[The Simpsons attend a convention of scientists. Lisa is to present her findings about bullies. She and Marge are a little intimidated by the crowd, which includes the inventor of the walkie-talkie (and someone who isn't his wife).

Frink calls the crowd to order.]

Frink: Scientists -- scientists, please. Looking for some order. Some order, please, with the eyes forward and the hands neatly folded and the paying attention ... [shouts] Pi is exactly 3! [the audience gasps and falls silent] Very sorry it had to come to that, but now that I have your attention, we have some exciting new research from young Lisa Simpson. Let's bring her out and pay attention.

[the audience applauds as Lisa walks onstage. The crowd sees that she's a little girl, and doubts that she has anything useful to say]

Lisa: [clears throat] My study is called, "Airborne Pheromones and Aggression in Bullies."

[the crowd gasps. Someone says, "I'm afraid"]

For as long as there has been smart people, there have been bullies to prey on them. From Galileo [shows a slide of the astronomer getting beaten up] to Sir Isaac Newton, [another slide] and even in the animal kingdom. [shows a slide of a large dog victimizing a smaller one]

But why do the brawny prey on the brainy. Is it jealousy?

[the crowd seems to think so]

No! The reason is chemical. [the crowd murmurs]

Scientist 1: Wait, that's impossible. Chemicals are our friends.

Dr. Koop: She's a witch!

Bye Bye Nerdie

[Meanwhile, Marge and Lisa are gazing dreamily into a window filled with glamorous shoes.]

Lisa: Look at all those beautiful shoes! I know they're made from animals but WOW!
Marge: Mmmm, If only I didn't already have a pair of shoes.
Bart: Speaking of shoes, I don't care about shoes. I'll meet you ladies back here in half an hour.

The City of New York Vs. Homer Simpson

Craig Venter gave the Dimbleby Lecture on December 4.

In this lecture I will argue that the future of life depends not only in our ability to understand and use DNA, but also, perhaps in creating new synthetic life forms, that is, life which is forged not by Darwinian evolution but created by human intelligence.

To some this may be troubling, but part of the problem we face with scientific advancement, is the fear of the unknown - fear that often leads to rejection.

Science is a topic which can cause people to turn off their brains. I contend that science has failed to excite more people for at least two reasons: it is frequently taught poorly, often as rote memorization of complex facts and data, and it is antithetical to our visceral-driven way we live and interact with our world.

A DNA-Driven World | Craig Venter

Tom Friedman:

Don’t get me wrong, I think Annapolis was useful.

But when you toil for a year to throw a party and some of your worst enemies R.S.V.P., but the two people whose lives you’ve once saved don’t show up, it’s beyond rude. It’s interesting.

Making Peace With Pieces

Jason Epstein, co-founder of the New York Review of Books:

"Try to read a serious book on that," he said of the Kindle. "You won't be able to, I don't think."

This is true.

...

"The real things that will be lost will be the discoveries that can be made in a bookstore, that wonderful wandering where you find precisely what you didn't know you were looking for."

Walter Kirn: "I think that what people who are mourning the book are really mourning is reading. They see the book as a totem of their melancholy over the disappearance of solid reading culture.

Reading between the lines with Kindle

Domestically, the most significant fact about the NIE is its public manifestation. The White House was powerless to prevent publication of a document that made Bush aides unhappy and uncomfortable. The administration went along because it knew that the document -- and any attempt to suppress it -- would have been immediately leaked.

It is as if this administration has developed its own political version of Jimmy Carter's aborted project for a neutron bomb, which was intended to destroy people while sparing buildings. Bush consistently manages to destroy or damage goals he proclaims and friends who support him, while foes escape harm.

The Spies Strike Back

National Book Award winner Tim Weiner:

The principles of how to arrive at good intelligence estimates are not new. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said last month that he learned them 17 years ago, while serving under Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“ ‘Look, I have got a rule,’ ” he said General Powell told him. “ ‘As an intelligence officer, your responsibility is to tell me what you know. Tell me what you don’t know. Then you’re allowed to tell me what you think. But you always keep those three separated.’ ”

At last, it is more likely now that those rules will be heeded.

...

Good information can win wars. But bad ideas can lose the battles in between.

Pssst: Some Hope for Spycraft

Here is Thomas Powers, on why the NIE is bad news for Israel:

"In fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."

With those nine much-argued words, the American intelligence community abruptly cut the ground from beneath years of threats to bomb or invade Iran if it did not do what the NIC concluded "with high confidence" that it had already done. In the pained bleat of denial that predictably followed from the White House and its allies, a basic question got pushed to the back of the line: Who pressed to declassify these highly inconvenient findings?

...

The fact that the NIE says what it says, and its release, both show that the White House has lost control over American intelligence. This good news probably needs a lot of hedging and qualification, but it is good all the same.

...

Absent a big surprise or sudden turn in the road, the president's attempt to remake the Middle East leaves an Iraq with a Shiite government in friendly concert with a Shiite Iran whose leader speaks with a new confidence as he brushes aside American threats not to "allow" or not to "tolerate" -- words used by Cheney and Bush -- a bomb program, which American intelligence says was abandoned four years ago.

See also:

The White House ordered a stepped-up effort [to encourage defectors] in hopes of gathering stronger evidence that Tehran was making progress toward building a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration "wanted better information" on Iran's nuclear programs, said a US official briefed on the expanded collection efforts.

"I can't imagine that they would have ever guessed that the information they got would show that the program was shut down," the official said.

Nine little words in the NIE

Stephen Biddle is optimistic about the prospects for peace, but he seems concerned about the Democrats.

Sticking it out to stabilize Iraq and avert the potential consequences of failure is more defensible now than it has been for a long time -- but only if we are willing to do what it takes to maximize the odds that Iraq does not return to bloodshed and chaos.

What does it take? A meaningful outside presence can be needed for a generation.

Iraq: Can We Guard What We've Gained?

For the seventh consecutive December, the magazine looks back on the passing year through a special lens: ideas. Editors and writers trawl the oceans of ingenuity, hoping to snag in our nets the many curious, inspired, perplexing and sometimes outright illegal innovations of the past 12 months. Then we lay them out on the dock, flipping and flopping and gasping for air, and toss back all but those that are fresh enough for our particular cut of intellectual sushi. For better or worse, these are 70 of the ideas that helped make 2007 what it was. Enjoy.

Virgil made the list with Wikiscanning. Congratulations, Virgil!

Several of the year's best ideas were also memes here, including:

Lap-Dance Science - Something in the Way She Moves?

The idea of Lite-Brite Fashion makes for an interesting contrast to the story of Star Simpson.

Pixelated Stained Glass - Pixelated Glass Window in Cologne Cathedral

The Radiohead Payment Model - Fans Decide How Much To Pay, and Radiohead’s Warm Glow

Wireless Energy, or Wi-tricity.

Weapon-Proof School Gear - My Child's Pack.

For commentary on the Ideas of years past, see 2004, 2005, and 2006.

The Year in Ideas, 2007 | The New York Times Magazine