Thursday, July 11, 2002

I'm no GW fan, but I do worry a bit that in the frenzy to find fault in his and Cheney's past business dealings, politicians might help exacerbate the fear and uncertainty that's currently facing the economy. John Robb has a few good things to say about this particular topic. One thought that occurs to me, though, is that this maybe isn't really a "down" economy. Perhaps it's stabilizing back to a level that it's always been at, but the numbers had been fudged by too many companies to paint a clear picture. I'll have to ask Tor about this -- my econ PhD college roommate -- when I visit D.C. in a week or so. Maybe we shouldn't worry so much about consumer confidence (thereby allowing us to grill Bush and Cheney about their business ethics, even as recently as Enron) and more about rethinking what profit, and growth, and responsibility to the shareholders really means. I suspect that the economy will continue to spiral downward for awhile longer yet. At least until the war machine kicks back in. Because we all know how great a war is for the economy... 4:34:34 PM

Assuming that it's not a hoax, yesterday's announcement of the discovery of nearly seven million year-old skull bones certainly sounds like it will shake up the scientific establishment. What a compelling mystery, to figure out from whence we came. Scientists said it was too early to know whether the skull represents a species on a direct ancestral line to humans. In fact, the fossils suggest an evolutionary complexity and diversity in human origins that seem to defy description by the family trees of the past. "It plays havoc with the tidy model of human origins," said Bernard Woods, a human-origins expert at George Washington University. 9:14:04 AM