Jinn of Current Events

SARS Watch follows Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome around the globe. A natural question is what are the chances you will die of SARS if you get it? Answer: We don't know. Nobody knows. But it seems to be bigger than was first thought (read the whole thing). Apparently, the death rate is somewhere between 5% and 10%, most victims are older than 40, and many had pre-existing ailments. 

WSJ: Contrary to what some believe, trade in ancient objects is not the enemy of preservation. The great contribution the art market makes to this cause is to endow works of art with value. When objects have no value they are inevitably at grave risk of destruction because preserving them is a costly enterprise. 

Daniel Johnson (WSJ): How can the Americans and British break the remaining grip the Baath Socialist Party has over the Iraqi people? The last time the Allies faced a comparable problem was at the end of the World War II, when the defeat of Germany left them with the task of re-educating a nation defeated on the battlefield but still saturated with Nazi doctrines. Just as Germany was successfully de-Nazified, the challenge today is to "de-Baathify" Iraq. ... In 1945 the problems of postwar Germany were at first sight even more intractable than those of Iraq. Read the whole thing. It's the first time I've seen such a clear, compact description of the de-nazification process in Germany.