A white applicant who seeks admission to a particular school, but is displaced by affirmative action, is necessarily one who has come very close to being admitted. If an applicant of that caliber were to apply to several comparable schools, it seems improbable that she would be rejected in every instance . . . Such an applicant makes an unlikely plaintiff. If, for example, a white student applies to ten selective schools and, though rated highly at each school, is rejected by all but one or two, the applicant may have legitimate grounds for complaining that she was displaced as a result of affirmative action. But because she has gained admission to one or two schools of comparable quality, her incentive (and, I suspect, psychological urge) to file a lawsuit is considerably attenuated. In this regard, it is interesting to note that in 1973, Allan Bakke failed to gain admission not only to the Davis Medical School, but also to ten other medical schools to which he applied. Bakke, like most white applicants and plaintiffs, was not close to the cusp. (Page 1094).

All three plaintiffs acknowledge that they had been relatively confident they would be admitted to Michigan and had done little to line up comparable backup choices. (emphasis added)

also had little in the way of choices. She had applied to one other selective college, Notre Dame, but only as a lark at the last minute, she said. She was rejected there, and for that she blames herself for spending only two weeks on her application, compared with the three months she spent perfecting her submissions to Michigan.

The documents, made public by lawyers suing Bayer, include e-mail messages, memos and sworn depositions of executives that suggest that Bayer promoted the drug, Baycol, even as a company analysis found that patients on Baycol were falling ill or dying from a rare muscle condition much more often than patients on similar drugs

Jesica Santillan died today. In case you haven't been watching the news, her family had themselves smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico so the ailing girl could receive treatment for a life-threatening heart condition. She waited three years for a heart and lungs to become available for the necessary transplant operation. Instead of life, though, the doctors gave her organs of the wrong blood type, a mix-up that put her on life support in a "coma-like state." They carried out a second operation, after which she suffered brain damage, complications, and finally death.

[The hospital's chief executive, Dr.] Fulkerson said [Dr.] Jaggers wrongly assumed compatibility had been confirmed when he was offered the organs, and later failed to double-check that assumption, a violation of the hospital's procedures. (from the Philly Inquirer)

Since the Columbia disaster, Nasa and contracter Boeing have been insisting that the shuttle was expected to return safely despite possible tile damage. Thanks to news agencies wielding the Freedom of Information Act, NASA has now released an e-mail from a safety engineer writing two days before the accident worrying that the shuttle might be in "marginal" condition and that others at NASA were not adequately considering risks from a breech near its left wheels (his concerns focused on landing problems).

"We can't imagine why getting information is being treated like the plague," the engineer wrote in one of a series of messages describing internal concerns about Columbia's safety in the days before its Feb. 1 breakup.

I really appreciate the candid remarks. As always your points have generated extremely valuable discussion in our group. Thank you. We have been discussing and continue to discuss the all possible scenarios, signatures and decisions. Your input is beneficial.

How, then, to sort out the rival assessments on issues so complicated that they are commonly referred to in shorthand, by names like Kyoto, Superfund and ANWR?

The ongoing scramble for position by those who would be president augurs another season of the merry slimeball fight the party engages in every four years; by the time the survivor gets to the actual election he looks like he's been trampled by slugs. And the poor bastard gets there just in time to be eaten alive by the Republican attack machine, while his own party squeals in fright and runs in the other direction (Sorry, Al!).

said "democracy is a beautiful thing," and he supported the dissenters' right to express their views. But he said the protests would not influence his decisions or those of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his closest ally.

"You know, the size of protests is like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group," Bush said. "The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security - in this case, the security of the people." (from the Philadelphia Inquirer)

Ok, now that the minimum consensus is out of the way . . .

First off, no matter how sensible a principle it might be, that analogy between protesters and focus groups speaks volumes.about Bush’s vision of democracy. Toning it down a few notches, at the very least it’s an offhand dismissal of a suprisingly strong and socially diverse - no, not just the usual subjects! - movement. Of course, the man does live in one of those alternative histories, the one where the past-fading-into-myth doesn’t ring with the sound of folk songs and protests chants, the one that doesn’t find its moral examplar in The March, the one in Washington. . .
Secondly. A man who lost the popular vote, whose election was hotly contested - to make a stab at impartiality (my left hand is busy trying to type stronger stuff) - goes on record saying "The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security - in this case, the security of the people." Now, we all want security, true, and golly, I’m not even one of those folks who went all a-trembly over Bush’s early and marginally funny "dictator" joke, but . . .

There does seem to be a fair bit of non-democracy in the air. This last November, Interior Dept. officials were flooded with letters and e-mails overwhelmingly in favor of Clinton’s proposed ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. They responded by quite loudly and pointedly saying that it didn’t matter, not like they’re a democracy or anything . . . (see, if you have $2.95 to spare, the New York Times "Flooded With Comments, Officials Plug Their Ears". Sure, it’s a complex issue; democracy needs its safeguards, but sometimes it’s the way you say something . . .

One beacon of hope comes from a consortium of researchers at 12 institutions headed by Jorge Dubcovsky, a wheat molecular geneticist at the University of California, Davis. Its primary tool is 'marker assisted selection' (MAS). This technique, enthusiasts claim, could offer to plant breeding what the jet engine has brought to air travel. Traditionally, breeders have relied on visible traits to select improved varieties. For pest resistance, for example, that means examining mature plants in the field over successive generations to see which survive best in the face of attack by pests, before carrying out new crosses. MAS, however, relies on identifying marker DNA sequences that are inherited alongside a desired trait during the first few generations. Thereafter, plants that carry the trait can be picked out quickly by looking for the marker sequences, allowing multiple rounds of breeding to be run in quick succession.

Superior breeding. MASwheat, as the consortium is known, aims to select for 23 separate traits in wheat, conferring resistance to fungi, viruses and insect pests. Its members also hope to breed the grain to produce bread and pasta of superior quality. Notably, the consortium is making all of its marker sequences and research protocols freely available. "If you go to our website, you have all the tools to do this anywhere in the world," Dubcovsky says.

For wheat, this admirably open approach was relatively easy to adopt, because it is one of the few crops to remain largely in public hands. Because wheat is self-pollinating, many farmers simply plant a portion of their harvest each year, safe in the knowledge that it will retain its desirable characteristics. Not surprisingly, this has restricted the interest of commercial seed producers, who don't see a robust market for their products.

Biotechnology dates at least to 6000 B.C., when the Babylonians used specialized microorganisms to brew alcoholic beverages. Genetic engineering can be dated from humans' recognition that animals and crops can be selected and bred to enhance desired characteristics. Nature, after all, didn't give us seedless grapes or virus-resistant potatoes.