-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 21:46:26 -0500 From: "Jeff Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Reason Express List Member <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Reason-Express: REx29, v2 Welcome to Reason Express, the weekly e-newsletter from Reason magazine. Reason Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor and draws on the ideas and resources of the Reason editorial staff. For more information on Reason, visit our Web site at www.reason.com. Send your comments about Reason Express to Jeff A. Taylor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and Virginia Postrel ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). REASON Express July 19, 1999 Vol. 2 No. 29 1) Kennedy Mystique or Media Myopia? 2) Latest Take on the Breast-Bottle Debate 3) Encryption: A Threat to Our American Way of Life 4) Report: The Best Teachers Know Their Subjects (Duh!) 5) Quick Hits - - A Man of Leisure - - Accepting for the moment that the round-the-clock coverage of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s mishap was right, proper, and proportional, what does the coverage tell us about the media? That news reporters operate with two distinctly different sets of rules: one for themselves, and people like themselves, and one for everyone else. The networks, commentators, and editors who assume their fellow citizens are unequipped to navigate across a slick shower stall, plan for their own retirement, or hold a pointed stick, fell all over themselves to understand, accept, and even applaud Kennedy's risk-taking spirit. Some went so far to label him a "daredevil," citing his parasailing and Rollerblading excursions. But if Kennedy was a daredevil, then the country is chock full of them, all willing to assume far greater risks than the average nightly newscast gives them credit for. Somehow the mainstream media have managed to misplay one of the greatest developments of the 20th century, the spread of leisure from a privileged few to the masses. Think--when was the last time you met someone who wasn't "into" some particular weekend activity? In the past 10 years, it has become even harder to miss the proliferation of ever-more-intense leisure experiences--hang gliding, paintball, parachuting. mountain biking. These are not the pastimes of the risk averse. So perhaps those intent on finding a legacy for the latest fallen Kennedy should focus on the rehabilitation of an all-too-common epithet: risktaker. http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/kennedyplane990718.html W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm track the development of leisure in America at http://www.reason.com/9512/COXfeat.html and http://www.reason.com/9808/fe.cox.html Nick Gillespie on the myth of disappearing leisure time http://www.reason.com/9805/citings.html#9 ************************************************************** - - Pulling A Breast - - >From the British Medical Journal comes an example of a scientific study which is less scientific than it appears. German scientists claim to have found a link between breast milk and the avoidance of obesity later in life. The results were cited as "powerful ammunition for the campaign to encourage mothers to choose the breast over the bottle." Many studies have shown that breast milk is better than formula on several counts, but what about this one? Does it really supply "powerful" evidence? Over 9,000 children were studied, and the authors did find a correlation between those who were bottle-fed and those who entered school obese. But a clear cause was not found. The best the authors could do was suggest that bottle-fed children are encouraged to finish each and every bottle, and thus add extra pounds. But that points to something which even exhaustive surveys on family background age, income, etc. cannot capture: parenting skills. Could it be that the breast-fed kids had, on average, better parents? Such a thing sounds impossible to measure and, of course, doesn't rule out there being excellent parents who bottle-feed, but a thought experiment might help. Suppose we have red Jell-O and green Jell-O, identical in every way except for color and the process by which it becomes Jell-O. The red Jell-O just needs warm water. The green Jell-O needs a complicated process requiring a degree in chemical engineering to produce Jell-O. Any mistakes and the stuff vaporizes. Should we be surprised if, five or 10 years on, the kids who ate only green Jell-O scored higher on standardized tests than those who ate only red Jell-O? Of course not. And researchers would say they would never let such an obvious thing slip by them. But in the breast-bottle arena something very similar happens. Breast-feeding can be very difficult. It can be painful, highly inconvenient, and sleep depriving (bottle-fed babies seem to sleep better). Given these factors, it follows that most mothers who breast-feed are highly attuned to their child's diet. Breast-feeding moms can be slackers, but they seem pre-disposed to not be. Could such a supposition be proven? Probably not without near constant monitoring of the test subjects. But attempts to single out a single factor in child rearing should be more than the collection of surveys and quick computation of the results. http://www.nando.com/noframes/story/0,2107,71009-112230-796028-0,00.html ************************************************************* - - Crypto Follies - - FBI director Louis Freeh spun images of havoc into the heads of members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and got the result he wanted. That committee voted to keep a hammerlock on private encryption technology. Committee chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) is so far inside Freeh's pocket that he actually said, "We have an obligation to use that leverage and that dominance to make sure that the world's terrorists, drug dealers, weapons merchants and child pornographers can be stopped in their tracks." Not content with that broadside, Goss let fly with one only slightly less coherent, "We are not about to subjugate our national security or the safety of the American people to the constantly changing whims of the marketplace." Those dang markets, forever subjugating and endangering on a whim. The way Goss' committee amended the encryption legislation puts it at odds with versions passed by other committees, once again underscoring the FBI's strategy of using key legislative choke points to get its way. The FBI also won a commitment to fund more code-breaking capabilities for the national security monolith, already the best in the world. Interestingly, it is that very capability, as deployed in the Echelon global eavesdropping system, which continues to cause heartburn in Europe. A British member of parliament has failed to get a clear response to his questions concerning just what a U.S. listening post in Menwith Hill listens to. Also, in a recent petition for a re-hearing of a key crypto case, the Justice Department admitted that the object of U.S. export controls on cryptography is to preserve the ability to intercept communications the world over. "The government's foreign intelligence-gathering activities include signals intelligence (SIGINT), the collection and analysis of information from foreign electromagnetic signals. The SIGINT capabilities of the United States can be significantly compromised by the use of encryption," the petition argues. This may sound like an admission of the obvious, but it makes clear that specific investigations of the bad guys Goss rants about are not what the widespread use of encryption thwarts. It is the wholesale, real-time snooping on millions of bits of communications that the feds do not want to lose. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-07/16/071l-071699-idx. html For background on Echelon in Europe try http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/Echelon_990709.html For the full Justice petition try http://jya.com/bernstein-pet.htm For background on crypto case go to http://www.eff.org/bernstein/19990621_eff_pressrel.html Mike Godwin reviews of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon in the latest Reason, at http://www.reason.com/9908/bk.mg.code.html ************************************************************* - - Certifiably Better? - - An important new study on teaching slipped out with little notice, despite the ongoing frenzy over how to improve public education. Perhaps it is because the findings do not mesh with the prescriptions of the professional teaching lobby. The study found that teachers with emergency credentials--i.e., without any of the teaching certification clap-trap that so many school districts, at the insistence of their incumbent teachers, demand--seem to teach kids just fine. "Contrary to conventional wisdom, mathematics and science students who have teachers with emergency credentials do no worse than students whose teachers have standard teaching credentials, all else being equal," Dan D. Goldhaber and Dominic J. Brewer concluded in their contribution to "Better Teachers, Better Schools," a report released by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. Brewer and Goldhaber found that what was important was having teachers with a strong background in the subject they teach. This radical idea--that math teachers should have math backgrounds--is what passes for unconventional wisdom in the topsy-turvy world of the edu-establishment. President Clinton called for a ban on emergency certification in his State of the Union address this year, a reward for teachers' unions which have backed Democrats so strongly. In May, the administration proposed that states get four years to scale back emergency certifications. The Education Department estimates there are about 50,000 teachers nationwide with emergency certification. The new study did not change the department's opposition to the practice--it prefers to rely on seven-year-old data which favors certification. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-07/15/175l-071599-idx. html For more info, including the entire report, go to http://www.edexcellence.net/better/teachers.html ************************************************************* QUICK HITS - - Quote of the Week - - "I'll do anything to get Hillary into office," Eve Weinstein, wife of Harvey Weinstein, honcho at Miramax Films, reflecting a fervor for HRC that is scary--and common in a certain stratum of New York's power elite. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-07/16/039l-071699-idx. html - - Blue Helmets Want Your Money - - The U.N. floated, then quickly backed away from, an idea to levy a global e-mail tax to help pay for development in the Third World. http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/20705.html - - Tastes Great, Less Explosive - - China is beset by killer beer bottles, which suddenly explode, sending shards of glass into victims. The problem is bottles made too thin by shady bottle-makers, who slide through China's well-greased, rattletrap justice system. Over 100 have died. http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/07/15/timfgnfar01001.html? 1334 425 - - Down! Set! Hut-hut-hut-Deduct! - - The IRS has ruled that money given to universities for the purpose of obtaining a skybox at football or basketball games is a charitable donation to a non-profit entity, and hence is deductible. Play ball! http://cnnsi.com/football/college/news/1999/07/15/irs_boosters/index.html - - The Butts Ban, Aflame - - San Francisco appears ready to get tough with bars that do not comply with a state ban on smoking. The city sued a bar owner for failure to comply with the 1995 law. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/07/ 14/M N78907.DTL ############################################################## Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group (http://www.dbtgroup.com), manufacturers of affordable, high-performance mainframe systems and productivity software. Current Circulation: 3408 We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue from a forward, please subscribe. 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