The Washington Post National Weekly - Sept 6, 2015

Politics Praying for, and with, a president 4

World Asylum crisis deepens 11

Innovations Regulators take a back seat 16

5 Myths About pandas 23

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

THE FIX

A mostly empty promise

MARK HUMPHREY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

BY

C HRIS C ILLIZZA

G

OP front-runner Donald Trump signed a formal pledge crafted by the Republican National Committee that he will not run for president as an independent if he doesn’t win the party’s nomination.

Which is fine. And a good thing for the RNC, which deserves credit for navigating the murky waters of Trumpworld.

But there is absolutely no reason to think that simply by the act of signing this pledge, Trump will somehow be legally bound to not run as anything but a Republican in 2016. He won’t be.

This pledge is not, as other reporters have noted, a legally binding document. It’s like the sort of pledge you get your kids to sign that they will do their homework, make their beds and eat their vegetables before they can play with your iPhone. It’s a statement of intention, but not a binding one.

KLMNO WEEKLY

Do I think Trump is secretly plotting a third party bid if he winds up not winning the Republican nomination? No, not at present. Do I think that Trump believes that he will be bound by this pledge from running if he decides that’s what he wants to do? Absolutely not.

What in Trump’s relatively short time as a presidential candidate (or much longer time as a person who takes positions on various issues) suggests that he would feel at all compelled to abide by a pledge put together by the head of a party that he is a) only a relatively recent convert to and b) can’t really hurt him, financially or otherwise, if he decides to break it?

Trump’s entire candidacy is premised on how he doesn’t owe anyone anything and how no one can tell him what to do. So, for the moment, it’s in Trump’s interest to play nice with the GOP establishment — since it might allay some fears of voters who are thinking about supporting him but wonder if he is, actually, one of them.

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2015 The Washington Post / Year 1, No. 47

But if Trump, at any point over the next few months, feels hard done by the GOP establishment — or if his poll numbers begin to fade — is there anything in what he will sign today that keeps him from breaking the pledge not to run? No. Yes, Trump would have to answer for his broken pledge among some Republican voters who took him at his word. But given Trump’s antiestablishment message, there would almost certainly be a big chunk of disaffected Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who would likely take his side in a fight with the national party.

The point is: Thursday was a good day for the RNC, which showed its ability to bring some order to what has been a wild race to date. But don’t assume that Donald Trump signing a piece of paper in front of a bunch of cameras is anything more than a nicely turned bit of political theater. Because, well, it isn’t. n

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY DESTINATIONS BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

4 8 10 12 17 18 20 23

ON THE COVER James Giordano, a neuroscientist and Georgetown professor, recorded an audio lecture for customers to review on Great Courses. Results should be back in October, determining whether he gets a contract.

Photograph by GREG KAHN, GRAIN

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

POLITICS

Power of prayer, and a president

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST

As he battles cancer, Jimmy Carter’s weekly Bible lesson draws more pilgrims D AVID W EIGEL Plains, Ga. BY

T

he cars and SUVs and RVs began lining up outside Maranatha Baptist Church early Saturday evening.

Jimmy Carter, a Maranatha parishioner and the 39th president of the United States, was due to teach Sunday school the next morning.

It would be Carter’s second lesson since he announced that he would undergo treatment for brain cancer. His first post-cancer lesson drew nearly 1,000 people to

a church built for a few hundred, so the church decided to offer pews on a first-come, first-served basis. Guests arriving by 12:01 a.m.

Sunday would be admitted to the church parking lot, where they would have to sleep in their cars.

Cynthia Alfont, a 47-year-old immigrant from the Philippines, flew from California to Knoxville, Tenn., then drove six hours straight to Plains. Georges Kabongo-Mubalamate, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, flew from his job in Maine then drove three hours from Atlanta. Kent

Schroeder, 62, packed his sister and mother into his SUV and drove the hard 14 hours from Illinois.

“We’re gung-ho people!” chirped Schroeder’s mother, Pat, who was 93 and could walk only with assistance.

By 9 p.m. Saturday, the line of cars snaked more than half a mile along the two-lane blacktop, and church organizers gave in. Drivers were ushered into the church parking lot by Jill Stuckey, a board member of the Friends of Jimmy Carter National Historical Site, who seemed to have evolved be-

People slept in cars, above, outside Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., to see former president Jimmy Carter’s lesson, his second at Sunday school since he announced that he will undergo treatment for brain cancer.

yond the need for sleep.

“Thank you for coming,” she told the drivers as she passed out seat numbers. “Thank you for putting up with us. We wish we could come up with a better way. Maybe we will by next week.”

The quiet town of Plains has long been defined by its relationship with Carter. The former president has taught all-ages Sunday school here for decades, speaking to maybe a hundred people a week in front of a wooden cross that he built himself. Tourists could go from there to a one-block down-

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

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POLITICS town dominated by the Carter peanut warehouse and his old campaign office. Or they could visit the boyhood farm that still produces fresh food for the former president and his wife, Rosalynn.

It was easy to believe that this version of Plains would last forever. And then Jimmy Carter got cancer.

“I said to my wife, ‘If you want to do it, we need to go,’ ” said Justin Vann, 33, who works for a food packaging company in Lyman, S.C., and drove five hours to get in the pews.

“This was a bucket list goal for me, to meet a president,” said Mark Mask, 50, who drove with his wife from Hickory, N.C. “It was already in the plans, and then, obviously, we had to move it up and do it right away. I drove a NASCAR car, I jumped out of a plane, and I wanted to meet a president.”

Carter, who turned 90 last year, worked hard to regain that kind of admiration. His single term in Washington ended in 1981 in one of the biggest landslide defeats ever handed to an incumbent. He was so politically toxic that by 1992 Bill Clinton felt it necessary during his presidential campaign to persuade reporters that “Jimmy Carter and I are as different as daylight and dark.”

Among Republicans, Carter’s name is still muck-stained. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recently invoked Carter to mock President Obama’s “feckless” and “weak” foreign policy, as if discovering a worse president than Carter was like discoveringamineralharderthandiamond.

But this time, Cruz and Christie were quickly chastised. Decades of charity and humanitarian work had made Carter a respected political figure. The cancer diagnosis, however, had catapulted him beyond politics.

Many Plains pilgrims said they vote Republican but admire Carter. It would be a different country, they said, if more Democrats were like him.

“Our current president, I don’t believe he’s got a religious belief in his body,” Mask said.

The eldest of four children, Jimmy Carter was also the longest lived. As Carter pointed out last week, the other three died young after battles with cancer. It has been 25 years since Carter buried his sister Gloria, longer still since

Everyone would get a picture with Rosalynn and Jimmy, but no one would hug or kiss him, because no one wanted him to get sick. the death of his evangelist sister Ruth and his occasionally infamous brother, Billy.

On Saturday, at the Billy Carter Museum — located in his old gas station — Billy’s daughter, Kim Fuller, took orders for politicalstyle yard signs inspired by a cartoon. “Jimmy Carter for Cancer Survivor,” they said.

Fuller and Stuckey had planted the signs all over town, especially on the road near the former president’s Plains home. They were thrilled when Carter took a photo of the signs, and thrilled when some out-of-town churchgoers absconded with them.

“Years ago, people used to pull peanuts out of the ground on the farm as souvenirs. So, you could say this was in that spirit, but for a better cause,” Fuller said.

On Saturday night, Fuller and Stuckey were out of signs, so Stuckey found herself guiding cars to the church lawn, informing drivers about the on-site port-apotties, promising coffee and doughnuts in the morning.

By 12:15 a.m., 193 pilgrims had received seat assignments. And by 6 a.m., the coffee was on the porch, as promised.

About 400 people made the trip to Plains, and nearly all got seats in the pews. Only about 60 were directed to overflow rooms, organizers said. After sleeping on half-reclined car seats and changing behind tinted windows, they queued up outside the church without complaint, handing over watches, bags and smartphones to Secret Service agents. And then they found their seats.

Carter would not speak until 10 a.m. It was the job of Jan Williams, 65, to walk the pilgrims through the Sunday school process.

There were rules — lots of them.

Above, Carter teaches a lesson at Sunday school shortly after he announced his diagnosis. Below, locals place signs of support around Plains as the former president battles cancer.

KLMNO WEEKLY

No one would interrupt the lesson by taking photos.

The president. Did not. Do selfies.

Everyone would get a picture with Rosalynn and Jimmy, but no one would hug or kiss him, because no one wanted him to get sick.

And “Don’t say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry about the diagnosis,’ ” Williams said. “You don’t have to tell him.

He knows it. Just say, ‘I’m praying for you.’ ” More rules: There would be no applause for the former president.

No one would stand when he entered. As a result, Carter slipped into the room at 10 a.m. sharp, with no fanfare.

He asked where people had come in from, then gave a detailed update on his disease.

“Doctors tell me they’ve made the most progress in the last five years in lung cancer and melanoma,” Carter said, “so, I’m lucky.”

Then it was on to the lesson.

Carter’s subject was “forgiveness,” and his Bible passage was Matthew 18:21-22: “ ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.’ ” This did not mean that the son of God was setting an upper limit on how much to forgive, Carter said. It meant that forgiveness should be boundless.

Over the next 30 minutes, Carter told the audience how he opened up China, how he talked to North Korea when President Clinton asked him not to, how he brokered the Camp David Accords.

“Not a word of that has been breached,” he said, with a pride tempered by fatigue.

“Wars between two countries, civil wars inside a country, disagreements between a husband and wife that lead to divorce, are all caused by the same thing,” he said. “That is an honest and sincere difference of opinion and an unwillingness to communicate.”

When Carter finished — he used nonotes—heinformedhispilgrims that he was under doctor’s orders to drink 84 ounces of fluid each day.

“That’s ten big glasses of water, so I might need to excuse myself.”

The joke landed. He smiled as wide as he had on any campaign poster. And after the service, he and Rosalynn sat down to take a quick photograph with everyone who had made the journey. n

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POLITICS

As Walker slumps, calls for a reboot W

isconsin Gov. Scott Walker surged into the top tier of the Republican presidential race with a fiery speech in the depths of winter in Iowa. But his candidacy has wilted in the heat of a summer dominated by Donald Trump, with loyalists and supporters now calling for an immediate mid-course correction.

Walker’s backers see a campaign discombobulated by Trump’s booming popularity and by his provocative language on immigration, China and other issues. They see in Walker a candidate who — in contrast to the discipline he showed in state races — continues to commit unforced errors, either out of lack of preparation or in an attempt to grab for part of the flamboyant businessman’s following.

These supporters say what is needed now is a return to basics, a more disciplined focus on the issues Walker long has championed in Wisconsin. They say there also needs to be a clear acknowledgment inside the campaign that the governor has yet to put to rest questions about his readiness to handle the problems and unexpected challenges that confront every president.

A poll for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg News, released at the end of August, showed Walker’s support plummeting, underscoring the severity of the problems. Iowa is the linchpin of Walker’s early-state strategy, the place where he has been leading the polls for much of the year and where a victory has long been assumed among his senior staff.

Now, Walker is the favorite of just 8 percent among likely GOP caucusgoers, running third behind Trump (23 percent) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson (at 18 percent). The poll also showed, however, that Walker remains wellliked by Iowa Republicans, with a favorability rating of 71 percent, second only to Carson.

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination four years ago, said that he sees both opportunities and challenges for

IM LO SCALZO/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Once a top Republican prospect, the governor of Wisconsin has been eclipsed by Donald Trump Walker as he tries to regroup.

“He’s a hybrid candidate who can appeal to both base conservatives and not scare the establishment,” Pawlenty said. “So he’s in a good spot in terms of the potential territory he appeals to. But he’s still got to go out and rise to the occasion and close the sale.”

Instead of rising to the occasion, Walker continues to raise doubts.

Several supporters say Walker appears to have had too many meetings with too many experts, turning him into a more timid version of himself. They miss the Midwestern candidate who focused on economic issues like weakening public unions, making painful cuts to the budget and reducing taxes by more than $2 billion.

A former Republican officeholder said Walker needs to project the political persona that first made him attractive to conservatives, rather than seemingly lurch further to the right on issues that

never have been at his core.

“The Walker of the Iowa caucuses is not the Walker that people were used to seeing in Wisconsin,” said the Republican official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to offer a candid view of Walker’s candidacy.

Walker said in August in North Carolina that he is “the same Scott Walker” he has always been and that any perceived shifts are exaggerations driven by the media. Although Walker once boasted about being a front-runner, he now says early polls are not a clear predictor of who will win the nomination months from now.

“These campaigns are marathons, not a sprint, and anyone who doubts Scott Walker this early in the race is making a big mistake,” said Michael Grebe, the chairman of Walker’s campaign, who served in the same role in all three of Walker’s gubernatorial races.

Even before the release of the

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker poses for a photo in Woodbridge, Va. A new Iowa poll shows Walker’s support plummeting there.

Iowa poll, Republicans partial to Walker were expressing their worries about the direction of his campaign. “This has not been a good August,” said one of Walker’s top fundraisers, who asked for anonymity to candidly discuss problems within the campaign. “Something has to change.”

As Trump has continued to gain momentum, Walker’s campaign in the past two weeks launched a concerted effort to win over Trump’s supporters, many of them frustrated with traditional politicians. Even though Walker is a career officeholder who has spent most of his adult life campaigning, he has pitched himself as a Washington outsider who can use his experience to get more accomplished from the White House.

As part of this reboot, Walker has adopted a more aggressive posture on the campaign trail, shouting back at protesters at the Iowa State Fair and sharpening his criticism of China, the media and members of the GOP — even the Republicans back in Wisconsin who were instrumental to his rapid ascension.

Walker has embraced several of Trump’s marquee stances, such as his controversial proposal for reforming the immigration system, saying it’s similar to his own border plan. But Trump’s positions don’t always mesh with Walker’s style and experiences.

Walker struggled for more than a week to say whether he believes birthright citizenship should be repealed. As the markets tumbled last week in reaction to weaknesses in the Chinese economy, Walker called on President Obama to show “some backbone” and cancel the upcoming state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, with whom Walker met during a widely publicized 2013 trade mission.

While several candidates agreed that a state dinner is too much, they stopped short of fully disinviting the foreign leader. Walker later said communication and trade with China would continue, even if the ceremonial visit was canceled.

In discussing immigration a week ago, Walker said constructing a wall on the U.S. border with Canada — the longest in the world at

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

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POLITICS 5,525 miles — is “a legitimate issue for us to look at.”

Comments like this strike Walker loyalists as too focused on chasing the issue of the day. Pawlenty highlighted an aspect of the challenge for Walker in what he called a “Trump-Kardashian” world: Can an understated Midwesterner compete in a sometimes cartoonish environment?

“You don’t need to out-Trump Trump,” he said. “But in the modern era . . . you can’t just be a steady policy person. You can’t just be an entertainer either. You have to blend the two together.”

Walker loyalists say the first priority should be to help the governor rebalance himself as a candidate.

That, they say, will require some tough love from his campaign advisers and more discipline in developing answers to questions about issues that are not central to Walker’s core message.

While a few of Walker’s staffers have worked with him before, many are newcomers. Two of Walker’s former top political advisers, Keith Gilkes and Stephan Thompson, are now in charge of the proWalker super PAC that is legally separated from the campaign.

The campaign is led by Rick Wiley, a former RNC political director who grew up in the Midwest and has worked in Wisconsin before.

He is frequently on the trail with Walker, and several top supporters say he acts too much like a buddy and not enough like a chief operating officer.

“Every candidate needs somebody that can checkmate them in private, like a Karl Rove and ‘W,’ ” one top donor said, referring to George W. Bush’s longtime political adviser. “Is there some concern about senior experience around the governor, actual presidential experience? Yes, no question.”

Wiley, through a campaign spokeswoman, declined to respond to the comments. A spokeswoman said that while the campaign manager did spend the first full week of Walker’s campaign on the road and has made a few trips since then, he is usually at work in Madison.

Despite falling poll numbers, Walker supporters are optimistic his campaign can still rebound.

“There isn’t a candidate out there who hasn’t had really serious issues or challenges,” said Gregory W. Slayton, a Walker fundraiser who lives in New Hampshire. n

KLMNO WEEKLY

How many investigations for Clinton? Five, for now.

BY

E LISE V IEBECK

I

t’s been a hard summer for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And the fall doesn’t promise much improvement in one significant way: congressional Republicans, along with at least two government agencies, will still be looking into the business of the former secretary of state.

Just how many government entities are currently investigating or reviewing actions related to Clinton? We counted five. The probes cover Clinton’s response to the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and her use of a private e-mail server as secretary of state, for the most part.

A Senate Republican aide said investigators will keep a close watch on information coming out in batches of Clinton e-mails.

“We’ll look at it as it comes to determine whether there is anything else that warrants further investigation,” said the aide, who is involved in one of the probes.

Here is a look at the investigations and reviews taking place and what to expect this fall: 1. House Select Committee on Benghazi. Led by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R­S.C.) The most prominent and controversial probe, House Republicans’ look into the Benghazi attacks gained new energy this year amid scrutiny of Clinton’s private e-mail server. The effort launched on May 2, 2014, as a way to combine probes of Clinton taking place simultaneously within four separate House panels. Its leader, former federal prosecutor Gowdy, continues to tangle with the State Department over the pace of its release of Clinton’s documents.

Clinton will testify before the Select Committee on Oct. 22, and the hearing will be open to the public.

A spokesman for the committee emphasized that questions will center on the 2012 attacks in Libya.

“The Select Committee on Benghazi remains focused on uncov-

ering all the facts surrounding the before, during and after of the Benghazi terrorist attacks — which will include questions on the security profile in Benghazi and also understanding the timing of when the video and protest narratives were known to be false,” panel spokesman Jamal Ware said in a statement.

SCOTT MORGAN/REUTERS

2. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. Led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R­Wis.) Johnson’s efforts began in March when he asked the State Department’s inspector general to examine Clinton’s e-mails for classified information. In the past month, the Wisconsin Republican reached out to three more parties with questions related to the emails: Clinton lawyer David Kendall; Platte River Networks, which ran Clinton’s server; and FBI Director James B. Comey, about the bureau’s own look into the issue.

3. Senate Judiciary Committee. Led by Sen. Charles E. Grass­ ley (R­Iowa) Grassley’s panel continues to investigate several issues that touch on Clinton and her former deputies at State. One is Special Government Employee status, a designation that allows federal workers to maintain positions outside the government. Top Clinton aide Huma Abedin received this designation at State, allowing her to work simultaneously in the private sector. Grassley raised the specter of conflicts-of-interest and

questioned Abedin’s qualifications for special status. His probe of personnel issues began in 2013.

Abedin figures prominently in another investigation at Senate Judiciary. The committee is looking into allegations that Abedin was improperly paid for leave days. Abedin is contesting findings by State’s inspector general.

Finally, Grassley is probing the handling of classified material within State, an issue that relates directly to Clinton’s server.

4. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI took an interest in Clinton’s private e-mail server after an intelligence community watchdog expressed concern about the security of sensitive information within the system. The FBI began probing the issue, The Post reported Aug. 4, by making inquiries with Platte River Networks, which maintained the private server, and Clinton lawyer David Kendall.

Just over a week later, Platte River Networks turned over the server to the bureau. From Kendall, the FBI obtained a thumb drive with copies of e-mails on the server.

The intelligence watchdog did not accuse Clinton of wrongdoing when it referred the matter to the Justice Department, and officials familiar with the review have said that the FBI is not targeting her.

5. State Department Office of Inspector General. Led by In­ spector General Steve Linick The State Department’s internal watchdog is looking into the way former secretaries handled official materials, a review that naturally involves Clinton. In a statement issued March 27, Linick said his team began preliminary work for a review of how the department preserves information and responds to information requests, including those from Congress.

The effort takes place against the backdrop of conflict with Gowdy and other congressional Republicans over the release of documents related to Clinton. n

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NATION

Little brotherly love for pope plans F RANCES S TEAD S ELLERS Philadelphia BY

T

o induce or not to induce?

That’s the question vexing pregnant women whose babies share late-September due dates with Pope Francis’s much-heralded arrival.

Meanwhile, Center City restaurants, unsure whether fresh produce will make it through three rings of increasingly impenetrable papal security, don’t know whether they’ll make a killing or have to close.

And where, oh where, will all the pilgrims rest their weary heads? In $75-a-night bunks on a battleship moored in the Delaware River? Or at the Philadelphia Zoo, where 240 members of one New Jersey parish plan to bed down?

“They can enjoy the pope side of things and the zoo side of things,” said a spokesman, apparently unaware how much the two are converging.

An estimated 1.5 million people are expected to travel to the city for a high-level global Catholic meeting on family issues, the highlight of which will be the visit by the pope the weekend of Sept. 26. The papal itinerary, punctuated by stops at Independence Hall, a seminary and a prison, will culminate that Sunday with Francis presiding over a public Mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway near the art museum whose steps were made famous by Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky.”

Philadelphians have been harshly critical of city officials for implementing extreme security measures, including a ban on driving into the downtown area during the weekend, and for devising an overly complicated lottery system for train tickets — and poorly communicating it all.

The decibel level has been so high — with some on Twitter predicting a #popeapocalypse — that Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput set aside ethereal concerns to warn against “the temptation to focus on possible problems in security, logistics and transportation.”

After recommending that resi-

ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Philadelphia residents criticize tight security measures for pontiff’s late September visit dents lay in groceries and prescription medicines, Mayor Michael Nutter has been trying to allay anxieties with an online “Papal Playbook,” which includes tips on everything from where to worship to how to handle stressed-out pets. Last week, the city launched an “I’ll be There” campaign to persuade potential pilgrims that Philadelphia will still be open for business.

“You don’t know what to expect,” said Luisa Magda, manager of The Bishop’s Collar, a bar blocks from the parkway where uncertainty is mixed with the tantalizing prospect of huge sales. She will be upping staff and paring back the menu because of the lack of clarity over deliveries — a concern shared by the giant food purveyor Reading Terminal Market, which recently resolved to stay open.

“Accessibility keeps changing,” Magda said. “I think it’s going to keep changing until the week of.”

Whether it overdoes or under-

does the papal preparations, Philadelphia risks reinforcing the notion that it is a second-rate stopover between Washington and New York City, both of which also will host His Holiness and appear to be taking his arrival in stride.

With its quaint, colonial streets built for carriages rather than motorcades, Philadelphia lacks experience with the crowd-drawing presidential inaugurations and visits from world leaders that are routine on Washington’s broad avenues. And the expected influx, potentially doubling the city’s population of 1.5 million, is on a scale that New York never sees.

Officials are planning for the deluge by redrawing the city’s map with colored lines for the two-day papal visit.

Last week, Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, said that “plenty of rooms are available and at affordable rates,” but he believes they will be quickly booked.

The Rev. Dennis Gill unveils and blesses a welcome banner for Pope Francis above main doors of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The city’s population is expected to double during the visit.

Meanwhile, more than 2,600 families within a 120-mile radius have offered shelter through the “Host a Family” program “for a reasonable daily fee.” Others have posted rooms, homes and at least one houseboat on Craigslist and Airbnb. Interest has been so great, said Julie Welker, a real estate agent near the parkway, that she put on a series of do-it-yourselfrental seminars as a “community service,” with advice about liability insurance and guidelines on removing valuables.

Popedelphia.com is “going strong,” Rovner said, with 7,000 monthly visitors, close to 500 listings and a “pope rent calculator” to help figure out fair market prices. So far there are few takers.

In an effort to avoid a repeat of the crush following the Phillies 2008 World Series win, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority set up a Web site in July for “Pope passes.” It crashed after fulfilling just 28 requests for 203 tickets, leaving thousands to be distributed through an online lottery, which ended in mid-August. Now passes are for sale at a select few stations.

Private cars aren’t an option because of the driving restrictions.

“Be prepared to walk,” warns the World Meeting of Families, noting (phew!) that Philadelphia is the “fourth most-walkable city.”

Belinda Lewis-Held, who has made a career of papal pilgrimages and last year launched apilgrimsjourney.com, plans to bus 1,200 Catholics from western Pennsylvania to accommodations.

Her Pittsburgh pilgrims, bearing socks and gloves for Philadelphia’s homeless, will be identified by their Steelers-colored flags on “crowd-friendly sticks.”

“I can’t even imagine,” marveled alto Rachel Bloemker — gathered outside the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul for choir practice — contemplating the coordination required.

“We’re really excited for it to be over, too” allowed tenor Michael Hogue.

To which a fellow chorister intoned, “Can we all say an ‘Amen’?” n

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NATION

KLMNO WEEKLY

The climate debate’s remote outpost J ULIET E ILPERIN Kotzebue, Alaska BY

B

y mid-August, Janine Saito was starting to get a sense of just how much President Obama’s visit would affect life in this small Arctic town.

The young attendees of Nikaitchuat Ilisagviat, the only Iñupiaq immersion school in the United States, would have the chance to perform for the president in their native language.

But the 20 preschoolers, along with their bright-blue circle time rug, sleep cots, toys and teachers, would have to vacate their tiny schoolhouse because it was going to be turned into a mobile Oval Office.

By Tuesday morning last week the children — who ultimately served as one of Obama’s warm-up acts — were still practicing the Pledge of Allegiance and “My Country Tis of Thee” in Iñupiaq, a language that recently has begun to experience a resurgence here.

“Kamanautaanun ilaalisan United Statesyum suli nunaaqqipayaat makittaviatnun,” the 3- and 4-year-olds dutifully recited, their hands over their hearts and eyes glued on the picture of a flag tacked to the wall.

But Obama’s visit this week was only the latest evidence of how Kotzebue and its surrounding communities have become symbolic of the massive environmental changes now underway, and the political effort to respond to it.

This Arctic community of 3,200 — with no roads in or out of it — is now a required stop in the anti-climate change movement, a living example of the threat global warming poses to the wildlife and the landscape and to the people who have subsisted here for millennia.

Northwest Arctic Borough’s mayor, Reggie Joule, says the attention is “a double-edged sword.” The warming in the Chukchi Sea could translate into new economic opportunities: Shell has already booked two dozen rooms in the town’s one hotel for the summer and has staged 11 vessels in the Kotzebue Sound. But residents are worried about how drilling and in-

JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST

Alaskan Village becomes essential stop in clash over global warming creased international ship traffic could harm local wildlife and the way more intense storms and shifting weather patterns has disrupted the natural rhythms of life here.

But having the president visit an imperiled and remote community is not easy. Qikiqtagruk — the indigenous name for Kotzebue — means “almost an island.” Not only did the armored presidential limo have to be flown in, but so did the press vans that followed it.

Secret Service agents swelled the town’s ranks so visibly that Lance Kramer, an official with the region’s tribal association, poked fun at them during a community potluck on Tuesday night. “I see the White House guys running the streets every day,” Kramer said, as he tried to coax them into competing in Eskimo feats of strength with locals. “They call them Secret Service. They’re not really secret. I see you running.”

Across town, the Qikiqta ruk Northern Lights Dancers were trying to get their act for the president down to exactly 15 minutes.

Several men banged their flat Eskimo drums as they sang; a few women performed synchronized moves on an aging linoleum floor.

“We’ll have to do this one song

for them, so they’ll recognize we’re Americans,” announced dance leader Martin Woods, launching into an unconventional rendition of the alphabet song.

“I’d say do dances,” said the troupe’s coordinator, Paula Octuck, only mildly amused. “They know we’re American.”

Kotzebue has come to epitomize the effort to save Alaskans’ traditional way of life in the face of climate change. It is a place where residents still regularly engage in subsistence hunting: Based on a recent survey, the Alaska Fish and Game Department estimates these activities provide each person in town roughly 75 pounds of caribou a year, along with another 13 pounds of moose. Hunting for seals and fishing is even more important: Alex Whiting, an environmental specialist for the tribe, estimates that 70 percent of the subsistence food tribal members eat comes from Kotzebue Sound.

Hunting and gathering serves a practical as well as cultural purpose: The median household income here is $53,163, according to 2010 Census data, but the cost of living is so high a family would have to earn $67,600 to get above the poverty level. With exorbitant

This community of 3,200 — with no roads in or out of it — is now a required stop on the anticlimate change movement, a living example of the threat global warming poses to the wildlife and the landscape and to the people who have subsisted here for millennia.

local grocery prices, nearly every freezer contains a bucket of seal sitting in its own oil along with frozen berries from the hillside.

But the sea ice on which bearded and ring seals, as well as walruses, depend is retreating farther to the north. It now freezes at least a month later than it did three decades ago, according to University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Hajo Eicken, and it is unstable in June — when it used to be solid.

This poses a threat to the animals, who are more vulnerable to predation and have a harder time feeding, and to villagers who can no longer hunt and travel safely across the ice.

Obama’s financial pledges to remote villages suffering from climate change’s impacts fell far short of what many residents said was sufficient — “We’re going to need more money than that,” one resident said — but most seemed happy Obama just showed up.

Not everyone, however, flocked to see the president. On Tuesday night Baltazar and her husband, Ernie Hyatt, got their 26-foot Hewes Craft ready to take to the launching dock and packed their guns: They were off to hunt moose, extra provisions for winter. n

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Are Hamas and Iran pulling apart?

W ILLIAM B OOTH Gaza City BY

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n the congressional battle being waged over the Iran nuclear deal, critics point to a likely windfall of cash and weapons that could flow from Tehran to terrorist groups, including the Islamist militant movement Hamas, which has fought three wars with Israel. Yet assertions that Hamas will benefit are far from certain. Hamas is officially on the outs with Iran — and has been for several years.

Whether a newly ascendant Iran, flush with petrodollars and free from economic sanctions, would bring Hamas back into its orbit as a client sub-state is one of thegreatunansweredquestionsbedeviling military analysts and intelligence agencies in the Middle East.

In the past three years, there is ample evidence that relations between Hamas and Iran have suffered badly — to the point that Hamas is now seeking support from Iran’s biggest adversary in the region, Saudi Arabia.

Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister Ghazi Hamad called relations with Iran “no good at all.” “Our problems with Iran are well known,” he said late last month.

Although Iran is Shiite and Persian, and Hamas is Sunni and Arab, Tehran lavished support on Hamas as an armed movement against their shared enemy Israel.

But Iran and Hamas fell out when Hamas in 2012 sided with the rebels and Islamist militants fighting civil war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The diplomat said Iranian support for Hamas in arms, training and cash was “tremendous” back in 2007, the year Hamas took control of Gaza. One Gazan academic estimated that Iran was providing Hamas with $250 million a year, though no verifiable figures exist.

Now? “Assistance was halted and remains suspended,” Mousa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, recently told Al Jazeera news.

Critics of the Iran deal in Congress and Israel often point to Iranian support for Hamas as one

MOHAMMED SABER/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

Relations are so strained between them that the radical group has turned to Saudi Arabia for help reason to oppose the pact, which would lift sanctions in exchange for a rollback of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

In a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Calif.), committee chairman, said the nuclear accord would award Iran with a “cash bonanza,” some $100 billion in frozen oil revenue held in restricted overseas accounts. Even if most of that money goes to pay debts to the Chinese and rebuild the Iranian economy, that could still leave a couple billion on the table.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), said Iran would use the money to fund terrorist groups.

“They support Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi, and those are just the organizations that begin with the letter ‘H,’ ” said Sherman, who opposes the Iran deal.

Iran supports Houthi rebels in Yemen in a proxy war with Saudi Arabia. Relations are closer than ever between Iran and the Lebanese-based Shiite movement Hez-

bollah, which serves as an Iranian ally to prop up Assad in Syria.

Hezbollah and Israel fought their last war in 2006.

Adnan Abu Amer, a political scientist and commentator in Gaza who has good connections with Hamas, said Hamas is running on financial fumes. “They are in a terrible spot,” he said.

The question now is who will support Hamas — and how.

There is evidence that Hamas militias continue to get support from Iran — but at a far diminished level. A freighter carrying 40 medium-range rockets was intercepted by Israeli commandos last year in the Red Sea, a shipment they say was destined for Gaza.

Israel’s domestic security agency, Shin Bet, in August reported it had captured a Hamas operative who claimed that Iran was funding tunnel-digging and advanced weapon smuggling. That report has been treated with skepticism by some Hamas watchers in Gaza and Israel, who cite the timing of

Palestinian fighters with the military wing of Hamas parade in Gaza City.

The Islamist movement is on the outs with Iran and has been for several years.

the Shin Bet announcement, during congressional debate over the Iran deal, as well as the position of the alleged informant, who dug tunnels for a living.

Regardless, Hamas is clearly looking for some new friends.

The military-backed regime in Egypt is openly hostile, seeing Hamas as a Palestinian extension of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Seeking support elsewhere, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and a Palestinian delegation made a pilgrimage to Mecca and met with Saudi Arabia’s new monarch in July. Saudi Arabia has traditionally kept Hamas at arm’s length.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, a close U.S. ally, could provide Hamas with funds, but not training or arms. Hamas officials described the meeting as a new beginning between old antagonists.

But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the Palestinians had come to Mecca to pray, not parlay, and stressed that Saudi relations with Hamas had not changed for the better.

In its attempt to improve relations with Iran, Hamas may also find itself blocked by its domestic rivals from the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank. Hamas and the Palestinian government in Ramallah are openly antagonistic.

Ahmed Majdalani, a top official from the Palestine Liberation Organization, visited Tehran in August and met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The PLO leader said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would visit Tehran in October or November, the first highlevel talks in years. Iran and the PLO fell out decades ago over Palestinian support for Iraq in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.

Meir Litvak, a Hamas expert at Tel Aviv University, said it is possible that within Hamas there is also a struggle.

“You can’t call it a split exactly,” he said. “But there are disagreements, tensions, both within the political wing of Hamas — some who want to reach out to Saudi Arabia, others not — and the military wing, who want the weapons that Iran can bring.” n

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Religion enters the asylum debate M ICHAEL B IRNBAUM Brussels BY

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s a spiraling refugee crisis challenged the European Union like little before, a fundamental debate broke into the open Thursday: whether “Europe’s Christian roots” are threatened by an influx of asylum-seekers.

That was the language used by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, warning Europe against allowing in mostly Muslim families.

A day after a drowned Syrian toddler washed up on the Turkish coast, another European leader retorted that Christian values demanded helping the less fortunate.

Orban, Hungary’s nationalist leader who has spearheaded attempts to turn back the migrants, said Thursday that he had little choice but to seal his nation’s border with razor wire, soldiers and a tall fence.

“We Hungarians are full of fear, people in Europe are full of fear, because we see that the European leaders, among them the prime ministers, are not able to control the situation,” he said in Brussels in a raw joint appearance with European Parliament President Martin Schulz. Orban and Schulz, a veteran politician from Germany, made no attempt to paper over their differences or their distaste for each other.

The Hungarian leader blamed Germany for the crisis, saying that its open-door policy toward Syrian asylum-seekers was propelling a wave of migrants to take dangerous journeys toward Europe’s heart. Germany expects 800,000 asylum-seekers this year, and it has said that it does not plan to turn away Syrians.

“The moral, human thing is to make clear: ‘Please don’t come.

Why do you have to go from Turkey to Europe? Turkey is a safe country. Stay there. It’s risky to come,’ ” Orban said.

Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have overwhelmed Europe’s capacity to respond in recent months, opening sharp divisions. Hundreds of migrants be-

ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES

Hungarian prime minister says ‘Europe’s Christian roots’ threatened by influx of migrants ing held at a train station in Bicske, Hungary, on Friday protested the conditions of their detention.

Some leaders believe that the world’s largest economic bloc — a vast territory of 503 million residents — is more than capable of accommodating refugees. Others, including Hungary’s Orban, believe the continent’s population is in a far more delicate balance.

The divisions have the power to threaten some of the most basic tenets of the European Union, an alliance built on the ashes of World War II in a bid never again to allow such destruction. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this week that borderless Europe — a key achievement of European unification — could be under question if no solution to the refugee crisis is found.

Schulz called Orban’s approach “wrong.” He warned that the splits opening during the refugee crisis could do lasting damage to the alliance, which was founded on a

spirit of burden-sharing.

“This is a crucial moment for the European Union,” Schulz said.

“A deeper split of the union is a risk we cannot exclude.”

Orban’s fears are shared by many Eastern European nations, which have pushed hard against any attempt to require them to take in asylum-seekers. Slovakia has said it would only accept Christians. In Estonia, where fewer than 100 migrants have resettled, police on Thursday were investigating a suspicious early morning fire at a dormitory that was housing victims of Syria’s war.

But the concerns also extend to Britain. There, fewer Syrians than would fit in a subway car have been accepted this year. There were reports Thursday by British news outlets that Prime Minister David Cameron would soon announce a plan to increase that number, but Cameron reiterated earlier in the day that the crisis cannot be solved by taking in more people.

Authorities in Hungary triggered chaos when they halted rail traffic at the country’s main train station while they worked to clear hundreds of asylum-seekers gathered there.

ElsewhereinEurope,therefusals brought mounting anger from leaderswhoaremoresympathetictothe growing crowds of asylum-seekers.

“For a Christian, it shouldn’t matter what race, religion and nationality the person in need represents,” European Council President Donald Tusk said Thursday, launching into Orban before the two met in Brussels. Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, proposed resettling at least 100,000 refugees around Europe.

In France, President François Hollande said the drowning death of a toddler is “a tragedy, but it’s also a call to the European conscience. Europe is made of values and principles.” Images of the child’s lifeless body on a Turkish beach evoked widespread consternation around the world.

Merkel, meanwhile, said she understood that not every nation was prepared to take on as large a burden as her country was doing. But she said it was impossible for Germany, Sweden and Austria to continue harboring the vast majority of the incoming asylum-seekers.

“The Geneva Convention does not apply only to Germany but also to every state,” she said, referring to the international treaty that requires countries to take in refugees of war.

Orban has vowed to completely shut Hungary’s borders by Sept. 15, followingnewemergencymeasures expected to be approved by the country’s parliament in the coming days. The measures would give authorities broad new powers to crack downonundocumentedmigration.

Critics of the European response said the continent’s 20thcentury history of dictatorships and wars should give it more sympathy for others in need.

“We are facing a historical moment, perhaps one of the biggest the E.U. has had to face over the last couple of decades,” said Yves Pascouau, director of migration and mobility policies at the Brusselsbased European Policy Center.

“European citizens have fled dictatorships and wars. This is a part of our history. We’ve been able to be protected elsewhere in our countries.” n

Think you can teach Bill Gates and George Lucas?

BY NEVIN MARTELL

Before there was YouTube or online degrees, there were Great Courses cas­ settes that delivered a college­level lecture series to the nearest tape deck. The Teach­ ing Company, the firm that makes them, has since moved on to MP3 files and smartphone apps. But the courses still enjoy a loyal following. (Billionaire Bill Gates said his favorite series is “Big History.”) Here is a look at what goes into the making of a Great Course.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY PÂTÉ FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

1. SCOUR THE WORLD FOR TALENT “A piano has 88 keys, but at any one time, I can only hold down 10,” James Giordano explains as he mimics playing a baby grand, his hands moving in the air above his plate.

He’s sitting at a center table in an upscale restaurant in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. Dressed in designer jeans and a sharp dark blazer and white shirt, the 55-year-old sports a shaved head and a closely cropped, graying goatee framing an impressively white set of teeth. He looks more like a businessman than a renowned neuroscientist and neuroethicist.

“I’m playing a little bit more than a tenth of that piano, yet I can make that puppy sing,” he continues, his fingers dancing up and down the imaginary keyboard. “If I’m Jerry Lee Lewis, I’m hammering that bad boy. It’s about the speed. It’s about the coordination. The same is true in the brain. If I used all the brain at every second, it would be noise. You would make no sense of it.”

The Georgetown University professor is debunking a popular urban myth: that if people could just gain access to more of their brains, they would be infinitely smarter. Unfortunately, one of Hollywood’s timeworn tropes — most recently explored in “Lucy” and “Limitless” — is nothing more than a screenwriter’s fever dream.

Listening raptly across the table is Will Schmidt. With youthful features, a blue blazer and khaki slacks, the preppy 36-year-old is director of professor recruiting for the Teaching Company. It is best known for Great Courses, long-form audio and video lecture series on topics from philosophy and photography to Buddhism and the barbarian empires of the Steppes.

The programs are designed to give lifelong learners a continuing education without the classroom time, homework assignments or credits earned. Self-described fans include Bill Gates and George Lucas, who delivered taped opening remarks to a Great Courses conference in Charlottesville in June. (The first choice, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a Great Courses professor himself, wasn’t available.)

Since its inception in 1990, the Teaching Company has created more than 500 courses, which, according to company reports, have sold 14 million copies. Though the firm is privately owned and doesn’t make earnings public, it claims to have racked up sales of $100 million last year.

What sustains the company in a crowded marketplace that includes amateur podcasts and competitors such as Lynda.com is a con-

kind of embarrassed to admit this on tape, is RateMyProfessors.com,” he says.

Customers also suggest potential professors. “If someone says, ‘I’ve been a lifelong customer and I’ve purchased 50 of your courses and I think this guy would be great,’ I’m going to take that person seriously,” Schmidt says. “Now that person might teach erotic medieval poetry, which we could never use, but I’ll still take a look.”

He isn’t sold on anyone until he has laid eyes on the lecturer in person. Schmidt travels the country several times a month to audit classes and attend academic conferences, such as MathFest, the annual summer meeting of the Mathematical Association of America with panels titled “Innovative Approaches in the Calculus Sequence” and “Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry.”

“I had no idea what was going on,” Schmidt says. “It’s the only place where I’ve felt like the stupidest but most attractive person in the room.”

Recruiter Will Schmidt and his colleagues refer to their talent as “rock stars,” though the official term is professors. stant stream of talent. That is where Schmidt comes in. Think of him as an A&R guy for nerds.

He and his colleagues refer to their talent as “rock stars,” though the official term is professors.

Today he’s sizing up Giordano for a course on neuroethics, the study of the ethical, legal and social issues surrounding neuroscience in research and its applications in medicine, security and beyond. So far, Giordano appears to be acing the audition. The professor is clearly used to working a room, talking with abundant energy and gesticulating to punctuate points.

For Great Courses, a professor’s persona and ability to engage a virtual audience is as important as their academic credentials. To find the right mix of brains and bravado, Schmidt devours TED Talks, online lectures and podcasts. “The best source, though I’m

2. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE Schmidt and his colleague, Ryan Davis, know what kind of talent to seek out because they know exactly who’s buying the lecture series. The courses are advertised in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and the New York Times Book Review. According to in-house research, more than half of today’s Great Courses customers hold advanced degrees, the average customer is older than 50 and nearly half make more than $100,000 annually.

They must, to afford the investment. Great Courses range from $20 for a short audio download to more than $500 for a 48-lecture DVD set on an introduction to Western visual art. This fall, the company is rolling out an online subscription service that will offer hundreds of full courses and thousands of standalone lectures for a monthly fee of $49.95.

To justify the expense, when some competitors offer college-level lectures for free, the Great Courses producers leave nothing to chance. Whereas decades earlier, courses were built around instructors, the company now relies on marketing data to identify subjects customers are clamoring for.

The research has revealed that customers disdain anything too dry and incomprehensible, as well as anything too dumbed down. So the company has staked out a niche somewhere between the academia-generated ofcontinues on next page

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from previous page

ferings of massive open online courses (or MOOCs), such as Coursera and edX, and basic-cable edutainment such as “How William Shatner Changed the World.”

3. FIND DEEP POCKETS Great Courses, which turns 25 this year, is the brainchild of former lawyer Tom Rollins. As the story has it, he was at law school, looking down the barrel of a final exam on the federal rules of evidence that he wasn’t prepared for. To cram he watched 10 hours of videotaped lectures by acclaimed legal professor Irving Younger. Not only did he find the videos entrancing, but he received an A. After serving as the chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Rollins drew up a business plan based on the idea that he would record college-level lectures by what he dubbed SuperStar Teachers and direct-market them on cassette and VHS tapes to create a “home university” for lifelong learners. He rented a car and drove up and down the East Coast from Georgetown University to Colby College, recruiting professors who had a reputation for delivering the goods as speakers.

One professor he signed up was Thomas Childers at the University of Pennsylvania, who would go on to teach a number of history courses. Childers later told Rollins he had only two thoughts: “Great idea. Get all the money upfront.”

Rollins figured he would need about $1.7 million to kick-start his company, so he began raising funds. “If there’s one thing I never want to do again it’s fly around the country, sometimes the Bahamas, to talk rich people out of $100,000 a pop,” he says.

After arranging the capital and moving the company’s headquarters from above his garage to an “instant office” in Arlington, Va., he set about recording lectures covering ancient Greek civilization, psychology, Shakespeare and political philosophy in front of a live audience in a basement auditorium of Georgetown Medical Center. Some of those early productions were fraught with unforeseen drama. One professor took one look at the 250-strong crowd, ran back into the hallway and vomited. “Then he came back and gave a pretty good speech,” Rollins says.

The company grew, eventually moved to Chantilly, Va., and now employs 250 people.

Rollins sold the firm in 2006 to the private equity investment firm Brentwood Associates, whose portfolio includes Zoë’s Kitchen, Paper

“Now it’s bigger topics, like cooking and photography, but with a very academic approach.”

— Brentwood co-founder William Barnum

Source and Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar. Says Brentwood co-founder William Barnum: “We look for companies that have great customer loyalty, that are usually owned by the founder, and have some unbelievably cool product and have a great customer following, but have run out of ideas.”

4. BE A LITTLE LESS SQUARE The new owners ditched cassettes and upgraded the recording studios and post-production facilities. “We had to,” says chief brand officer Ed Leon. “Consumers got savvier. The expectations of somebody watching something on their personal screens or their television screens has become elevated.”

Brentwood Associates also encouraged Great Courses executives to expand offerings.

“We’re doing academic approaches to slightly less long-haired subjects, as opposed to the Restoration [in 17th-century England] or the three years after the French Revolution,” says Barnum. “Now it’s bigger topics, like cooking and photography, but with a very academic approach.”

Great Courses is also starting to compete with Rosetta Stone by introducing more language-instruction courses in the next three years. “It’s a testament to our customers that the first language we rolled out was Latin” two years ago, Schmidt says. “Now we’re going to do languages that people actually speak, like Spanish, French and Italian.”

The company recognizes that loyal customers may grumble at this departure from longtime core favorites, such as philosophy, literature and history, and are treading carefully. “We don’t want to annoy the base,” says Andreas Burgstaller, senior creative director for marketing.

“We sound like a political party,” Burgstaller says. “We’re trying to encompass the edges while keeping the middle happy.”

5. TEST EVERYTHING — THEN TEST SOME MORE Kevin Manzel, director of innovation, likes to brag that the company produces “only hits.”

The secret?

“We test, test, test everything,” he says, “to mitigate the risk.”

Every aspect of the Great Courses — from which lecture series are produced to the design of the catalogues, apps and Web sites — is rigorously surveyed with customers. No incentives are offered for those who participate. “Our customers get that they are co-contributors to the content, and they take their role very seriously,” Manzel says. “We compete for people’s leisure time. It’s what they could be doing in otherwise unproductive time, like watching TV or reading a book.”

Before the company began producing photography and cooking courses, it polled its customers and determined that National Geographic and Culinary Institute of America were the gold standard for those specialties. Then customers were asked whether collaborating with those institutions would tarnish the prestige of the Great Courses.

Though some customers were split, the data ultimately gave the firm the confidence to proceed. “Fundamentals of Photography” and “The Everyday Gourmet: Rediscovering

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the Lost Art of Cooking” are two of Great Courses’ biggest hits.

The company routinely abandons topic ideas, such as poker, or rejects potential partnerships after it floats the idea with customers and it doesn’t go over well. “They told us, ‘If you make a course with partner X it will decrease my perception of you,’ ” Manzel says. “So that was it. The Mediocre Courses doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

WEEKLY

the time that they may not be aware of.

He fills the miniature reservoir with water, observes it for a second, then addresses the camera: “I leaks a bit, but structurally, it works fine because both the arch and the load are oriented horizontally,” he says.

For this course alone, Ressler has handmade 50 models, which he’ll use in 150 or so demonstrations, and he has developed 50 to 60 computer models. It took seven weeks working 18-hour days to make them all. He has also been building an addition on his house partly to accommodate the models he plans to build if he gets to do more Great Courses.

6. ADD POLISH After being vetted, a prospective professor writes an overview of her Great Course.

Customers are polled on the idea. If it hits the threshold, a sample lecture is tested.

That’s what has brought Eric Snodgrass to the Great Courses television studios in Virginia this afternoon. The director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois and consultant on climate forecasting is here to record a demo lecture on extreme weather.

“Tropical cyclones are one of the most powerful expressions of severe weather on Earth,” he tells the camera.

In the control room, Schmidt and Davis watch on a giant flat-screen monitor and follow the script on computers to see if it matches what Snodgrass is reading from the teleprompter.

Snodgrass nails the lecture on his first take.

He does not have the bad habits and ticks that plague less-seasoned professors. Some sway while they talk. Others wander the set because they feel the need to fill the room. “It’s tough when you get someone who is incredibly passionate about what they do, but they’re just not a natural speaker,” says senior producer Alisha Reay. “The toughest affectation is people who want to shout to emphasize everything. It’s like they’re talking in all caps.”

Schmidt finds that the most difficult part for professors is exuding warmth. “It’s so hard to smile,” he says. “It’s such an artificial environment that the natural expression is a grimace.”

After some consultation with Schmidt, Snodgrass re-records a few lines to cover up minor flubs, then he’s finished.

“I thought it went well,” he says.

This lecture will be sent to customers who will rate whether the content and the professor are engaging, educational and intellectually rigorous while still being comprehensible to someone not versed in the subject. Only about half of the potential professors make it through this stage.

Schmidt calls it “professor Darwinism.”

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8. CROSS YOUR FINGERS

“Our customers get that they are co-contributors to the content, and they take their role very seriously.”

— Kevin Manzel, director of innovation

7. BRING IN SOME MODELS One-camera shots of a professor at a lectern don’t cut it these days. So Great Courses videos now feature custom-built physical or virtual sets and are packed with graphics and footage shot on location.

Stephen Ressler, a professor emeritus of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., builds his own models for his engineering courses.

He has superstar status around the Chantilly office. His first Great Course, “Understanding the World’s Greatest Structures,” is the company’s highest-rated product.

One afternoon, Ressler is standing in the studio with a replica of the Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona, recording his third course, “Everyday Engineering,” about the underlying scientific principles of technologies people use all

James Giordano’s lecture on predictive neurotechnology — “the ability to utilize neuroimaging to predict who may be aggressive, violent and/or a criminal” — went through three edits. After fine-tuning the script, Giordano recorded an audio lecture for customers to review. Results should be back in October, determining whether he gets a contract.

If he does get the green light, Schmidt estimates Giordano would earn a $14,000 advance for a 24-lecture course or $21,000 for 36 lectures, though the company would not officially comment on how much it pays.

“Most academics are fine with that kind of money because it’s more than they make doing other stuff,” says Schmidt, who notes that professors also earn royalties.“If they’re a best-selling author, though, I might have to have my CEO talk to them.”

For Edward T. O’Donnell, an associate history professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., a gig with the Teaching Company “offered the prospect of paying some bills.”

So far, he has recorded two Great Courses, “Turning Points in American History” and “America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.” “It’s made a big difference financially,” he says. “With three kids in college, [the approximately] $22,000 in royalties almost takes care of one of my kids for a full year.”

For Giordano, landing his own lecture series would offer more rewards than just money. After the recording session, he reveals that he has been a serious fan of Great Courses for years.

“This is like the kid who gets to play on his favorite baseball team,” he says. “So I’m crossing as many things as are crossable — toes, fingers, legs.”n

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INNOVATIONS

Look, Ma, no hands (of regulators) BY

T HAD M OORE

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henself-drivingcarsbegin zipping through Virginia this year, they won’t need any special registration, and the testers sitting behind the wheel won’t need a special license. In the eyes of the law, they’ll be regular cars.

A handful of states are looking to attract the potentially lucrative business of developing self-driving cars. And along with a few other states, its lawmakers and regulators are inclined to welcome the industry — and get out of the way.

California, Florida, Michigan, Nevada and the District of Columbia have enacted laws to legalize automated vehicles, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Of those, two have set out detailed regulations.

In states such as Virginia and Texas, however, self-driving cars can hit the roadways thanks to a simple argument: Doing so is legal because the law doesn’t say otherwise.

“Automated vehicles are probably legal,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor whose research helpedadvancethatinterpretation.

“That is the default assumption.”

That’s the view Google took this summer when it put driverless, retrofitted Lexus SUVs on the road in Austin, the first time the tech giant has run tests outside of California. Texas transportation officials say they are not involved with the project.

And on the strength of that argument, auto-parts maker Delphi took a prototype on a cross-country trip from San Francisco to New York, passing through 15 states, nearly all of them lacking laws that address autonomous cars.

John Absmeier, director of Delphi’s Silicon Valley operation, said Delphi told states that its car would be coming through before the March trip.

Virginia has designated 70 miles of public roads for testing later this year, offering to repaint roads or provide high-definition maps for tests sanctioned by the

MATT GENTRY/THE ROANOKE TIMES VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Self-driving vehicles will be coming to U.S. streets without much oversight from lawmakers Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, but cars can legally be tested statewide, said Myra Blanco, who runs the institute’s automation research.

Running tests on public roads in realistic conditions like snarled traffic is a key step in sanctioning innovations that could be lucrative and lifesaving, researchers say. The market for vehicle automation technology could be worth $87 billion by 2030, according to Lux Research, and could one day eliminate the leading cause of traffic fatalities: human error.

“On real roads is where you get your real gold standard,” Blanco said. “What is happening when people are driving out there?”

Fearing that the technology’s development could be stifled, Google has lobbied state lawmakers nationwide not to advance any bills, even if they seem innocuous.

Enacting a law that explicitly allows testing, for example, could cause problems when automakers

are ready to start selling their cars.

In 2013, federal traffic safety regulators echoed that caution, urging states to wait to pass laws addressing self-driving cars until the technology is more established. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its research “will be released in the coming months,” but it hasn’t made any formal decisions.

No state has passed legislation to make autonomous vehicles legal since 2013, and while bills were proposed in 16 states this year, none have passed.

“Once you have specific legal frameworks implemented, then the rules become more onerous,” Smith said. “These [regulatory] regimes may not be necessary and are probably looking at the wrong things regardless. I think that has contributed to this shift to saying we don’t necessarily need this legislation.”

In Texas, state Sen. Rodney Ellis (D) pitched legislation that would

Tech companies are hoping lawmakers will wait to regulate the self-driving car industry until it has had a chance to develop.

TONY AVELAR/ ASSOCIATED PRESS

$87 billion The market for vehicle automation technology by 2030, according to Lux Research.

allow test-drives and give the state a way to regulate them. He described the proposal as a way to lure the industry to Texas by clearing up its laws.

“Texas’s laws are silent on autonomous vehicles, which fuels uncertainty,” Ellis said. “Instead of waiting to find answers once these technologies are on our roads, I advocated getting ahead of the curve with an exploratory pilot program.”

Ellis dropped the issue soon after Google and automakers came out against it, the Texas Tribune reported at the time. Within months, Google’s test cars were spotted around Austin. (Ellis says he will “continue to refine the language in anticipation of next session.”)

States that have forged on with laws and regulations have faced steep learning curves and tricky questions such as: How can government ensure safe testing without snuffing out innovation?

Florida, for one, answered with a stripped-down law: It allowed self-driving cars, and held them to higher insurance requirements.

State Sen. Jeff Brandes, a Republican who sponsored the measure, said it was meant to lure the industry with simple requirements that could be fleshed out once the early flashes of possibility give way to a more standardized technology.

“Florida is in a rush to test, not to regulate,” Brandes said.

“There’s not really much to do in that space between the lightning and the thunder but wait.”

California and Nevada are not waiting.

California requires that manufacturers hire test drivers with clean driving records, train them and tell regulators any time they are forced to shut off automation or their cars crash. Nevada requires that self-driving cars be tested extensively on private tracks and have special license plates before getting on the road.

“We want to ensure that as the technology rolls out that the motoring public is safe,” said Bernard Soriano, deputy director of the California DMV. “We certainly don’t want to stifle innovation; we

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

17

DESTINATIONS

WEEKLY

How Americans move among the biggest cities is co nc Fr a Sa

7,385

5,257

4,861

26,957

16,295

22,226

10,616

14,591

5,642

--

4,316

6,802

5,727

1,803

4,245

2,275

2,835

3,995

16,728

From Chicago 6,435

5,554

--

4,474

5,252

1,590

3,377

3,077

5,275

2,921

2,781

From Dallas 2,645

3,186

2,691

--

13,359

603

1,864

1,840

3,093

839

1,063

From Houston 2,353

1,857

2,524

13,934

--

707

1,705

1,132

1,516

891

911

From Philadelphia 19,336

2,207

2,027

1,029

1,411

--

6,631

3,393

2,457

2,614

1.528

From Washington 9,445

4,119

3,150

3,415

2,808

5,182

--

2,793

4,374

3,744

2,370

From Miami 10,539

2,989

3,364

1,930

2,622

2,186

4,162

--

7,641

2,694

975

From Atlanta 6,342

2,240

4,582

3,657

2,445

1,622

5,604

4,965

--

1,450

1,170

From Boston 10,079

3,533

2,263

1,228

990

2,666

5,148

2,974

2,229

--

3,174

From San Francisco 6,691

13,552

1,820

2,385

1,547

996

2,622

1,380

1,330

2,291

--

SOURCE: 2009-2013 AMERICAN COMMUNITY SURVEY

BY C HRISTOPHER I NGRAHAM AND E MILY B ADGER

I

n any given year, about 8.5 million people move from one metropolitan area to another within the United States — from the Boston region to New York, or from New York to Philadelphia and farther away. These major moves — distinct from the kind you make across town, or even from the city to the suburbs — make up a relatively small share of all migration. Only about 1 in 5 movers today decamps for another metro area entirely.

But these moves are where the metro bragging rights lie. Think New York is so much better than Washington? Then why do more than 16,000 New Yorkers move to the nation’s capital every year?

(That is, ahem, about 0.08 percent

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Bo st on

ta tla n To A

11,284

From Los Angeles 9,191

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From New York

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Ph ila de lp hi To a W as hi ng to n To M ia m i

Annual migration among the 10 largest metro areas (plus San Francisco)

To

want to encourage innovation.

But at the same time, we want to ensure that the safety aspect is there.”

Setting up those requirements has been difficult and costly, regulators say, since state agencies don’t usually deal with auto manufacturing or advanced technology.

State DMVs have traditionally been in the business of licensing drivers and registering vehicles, letting the federal government regulate the safety of the cars themselves.

“There’s been a fairly clear division between what the federal responsibility has been and what the state responsibilities have been.

Automation blurs that boundary,” said Steven Shladover, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who studies self-driving cars. “It cuts across both of them in an awkward way.”

In Nevada, the first state to pass a law, the DMV had to dedicate nearly half of its small research division for more than a year to get up to speed with the technology, spokesman David Fierro said.

“We’re having to learn on the go,” Fierro said. “It’s a significant investment, but on the other hand, it’s the future of transportation.”

The DMV in California, where nine companies have registered 78 self-driving cars, developed its expertise in-house, Soriano said, using a handful of employees with relevant backgrounds to make sense of the systems coming from Silicon Valley.

While the state’s rules for testing are considered the nation’s most comprehensive, DMV officials still wrestle with how to handle autonomous cars’ everyday use, highlighting the challenge self-driving cars present state regulators.

Virginia state Del. Thomas Davis Rust (R), who heads the House Transportation Committee, said he’s content to see how other states wrangle with those issues.

His Senate counterpart, state Sen. Stephen D. Newman (R), said the state will need to pass laws eventually — perhaps as early as 2017. For now he’ll wait to see what researchers and regulators glean once self-driving cars have had a chance to navigate Virginia roads.

“We’re wanting to be a leader on it, and I think we can be,” Newman said, “especially if we don’t step on our feet getting there.” n

KLMNO

THE WASHINGTON POST

of the metro New York population!)

In the table below, based on new five-year American Community Survey data from the Census Bureau, we’ve plotted annual migration totals among the 10 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. New Yorkers — another 27,000 of them — also flock to Philadelphia each year. And, more surprisingly, 22,000 New Yorkers head to Miami, an unusually large migration for two metros 1,300 miles apart.

It looks like a lot of people are leaving New York — more, in fact, than move there from these other cities. But the population New York starts with is larger, too (so, relative to metropolitan Philadelphia’s size, more people still move from Philly to New York than the other way around).

You can get a sense in this table

of how regional proximity plays a big role in metro migration trends.

More than 13,000 people head from Dallas to Houston each year, with a similar amount moving in the opposite direction. But the two Texas cities don’t see much in the way of migration to and from the other major metro areas in the chart, and they stand apart for sending particularly few people to New York.

You can also see metro pairs where in-migration and out-migration aren’t balanced.

For instance, the Atlanta and Miami metro areas are roughly the same size, population-wise. But significantly more people move from Miami to Atlanta (7,641) than from Atlanta to Miami (4,965).

People from Chicago and Los Angeles, meanwhile, seem particularly uninterested in Philadelphia. n

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

18

KLMNO WEEKLY

BOOKS

Dr. Frankenstein of foreign a≠airs?

NON-FICTION

H KISSINGER’S SHADOW The Long Reach of America’s Most Controversial Statesman

By Greg Grandin Metropolitan. 270 pp. $28

l

REVIEWED BY

E VAN T HOMAS

enry Kissinger has not held high government office since 1977, almost 40 years ago. True, he accomplished a great deal during his eight years as national security adviser and secretary of state in the Nixon and Ford administrations — for better (opening China, arms control with the Soviet Union, peace in the Middle East) or for worse (secret bombings and cold-blooded diplomacy that, some scholars argue, contributed to genocidal outcomes in Bangladesh and Cambodia). Nonetheless, it is remarkable how visible, even at age 92, Kissinger remains.

Conservatives who once denounced him as a dangerous appeaser now seek his autograph and blessing, especially if they’re running for president and want access to his pals in the New York money crowd. He has not lost his power to charm. Just over a year ago, Samantha Power, President Obama’s human-rights-activist ambassador to the United Nations, went to a New York Yankees game with Kissinger. The two reportedly engaged in light banter about the geopolitical symbolism of their baseball fandom (Kissinger backing the historically hegemonic Yankees, Power rooting for the less-fortunate Boston Red Sox).

Greg Grandin, an accomplished historian, wants us to think of Kissinger as theDr. Frankenstein of foreign affairs. He blames Kissinger and “Kissingerism” for a perpetual national security state that engages in “constant, unending war” and has coarsened our national morality. Kissinger, Grandin argues, has accomplished this by the power of his personality and undeniable brilliance — and by metaphysics. Deconstructing Kissinger’s 1950 PhD thesis, which Grandin contends still informs his worldview, the author argues that Kissinger has touched on the “most American of conceits: self-creation.” With his funereal German accent and fond allusions to Metternich and the Congress of Vienna, he sounds like a gloomy

JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST

Old World realist resigned to cynical zero-sum games. Actually, he believes that since life is “ultimately meaningless and . . . history is tragic,” Americans — or rightthinking ones — are free to endlessly shape their own reality, or so Grandin argues. Meaning comes from the exercise of power; morality is mostly what you make it. There are a few limits, but most can be ignored. The key is to act. Grandin would have us believe that Kissinger laid the foundation for a national security state that is in constant motion, with spy satellites and drones relentlessly attacking our enemies and creating new ones.

Grandin is a persuasive polemicist, and he has a lot of material to work with. It is hard not to cringe while reading transcripts of White House tapes that recorded Kissinger and President Richard Nixon cynically talking about a “decent interval” in Vietnam — building in enough time between America’s exit and the inevitable fall of Saigon to protect Nixon’s political fortunes. Grandin reports on a conversation between Kissinger and Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong, the ultimate cynic.

Mao and Kissinger, Grandin

writes, “shared a mutual appreciation of German metaphysics.” In November 1973, after the Vietnam War was over, Mao said to Kissinger, “You are now freer than before,” meaning that with the war ended and Nixon reelected by a landslide, the Americans were freer to do what they wanted on the world stage. “Much more,” Kissinger replied. You can almost picture him rubbing his hands together!

Grandin is one of a small group of academics who defy the stereotype of a turgid, jargon-ridden pedant whose prose is accessible only to his colleagues (and not always to them). Writing fluently on an interesting variety of topics, Grandin has escaped narrow specialization.

He writes with literary flair and a sharp eye for the absurdities of politics. But he has perhaps credited the protean Kissinger with too much sinister influence.

Grandin acknowledges that the national security state existed before Kissinger came along, but he slides past just how secretive and powerful it was. When Franklin Roosevelt wanted to help Britain before Pearl Harbor, he was not shy about bending the rules. President Dwight Eisenhower, to his

later regret, virtually gave carte blanche to the CIA to conduct covert operations around the world. Congress looked the other way as CIA operatives overthrew governments in Guatemala and Iran and tried to do the same in several other countries.

Kissinger did help reinvent and legitimize the national security machinery after Watergate and the 1975 revelations of the Church Committee on abuses in intelligence-gathering. He has been a persistent presence in influential journals and has served as an informal adviser to presidents and their deputies. But it gives him entirely too much credit — or blame — to suggest that his metaphysical musings, however backed by force of will, have so permeated the national security establishment that we live in his permanent shadow. Kissingerism is hardly U.S. foreign policy dogma.

Kissinger is one of the most influential and fascinating men of the past half-century, but his greatest success has been the promotion of his own celebrity. n Evan Thomas is the author of “Being Nixon: A Man Divided.”

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

19

BOOKS

KLMNO WEEKLY

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

Meet the human crash-test dummy

F ICTION

N ON-FICTION

O

l

REVIEWED BY

P ATRICK A NDERSON

ne of the great sagas of modern publishing began in Sweden in 2004 when a left-wing journalist delivered a ridiculously long manuscript to his publisher. The aspiring novelist, who died of a heart attack a few months later at the age of 50, was of course Stieg Larsson. His editor recognized the value of what he had written and also that it should be published as three related novels. At last report, the three novels in Larsson’s Millennium trilogy have sold in excess of 80 million copies worldwide.

Their success was richly deserved.

The novels offer a strikingly intelligent, gripping, angry look at political and corporate corruption in Sweden and, by implication, throughout the Western world.

Like countless readers, I would welcome a fourth novel in the series that equaled the high standard set by Larsson, but “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” is not that novel. Authorized by Larsson’s father and brother and written by Swedish writer David Lagercrantz, the book brings back Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, the heroes and occasional lovers of the trilogy. It’s interesting, but more often the story is disjointed and annoying.

More than anything else, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” is a novel about hacking. We learned in “Dragon Tattoo” that the pierced, punkish Salander was a formidable hacker, but here, in a world of warring hackers, she is the unquestioned genius. She guides Hacker Republic, a group of goodguy hackers, and ultimately manages to hack the supposedly invulnerable National Security Agency, whereupon she triumphantly tells its leaders, “Those who spy on the people end up being spied on by the people.” Many other hackers fill the story. Unfortunately, their deeds are too often presented in incomprehensible tech-talk.

At the end of Larsson’s trilogy, Salander stole a fortune and vanished, and she isn’t much seen in the first half of this book. Blom-

kvist thinks of her often, but we learn that he has fallen on hard times. His beloved magazine, Millennium, has been bought by a corporation that wants to force him out. Desperate for a big story, he stumbles onto one about hacking and high-level corruption.

We meet Frans Balder, a computer genius who has recently reclaimed his 8-year-old autistic son from his ex-wife and her lover.

The boy improves under his father’s care, but trouble strikes. The father has discovered that one corporation has stolen secrets from another corporation. Hired killers are sent to silence the father. The boy proves to be a savant, a near-genius at both drawing and mathematics. Because he may be able to draw an accurate picture of his father’s killer, the hit men return. But by then, the fearless Salander is there to protect him.

I recall the Larsson books unfolding gracefully. Lagercrantz’s narrative is fragmentary and confusing. It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the hackers, scientists and killers who emerge briefly, vanish, then turn up again after you’ve forgotten them. There are absurdly complicated moments.

Several of the characters are certified geniuses but, sad to say, most readers are not.

The book introduces Salander’s twin. If Lisbeth is the most brilliant and brave of women, Camilla is the most beautiful and evil.

Larsson left no will and never married Eva Gabrielsson, with whom he had lived for many years.

The huge royalties from his three books have gone to his father and brother, with whom he reportedly had not been close. It has also been reported that they approved the publication of this novel over Gabrielsson’s objections. “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” has a huge first printing of 500,000 in the United States alone and will probably adorn the bestseller lists for months and make millions for everyone involved. Don’t be fooled.

Gabrielsson was right; Larsson deserves better than this. n

S THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER’S WEB

By David Lagercrantz Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding Knopf. 416 pp. $27.95

SONIC WIND The Story of John Paul Stapp and How a Renegade Doctor Became the Fastest Man on Earth

By Craig Ryan Liveright.

411 pp. $27.95

l

REVIEWED BY

E MILY A NTHES

hortly after noon on Dec. 10, 1954, the sun finally broke through the clouds at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, and the countdown began. Two minutes later, nine rockets fired, propelling John Paul Stapp — and the 2,000lb. sled he was strapped into — down a 3,500-foot track. Within five seconds, he was traveling at 639 miles per hour. It was a new land-speed record, making Stapp, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, the fastest man on Earth.

At least temporarily. A second and a half later, the sled slammed to a stop. “In a microsecond, all momentum was reversed,” Craig Ryan writes in “Sonic Wind,” his compelling and compulsively readable new biography of Stapp.

“Remarkably, he “emerged not only alive, but fully conscious.”

Pain aside, it was a crowning moment for Stapp, a doctor and researcher who spent his career acting as a real-life crash-test dummy, collecting data that ultimately helped the military to design safer planes and the automobile industry to build safer cars.

“Sonic Wind” is a curious but charming tale, the story of a man who courted danger — and death — in the ultimate pursuit of safety.

During a vacation, his cousin sustained horrific, fatal burns in a freak accident. When Stapp returned to college in January, he learned that his girlfriend had been killed in a car accident.

The 18-year-old decided to pursue medicine. By October 1940, he had earned a PhD in biophysics and was on his way to his medical degree when his number was selected in the draft. He joined the Army Medical Corps, attended the School of Aviation Medicine and landed at the Aero Medical Laboratory at Wright Field in Ohio, where he tested a new oxygen system in a nonpressurized plane flying at high altitude and became a rider of the human centrifuge, “a high-speed industrial merry-go-round” designed to help researchers assess the effects

of extreme acceleration.

After impressing his superiors, Stapp was given command of a new project at Muroc Army Air Base in the Mojave Desert. He oversaw the construction of a rocket-powered sled capable of hurtling down a 2,000-foot track at more than 200 mph. He had been charged with evaluating protective restraints that might safeguard pilots in a crash, but he had a grander vision: testing the limits of the human body. The military believed that, in the event of a plane crash, humans could not survive forces that exceeded 18 times the force of gravity, or 18 g’s. Stapp suspected that the body was far more resilient.

Dummies, chimps and pigs all went zooming down the track, but Stapp also took dozens of rides himself. Along the way, he set multiple land-speed records and ultimately withstood forces of more than 46 g’s. He took a beating — he tore cartilage between his ribs, broke both wrists, bruised his collarbone, fractured his coccyx, sustained several likely concussions and nearly blinded himself — but he survived.

By surviving, Ryan explains, “Stapp had rewritten much of the School of Aviation Medicine’s textbook on human tolerance.”

“It’s been suggested that Stapp was indirectly responsible for saving more lives than anyone in history,” Ryan writes.

“Sonic Wind” is an engrossing read, and Ryan brings his unlikely hero to life, deftly describing Stapp’s missionary zeal for safety.

Stapp was driven, stubborn and occasionally downright defiant when he believed that officials were standing in the way of research that could save lives. He never relented, and when he died, he did what he had spent nearly all of his life doing: He donated his body to science. n Emily Anthes is a science journalist and the author of “Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts.”

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

20

KLMNO WEEKLY

OPINIONS

Why a Duke student refuses to read ‘Fun Home’ BRIAN GRASSO Brian Grasso is a freshman at Duke University who plans on studying Global Health and is passionate promoting economic development in subSaharan Africa.

As a Christian, I knew that my beliefs and identity would be challenged at a progressive university like Duke.

My first challenge came well before I arrived on campus, when I learned that all first­years were assigned “Fun Home,” a graphic novel by Alison Bechdel. The book includes cartoon drawings of a woman masturbating and multiple women engaging in oral sex.

After researching the book’s content and reading a portion of it, I chose to opt out of the assignment. My choice had nothing to do with the ideas presented. I’m not opposed to reading memoirs written by LGBTQ individuals or stories containing suicide. I’m not even opposed to reading Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx or Charles Darwin. I know that I’ll have to grapple with ideas I don’t agree with, even ideas that I find immoral.

But in the Bible, Jesus forbids his followers from exposing themselves to anything pornographic. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” he says in Matthew 5:28-29. “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.” This theme is reiterated

by Paul who warns, “flee from sexual immorality.”

I think there is an important distinction between images and written words. If the book explored the same themes without sexual images or erotic language, I would have read it.

But viewing pictures of sexual acts, regardless of the genders of the people involved, conflict with the inherent sacredness of sex.

My beliefs extend to pop culture and even Renaissance art depicting sex.

I’m well aware that my ethics make me an anomaly on campus, in contemporary culture and even among many professing Christians. However, my principles come primarily from

my understanding of the Bible, which I have read multiple times, studied weekly in the community for the past seven years and consider to be the Word of God. I don’t believe my position will limit my exposure to essential lessons in history, philosophy or literature. I assume that having to view graphic images of sex for a class will be rare. If it does happen, I will avoid any titillating content and encourage like-minded students to do the same. And I believe professors should warn me about such material, not because I might consider them offensive or discomforting, but because I consider it immoral.

Still, if my academic

JIM R. BOUNDS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Students walk past the chapel at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

experience at Duke is full of thought-provoking stimuli other than pictures of sexual acts, it’s hard for me to believe that it will be incomplete.

I decided to post about my decision on the Duke Class of 2019 Facebook page to comfort those with similar beliefs. I knew that my decision wouldn’t be well-received.

How could it in a country where, according to one study, more than three-quarters of American men between 18 and 24 years old have viewed pornography within the past month?

Though many students denounced my decision publicly, almost 20 people privately messaged me, thanking me for my post. I received many messages from Christians, but a message from a Muslim man stood out. The man, currently a sophomore at Duke, wrote, “I’ve

“Cultural pluralism will lose its value if students aren’t allowed to follow their beliefs, even if they are conservative.”

seen a lot of people who just throw away their identity in college in the name of secularism, open-mindedness, or liberalism.”

Is this really what Duke wants?

Cultural pluralism will lose its value if students aren’t allowed to follow their beliefs, even if they are conservative. Without genuine diversity, intellectual dialogue and growth are stifled.

I recognize, of course, that Christians on campus and throughout the country have an important responsibility, too. We need to learn how to dialogue across differences. Over the past couple of days, I have received many encouraging messages from a new friend, who considers herself bisexual and a Buddhist.

She and I became friends after she saw my Facebook post.

Instead of criticizing me, she asked me to explain my beliefs. I, in turn, asked her to explain the Buddhist perspective on sexuality. This is how diversity is supposed to work. We each shared our perspective and walked away from the conversation with a deeper understanding and compassion for each other. That is what college is really about. n

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

21

OPINIONS

KLMNO WEEKLY

TOM TOLES

Making a mountain of a molehill DANA MILBANK writes about political theater in the nation’s capital.

Come now the Denali deniers.

President Obama’s conservative critics have long said there is no depth to which he will not sink in his zeal to trash the Constitution.

Now, apparently, they also think there is no height to which he will not climb in that same effort.

Obama went to the very top this weekend — 20,320 feet, to be exact — and stripped North America’s highest peak of its official name of the last century, Mount McKinley, returning it to what Alaskans had called it for centuries: Denali, or Great One. Obama’s opponents immediately condemned him for acting like a dictator, taking unconstitutional action, overstepping his authority, engaging in a partisan stunt and, of course, exhibiting racial animus. President William McKinley, after all, was a white guy. And, um, the mountain itself is mostly white.

“I hope my colleagues will join with me in stopping this constitutional overreach,” proclaimed Rep. Bob Gibbs (ROhio), vowing to work with the House natural resources committee to reverse Obama.

“President Obama has decided to ignore an Act of Congress in unilaterally renaming Mount McKinley in order to promote his job-killing war on energy. This political stunt is insulting to all

Ohioans.”

Former representative Ralph Regula, also from McKinley’s home state of Ohio, asserted to the Columbus Dispatch that Obama “thinks he is a dictator and he can change the law.” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) saw it as “yet another example of the president going around Congress,” while Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) scolded Obama for moving to “undermine a prior act of Congress.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a GOP presidential candidate, tweeted that “POTUS once again oversteps his bounds,” and House Speaker John A. Boehner, from Ohio, pronounced himself “deeply disappointed.”

It wasn’t just a provincial dispute. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (RIll.), on Fox News, thought the move might have something to do

with McKinley being Republican.

“People feel like this president is constantly trying to, like, stick it in our eye, and put his thumb in our eye.” The conservative Web site Gateway Pundit posted an item titled “Obama Renames Mt. McKinley (Named After Some White Guy) to Denali.”

At the conservative outlet Breitbart.com, Ben Shapiro asked, “Why did Obama choose to change the name now?

Presumably because Obama has now solved all the world’s problems, and decided against his second choice, Mt. Trayvon.”

Shapiro said a “more serious” explanation was that Obama “opposes the legacy of President McKinley,” which includes the Spanish-American war and annexing various territories.

Asked Shapiro: “[W]hen will President Obama change the name of the American Southwest to Aztlan?” The deeper one wandered into the conservative blogosphere and Twitterverse, the uglier the messages became — about Obama’s anti-American views, his Muslim practices and his urge to defecate on his predecessors.

Actually, Obama is perfectly within his authority to make the change. If his opponents are really outraged, they can overrule him in Congress or they can elect

a president who will change the name back. The problem with both of these is that Alaska, run

by Republicans, wants the name to be Denali and has been trying to make the change for decades.

The Alaska delegations — Sens.

Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young, Republicans all — heralded the move (even as Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents McKinley’s hometown, joined the opposition).

There’s also the small matter of conservatives claiming to support local control, and devolution of power; in this case, they’re demanding the federal government to continue to overrule a state’s wishes. A more ideologically consistent solution would be for the Ohioans to rename something of their own — say, Cincinnati or Columbus — after McKinley. McKinley hadn’t even visited his eponymous peak, named for him by a prospector before McKinley was elected the 25th president.

More likely, the mountain will be added to other molehills of Obama overreach: Obamacare, the stimulus, Dodd-Frank, the IRS, immigration, executive appointments and on and on. The common objection to all of these is less about what was done than who did it. n

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

22

OPINIONS

BY OHMAN FOR THE SACRAMENTO BEE

The less you know, the better DAN GRIFFIN AND KATHERINE RUSSELL Dan Griffin is a clinical psychologist specializing in families of adolescents.

Katherine Russell is associate dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland.

Parents who want their kids to succeed more than anything are now being sold a high-tech solution. Class 120 is a $199-a-year smartphone app that tracks your teenager and alerts you if the kid isn’t in her scheduled class — and, according to figures provided by the company, 4,000 subscribers are enrolled for the upcoming fall semester. For the more budget-minded parent, surveillance apps including “My Mobile Watchdog” ($44.95) and “Sygic Family Locator” ($24.99) can perform similar surveillance duties from an iPhone or Android.

Attendance is a great predictor of college grades, even more so than scores on standardized admissions tests. If grades are good predictors of graduation, and if a parent is paying for college, isn’t it a great idea for parents to track whether their young adults are in class?

No. This is a terrible idea.

One of the primary objectives of a residential college is learning to be an independent student and person. That means learning how to do what needs to be done, whether one particularly feels like doing it or not.

The first year of college is pretty late to start learning the basics of responsibility. By the time a student packs up for the first year of college, parental wake-up calls and day-to-day tracking of classroom attendance and homework completion

should be a thing of the past.

It’s easy to see how parents get themselves into a situation where tracking their kids makes sense. A student is admitted to college by a process that focuses primarily on grades, courses taken and test scores. Monitoring grades and scores is easy. The progress is more or less linear. The narrative is clear: “Our child is succeeding.

She is happy. We are good parents. We are happy.”

But adequate grades and test scores set a low bar. They don’t take into account whether that kid is ready for the responsibility.

Monitoring the development of character (and related qualities including resilience, willpower and “grit”) is much harder for parents. Cultivating resilience is complicated and largely unrelated to what we usually think of as intelligence or talent.

KLMNO WEEKLY

BY LUCKOVICH FOR THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

Its direction is nonlinear, and tends to expand and contract over time. Character growth happens through encountering and learning to cope with disappointments, tough jams and failures. You never know which setback will be the tipping point for growth and which will be a plain old miserable experience.

Letting kids fail can be really tough for anxious parents who sense that self-esteem is solely a product of success. These parents fear that failure will inevitably incur serious anxiety and depression, so failure is to avoided at any cost. However, the widespread belief that success means being perfect and never faltering is a big problem. The truth is kids need to learn to fail.

One cohort of young adults whose parents are most likely to track are the students who just don’t have the internal motivation to get themselves into the classroom. Maybe they’re having trouble adjusting to a new and independent life at college.

Tracking may get them to go to class, but if the primary motivation is to avoid parental harangues, parents are just encouraging the adolescent mindset: Evade getting caught.

A kid might learn academic material if her parents nag her into going to lectures. But many

students learn much more from the difficult experience of sleeping through too many lectures and bombing a midterm.

College is an ideal place to practice adult responsibility and independence in an environment where the stakes are relatively low. The majority of students rise to this challenge in their first year, manage to get to class on time, do their homework and return as sophomores. Though many struggle, most learn from mining failures and hone a “growth mindset” — the conviction that “I can cultivate the skills I need by deliberate effort.”

An alarm clock’s job is to wake you up, and the thing works pretty well. It does not provide a reason to get up, however. If your student’s tracker says she failed to go to class and your daughter says she went, Class 120’s Web site suggests finding out: “Did the student bring the smartphone to class?” However, if the device indicates your daughter never misses class, a parent may then want to determine “Just who is it that brings the smartphone to class each time?”

Resist the $199 solution. Take that money, book a nice B&B for a weekend and rediscover that the partner you chose before you had a kid is a lot more interesting than trailing that kid’s every move. n

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

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KLMNO WEEKLY

FIVE MYTHS

Pandas BY

B ILL M C S HEA

The Smithsonian National Zoo’s panda cam maxed out its bandwidth in August as the saga of the giant panda family unfolded. There was celebra­ tion upon the birth of a cub, jubilant surprise at the arrival of a twin, then heartbreak when the smaller cub didn’t make it. Despite public fascina­ tion with these animals, certain misconceptions are stubbornly persistent.

If you should find yourself discussing the latest panda news, please do not fall for the following myths.

1

Pandas are cuddly, gentle creatures.

Online photographs of grinning people hugging baby pandas may suggest that giant pandas would make perfect pets.

But make no mistake: They are bears and are built to be aggressive.

They do harm one another, particularly when males are establishing dominance or competing for females. Males in China’s Qinling Mountains are often observed with torn ears and bite wounds from tussling with other males. And in 2007, the first captive-born male reintroduced into the wild died after an apparent fight with other pandas.

Attacks on humans are relatively unusual. In 1984, the National Zoo’s Ling-Ling bit a keeper. Generally keepers do not enter the pandas’ enclosures when the animals are there.

2

Pandas are incompetent breeders.

The original power couple at the National Zoo, Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, were a breeding pair for almost 20 years. Hsing-Hsing famously attempted to mate with LingLing’s foot and ear. They ultimately produced five cubs; none survived.

Such records have led to the hypothesis that reproductive incompetence is one factor behind the panda’s endangered status. “They have no libido, no interest in repopulating the species,” Brian Barrett wrote for

Gizmodo in a typical rant.

However, there is no evidence that giant pandas have any problems breeding in their natural habitat.

In the wild, aggregations of male pandas form along ridge tops in the spring, and a stream of visiting females in heat keeps the mating activity intense.

That’s hard to mimic for zoo pandas. Rather, in most zoos one male is isolated from one female until the fateful day of estrus; and when the moment arrives, neither is socialized to know what to do.

3

Pandas are rare in captivity.

Only 50 giant pandas live outside China.

The key phrase, though, is “outside China,” as there are approximately 345 captive pandas in China.

Wild pandas remain endangered — there are only an estimated 1,800 — and there is a critical role for captive giant pandas in spreading a conservation message. But compare giant pandas with Sumatran rhinos, with only nine in captivity worldwide, and the last one in the United States is about to leave for Indonesia. The worldwide population of captive pandas is healthy and thriving.

4

Pandas are not your average bear.

Since they were first described by Westerners in 1869, giant pandas have been placed in the bear family (Ursidae), the

CHINA STRINGER NETWORK VIA REUTERS

raccoon family (Procyonidae) and in their own unique family (Ailuropodidea), depending on whether researchers were looking at bone structure, behavior or penile characteristics. They share the name “panda” with one other species, the red or lesser panda.

Only in the 1980s was genetic analysis able to differentiate the two, with red pandas being placed within the procyonids and giant pandas within the bear family.

Ask zoo visitors what makes pandas unique among bears, and they’re likely to say something about the tiny cubs, black-andwhite coloring or a bamboo diet.

But all bears give birth to altricial (underdeveloped) young. And five species of bears are some combination of black and white, while the remaining species are either all white (polar bears), all black (American black bears) or remarkably variable (brown bears).

Meanwhile, although pandas do go heavy on bamboo, eating as much as 44 pounds a day, they retain the capacity to eat meat in both their tooth structure and gut flora. Chinese villagers report pandas breaking into livestock pens and consuming goats and

sheep. Only polar bears are allmeat eaters.

5

Pandas are lazy.

The adult giant pandas you see at a zoo seem like they would be just as comfortable on a lounge chair. Contrast this with images of polar bears stalking prey among the ice floes or brown bears fighting along salmon streams. Giant pandas appear to live the life of Riley.

What they lack in speed, though, giant pandas make up in endurance. They feed about 19 hours a day, 365 days a year.

They do not go into an extended hibernation like other temperate bears; they do not lie in wait for prey or sleep off a big meal.

Seasonal movements up and down steep hillsides are the norm in their native habitat.

Juveniles disperse from their mothers’ home range, and everyone moves in response to bamboo die-offs after flowering events, with reports of six-mile treks over alpine mountains.

Giant pandas are not lazy, just comfortable. n Bill McShea is a research scientist at the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va.

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Every Friday in The Wenatchee World, look for our new weekly outdoors page — Everybody Out — published in coordination with WenatcheeOutdoors.org.

Each week you’ll discover new pathways to get out and enjoy outdoor opportunities in North Central Washington.

Every Friday you’ll enjoy stories of adventures, stunning photographs, and a calendar of activities to plan your outings. Longtime outdoors writer Andy Dappen and others will guide you to some of the most popular recreational spots in our region — as well as some of the lesser-known and relatively undiscovered treasures in our area.

Everybody Out is also published on our website at wenatcheeworld.com, and you can share your outdoors experiences, photos and videos via our Facebook and Instagram accounts.

— Everybody Out — discover it in the Friday edition of The Wenatchee World.

wenatcheeworld.com