the credit crunch that battered Britain. "Government also failed," he writes of the crisis. "Regulations failed. Politicians failed. Monetary policy failed."

IN POLITICS IT'S NEVER A GOOD ISEA TO MAKE YOURSELF THE OTHER:

How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular (Michael Scherer, 9/02/10, TIME)

A couple of weeks back and a dozen miles west of Elkhart, hundreds gathered in another school gym — except this time it was for a job fair. With the local unemployment rate above 12% and rising again this summer, about a third of the employer display tables stood empty. Julie Griffin, who voted for Obama in '08, sat down at the room's edge, well dressed and discouraged. After 23 years as a payroll administrator at a local RV plant, she got laid off 18 months ago. "Really, what has he been doing?" she said when I asked about Obama's efforts to help people like her. "I guess I don't know what he is doing."

Across the gym floor, Joe Donnelly, Elkhart's pro-life, pro-gun Democratic Congressman, worked the crowd. He was part of the moderate wave that won Congress for Nancy Pelosi in '06, and he was re-elected with 67% of the vote while campaigning for Obama in '08. The President has since returned to the region three times, but Donnelly is nonetheless fighting for his political life. In a recent television ad, an unflattering photo of Obama and Pelosi flashes while Donnelly condemns "the Washington crowd." This is basically a Democratic campaign slogan now: Don't blame me for Obama and Pelosi. "I'm not one of them," Donnelly told me when I caught up with him. "I'm one of us."

This shift in perception — from Obama as political savior to Obama as creature of Washington — can be seen elsewhere.

THAT'S THE WRONG THREE TO FOCUS ON:

Senate control hinges on unlikely trio (JONATHAN MARTIN, 9/1/10, Politico)

[W]ith the political environment turning toxic for Democrats and incumbents, Murray drawing perhaps her toughest possible opponent and Boxer and Feingold facing self-funders, the three Class of 1992 veterans are in the fight of their long political lives as the battle for control of the Senate moves from traditional battlegrounds to blue state venues.

The Senate majority could rest in their hands since it’s difficult to conjure a scenario where Republicans could pick up the 10 seats they need to reclaim the Senate without knocking off at least two of the three.

None of them will be easy to defeat—each is keenly attuned to the threat and has begun hammering the opposition. Senior Democrats, however, are increasingly worried about the trio and especially Murray and Feingold.

ROLLING DOWN LIKE WATER:

The Online State of Nature: Why has Internet discourse devolved into a "war of every man against every man"? (Alan Jacobs, August 30, 2010, Big Questions)

I have thought a lot about why people get so hostile online, and I have come to believe it is primarily because we live in a society with a hypertrophied sense of justice and an atrophied sense of humility and charity, to put the matter in terms of the classic virtues.

Late modernity’s sense of itself is built upon achievements in justice. This is especially true of Americans. When we look back over the past century, what do we take pride in? Suffrage for women, the defeat of fascism, Brown vs. Board of Education, civil rights and especially voting rights for African-Americans. If you’re on one side of the political spectrum, you might add the demise of the Soviet empire; if you’re on the other side, you might add the expansion of rights for gays and lesbians. (Or you might add both.) The key point is that all of these are achievements in justice.

Someone might object: well, of course — those are political accomplishments, and politics is, or ought to be, largely about the pursuit of justice. That’s right, as far as it goes, but it overlooks the key variable that has changed in the late modern world: the dramatic increase in the information available to us about political action. We simply know more about politics, in all of its dimensions, than our ancestors ever could have.

In the 18th century, when modern political journalism was just beginning, Samuel Johnson wrote: “How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.” Johnson wrote as someone who, as a young man, had observed and commented extensively on debates in Parliament. But few of us would agree with him today. We expect our laws and kings — that is, our politicians and the state — to try to cure or avert a great many of the hardships that “human hearts endure.”

And so, as we have come to focus our attention ever more on politics and the arts of public justice, we have increasingly defined our private, familial, and communal lives in similar terms. The pursuit of justice has come to define acts and experiences that once were governed largely by other virtues. It is this particular transformation that Wendell Berry was lamenting when he wrote, “Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended. Marriage, in other words, has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided.” That is, it has become a matter of justice rather than of love, an assertion of rights rather than a self-giving.

This same logic governs our responses to one another on the Internet. We clothe ourselves in the manifest justice of our favorite causes, and so clothed we cannot help being righteous (“Someone is wrong on the Internet”). In our online debates, we not only fail to cultivate charity and humility, we come to think of them as vices: forms of weakness that compromise our advocacy. And so we go forth to war with one another.

THE DIMMING bRIGHTNESS:

Outlook Dimming for Democrats (NEIL KING JR, 9/02/10, WSJ)

Citing the bad economy, President Barack Obama's unpopularity and a generally sour mood among voters, pollsters and nonpartisan analysts have recently downgraded the prospects for Democratic incumbents in Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and other states.

Among those seats now regarded as up for grabs are more than a dozen—including Mr. Marshall's—that analysts from both parties saw as safe as recently as June.

The Cook Political Report, a newsletter that tracks congressional races, now lists 68 Democratic House seats as being at "substantial risk," up from 62 in July and 58 in June, and the group plans to raise the figure to more than 70 this week. Other pollsters and analysts have also increased their list of Democrats they now consider imperiled. By comparison, less than 10 Republican-held seats are thought to be in jeopardy.

AT LEAST THEY'LL LEARN ONE USEFUL THING THIS YEAR:

Basic bread (Regina Murphy, September 1, 2010, Emporia Gazette)

For nearly two decades, King Arthur Flour has taken special pride in educating the next generation of bakers. Through their Life Skills Bread Baking Program, their baking educators travel the country every school year demonstrating how to bake bread, and the students in turn donate their loaves to people in need in their communities.

King Arthur Flour offers this free program to students in fourth through seventh grades, providing the flour, yeast and the know-how to bake bread at home. Students see, feel and consume what they have learned.

This recipe is based on the Life Skills Bread recipe King Arthur Flour provides to students. It bakes up delicious bread and allows budding chefs to get creative with braided loaves, cinnamon rolls or even pizza.

DADDY? WHAT WAS COLLEGE? (via Bruno Behrend):

Bill Gates' favorite teacher

In an undistinguished ranch house off the main freeway of Silicon Valley, in a converted walk-in closet filled with a few hundred dollars' worth of video equipment and bookshelves and his toddler's red Elmo underfoot, is the epicenter of the educational earthquake that has captivated Gates and others. It is here that Salman Khan produces online lessons on math, science, and a range of other subjects that have made him a web sensation.

Khan Academy, with Khan as the only teacher, appears on YouTube and elsewhere and is by any measure the most popular educational site on the web. Khan's playlist of 1,630 tutorials (at last count) are now seen an average of 70,000 times a day -- nearly double the student body at Harvard and Stanford combined. Since he began his tutorials in late 2006, Khan Academy has received 18 million page views worldwide, including from the Gates progeny. Most page views come from the U.S., followed by Canada, England, Australia, and India. In any given month, Khan says, he's reached about 200,000 students. "There's no reason it shouldn't be 20 million."

His low-tech, conversational tutorials -- Khan's face never appears, and viewers see only his unadorned step-by-step doodles and diagrams on an electronic blackboard -- are more than merely another example of viral media distributed at negligible cost to the universe. Khan Academy holds the promise of a virtual school: an educational transformation that de-emphasizes classrooms, campus and administrative infrastructure, and even brand-name instructors.

AFTER 200 YEARS OF BEING WRONG ONLY DARWINISTS ARE LEFT BELIEVING IN HIM:

How Malthus drove the Discovery Channel gunman crazy: The greatest pessimist in economic history has been wrong for 200 years, but he's still freaking people out (Andrew Leonard, 9/01/10, Salon)

Among the demands of James Lee, the deranged gunman who rampaged through the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Washington, D.C., before being shot and killed late Wednesday afternoon, was a request that the TV network "develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race."

Insane, but perhaps not quite as kooky as it might initially seem. Because when choosing crazy-making prophets of doom and destruction as your inspiration, you could do a lot worse than the late 18th-century economist Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus.

POOR GUY, HAD NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER:

A Note to My Fellow Hawks (William Kristol, August 31, 2010, Weekly Standard)

[H]e portrayed the fact that we sustained the combat mission for over seven years as a "message to the world that the United States of America intends to sustain and strengthen our leadership in this young century." That was good. He credited our men and women in uniform rather than the civilian leadership of the country for the accomplishments of the mission—but that was both understandable and even, in a way, appropriate. He did—probably as much as an anti-Iraq war president could—nod both to the justice and the achievement of the war, saying that our men and women in uniform had "defeated a regime that had terrorized its people," and that, "Together with Iraqis and coalition partners who made huge sacrifices of their own, our troops fought block by block to help Iraq seize the chance for a better future.... Because of our troops and civilians—and because of the resilience of the Iraqi people—Iraq has the opportunity to embrace a new destiny, even though many challenges remain."

The president praised Iraq's elections, and said that the new Iraqi government "will have a strong partner in the United States. Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not." This was worthwhile. It's true the president unfortunately felt he had to restate that, "Consistent with our agreement with the Iraqi government, all U.S. troops will leave by the end of next year." But the "Consistent..." phrase leaves open the possibility that the Iraqi government will ask us to reach a new agreement. And the president did emphasize "our long-term partnership with Iraq—one based upon mutual interests, and mutual respect.... What America can do, and will do, is provide support for the Iraqi people as both a friend and a partner."

In sum, the president seemed to me to go about as far as an anti-Iraq war president could go in praising the war effort: "We have persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people—a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility."

SHAME IS TRANSFORMATIVE:

ADL'S Abe Foxman denounces anti-mosque rally as 'un-American' (Adam Serwer, 9/01/10, The Plum Line)

Today, I spoke with Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman, who said he agreed with "Where to Turn" that the rally shouldn't take place. Among those slated to appear is Dutch MP Geert Wilders, whom the ADL has previously criticized for anti-Muslim bigotry. Foxman called the planned rally, and the recent incidents of anti-Muslim bigotry across the country, "un-American."

On the rally:

I would agree with [Where to Turn], this is not a place for political demonstrations, for advocacy, especially on 9/11. This is a place for memory, for families to be together, to memorialize their loved ones, [to have] a moment of reflection and introspection. For people with political agendas to use the place and the moment for their own interests and their own platforms is desecrating the memory and very sad. Especially if some of the families of the victims are asking, their view should be taken seriously and respected.

Foxman had some harsh words regarding the presence of Wilders, as well as for conservative blogger Pamela Geller and her group Stop Islamization of America, which is organizing the protest:

[Wilders] is a bigot, he's an anti-Muslim bigot, and one of the demonstrations being called for is being headed by someone who has an anti-Muslim agenda, often under the guise of fighting 'radical Islam.' The group vilifies Islamic faith and is engaged in [claiming] there's a conspiracy to destroy American values, which is nonsense. The organizer in fact has stated that part of her agenda is to help garner support for Wilders, who is a bigot, who has a long record of anti-Muslim bigotry.

Foxman also said he was concerned about other instances of anti-Muslim incidents around the country:

The debate surrounding the Ground Zero mosque has surfaced, first, a campaign which is in many places directed against building mosques, and it also has focused attention on the anti-Muslim bigotry that exists in this country. It's not new. It has been there. Part of the landscape, unfortunately, of America is that we're not immune to bigotry, to racism, to anti-Semitism. And part of what's out there is a bigotry to immigrants. Jews experienced it, Irish experienced it. Part of our history is there was opposition to building Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues. Now there's opposition to build mosques, and there is, in our landscape, bigotry.

Some of it is beneath the surface, and some of it in moments of crisis explodes. That's what we're seeing now. There seems to be a legitimacy that it's okay now to speak out and act out against Islam, and that's why this rally, on this very tragic day for Americans, but most tragic for those who lost their families, to use it and abuse it as a platform for bigotry, is not only tragic, it's un-American.

LEARNING FROM HIS BETTER:

As Obama Struggles, Bush's Legacy Recovers (John Dickerson, 9/01/10, Slate)

The relevant similarity between the federal response to Katrina and the BP oil spill (other than geography) is that both show the limits of the presidency and the federal government. Of course, a hurricane is different from an oil spill, and it's not necessary, for the purposes of comparison, to pass judgment on Bush's or Obama's response. The point is that from a purely logistical standpoint, it's hard to get the federal bureaucracy to move quickly. That's true whether you think the president is uniquely incompetent or a smart manager. A president weighing the benefits and costs of making a visit to the disaster area can catch similar grief for not taking command whether they're photographed in a plane or on a basketball court. And even an eloquent speaker can sound the wrong note.

On Tuesday night, President Obama will give a prime time address about Iraq as his predecessor did several times. [...]

Yet Obama's announcement Tuesday would not be possible were it not for a strategy that he adamantly opposed. When Bush announced the surge in January 2007, then-Sen. Obama not only fought the increase in troops, he opposed on more than one occasion the underlying approach (already in practice in Iraq) that the new troops were being sent to pursue.

Sen. Obama not only expected the surge to fail; he saw it, incorrectly, as yet another example of Bush's inability to adapt to reality. President Obama, at least, does not face that criticism. He has based his strategy in Afghanistan on the same counterinsurgency strategy that was central to Bush's surge. He's done more than borrow his predecessor's strategy--he's also borrowing his language.

PWNGE:

Republicans Lead Democrats on 7 of 9 Key Midterm Election Issues (Bruce Drake, 9/01/10, Politics Daily)

Right on the heels of a poll giving the Republicans a 10-point edge on this year's "generic" congressional ballot, a USA Today/Gallup poll says that Americans believe Republicans on Capitol Hill would do a better job on seven of nine key election issues.

The issues on which Republicans enjoy their biggest margins are on terrorism, immigration, federal spending and the economy, according to the poll conducted Aug. 27-30. The Democrats prevail only on health care (and that's by a statistically insignificant difference) and the environment (the margin of error for this poll is 4 points).

AS MAGGIE HAD THE EUROPHILES AND CLINTON HAD HILLARY AND W HAD THE HOUSE GOP AND RUDD HAD GILLARD...

Tony Blair: Gordon Brown had 'zero' emotional intelligence (Heidi Blake, 01 Sep 2010, Daily Telegraph)

In an interview with Andrew Marr, Mr Blair criticised his sucessor's performance in office: "I always knew that if we departed a millimetre from New Labour we were going to be in trouble," he said.

"In my view what we needed to do in 2007 was we needed to renew New Labour with vigour, take it to the next stage, being the party that reforms welfare and public services, carried on deepening those reforms.

"I think we somewhat backed away on them." [...]

The book also pins the blame for Labour’s recent election defeat squarely on Mr Brown, arguing that had the Government stuck by the centrist policies of New Labour it could have clung on to power.

“I won three general elections,” he writes. “The longest Labour government had lasted six years. This lasted 13. It could have gone on longer, had it not abandoned New Labour.”

Mr Blair dismissed the suggestion that Labour could have formed a coalition with the Lib Dems in the wake of the indecisive result in May, insisting: "The people would have revolted; the votes weren't there."

But he said that there were many areas of policy where the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition partners "don't really agree", making them vulnerable to Labour if it sticks to the New Labour agenda.

The party must remain "flexible enough to attack the Government from left and from right", said Mr Blair.

He added: "Big-state politics today will fail. In fact, if you offer 'small-state vs big-state', small will win."

Mr Blair urged Labour's new leader to focus in opposition on "renewing the party" and "resisting any notion of letting the ... trade unions get back any dominance in policy".

SCRATCH A DARWINIST (OR DARWIN, FOR THAT MATTER) FIND A DESIGNIST:

Island holds Darwin's best-kept secret: Cloud forest now forms a damp oasis on Ascension's highest peak (Howard Falcon-Lang, 9/01/10, BBC News)

Back in 1836, the young Charles Darwin was coming to the end of his five-year mission to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no naturalist had gone before.

Aboard HMS Beagle, he called in at Ascension. En route from another remote volcanic island, St Helena, Darwin's wasn't expecting much.

"We know we live on a rock, but the poor people of Ascension live on a cinder", the residents of St Helena had joked before his departure. [...]

Ascension was an arid island, buffeted by dry trade winds from southern Africa. Devoid of trees at the time of Darwin and Hooker's visits, the little rain that did fall quickly evaporated away.

Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens - where Hooker's dad was director - shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.

The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich loamy soils. The "cinder" would become a garden.

So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.

Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, norfolk island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot.

Back in England, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolutionary was busily uprooting the Garden of Eden.

But on a green hill far away, a new "island Eden" was being created.

REMEMBER WHEN THE RIGHT GOT ITS PANTIES IN A KNOT OVER THESE GUYS BUYING THE SACRED GROUND OF 30 ROCK AND PEBBLE BEACH?:

Only in Japan, Real Men Go to a Hotel With Virtual Girlfriends: Dating-Simulation Game a Last Resort For Honeymoon Town and Its Lonely Guests (DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI, 9/01/10, WSJ)

ATAMI, Japan—This resort town, once popular with honeymooners, is turning to a new breed of romance seekers—virtual sweethearts.

Since the marriage rate among Japan's shrinking population is falling and with many of the country's remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia's Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.

In the first month of the city's promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.

THERE IS A KASHMIR:

Kashmir: a place of blood and memory: In attempting to suffocate a separate Kashmiri identity, India reveals the cracks in its own idea of nationhood (Nitasha Kaul, 31 August 2010 , Open Democracy)

[E]ven as it is devoured by the big states that surround it, Kashmir cannot be understood through the simplistic framing of ‘India versus Pakistan’, ‘Hindu versus Muslim’, or ‘China allied with Pakistan versus India’. Instead, see Kashmir as a vital link in the Himalayan mountain chain; a historic part of the Silk Route, that is now a violent battleground. Why? Because people in none of these three regions identify themselves as primarily and ‘above all’ Pakistani, Indian, or Chinese. Neither should they be forced to.

Cartography might lie, but topography and cultural geography does not. Kashmir is not India. Kashmir is not Pakistan. Kashmir is not China. Kashmir is the boundary zone of India-China-Pakistan. But it is distinctively Kashmir. And its people – whatever their religion or national identity – are Kashmiris. [...]

From 1947 onwards, post-colonial India saw itself as an inheritor of the British imperial mantle in the region. Indian leadership, while aware of the negative legacies of the empire, also inherited its realpolitik attitudes, which were made worse by a euphoria of emergent nationalism and self-righteousness. The regime had changed but the processes had simply replaced foreign elites with a home-grown indigenous elite (for example, a significant number of rulers from the erstwhile princely states were appointed as bureaucrats, ambassadors, policy-makers). Add to which there was the personality cult of Nehru whose personal friendships, affiliations, and dispositions could brook little opposition and loomed large on the decision-making processes in a democratic state. In the subsequent decades, notwithstanding the official non-aligned third-worldist stance, India’s political priorities – national and international – were shaped by its close relations with the old and new imperial powers. An entrenched (often English-speaking, Brahminical, Hindu) elite thrived domestically, India began to be seen as a regional hegemon, relations with neighbours (China, Pakistan) rapidly deteriorated, and electoral politics became a game of patronage.

In the years following independence, India refused to negotiate with China on the boundary issue (while simultaneously following a less-than-pragmatic policy on Tibet), pursued an ill-advised ‘forward policy’ in NEFA (North East Frontier Areas), and Nehru – a Kashmiri himself and fond of Kashmir; Kashmir was special – promised Kashmiris a plebiscite to determine their future.

In the middle of the twentieth century, my grandfather, then a young man, stood among the crowd at Lal Chowk in the centre of Srinagar (capital of IOK) listening to the Indian Prime Minister Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru make a rousing speech to the people of Kashmir - ‘Kashmir ke log koi bhhed-bakri nahin hain ki hamne kaha yahaan chalo ya wahaan chalo’ (the people of Kashmir can’t be led like goat or sheep in one direction or the other) – in which he promised them a choice to determine their identity, specifically a plebiscite to determine their own future. In later years, my grandfather would often recall those words of Nehru apologetically (recently he passed away and I went again to Srinagar to mourn for him in his birthplace, the land of my lost memories). This Nehruvian promise came to naught as India’s stance on Kashmir became ever more legalistic.

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

Guess who wants a carbon tax? (Nina Easton, September 1, 2010, Fortune)

Inglis and Flake, two House members with impeccable conservative credentials, want to impose a carbon tax on the nation.

Surprised? Most people are. But scratch the surface at conservative think tanks and universities that house free-market economists, and it's not hard to find proponents of a carbon tax. Not as an industry directive from Washington, nor as a revenue grab by the feds. Conservative carbon-tax proposals are revenue neutral: The Inglis-Flake bill offsets its carbon tax with a cut in payroll taxes.

Instead, free-marketers view a carbon tax as a way to cover a public cost -- something economists call "negative externalities." In 2008, Harvard's Greg Mankiw, formerly chairman of George W. Bush's Council on Economic Advisers, wrote a paper extolling the virtues of what he called a "Pigovian tax," named for the British economist Arthur Pigou. Here's how the argument goes: When economic transactions impose a cost or a benefit on individuals who are not part of the transaction, "Adam Smith's invisible hand will fail to lead to an efficient outcome." Therefore, Pigou -- "sometime friend and sometime nemesis to his more famous colleague John Maynard Keynes," as Mankiw notes -- argued that individuals and institutions should be charged for the external costs they impose on others.

Mankiw cites a range of costs for oil use -- ranging from accidents, congestion, and insurance to global climate change and national security. Imposing a simple tax, in sharp contrast to a cap-and-trade system (in which the government sets limits on emissions), would account for these costs and "let the market sort it out," he told me. Mankiw favors offsetting a carbon tax by reducing levies with more distorted effects, like those for income and corporate taxes.

ALL ANGLOSPHERIC ELECTIONS CONSIST OF IS A FIGHT OVER WHO IS THE REAL HEIR:

Blair endorses Cameron's economic policy (George Eaton, 01 September 2010, New Statesman)

When David Cameron declared, at a 2005 dinner with newspaper executives, that he was "the heir to Blair" he was more right than he could have known.

In his memoir A Journey, Blair offers the coalition's economic policy his unequivocal endorsement and dismisses Gordon Brown as a retrograde Keynesian. He laments that Brown "bought completely the Keynesian 'state is back in fashion' thesis".

Had Blair led Labour into the election, he would have supported a "gradual rise in VAT", a faster pace of deficit reduction and smaller increases in direct taxation.

SITUATION NORMAL, REPUBLICANS UP:

The Democrats’ New Normal (NATE SILVER, 8/31/10, NY Times)

[E]ven if the poll is an outlier, that doesn’t mean it should simply be dismissed. Instead, the question is: an outlier relative to what? If the Democrats’ true deficit on the generic ballot were 5 points, it would not be all that unusual to have a poll now and then that showed them trailing by 10 points instead, nor would it be so strange for a couple of polls to show the race about tied. Indeed, that seems to be about where the generic ballot sits now. No non-Internet survey has shown the Democrats with a lead larger than 1 point on the generic ballot for over a month now, whereas their worst results of late seem to put them in the range of 10 points to 11 points behind.

This is not the situation the Democrats faced earlier this summer, when the generic ballot was closer to even. Back then, a 5-point Republican lead on the generic ballot would have been pretty big news; now, it seems to be the new normal. I don’t say this cavalierly: FiveThirtyEight tracks the generic ballot pretty obsessively, as it’s used in several ways in our forecasting models, and the Democrats’ numbers have almost certainly undergone some further deterioration over the past few weeks.

Making matters worse still for Democrats, Gallup’s survey — and some other generic ballot polls — are still polling registered rather than likely voters, whereas its polls of likely voters are generally more reliable in midterm elections. At FiveThirtyEight, we’ve found that the gap between registered and likely voter polls this year is about 4 points in the Republicans’ favor — so a 10-point lead in a registered voter poll is the equivalent of about 14 points on a likely-voter basis. Thus, even if this particular Gallup survey was an outlier, it’s not unlikely that we’ll begin to see some 8-, 9- and 10-point leads for Republicans in this poll somewhat routinely once Gallup switches over to a likely voter model at some point after Labor Day — unless Democrats do something to get the momentum back.

THE RAINMAKER:

Beck on Top: The talk-show host's 'Restoring Honor' rally was about one thing: him. (Alexander Zaitchik, August 29, 2010, New Republic)

To understand what Glenn Beck accomplished with “Restoring Honor,” it’s useful to look back at the methods Beck has always used to promote himself and further his career. His path to last Saturday’s success began, appropriately, while working in Washington, D.C., as a WPGC morning jock during the early ‘80s. It was there that Beck met another young DJ named Bruce Kelly, who became his first mentor in the art of publicity. For the next two decades, Beck labored in the fiercely competitive world of zoo-style Top 40 morning radio, where DJs fought dirty for attention—from local media coverage to top billing at charity events. “It’s hard for people who never worked in FM radio during the 1980s to really understand how deep publicity-hunger runs in Beck’s blood,” says Kelly, a radio veteran who worked with and against Beck in two markets. “Morning radio DJ’s were the Navy Seals of getting your name out there and keeping it out there. It was all about finding the biggest stage to promote yourself and your shows. Take away the high rhetoric, and Saturday is just a masterful lesson in the art of the publicity stunt. Old DJ’s like me can only stand in awe.”

Years before Beck made it as the maudlin hype man of the paranoid style, he was famous for high-dive publicity splashes following a masterful long-tease. In Baltimore in the early ’90s, while working with his current radio co-host Pat Gray, Beck turned straw into gold by building up the grand opening of an underground theme park, Magicland, which did not exist. He did it all with a few audio clips and an understanding of his audience’s psychology—the very tools he later used to create the political Magicland known as the Van Jones Scandal.

The closest analog to Saturday in Beck’s past was his 2003 traveling “Rally for America” road show. As with last weekend’s “Restoring Honor,” Beck falsely billed those controversial rallies as “nonpolitical,” used charitable donations to defray logistics costs, piggybacked, when possible, on other events such as Memorial Day parades, and barely bothered to hide the fact that the whole thing was a shameless brand-building exercise, stamped with his corporate logo.

THE BUSINESSMAN IN THE OVAL SAVED THE ECONOMY...:

The Failure of the Liberal Economic Experiment? (James K. Glassman, September 2010, Commentary)

Government played two distinct roles during and after the crisis. The first was shoring up shaky financial institutions. On March 24, 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued JPMorgan Chase a $29 billion non-recourse loan that allowed it to buy Bear Stearns, an investment bank on the verge of collapse. Six months later, the Fed provided $85 billion (more came later) to save AIG, the insurance giant with assets of more than $1 trillion. Congress then enacted the comprehensive Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which authorized loans and equity purchases for hundreds of institutions (mainly banks but also auto companies).

By June 30, 2010, the U.S. Treasury had disbursed $386 billion in TARP funds. Another $145 billion went to keep afloat the two government-sponsored (though ostensibly private) institutions that provide lenders with mortgage money, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

How did all that work out? The Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, and TARP dispositions were far from perfect. Robert Pozen argues in his book Too Big to Save? that too much of the federal money injected into AIG was used to bail out banks—many of them foreign—that AIG had insured against mortgage losses through credit default swaps. Those banks, he writes, could have taken a -severe haircut without jeopardizing the global financial system. Also questionable was giving General Motors and Chrysler more than $80 billion (though President Bush acted honorably in keeping the automakers alive until the start of the Obama administration.) A good case can be made that automakers should have been allowed to go bankrupt through the normal legal process, with their assets passing from weak hands to strong. As for Fannie and Freddie, had perfectly sensible warnings from experts like Peter Wallison been heeded, they might not have collapsed at all, and the entire subprime-mortgage meltdown might not have occurred. So far, Congress and the president have simply kicked the Fannie-Freddie can down the road, delaying a long-term solution.

Overall, however, it has to be said that the TARP and the other financial rescues were necessary and -efficient. The global financial network did face systemic failure, mainly because of a lack of liquidity, or cash to meet immediate demands. The U.S. government was able to provide that liquidity, using its authority as lender of last resort, and most of the direct beneficiaries could eventually repay their loans, with interest, as they recovered. In fact, within a year and a half after the TARP was launched, the Treasury had been repaid $211 billion—or more than half what it had put out.

The second role government played, however, was far more questionable. Instead of lender of last resort, it determined to be the spender of last resort. And this decision, more than any other, is what has led to the crisis in the liberal economic experiment.

IT'S EASIER TO BE DISPASSIONATE WHEN YOU KNOW TODAY'S OPPONENTS WILL EVENTUALLY REALIZE THEY WERE WRONG:

There is no struggle between Islam and America, imam says (Kareem Shaheen, August 30. 2010, The National)

Imam Feisal , an imam in the area for 27 years, said the struggle “is not between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between moderates of all the faith traditions and the radicals of all the faith traditions. So what is required is a coalition.”

Christian and Jewish leaders have spoken in support of the project, he said, and are in favour of positive, interfaith discourse.

“However, there are also those very small, loud and vociferous voices who are beating the drum for the opposite kind of discourse. So the question becomes which discourse will dominate, not only in the short term but in the long term.”

He suggested that part of the opposition was politically motivated.

“There is no doubt that the election season has had a major impact upon the nature of the discourse,” he said.

Opposing or supporting the centre has evolved into a campaign issue ahead of congressional midterm elections in the US in November.

The project’s creators have also been criticised for not effectively participating in the media debate over the centre, but Imam Feisal rejected that criticism.

“We have been saying from the very beginning what the vision and objectives are. I’ve said it repeatedly on many television shows,” he said, adding that religious and political leaders have also spoken forcefully about the merits of the project.

“But, as I said, there is a small minority that doesn’t want to hear this.

“The fact of the matter is the local community board recognises and understands the vision, the politicians in New York understand the vision, and there is broad-based support for these objectives.” [...]

The imam said that religion is enmeshed in American life, and the Arab and Muslim world must realise that protection of religious freedom is part of the “American creed”.

The inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, endowed by the Creator and laid out in the US Declaration of Independence, are “a very deeply embedded vision … in the American people. This particular existential viewpoint and foundational viewpoint of America is exactly what Islam is.

“America was created by people who fled Europe seeking religious freedom and religious liberty. So it is an essential part of the American worldview and creed, that religious liberty is a fundamental protected right,” he said, adding that the role of government is to protect all religions.

“This is something which I believe the Muslim world insufficiently appreciates about America. I’d like to see them understand that better, recognise that better. And recognise that in that is a value which lies at the very core of the Quranic value,” he said.

The imam also spoke of an “evolving American Islamic identity”, and the need to avoid equating Islam with extremism, a concern that “has been going on for quite some time now”.

“And this is why it is important, the issue of radicalism is a threat to all of us. We have radicals in the Muslim world and we have radicals in the other faith traditions as well.”

“The radicals feed off each other and need each other to sustain themselves. So we need right now to combat the radical voices. That’s the only way we can win this struggle, and establish a peaceful world order, which is what everybody wants and everybody needs.”

“We are evolving an American Islamic identity, and the struggles we are going through today are of the same genre as what the previous faith communities had to face – Jewish immigrants, Catholic immigrants had to face even worse attacks against their communities,” he said.

“But as time goes on and as the second generation establishes itself and is rooted in the United States they articulate an expression of who we are as Americans and to be seen decreasingly as alien and being local.”

SOME FOLKS JUST REALLY WANT TO COME HOME:

Migrants say Arizona worth risk of crossing (AMANDA LEE MYERS, 08/31/2010, AP)

Deaths of illegal immigrants in Arizona have soared this summer toward their highest levels since 2005 — a fact that has surprised many who thought that the furor over the state’s new immigration law and the 100-plus degree heat would draw them elsewhere along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border.

But at the Pima County morgue in Tucson, Ariz., the body bags are stacked on stainless-steel shelves from floor to ceiling. A refrigerated truck has been brought in to handle the overflow at the multimillion dollar facility.

In July, 59 people died — 40 in the first two weeks when nighttime temperatures were the hottest in recorded history, hovering around the low 90s. The single-month death count is second only to July 2005, when 68 bodies were found.

Of this July’s deaths, 44 were on the Tohono O’Odham Nation, a reservation the size of Connecticut that shares 75 miles of Arizona’s border with Mexico. The tribe is opposed to humanitarian aid on its lands, believing it invites violence.

Twenty-two more people died in the first 30 days of August.

Even with the prospect of a torturous death, and the bitter wrath they face in Arizona, immigrants, including Ortega, say the state’s vast, sparsely populated terrain is still the best place for border jumpers.

“In Tijuana, you have two walls that you have to get over,” said Ortega, who first came across in 1976 to work in West Coast agricultural fields. “This is much easier here. You just have to watch out for the snakes. That’s why I prefer to walk in the daytime and not at night.”

He admits he’s afraid when he crosses, but states flatly, “It’s worth the risk.”

Oatmeal raisin walnut cookies (Jill Gibson, 8/31/10, Boston Globe)

1 cup chopped walnuts
1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups dark raisins

1. Set the oven at 375 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. Spread the nuts in a baking dish. Toast them for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned; set aside to cool.

3. In a bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt to blend them.

4. In an electric mixer, cream the butter with the granulated and brown sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla.

5. Blend in the flour mixture just until incorporated.

6. Remove the bowl from the mixer stand. With a wooden spoon, mix in the oats, raisins, and walnuts.

7. Drop the batter on the baking sheets in 2-tablespoon mounds, leaving 2 inches between them.

8. Bake for 12 minutes or until the edges are lightly brown but the tops are still fairly light.

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WHO WOULD BETTER UNDERSTAND THE PREJUDICE THEY FACE?: