Several classified documents saved after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1990 describe the promotion by the government of the use of drugs, notably androgenic steroids, in high-performance sports (doping). Top-secret doctoral theses, scientific reports, progress reports of grants, proceedings from symposia of experts, and reports of physicians and scientists who served as unofficial collaborators for the Ministry for State Security (“Stasi”) reveal that from 1966 on, hundreds of physicians and scientists, including top-ranking professors, performed doping research and administered prescription drugs as well as unapproved experimental drug preparations. Several thousand athletes were treated with androgens every year, including minors of each sex. Special emphasis was placed on administering androgens to women and adolescent girls because this practice proved to be particularly effective for sports performance. Damaging side effects were recorded, some of which required surgical or medical intervention. In addition, several prominent scientists and sports physicians of the GDR contributed to the development of methods of drug administration that would evade detection by international doping controls.

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Hormonal doping and androgenization of athletes: a secret program of the German Democratic Republic government

It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This suggests we should reject our ordinary conception of how to make this life-changing decision, and raises general questions about how to rationally approach important life choices.

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What You Can’t Expect When You’re Expecting

Much of the academic and commercial work which seeks to innovate around technology has been dismissed as "solutionist" because it solves problems that don't exist or ignores the complexity of personal, political and environmental issues. This paper traces the "solutionism" critique to its origins in city planning and highlights the original concern with imaging and representation in the design process. It is increasingly cheap and easy to create compelling and seductive images of concept designs, which sell solutions and presume problems. We consider a range of strategies, which explicitly reject the search for "solutions". These include design fiction and critical design but also less well-known techniques, which aim for unuseless, questionable and silly designs. We present two examples of "magic machine" workshops where participants are encouraged to reject realistic premises for possible technological interventions and create absurd propositions from lo-fi materials. We argue that such practices may help researchers resist the impulse towards solutionism and suggest that attention to representation during the ideation process is a key strategy for this.

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Anti-Solutionist Strategies: Seriously Silly Design Fiction

This paper attempts to explain the conceptual connections between happiness and well-being. It first distinguishes episodic happiness from happiness in the personal attribute sense. It then evaluates two recent proposals about the connection between happiness and well-being: (1) the idea that episodic happiness and well-being both have the same fundamental determinants, so that a person is well-off to a particular degree in virtue of the fact that they are happy to that degree, and (2) the idea that happiness in the personal attribute sense can serve as a “proxy” for well-being, i.e., that a person’s degree of deep or robust happiness approximates their degree of well-being. It is argued that happiness in both these senses is conceptually, metaphysically, and empirically distinct from well-being. A new analysis of welfare, well-being as agential flourishing, can explain welfare’s real connection to happiness in both the episodic and personal attribute senses. It predicts that such happiness is only directly beneficial when it is valued, when it is a form of valuing, or when it underwrites (i.e., serves as the causal basis for) the disposition to realize one’s values. It is therefore a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for especially high levels of well-being. This analysis of welfare integrates many insights from the eudaimonic tradition of welfare and happiness research in psychology, and also addresses common criticisms of these eudaimonic models.

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Happiness is not Well-being

This paper examines various claims made by charter-school advocates that charter schools are publicly funded, open to all, are chartered by public entities, and thus are a form of public schooling. It addresses this subject by comparing the rhetoric of Michigan's charter-school reformers with that of the common-school reformers of the 19th century, particularly Horace Mann. The analysis finds conflicting definitions of what constitutes public schooling. Whereas both types of reform support tax-funded schools and open access, the common-school reformers emphasized political-democratic forms of control. Charter-school advocates actively challenge such control and claim that market mechanisms of consumer choice and competition among providers are the primary means of authority. Furthermore, proponents of charter schools seek to "redefine" popular conceptions of what constitutes public and private education. In doing so, they frame education principally as a consumer good, and thus effect a privatization of the purpose of public education that contrasts with the common-school reformers' stated concern for democracy and the public good. The paper suggests that the rhetoric of charter-school advocates promotes depublicization and a redefinition of the "public" in education away from that of an institution of and for the public good. (Contains approximately 120 references.) (RJM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Redefining "Public" Education: Charter Schools, Common Schools, and the Rhetoric of Reform

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Redefining "public" education: Charter schools, common schools, and the rhetoric of reform

Rip Van Winkle arose this spring from a slumber of two decades. He gazed in amazement at a world transformed. The Soviet empire, so menacing when he fell asleep in 1977, was now on the ash heap of history. Rising protectionism had given way to exploding commerce and tumbling trade barriers. Nixon-Carter stagflation had been replaced by Reagan-Gingrich prosperity. Business and profits were no longer dirty words. Now everyone wanted to be an entrepreneur. Prices for gasoline, airfare, and long-distance phone service had plummeted thanks to competition and deregulation. California had passed an initiative abolishing racial preferences. Federal farm and welfare programs dating to the New Deal had been abolished. Welfare caseloads in Wisconsin had fallen in half. A new emphasis on local accountability, truth-in-sentencing, and community policing was reducing crime in New York and other major cities. Congress was debating fundamental Medicare reform that would lower costs and give the elderly more choices. Leading liberals were pushing for legislation criminalizing late-term abor- tions. Congressional Black Caucus leaders were breaking with the teachers unions and the NAACP by endorsing school vouchers. Conservative Republicans now controlled both houses of Congress and a robust majority of governorships. Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep listening to a harangue by Ralph Nader. He awakened to the music of Rush Limbaugh. But one thing hadn't changed since Rip closed his eyes. Conservatives were still depressed. They were still complaining about their leaders. And they were still failing to build institutions as powerful as their ideas. The American conservative is seemingly dedicated to three principles: life, liberty, and the pursuit of unhappiness. Something there is about the con- servative temperament that loves despair. Conservatives have been singing the blues for most of the 20 years this magazine has been published. This is not simply nostalgic yearning for a leader like Ronald Reagan. Conservatives were unhappy during most of his administration, too. In October 1983, Policy Review interviewed 12 conservative leaders to ask them what they thought of Ronald Reagan. Nine gave him low ratings. "If Reagan represents no more than a right-of-center vision of the welfare state, he doesn't represent change; he simply represents cheap government. Republicans cannot win in that framework," said a GOP backbencher now in the congressional leadership. "The radical surgery that was required in Washington was not performed. Ronald Reagan made a pledge not to touch entitlement programs, and that's one of the few pledges he has kept absolutely," said a top conservative activist. "This has been essentially another Ford administration. It has been business as usual, not much different from any other Republican administration in our lifetime," said a leading conservative intellectual and journalist. These quotations, from brilliant people I admire, betray an impatience, a set of unrealistic expectations that lead to dejection when they aren't satisfied, and a failure to create a culture of celebration for conservative achievement. In retrospect, we know that 1983 was a glorious year for conservatism. It was the first year of the Reagan boom. During 1983, as Grover Norquist wrote in these pages in the spring of 1984, "America in the throes of a supply-side recovery created more jobs in 1983 than Canada has created since 1965 . . . and as many jobs as Japan created in the entire decade of the 1970s." That year was also the turning point in the great titanic struggle against communism. As Elizabeth Spalding and Andrew Busch wrote in Policy Review in the fall of 1993, "a series of events in 1983 would come together to stop the seemingly inexorable advance of Soviet totalitarianism and to lay the ground- work for the eventual triumph of the West. …

The Pursuit of Unhappiness

In cooperation with other conservative organizations, The Heritage Foundation holds monthly fundraisers for private civic groups that aid the needy more effectively than does the District of Columbia government. Our "Breakfast for Champions" series has so far raised more than $15,000 for six groups. Our first event was for the Washington Scholarship Fund, a privately financed school-voucher program that enables 300 low-income children to flee dead-end D.C. public schools for the religious or secular private school of their choice. The money we raised will fund three half-tuition scholarships. Breakfast for Champions financed five months of utilities for Hannah Hawkins's Children of Mine, an after-school program in the violent neighborhood of Anacostia that provides 65 children from troubled families a safe environment for homework, hot food, and Bible study. Hawkins has refused to take money from the government ever since she participated in a D.C. food program and was told she was not allowed to feed hungry children at 3 in the afternoon or give them leftovers as they headed home. Through other fundraisers, Breakfast for Champions has also financed: pregnancy testing and life-affirming literature for 600 women at the Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center; 22 walkie-talkies for the Metro Orange Coalition* the umbrella group for the brave men and women (mostly women) who are driving drug dealers out of their neighborhoods; pastoral care and a camp experience for the child of a D.C. prison inmate as part of the Prison Fellowship Ministries' Angel Tree program; and summer transportation for 60 participants in The Fishing School, a program run by ex-policeman Tom Lewis, a substitute father who teaches rocketry, dance, gardening, personal responsibility, and, yes, fishing to fatherless children. As this issue went to press, we were preparing a fundraiser for Clean and Sober Streets, a no-nonsense, "one-strike-and-you're-out" drug and alcohol rehabilitation program that turns around the lives of homeless addicts without taking a dime of government money. We are still accepting donations of $25 (or more) for any of these worthy organizations. Our goal in hosting these fundraisers is not only to raise money but also to generate publicity and future fundraising opportunities for effective civic groups that fight poverty through conservative principles. Here are some results of our efforts: * After we held an event for the Washington Scholarship Fund, House Majority Leader Dick Armey invited some of his top donors to a $1,100-per-head fundraiser of his own, where he raised more than $100,000 for the WSF. …

Breakfast for Champions

Over the next two years, Congress will reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a $13 billion federal program that encompasses most federal legislation affecting K-12 education. At the heart of ESEA is the infamous Title I program, Aid to the Poor. This $8 billion annual disaster has spent over $100 billion since its inception in 1965. Its catastrophic result: 57 percent of central-city fourth graders in public schools cannot read. Education has historically and rightfully been a state and local responsibility in the United States. Title I reauthorization offers an excellent opportunity to transfer resources and responsibility back to states, and to show how vouchers and other choice models would improve education for poor children compared with current federal aid. Reauthorization also gives federal legislators an extraordinary opportunity to focus national public attention on the failures of inner- city education. Indeed, congressional hearings and surrounding media events could be modeled on Ronald Reagan's ideological offensive against the Kremlin. Reagan pursued successful military, economic, and political strategies against the Kremlin. But perhaps his most important contribution to Cold War victory was his ideological strategy to delegitimate Communism-to make Soviet leaders so embarrassed, so ashamed of themselves, that they were no longer willing to kill to protect their own power. This is why the "Evil Empire" speech was so significant: its biggest impact was on Kremlin leaders who knew in their hearts that Reagan was right. A daily barrage of public diplomacy through Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and other avenues drove the message home. By the mid-1980s top Soviet officials were beginning to make public apologies for the crimes of their regime. In 1987 Reagan asked Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. In 1988 he took his message of freedom to the very bosom of the enemy-under Lenin's statue at Moscow State University. Under Reagan's withering moral pressure, the nomenklatura lost so much confidence in itself that in just a few years it voluntarily gave up power and the wall came tumbling down. The public education establishment today is where the Soviet Union was in 1987. It looks all powerful. It rules by fear and intimidation. But it is ideologically a house of cards that will collapse if conservatives go on a sustained moral offensive and highlight its failure to teach basic skills to poor children. In so doing, we can deny defenders of the education monopoly all moral legitimacy-in their own minds! …

Education's Evil Empire

A Model of Cultural Leadership. The Achievements of Privately Funded Vouchers.

In the Spring of 1993, Policy Review predicted that "1994 will be the most important year in American politics since the 1980 race between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan." At least we got that one right. "If the Democratic Party maintains its overwhelming majority in both Houses of Congress in 1994," Policy Review went on to say, "then the Reagan Revolution truly will be over, and the federal government will likely grow in size and intrustiveness into American life. If, however, the Republican Party makes substantial gains, then there is a good chance that the Clinton presidency will be just a temporary interruption in the downsizing of central government. These choices were muddied in 1992 because Mr. Clinton ran to the right of President Bush on many taxing and spending issues. In 1994, the choices will be clearer." The choices certainly were clear in 1994, and so was the message of the voters. Thanks mostly to President Clinton's health care plan, but also to his crime bill, his tax increases, and his regulatory excesses, the party of the donkey was openly identified with liberalism and the cause of bigger government, especially in Washington. In sharp contrast, the party of the elephant stood more strongly for smaller government at all levels--federal, state, and local--than at any time in over a generation. When voters were given this clear choice, the result was an elephant stampede. The magnitude of the GOP victory was a tribute to many of its leaders. To Bob Dole and the Senate Republicans, whose guerrilla warfare and united resistance to Clintonism blocked many of the administration's worst initiatives. To Haley Barbour, one of the greatest chairmen in Republican National Committee history, who brought his party back to conservative ideas and to Politics 101--grass-roots organizing and candidate recruitment. To governors such as Christie Whitman of New Jersey, John Engler of Michigan, and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, who showed, after the Bush Betrayal of 1990, that at least some Republicans keep their promises to cut taxes and reduce the size of government. The number of states with a Republican governor and GOP control of both houses of the legislature rose from three to 15, as voters took a gamble that Republican promises of tax and spending cuts were not simply the cynical political gestures they have often proved to be before. Above all, the Republican sweep was a tribute to Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and their Republican House colleagues, whose Contract With America did something the GOP should have done long ago--show clearly what difference it would make if Republicans instead of Democrats controlled the House. In Winter 1992, Policy Review asked then House Minority Leader Robert Michel to write an article on what House Republicans would do if they took charge. His only answer was congressional reform--cutting congressional staff, reforming internal House rules, applying to the House the same regulations the Congress applies to everyone else. Michel's answer, in short, was what Gingrich promised for Day One of Republican control. He left out the other 99 days! What a difference new leadership made! The Gingrich-Armey contract made 41 pages of concrete promises to the American people on tax relief, a balanced budget amendment, welfare reform, crime control, defense readiness, and other leading issues. No one can deny that this is what the American people voted for: The Democrats spent millions publicizing the GOP Contract in what turned out to be one of the most issues-driven campaigns of recent decades. SOLEMN OBLIGATION The GOP Contract, though, was more than just a platform. It was a solemn obligation. It was the genius of Gingrich, Armey, and their House Republican colleagues to recognize that the American people want not only smaller government, they want accountability. The citizens are furious over broken promises--not only by Presidents Bush and Clinton but by most of the political class. …

Adam Meyerson

Papers

The Pursuit of Unhappiness

Breakfast for Champions

Education's Evil Empire

A Model of Cultural Leadership. The Achievements of Privately Funded Vouchers.

An Offer Too Good to Refuse; Americans Put out a Contract on Big Government