Mark Pine

Something is out of place, excessive in the brouhaha over Muslims that is dominating the airwaves and the internet right now. Many of us, myself included, think we should not be paying so much attention to Terry Jones, the pastor of the small Gainesville, FL Christian church who was planning to burn a Koran tomorrow on the anniversary of 9/11.

Yesterday Gail Collins, the NY Times columnist, reminded us that the world is full of crazy people who have poor judgment and sometimes do ill-advised things, so why so much angst? An accompanying article in the same newspaper took the trouble to explain that the Jones phenomenon got energized after “Gen. David H. Petraeus, warned that the Koran burning could endanger troops,” and “after the protests in Afghanistan and in other Muslim countries.” One ABC News anchor also blamed the media for giving the story too much attention, according to the Times.

But more than that is going on. Underlying the uproar are basic emotional responses—irrational, even instinctive, reactions. We see the operation of the same motivations in the persistent false belief of many Americans that Obama is a Muslim, rather than a Christian as he said, and in the opposition to Cordoba House, the so-called “Ground Zero” mosque. Articles in ScienceDaily and Scientific American on August 31 may help to explain these reactions. They focused on perceptions of interpersonal dissimilarities and the motivations they arouse.

The ScienceDaily piece reported on studies by a psychologist at Michigan State University. Around the time of the last presidential election, the researcher investigated the attitudes of a group of mostly white, non-Muslim college students. Initially about one-quarter to one-half the group believed one or more of three false ideas: President Obama is a Muslim, he is a socialist, or John McCain is senile. But then the students were asked to complete demographic questionnaires, filling in their own races and ages—and reminding them of the differences between themselves and Obama and McCain. After doing the questionnaire, the percent of the students holding at least one of the false beliefs rose by 21% to 37%. Such was the effect merely raising the awareness of differences of race or age.

A blog posting by Gary Stix in Scientific American criticized the writings of a controversial evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics. The academic, Satoshi Kanazawa, has gained attention for a variety of eccentric opinions appearing in his blog on the subject of human nature. Recently he wrote that President Obama is a Muslim no matter what he says. The reason: Muslim-ness is an inherited thing. “Barack Obama’s father was a Muslim Kenyan, descended from a long line of Muslims, … and nothing he ever does in his life can change half of his genes that he inherited from his father,” Kanazawa explained.

The explanation, of course, ignores the concept of a religion as a set of beliefs and focuses instead on its association with a particular ethnic group.

The results of a poll published yesterday in the Washington Post may lend some support to the notion that opposition to Cordoba House is motivated by perceived differences. Americans who participated in the poll objected to the proposed mosque more often if they held an unfavorable view of Islam as a religion.

Views of the Cordoba House project are closely related to these general perceptions of Islam…. Those who hold favorable views of Islam and see it as generally peaceful religion are far more apt than others to say the building should move forward. For example, 55 percent who have favorable impressions of Islam support the construction, while 87 percent of those with unfavorable views oppose it.

Many religions, of course, encompass both bellicose and peaceful beliefs. Islam, however, has the additional attribute of seeming alien. Whether it’s a plan to burn a Koran, a belief that Obama is a Muslim, or opposition to a mosque, the fundamental human response to the perceived “otherness” of others can induce feelings of rejection. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the feelings are grounded in rational considerations.

Last month Science magazine devoted a special issue to alternative energy, focusing on the potential of each source—biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, wind and nuclear—to meet the energy demands of humanity around the globe. On pages 786-787, a remarkable graphic by reporter Adrian Cho summarized the data and put the subject in perspective. It made clear and obvious that solar energy is by far the best alternative, hands down.

Only two renewable (i.e., non-fossil-fuel, non-nuclear) energy sources, solar and wind, possess the capacity to meet the total power demand of humanity, which is 15 terawatts, the illustration shows. Sunshine beams a colossal 100,000 TW to the earth. Wind blows 190 TW over the planet. In practice, it would be possible to retrieve about 50 TW from sunlight and 20 TW from wind. By contrast, biomass could yield 9 TW, hydroelectric 1.6 TW, and geothermal 9.8 TW. Thus, the latter three could only partially meet worldwide power needs. If (for some reason, hypothetically) we had to choose one renewable source to focus on, it would have to be either solar or wind.

The superiority of solar power over wind becomes obvious on considering the quantity and location of the land area that would be required to meet the need. One panel of Cho’s graphic takes San Jose, CA, as an example. The city spreads over 46,000 hectares, but sourcing its power from wind would take up 53,000 H for wind farms, an area larger than the city itself. Solar power to supply all the city’s need would take up only 7,500 H.

Moreover, wind power would require upgrading the transmission grid to have sufficient capacity to transport electrons from the farms where the wind blows strongly to homes and factories. And because the wind blows intermittently, the grid would have to have the capability to store wind energy during the 65-80% of the time that turbines are usually still. Although solar energy has a similar intermittency problem, the distribution difficulties of solar energy are less daunting, since flat panels can be sited on each rooftop and storage batteries placed in each building.

But perhaps no problem is more difficult to overcome for wind power than NIMBY—not in my back yard. Here on Cape Cod, where I write this post today and it’s windy much of the time, alternative energy supporters have been trying to put turbines in place for years. The notorious effort of Cape Wind Associates to site a wind farm in Nantucket Sound has being going on for a decade. In the town of Eastham on the outer cape, an attempt by the town government to put turbines on open land near the Cape Cod National Seashore ran into opposition of nearby homeowners. Wind turbines, unlike solar panels, make lots of noise and intrude upon the scenery.

Although in some regions of the country with wide-open spaces the residents of are accepting of wind towers—like Texas, then nation’s foremost wind-power state, where turbines run the lengths of mountain ridges like picket fences sporting pinwheels—those places are usually hundreds or thousands of miles from urban concentrations of energy demand.

Of all the alternative sources of energy, only nuclear energy could theoretically power the entire planet by itself. And unlike wind and solar energy, nuclear facilities could generate power constantly 24/7. But problems associated with its use include the enormous cost of nuclear plants, the disposal of radioactive waste, the potential of melt-downs, leakage of radioactivity and sabotage by terrorists.

Of course, there is no reason to limit power sources to one kind of power. In reality, a mix of many kinds of power will satisfy the energy needs of humanity. But what Cho’s graphic demonstrates clearly, in my view, is where the emphasis and most of the funding should go. The major obstacles to expanding use of solar power are solvably technological and cost-related, like increasing the efficiency of solar chips and the storage capacity of batteries.

Most homeowners and businesses would gladly put panels on their homes and buildings if the cost is affordable, I am sure, and many have already done so. Solar power is a solution to the energy problem that is already on its way to being realized. We should expand our efforts in that direction and push forward rapidly to achieving it.

On Labor Day, President Obama finally turned to focus on jobs. So far this year, other items have dominated the agenda: financial reform, the BP oil leak, the Afghanistan war, the Middle East peace process. Now, less than two months before the mid-term elections, the president has begun to address the main issue on most people’s minds—the economy and jobs.

Speaking to a union crowd in Milwaukee yesterday, Obama called for $50 billion to rebuild 150,000 miles of roads, 4000 miles of rail, and 150 miles of airport runway. The program would create jobs by early next year with a quick injection of money. The federal government would establish a financing bank to make loans for infrastructure projects.

Predictably, Republicans nixed the idea, calling it more “out-of-control spending.” The GOP message has resonated with the public, which, by a wide margin of 55% to 39%, now has more confidence in that party’s approach to government policy, according to a Washington Post poll reported today.

But though most Americans are not convinced, the evidence shows that the president’s stimulus did work to add a millions of jobs and several percent economic growth. Indeed, Paul Krugman, the economic columnist for the NY Times, has long urged much more stimulus spending and has warned against ending fiscal support for the economy too soon. Yesterday Krugman detailed the parallel between now and the late 1930s, when FDR reigned in spending and prolonged the Great Depression until the hyper-stimulus of World War II took over and galvanized the economy:

President Obama’s economists promised not to repeat the mistakes of 1937, when F.D.R. pulled back fiscal stimulus too soon. But by making his program too small and too short-lived, Mr. Obama did just that: the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment — and now it’s fading out. And just as some of us feared, the inadequacy of the administration’s initial economic plan has landed it — and the nation — in a political trap. More stimulus is desperately needed, but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery has discredited government action to create jobs.

The Republicans, of course, know this history as well as the Democrats. But seeking to return to majority power in the Congress, they have done everything they can to foil proposals to improve the economy and try to convince the public that government spending does nothing to help. It is of course politics-as-usual, but we cannot easily dismiss their rhetoric, when so many people remain unemployed and suffer financial hardship as the result of their obstructionism.

Current education policy has moved away from No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s program, which emphasized standardized tests, to Race to the Top, President Obama’s initiative, which continues the testing but adds a focus on individual teachers and students.

Like most Americans concerned about the future of our nation and the upcoming generation of students, I’ve been troubled by our problems with education. But now I feel encouraged. I think the policymakers have finally got it right.

Last January, the president spoke about the new policy at an elementary school in Virginia. He said, “We urged states to use cutting-edge data systems to track a child’s progress throughout their academic career, and to link that child’s progress to their teachers so we know what’s working and what’s not working in the classroom.”

Perhaps in that spirit, this week the L.A. Times announced the upcoming publication of a new database tracking the performance of public school teachers in that city. The news organization analyzed seven years of students’ math and English test scores, obtained from the L.A. school system, to estimate the effectiveness of teachers. According to the article, the statistical method, called “value-added analysis,”

rates teachers based on their students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year. Each student’s performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors.

Jason Felch, the reporter on the investigation, interviewed on NPR’s “All Things Considered” last evening, explained the reasons for tracking teachers and publishing the database:

Well, the big takeaway from our series and after, you know, spending a lot of time analyzing this data is that individual teachers really matter. The difference between teachers can be enormous, and which teacher a child gets is often left up to chance. So it would be difficult to have the information about which teachers are effective and which teachers are less effective and not make that public.

I remember my fifth grade teacher. It took me years to realize that for personal reasons of her own, she actively sought to undermine my education. One day during an assembly of the students, I competed against other students answering questions on science. She arranged for my correct answer to be announced false to eliminate me from the competition and teach me a lesson.

In contrast: My high school physics teacher, who was motivated by the subject and his passion to teach. Physics and math were beautiful things to him. He wrote the equations on the blackboard in an elegant hand that expressed his love for the subjects. His enthusiasm and his conceptual clarity transferred themselves to my classmates and me.

Although, I’m not an expert in education, I’ve had some degree of educational success, graduating from an Ivy League college and a top tier medical school. I think standardized learning—measured by tests—and the learning of fundamental concepts—imparted by excellent teachers—are both important for educational success. But teachers tip the balance.

At last, the country is moving ahead on education. The first leg was the standardized learning and the tests to measure it, under President Bush’s program. Under President Obama, the second leg is the excellence of performance by teachers. The nation is stepping forward, perhaps soon to walk, eventually to run.

This weekend, the NY Times ran a story on the Obama’s administration’s covert war on al Qaeda. But war is not the right word. What the reporters described is a clandestine Special Forces campaign.

The reporters wrote that the CIA has become a paramilitary organization, conducting attacks with missiles and other weapons, and the Pentagon has be come like the CIA, conducting spy missions. Private companies under government contract have also participated.

Such operations have played major roles in the wars Iraq and Afghanistan and in operations in Yemen. Congressional oversight has lagged, because existing legislation doesn’t apply to these special military programs, the Times reports.

I read the story with ambivalence. On the one hand, I know in my heart that if I were president, I would, like Obama, authorize any covert operation that could reasonably succeed in tracking down and eliminating Bin Laden and other terrorists.

On the other hand, I imagine and worry about the possible misuse of such capabilities by a future government of the United States. In the nightmare scenario I envision, Will Smith plays Robert Dean fleeing agents of the NSA in the 1998 movie “Enemy of the State.” Dean, an innocent bystander caught up in a rogue security operation, possesses a videotape showing a murder committed by the agents of the government.

In the most hellish scene, Smith runs and jumps from rooftop to rooftop, dashes up and down stairs, sprints down streets and through tunnels, etc., in Washington, DC, pursued by agents in helicopters, cars and on foot, all the while tracked by surveillance cameras.

Back when the movie was filmed, there were no drones. But if there were an actual Robert Dean today, he could be surveilled from on high by drones and targeted by missiles.

Ours is a nation that was founded in rebellion. The signers of the Declaration are reputed to have joined in rebellion because Benjamin Franklin told them, “We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.”

What would happen today if an unjust government misused its power against the citizenry? I don’t mean the stuff of Tea Party paranoia, which is making the rounds today on some networks on the internet. I mean suppose it really happened. What would happen if the government started using some of the awesome counterterrorism capabilities it is now developing to pursue al Qaeda on American citizens inside this nation?

I worry about that when I read a story such as this one in the Times Saturday. I applaud the aggressive pursuit of Bin Laden at the same time as I remember that the existence of al Qaeda itself is attributable to blowback from CIA clandestine operations. Could the blow one day come back to our own nation?

A new test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at an early stage may be at hand. Until now, the definite diagnosis of this most common form of dementia required an autopsy to demonstrate plaques of amyloid-ß protein and tangles of tau protein in the brains of deceased patients. A test that would diagnose the disease before death would permit trials of drugs on living patients who test positive, a critical requirement for development treatments. The ability to diagnose early may also be a critical requirement for developing effective treatments of AD-associated brain degeneration, ones that can be administered before irreversible brain damage has occurred.

The new test assays the levels of amyloid-ß and tau in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the liquid that surrounds and bathes the brain and the spinal cord, supplies these organs with nutrients and removes their waste products. The research by scientists in Europe and America, reported this week in the Archives of Neurology, found that amyloid-ß was reduced and tau was elevated in the CSF of the AD patients.

A report by Gina Kolata in the NY Times on Monday suggested that the test “can be 100 percent accurate in identifying patients with significant memory loss who are on their way to developing Alzheimer’s disease.” But although it may turn out to be highly accurate, the reporter’s assertion of perfect accuracy may have conveyed an erroneous impression.

The researchers found that the statistical distribution of amyloid-ß levels was bimodal, i.e., there were two clearly defined peaks, indicating that CSF amyloid-ß level probably reflects a single disease process affecting the patients suffering from AD.

The scientists tested the test in three distinct populations of patients with similar encouraging results. In one carefully selected group, in whom the diagnosis of AD had been made made clinically based on signs of dementia, levels of amyloid-ß were found to indicate AD in all the patients. But in a different group of patients diagnosed after death with autopsies, which is the most accurate method, 94% of the patients with AD had levels of amyloid-ß consistent with the post-mortem findings.

It’s important to bear in mind that the results reported this week came from retrospective studies. Patient-derived data from existing databases of patients, rather than the patients themselves, were the subjects of the analyses. With the outcomes (AD present or absent) known, the scientists “looked back” to the results of previous CSF tests.

A definitive study of the accuracy of the test would have to be done prospectively. Patients whose diagnoses are not known would be followed forward in time until their diagnoses became evident. The results of prospective studies—unavoidably among less carefully selected patients—often turn out less impressive than those of retrospective ones.

The new test would require patients to undergo a spinal tap to obtain CSF for the assay. Some patients and even some doctors might be discouraged by the prospect of the procedure. They need not be. The spinal tap is a fairly routine test, probably done thousands of times a day. It is safe and doesn’t usually cause severe or significant side effects.

Google, the company that some time ago evidently changed its motto to “Do evil,” is teaming up with handmaiden Verizon to influence FCC regulations regarding net neutrality. Their apparent goal is to insinuate preferential treatment into the internet by persuading the commission to establish exceptions to such regulations. The effect would be to create a premium, high-performance tier of internet transmission that would be available at higher cost. What is now a level field and neutral network could become, in part, a telecommunications system that charges extra for enhanced content, more bandwidth and higher speed.

“As Google has gotten bigger and entered new lines of business, it has revised some of its principles — and it is drawing criticism from start-ups and public interest groups along the way,” the Washington Post reported yesterday.

Google and Verizon agreed that telecommunications companies could charge consumers for the quality of the content coming through their networks and even block access to certain content. For example, Verizon could transmit Google’s search engine but block Microsoft’s Bing, the Post said.

The NY Times, however, reported that the two internet giants had proposed that blocking any ordinary internet content would be prohibited. But new services providing enhanced content would be exceptions to the requirements of net neutrality. Such premium content and services would be allowed to transmit via high bandwidth channels, with premium prices set for access to them. For example, the Times said

the Metropolitan Opera might decide to stream its performances in 3-D through such a service because it would otherwise require too much bandwidth.

Support for exceptions to net neutrality may be building in Congress, even among Democrats, who might be expected to try to protect ordinary internet users from higher charges. On Monday, Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Congressman and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, wrote in an email response to an inquiry on net neutrality,

I believe that this vast new frontier [the internet] must also have the careful watch of regulators to ensure that no collusion or anti-competitive practices take place and that those who control the distribution channels do not attempt to unduly influence the content. I will continue to support measures to allow fair-use of the internet….

Absent—conspicuously so, in my view—from Van Hollen’s response was any use of the term “net neutrality” or any statement of support for that concept. Instead the Congressman used the phrases “unduly influence” and “fair-use of the internet.” But what constitutes undue influence and fair use? Responsible for raising contributions for Democratic campaigns, I suspect Van Hollen may have agreed with Verizon, Google and other huge companies to try to drill holes in regulatory walls protecting internet neutrality.

If that happens, large corporations and their legal staffs could breed corporate mice to squeeze through the holes in the regulatory walls and then grow to guerilla size. If permitted to exist and grow, these entities would transmit enhanced content and would surely diminish the visibility, audience and influence of ordinary content providers.

The internet would not remain the open, innovative space for new creators of content to work in at minimal initial cost.

The prevalence of obesity in America has risen to 34% of the adult population, the CDC announced last week. An adult is considered obesity if his or her BMI, which is calculated from height and weight, is greater than 30. The public health agency tracks the nation’s average BMI with telephone surveys asking people to report height and weight. Since the respondents often underestimate their weight and overestimate their height, the agency corrects the raw data to compute the actual rate of obesity. Referring to its full report, the CDC said on its website:

The data show a 1.1 percentage point increase—an additional 2.4 million people—in the self-reported prevalence of obesity between 2007 and 2009 among adults aged 18 and over. The report also notes the medical costs associated with obesity are high. In 2008 dollars, medical costs associated with obesity were estimated at $147 billion. People who are obese had medical costs that were $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

In 2005, the NIH warned that rising obesity rates could reduce Americans’ life spans by as much as 5 years, on average. The health research institute based the projection on a report in the New England Journal of Medicine that estimated a 5-20 year reduction in longevity among the severely obese portion of the U.S. population. The problem could have an especially large impact on young people. The article said,

If the prevalence of obesity continues to rise, especially at younger ages, the negative effect on health and longevity in the coming decades could be much worse. It is not possible to predict exactly when obesity among the young will have its largest negative effect on life expectancy. However, in the absence of successful interventions, it seems likely that it will be in the first half of this century, when at-risk populations reach the ages of greatest vulnerability.

Yesterday, the NY Times reported that more girls are developing breast enlargement at the age of 7 or 8, and “increased rates of obesity are thought to play a major role, because body fat can produce sex hormones.” The article was based on research by physicians at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, who found that overweight girls were more likely to develop breasts. At that young age, girls may be unprepared to deal with the emotional and interpersonal challenges of elevated hormones and sexual development.

There can be little doubt that the diet of Americans, who consume large amounts of high-fat, high sugar foods, is one of the main causes of the epidemic of obesity. And the U.S. food industry has contributed mightily to the problem by selling and advertising many food products with high-fat, high-sugar content, in order to boost sales.

We Americans should at the very least, as national policy, restrict the advertising of these high-calorie food products to children via TV and the internet. And parents should teach their children to eat healthfully.

When I was a schoolchild, my teachers taught that America was first settled by Pilgrims, who sought to worship God in the manner they chose. Practicing their religion was so important that they crossed the treacherous expanse of the Atlantic in the little Mayflower, to begin new lives in the wilderness, thousands of miles from the civilization of their births. My teachers’ point was that freedom of religion is one of the original and central founding principles of our American nation—one worth facing great hardship and sacrifice, including loss of life.

Why is it that so many Americans don’t seem to understand that?

The Anti-Defamation League—of ALL groups—has joined a cacophonous chorus of opposition to the ground zero mosque. According to the statement of purpose on its website, the association is dedicated to “to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” But not including Muslims, apparently. It’s declaration on the proposed mosque asserts:

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. … But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right.

ADL fights discrimination against Jews, but it apparently doesn’t see a contradiction in supporting discrimination against Muslims. How would ADL react if the religious center were synagogue, I wonder. Would it claim it isn’t “a question of rights?”

But Fox News and its commentators are sounding the sourest notes. A story on the politics of the mosque showed a picture of a demonstrator with a sign equating building the house of worship at that site with glorifying the murders of the three thousand 9/11 victims. It’s clear from the text that Fox News accepts that view and is trying to demagogue it.

Didn’t these people take any American history? We learned about the Pilgrims in elementary school.

Freedom of religion is part of the first of the amendments for a reason. That’s how important the founding fathers thought it was. Since there would be no objections to a church or a synagogue, there should be none to a mosque. That’s how America works, or is supposed to, anyway.

The hullabaloo shows how many Americans, including some of the most fiercely patriotic, have failed to take to heart the history of our country and what the founders intended.

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights requires that government not favor or discriminate against any establishment of religion. As Americans, we should all uphold that principle, and we should avoid demonizing any single religion and denying its followers their rights because of what a few of them have done.

In January 2008, the CDC and the FDA learned of an unusual number of fatalities among kidney dialysis patients who had received heparin. The drug, which had been manufactured in China for use in Heparin products marketed by Baxter International, proved to be contaminated with a dangerous ingredient. Following the discovery of the problem and under the supervision of the FDA, Baxter recalled the contaminated Heparin products.

This Spring, McNeil Consumer Products recalled numerous batches of its over-the-counter medicines, including pediatric and adult products marketed under the Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec and Benadryl brands. Consumers had complained of being nauseated by the smell and experiencing stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea. The FDA, which regulates drug manufacturers, criticized McNeil for not acting fast enough and failing to keep the agency informed about the problem.

One of the FDA’s most important jobs is ensuring the safety of medicines. But the work has become more difficult in recent years, when the ingredients originate all over the world and the companies that manufacture and market drugs are multinational giants. But this week Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo) has introduced new legislation to give the FDA more power to carry out its functions.

The Drug Safety and Accountability Act of 2010, introduced by Bennet on Tuesday would give the agency new powers [pdf] to act on its own authority to order recalls of dangerous drugs. The bill would also grant the FDA new powers to require pharmaceutical companies to document all entities involved in the manufacturing supply chains of drugs and to have management plans in place for ensuring the quality of all ingredients.

Under present law, even when the FDA has reason to believe a drug is harmful, it cannot initiate recalls on its own authority. Rather, the agency must pressure pharmaceutical companies to carry them out. As a last resort, the FDA agency may go to court to have a drug product declared an imminent hazard to public health and to obtain the authority act on its own to seize it. But the FDA is usually reluctant to take such a step. Most often the pharmaceutical companies understand the possibility of an imminent hazard declaration and want to avoid the adverse publicity, and in consequence, the companies usually agree to recalls when the FDA requests them.

Bennet’s legislation would also give the FDA power to subpoena documents and witnesses and to assess civil penalties, and it would authorize the agency to create a database of all manufacturers of ingredients worldwide.

In the case of drug regulation, as in many other governmental functions, long-standing authorizing laws are becoming outmoded. New legislation is often required to allow agencies to carry out their missions in a globalized world. Congress should pass Bennet’s bill or similar legislation quickly. … Unfortunately, that’s probably not likely to happen in the current extremely partisan, pre-election environment.