Some things Ampersand is reading today

Huge portions of Iraq’s Library were saved!
Via Making Light, some good news for a change: Some smart Iraqis, seeing which way the wind was blowing, hid many of the Iraqi Libraries holdings before the looters and fires got to them. The Boston Globe has the story. Yay!

What if there is no more Normal to return to?
The Iron Monkey blog is pretty funny. (Via Dru Blood).

Republicans are bad for employment
Wampum charts out job gains and losses under the last five presidents. Here’s a sample, but you should go read the whole post.

War, Brought to You by Public School Funds
Sue Berger at Yo Mama tells the story of an anti-war protest her 14-year-old daugther organized at her school. It’s nice to read something like this – clearly, some members of the upcoming generation rock. (Also, it reminded me of when I was around 14 years old and organized a protest against our invasion of Grenada.)

We’re on a Road Map to Nowhere
Calpundit links to an excellent op-ed by Israeli novelist David Grossman (registration required, alas) about prospects for peace in the middle east. Things don’t look great; Sharon doesn’t seem at all sincere (as Calpundit points out, “when a party to a conflict insists that the other side concede something before negotiations even begin, it shows that they aren’t serious”), and neither is Arafat. (Abu Mazen may be sincere, but I’m not sure how much he can accomplish over Arafat’s will).

The good news is, someday the Israeli voters may choose someone other than Sharon. And someday Arafat may die.

Boys Falling Behind in Schools?
Diotima links to an unusually decent article on boys and schools from Business Week. There’s a touch too much biology-is-destiny in the article – it would have been nice, for instance, if the writer had acknowledged that not all little boys are the same, and factors other than sex determine what learning style is best for each kid. But there’s also a refreshing lack of blaming girl’s advances for boy’s problems, as if decent education for all were a zero-sum game.

I’d also point out that education isn’t the same as outcome. One reason (referred to briefly in the second-to-last paragraph of the article) boys may work less than girls at education is that boys don’t need as much education to get the same earning power. In a world in which a boy with a high-school degree can earn about as much as a girl with a college education, is it any surprise that fewer boys than girls go on to college?

Drug testing: Self-Evident and yet wrong
Mark Kleiman discusses last year’s Supreme Court decision that drug testing in school was constitutional, due to the state’s pressing interest in reducing drug use among kids. Justice Scalia wrote that it was “self-evident” that drug testing woudl reduce usage.

Now a new study shows that drug testing doesn’t reduce usage among kids (at least, it doesn’t do so as it’s been implemented). As Mark writes, “It will be interesting to see whether Breyer allows himself to be swayed by the facts, whether Thomas continues to think that something with zero measured effect is still ‘reasonably effective,’ and whether Scalia is prepared to deal with the possibility a proposition that strikes him as self-evident might nevertheless be untrue.”

The World Bank insults indigenous peoples
The World Bank is offering “up to 50,000 dollars for projects on development themes” – compared to the millions it’s been willing to lend for projects that are imposed on indigenous peoples without their participation or consent. Apparently the World Bank thinks indigenous folks are too stupid to tell the difference between a real program providing significant aid, and a cheap publicity stunt intended to help the World Bank’s image problems. Little Red Cookbook has the details.

Women’s Rights versus Population Control
Interesting (albeit somewhat academic) article from a couple of folks at the Harvard School of Public Health. To vastly oversimplify: There are two approaches to “the problem” of reproduction in the developing world: the “population control” approach, which takes reducing population as the goal. And the feminist approach, which is about empowering women – including, but not limited to, reproductive rights – and trusting that the choices empowered women make will be correct and sustainable.

Gender and AIDS
The UN Development Fund for Women has a newish website, genderandaids.org, a website devoted to studies and articles about the ways gender roles and women’s lack of power helps spread AIDS in the developing world. There’s a lot of interesting material there that I hope to get around to blogging.

Tests show: Racists become even stupider
Silver Rights, refuting the claim that racism isn’t important anymore, discusses some fascinating research showing that bigots, after talking with a black person, actually become less able to perform mental tasks..