THE PROTESTS AHEAD?
Has the World Trade Organization become the new Vatican? Have large multinational corporations turned into the 21^st-century equivalents of feudal lords to whom we offer fealty for our health and financial salvation? Perhaps not quite yet, though in George Monbiot's view this is where we're heading—or somewhere like it. In a new book, Monbiot argues that "the struggle between people and corporations … will be the defining battle of the 21^st century." (To read Paul Foot's review of Captive State, click here. In a Feb. 8 article for the Guardian, Monbiot wrote, "In seeking to wrest it back, we have yet to develop a coherent political programme to which all of us can subscribe. While the greens support small business, trades unionists find workers within big corporations easier to mobilise. The anarchists want to smash the state, while the socialists want to rebuild it. But the unprecedented solidarity between these disparate groups is beginning, I feel, to develop into a program in its own right: a grassroots reorganisation of the political process, propelling democratic renewal from below."

AIR JAMS
Matthew Wald, aviation correspondent of the New York Times, explains the results of a statistical analysis of commercial airplane delays in the United States. Two words sum up the entire problem: La Guardia. Delays at the New York airport, which are getting worse by the year, foul up flights around the country. Two points are absent from Wald's conclusions. 1) To what extent have private or corporate jets contributed to the increase in air traffic—and to the delays—at La Guardia (and, indeed, elsewhere)? 2) There's a good high-speed train between Washington, D.C., and New York City—one that often beats the plane considering all the delays. Perhaps Delta and US Airways, airlines that run shuttle services between these two cities, might magnanimously cancel these flights in the interests of their other customers who cannot count on a high-speed train link. The latest issue of Technological Review devotes three articles to the question of airport congestion. In "The Digital Skies," David Talbot writes about how UPS has developed a novel solution to congestion at its chief hub in Kentucky.

DARWIN RETURNS TO KANSAS
The Kansas Board of Education has overturned a previous ruling that outlawed the teaching of evolution in the state's schools. (To read the board's report click here). But as Kate Beem of the Kansas City Star reports, there may be further battles ahead. "The next state board election is less than two years away, though, and three of the five open seats are held by moderate Republicans and Democrats. It's too early to say whether the science standards will return as an election issue, but members of the pro-evolution group Kansas Citizens for Science predicted that Kansans would remain vigilant." For other reports on the decision click here and here.

ABOUT CRICKET
With all due respect to fellow Slate contributor, Robert Lane Greene, who wrote about cricket in yesterday's Slate, the chief difference between this game and baseball is that whereas the latter is dominated by pitching, cricket is a batter's game, even in a match overwhelmed by strong bowling. Moreover, a lot of cricket is played in America by Indians, Pakistanis, and West Indians, and for details of teams and grounds, visit Cricinfo. One disadvantage about playing cricket in America is the absence of turf pitches—or "wickets." The game is usually played on matting, where the subtleties of a grass wicket are mostly absent. The ground at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where cricket has been played since the 19^th century, is an exception. The college is also home to the second-best cricket library in the world, thanks to the bequest of C.C. Morris.

MARLEY AND THE WAILERS
Bob Marley died 20 years ago. To mark the anniversary, PBS's American Masters is broadcasting a documentary about the singer, though as I seem to recall, Marley was Jamaican. In a flamboyant essay posted on the American Masters Web site, Roger Steffens says: "Without doubt, Bob Marley can now be recognized as the most important figure in 20^th century music. It's not just my opinion, but also, judging by all the mainstream accolades hurled Bob's way lately, the feeling of a great many others too. Prediction is the murky province of fools. But in the two decades since Bob Marley has gone, it is clear that he is without question one of the most transcendent figures of the past hundred years. The ripples of his unparalleled achievements radiate outward through the river of his music into an ocean of politics, ethics, fashion, philosophy and religion."

AVOIDING THE TRUTH IN SOUTH AFRICA
R.W. Johnson, formerly of Magdalen College Oxford, is now South African correspondent of London's Sunday Times. In a review of a new and, in Johnson's view, bad book about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he writes: "[The] TRC to play[ed] fast and loose with real truth … ignore[d] proper procedures and … disregard[ed] court decisions and commissions of inquiry that had inconveniently come up with quite different facts and conclusions. Worse, it reheard a murder hearing and, with no fresh evidence, exculpated the murderer; it mistook basic facts, alleging, for example, that an inquiry had found a certain police informer guilty of 18 deaths when, in fact, it had made no such finding; it quoted the exhaustive investigations which had found that the police had not been involved in the Boipatong massacre in 1992—and then just reiterated ANC propaganda that the police had been to blame. Of the 20,500 people killed in political violence between 1984 and 1994, the TRC simply made no attempt to explain the deaths of more than 12,000 of thems—and it virtually ignored the period of the early 1990s when nearly 15,000 of these deaths occurred."

THE RULES OF RECIPROCITY
If he were alive, the anthropologist Marcel Mauss would doubtlessly have a field day with the furor about gift-giving to presidents and presidential "gifts" to the people. In his famous book, The Gift, Mauss argued that in certain societies giving, not receiving is far more important—something that President Bush seems to understand, but President Clinton did not. Yet as Robert Gordon, a letter writer to the New York Times, explains, it depends on what is being given and to whom. "Has it escaped your notice that all of President Bush's major proposals (tax cuts, Arctic drilling, the missile defense shield) work to the direct financial advantage of his friends, business associates and chief campaign contributors (defense contractors, drillers and ranchers on public lands, the very rich who pay the top income and estate taxes)? These are financial-political payoffs on a large scale. Yes, the pardon of Marc Rich is unseemly, but he is just one unworthy beneficiary of government favoritism. Let's try to keep that in perspective as we prepare to repeat the Gilded Age's giveaway of public lands, subsidies and benefits to corporate interests, since known as 'the Great Barbecue.' "

DARKNESS IN AUSTRALIA
One of the dubious allegations Patrick Tierney makes in his book Darkness in El Dorado is that Western scientists infected Amazonian Indians with measles. (Click here for Judith Shulevitz's Slate"Culturebox" about the controversy; click here for the article she wrote for last Sunday's New York Times Book Review.) You do not, however, have to head to the jungle to find examples of scientists and drug companies using humans as guinea pigs. As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, lately a number of American and European pharmaceutical companies have tested new drugs on Australians without anyone other than doctors knowing about such trials. "A Herald investigation has identified hundreds of pharmaceutical company-sponsored clinical trials across Sydney public hospitals, some of which are paying up to $10,000 per patient. Anyone from babies to the elderly to people in intensive care are enrolled in the drug studies that are designed to improve understanding and prevent sickness, but whose potential side effects are still being researched. Patients who volunteer for the trials are not being told about the financial arrangements and are not always given copies of the consent forms they sign. The fees paid by the drug firms are calculated to compensate the hospital for staff time and effort and to pay for medical procedures associated with the trials, such as CAT scans and blood tests." For more about the scandal, click here. 

THE COMPUTER—AN EARLY OBITUARY
Writing in MIT's Technological Review, John Seely Brown   imagines himself in the year 2020, when the computer will have become redundant. "During the personal computing stage, computers became increasingly powerful, but they also became harder to use. Moore's Law, stating that computing power would double every 18 months, seemed to hold for hardware. But robust software never could keep up. The result was that personal computers remained hard to use. … [E]ven that degree of usability faded in the second era of computing, when designers tried to extend this interface motif to navigating the vast information and document spaces of the Web. Those who surfed the Net all day long just ended up feeling disoriented or lost. … Eventually the Web became a jungle of information pathways with no cues to help folks to their destinations, much like the center of a megacity without reliable signs or guides. Urban architects and social theorists were called on to help technologists see the resources that lay latent in the social and physical context."

THE GENOME
Despite the important news about the human genome—that we are made up of many fewer genes than was previously believed (click here, here, here, here, and here for various reports from around the world)—the rivalry between the two genome research teams, the Human Genome Project and Celera, has the potential to hinder further analysis, as the New Scientist points out. The Washington Post characterizes the battle as "a highly technical dispute over the best method to unravel big, complicated genomes so they can serve as a foundation for future medical research and a source of information about the evolutionary past." Meantime, the conservative-minded editors at the Daily Telegraph argue that the latest discoveries should be treated with caution. "The book of life alters much and little at once. It could greatly extend the human lifespan; this would mean huge social change. But it cannot transform the human condition; what it means to be human. That, after all, is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. There is a story about this distinction in the book of Genesis. In the tale, Adam and Eve are prevented, after the fall, from eating the fruit of the tree of life—in other words, from becoming immortal. Science could yet show us where the fruit is, because it is in its nature to find new things. But wisdom would advise us not to eat the fruit, because death itself seems to be part of the life cycle: we are, as it were, 'wired' to die." Nature and Science will post the latest genome research on their Web sites.