At this point you may wonder, why on earth have candidates take IQ tests? Haven’t they proven themselves intelligent and motivated already by running for office? My reasoning is based on the assumption that the majority of the American population is intelligent and capable and therefore would be represented best by intelligent and capable politicians. However the truth of the matter is that quite a few political candidates, past and present, for any office, have substandard intelligence and have slipped through the cracks formed by the scant requirements. Two examples: Former President George H. W. Bush and current President George W. Bush. Daddy Bush has an IQ of 98 and our very own Dubya has an IQ of 91 (Lovenstein Institute Presidential IQ Study). An IQ score of 100 is considered average, with most likely professions being truck drivers, machine operators, farmers and carpenters. Bush Sr. was a Texas representative in 1966 and 1968 before being vice president to Ronald Reagan and then President. Bush Jr. was also a Texas representative, and became Governor of Texas in 1994. Obviously, a mandatory IQ test prior to campaigning would have saved America from the collective bad decision-making of the two Bushes, as neither of them would have made it to Congress at all.

Sure, most political candidates are smart and do their jobs well. Granted, the current requirements are logical and serve the purpose of providing the nation with good lawmakers and civil servants. Nevertheless, the addition of intelligence testing to the existing qualifications would reinforce the standard of politicians and lead to improved decision-making for the people’s benefit. Congress would not be stunted by any stupidity and would work more efficiently. Smarter politicians would also raise the rock-bottom public opinion of the government, and give the multitude of foreign countries that currently hate us, a more realistic impression of the American people. We can only benefit from such an addition, and although intelligence testing may not affect the majority of political candidates, it certainly would minimize the chances of ending up with a president who can’t pronounce the word nuclear.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi - from every mountainside.

Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring - when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

My contribution is to share a story with you - specifically how I got to know the wonderful people at CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast. It was mid-2005, the show was pretty new and a few people were beginning to develop what would become a vibrant community. We were in the hundreds, and at the CNET forums learnt about each other, discussed all sorts of issues, and so on. It was a great community and the hosts dropped in often. The forum was one of the places I had to visit everyday; the conversations there were as important to me as my ‘real-life’ conversations.

Late 2006 turned out to be a tough time in my life and the people I had known, but never met, rallied around to provide moral support. These people strewn across the planet came to share kind words with me and show that I mattered to them. That forum has always meant a lot to me, because I have met some amazing people there, people I later met in real life, and others spread all over the world with whom I have started online projects!

What was equally remarkable about the listeners’ community was how much we interacted with the hosts. They didn’t live one step withdrawn, watching from afar at what we said about their opinions and analysis. They participated, which made the whole atmosphere far more conducive to lively conversations, not just responses. Tom, Molly, and Veronica were always in the forum talking to their listeners. It was never a ploy to suggest they cared about the audience, it was real interest in the listeners. Even as the show has grown to the tens, likely hundreds of thousands of listeners it has today, you’ll still see Tom, Molly, and Jason joining in.

There are several thousands of miles east and west from me, here in London, separating us in the Buzz Out Loud community but I know that through my many years of interactions with the Good People involved with the show, I have gained real friends and am better for having known them.

Critical and commercial success in architecture is increasingly coming from architects who do not have a ‘house-style’ and Jean Nouvel is no exception. Like David Chipperfield, the British architect who won the RIBA Sterling Prize 2007 for his Museum of Modern Literature in Germany, Nouvel believes the surrounding environment essentially dictates the design of a building. “The story, the climate, the culture of the place,” he said. “The references of the buildings around, what the people in the city love. The wind, the colour of the sky, the trees around - the building is not done only to be the most beautiful,” he said. “It’s done to give advantage to the surroundings. It’s a dialogue.” However, he does not design buildings simply to echo their surroundings. “Generally, when you say context, people think you want to copy the buildings around, but often context is contrast,” he said.

Nouvel’s projects are diverse; from designing luxury homes for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to building the Concert Hall Lucerne in Switzerland, his work has challenged the way in which architects approach architecture. He claims anything from the monumental and the civic, to the residential and vernacular can be realised successfully by an architect with an appreciation of the surrounding environment. The jury said of Nouvel’s industrial Guthrie Theater, which has a cantilevered bridge overlooking the Mississippi River, “the theatre both merges and contrasts with its surroundings.” It added, “It is responsive to the city and the nearby Mississippi River, and yet, it is also an expression of theatricality and the magical world of performance.”

I recently visited Madrid and stayed at Hotel Puerta America, a conceptual hotel where each floor is designed by a high profile designer. Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, David Chipperfield, Arota Ishozaki and Jean Nouvel are just a few who have experimented with hotel design as the operators, Silken, claimed the project ‘had no budget’. Nouvel’s floor, the top one, is perhaps the most impressive. It is wildly romantic; stunning Japanese influences and a heady sense of artistic involvement, the design is a world away from the environment, a dusty residential area of a metropolitan Madrid. Forgiving the experimental nature of the project, it seems Nouvel has stuck to the ‘context is contrast’ mantra very strictly. Where other designers who have a ‘house style’ merely put their signature curves and deconstructive lines (in the case of Zaha Hadid) on their floor, architects such as Foster and Chipperfield, who are driven wholly by an environmental and social sensitivity to architecture, and no house style, chose to echo their surroundings. In the case of Foster, the palette of Spanish artist and friend Chilleda was employed; the dusty sienna brown worktops working symbiotically with the yellow ochre leather of the furnishings. It seems both Nouvel and Foster have gained success differently by echoing and contrasting the environment to provide feelings of excitement and familiarity respectively.

This year’s Pritzker Prize winner is yet another example of a successful architect who is very different to his contemporaries. Not restricted by an ‘ism’, not a disciple of a school, just a servant to society and its needs. I feel excited and privileged to be living in a time where architecture really is becoming all about social concern.

Whilst the day is a great accolade for the Terminal’s sole occupant, British Airways, it is a triumph for airport owner BAA. The project was delivered on time and on budget. Further more, all the UK taxpayers out there will be glad to know that it was funded entirely out of private money. Compare that to the Millenium Domes and Wembley Stadiums that used other people’s money to deliver something over-budged and late. Of course 2012 will be the real Doomsday for UK tax-payers when the Olympics, a purely prestige project for Ken Livingtone’s (and his others cronies) ego takes place.

So from today, millions of Brisith travellers, and international visitors to Britain will be able to enjoy their holiday or their business trip just a little bit more thanks to the new terminal. Even those not using it directly will benefit from the increased capacity in the other Heathrow terminals as airlines move around. (Though the teething problems associated with this move may be problematic).

All that remains now is for approval for Heathrow’s third terminal to be given, so that the UK economy will see a viable future, with a key part of its infrastructures expanding to meet demand.

UPDATE 18:31 GMT - I mentioned that teething problems may be problematic, but did not envisage this sort of trouble. The BA Operations Director has just announced that fligts out of T5 today will be hand-baggage only. He apologises (as he should) but does not say who is to blame.  Given the supposed extensive testing of the new terminal, with images of thousands of bags circulating the T5 system being shown on the news only weeks ago, one has to wonder how successful these tests were. A way to have avoided all this fuss if BAA and BA weren’t too keen on extensive testing would have been to make all outgoing flights from T5 today free, so that no-one has a major ground to complain if they are public volunteers. The cost of that may have been in the region of £10m, but given the £4.6bn terminal, it seems a small price to pay.

The result was ugly, disproportionate homes. They had glamorous faces but sides built with plywood and very few windows. These homes had large heating and cooling bills. They loomed over their diminutive lawns. They were unoriginal; that cost-cutting decision to not have an architect meant many houses looked alike.

What few people predicted was another format growing around the same time: prefab modular houses, would later rise from its roots as trailer-park centerpieces to the sort of thing Silicon Valley billionaires like Phillipe Kahn want to live in. The difference is of course a dramatic change in style and building quality; but two things remain the same: affordability and convenience.

I was drawn to Marmol Radzinger’s designs for a totally different reason. It seems odd to say these homes are beautiful - they are designed to be purely fuctional and completely ignore aesthetics  - but in their drive to lower costs and reduce the amount of energy needed, the designs bear a striking resemblance to the work of the Internationalist architects of the 1930s - 1970s. The homes are not adorned with pediments and columns, they are purely functional, which ironically forms a style of their own.

Firms like Resolution: 4, Marmol Radzinger, and Jeriko House have designed striking model homes. These can be up to 5,000 square feet and include pools, second floors, and garages. These three firms in particular, along with LivingHomes and Michelle Kaufmann design beautiful modern homes for six, sometimes seven figures. Those on a much tighter budget can also build their own brand new, green, modern homes from Rocio Romero, whose LV homes can be bought, built, and completed for $80,000.

Some of the particularly appealing aspects are the modular designs, which allows for easy extendability and customisation: if you choose to add a library, it’s fairly simple to do so, and that library can be built exactly to your specification. Another recent draw is green technology. Marmol Radzinger offers the option of installing solar panels, and all firms use materials and building techniques which limit the impact on the environment. Most firms build to LEED certification.

In these ways, the firms have turned a cheap, efficient, and highly customisable medium into a luxury good. They come with 20 year warranties, are built to a truly impressive standard with high-grade materials, and by being easily customised are usually unique. The only downside is that as a relatively new phenomenon; you can’t just go and buy one on the street. While appealing because you can build exactly what you want, in densely packed, highly urbanised cities and suburbs, the cost of tearing down an existing house is included. Nevertheless, the impressive qualities outweigh these costs, which is why this option is growing in popularity so rapidly.

But economically, the-tip-of-an-island blew the world into searing chaos. The three firms most heavily involved in the sub-prime mortgage crisis; Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch all teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. While so far only one has collapsed, the other two remain balanced, delicately, on the whims of Wall Street traders.

The collapse of Bear Stearns was only surprising because it seemed Wall Street believed these firms could get away with their incredibly profitable but totally absurd subprime lending. The International Herald Tribune reported yesterday from within Bear Stearns, about the employees’ reaction. Many spoke of total shock, a feeling of betrayal, and ominously; none seemed aware that this sort of collapse was well within the realms of Bear Stearns operations.

Bear Stearns’ operations were so risky because they were bundling valueless loans with some good loans and then sold them to other institutions which were totally unaware of what they had bought (other than seeing the AAA rating on the bundles).

Surely a firm operating in this manner should go bankrupt. It had made risky financial maneuvers, assumed it would not get caught, and when it all fell apart - everyone was surprised. The story should have ended there. Bear Stearns would have collapsed into a smoking heap, other firms would peer at the wreckage and learn some valuable lessons. Although the following year would be fraught with panicking traders feeling insecure about deals, it would be the ultimate culmination of Milton Friedman’s pro-free-market ideals. Leave it to the market, we chanted.

But when the market fell apart because their brash deals collapsed, they called in the Federal Reserve. Although the Fed deserves blame for not reigning in Wall Street during Alan Greenspan’s boom years, it should not be paying for Bear Stearns collapse. Nevertheless, it floated $30 billion to grand old JP Morgan and Bear Stearns was snapped up on Monday for $236 million, massively down from the $3.54 billion it was worth on Friday.

Most impressively, JP Morgan has an option on Bear Stearns World Headquarters (photo above of the Kohn Pederson Fox-designed skyscraper built in 2001) so if Bear Stearns stakeholders vote down the JP Morgan bid, not only will they likely be bankrupt immediately, they could get evicted from their own headquarters; a building which is worth approximately 5 times what JP Morgan bid for the whole company.

Here in England when our government did something very similar: nationalising Northern Rock, our Senior Staff Writer wrote a sarcastic article labeling the Prime Minister a ‘dyed-in-the-wood Commie’. While joking, the point is that the nationalisation of Northern Rock was direct government intervention in the financial system after its collapse. Which is exactly what the Fed did for Bear Stearns. Headlines across the world trumpeted it as JP Morgan saving Bear Stearns, but this was funded by the Fed’s $30 billion.

Government intervention in this ways is like giving candy to the class bully. Bear Stearns was ruthless in its quest to make money from subprime mortgages. For this, Bear Stearns should not be nursed back to life, it should be allowed to collapse because it brought its downfall upon itself. Notice Goldman Sachs, another player in Wall Street, has $21 billion to hand out in bonuses; it was not necessary for Bear Stearns to operate in this way. It chose to, and for that error, it should fall. Saying it is too big to fail should only be a justification for propping up necessities like waterworks, electricity suppliers, and so on.

The blame remains at the feet of Alan Greenspan. Bear Stearns, Citicorp, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide, and the rest should be free to operate and make vast profits. Their activities fuel economic growth and generate wealth across the world. However, regulation should have been in place to ensure those worthless loans were not ‘mislabeled’ AAA. These firms should be free to invest, invent, foster entrepreneurship, and make trillions of dollars; but not by swindling others.

The protests are very easy to join; you click on a country - perhaps the one that offends you most, or as I did, the one with the fewest protesters - and fill out 4 text fields; name, surname, city, and country. Then you pick the slogan you wish to hoist above your virtual head and join in with thousands of others who right now are protesting in virtual representations of famous plazas around the world, including the infamous Tienanmen Square in Beijing.

Join in (French)
Join in (English)

The graphic above, from the Wikimedia Foundation, is the Reporters Without Borders 2006 press freedom ranking map, showing from blue to red the severity of Internet restraints across the world.

It seems that the writer wishes to enter a discussion as to who is a civilian. According to his logic – that all Israeli citizens are legitimate targets due to compulsory military service – a citizen of any society that has conscription is a viable military target. Such as, say, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan and Tunisia. We’ll bear that in mind next time we’re engaged in hostilities with those nations, Khalid.

But let us not forget that this yeshiva was (apparently) the headquarters of the Jewish settlement movement. Aha! They therefore deserved to die. That clears that one up. Except civilised people do not condone acts of violence – or, in this case, murder – in response to political beliefs. If we did then, presumably, retribution against the Palestinians who, in a 77% voter turnout, elected Hamas to 76 out of 132 parliamentary seats, would be equally justified. Or who were seen dancing in the streets, cheering and distributing bon-bons (yes, bon-bons), in celebration of cold-blooded murder.

Amaryeh, in the interests of journalism, moreover seems to deem it relevant that “Yitzhak Rabin’s killer, Yigal Amir, is reportedly to have studied at the Merkaz Ha’rav”. One wonders: is he sure he wants to go down that route? Unsurprisingly, he does not pursue this line of thought.

Of course, as was to be expected, the “Zionist-influenced or Zionist-controlled American media” did not stray from the official Zionist “propaganda”, shallowly portraying the innocent civilian victims as…well, as innocent civilians. But our mate Khalid knows better. They were, as “paramilitaries” (though not engaged in hostilities), anything but innocent. But, if that applies, then how much more was the assassination of Imad Mugniyah justified? And if we take this to its logical conclusion, then the attack, which was “probably to avenge [his] murder”, was in fact unjustified, as the original killing was justified. No?

Amaryeh also dismisses the claim that the IDF “doesn’t murder Palestinian civilians deliberately”, forgetting to note the fact that while the Israeli Army, in the interests of clarity, wears full military uniform when engaged in hostility (I hardly need mention that neither the victims of the shooting, nor the shooter himself, was wearing any such thing) – militants, if they are in an obliging mood, may deign to wear towels on their heads. But let us not forget that the murderer was a civilian himself until he decided to pick up a rifle and kill other civilians. This episode, if anything, perfectly demonstrates the dilemma facing Israel in terms of knowing who the enemy is.

After the horrific Baruch Goldstein massacre of almost exactly 14 years ago, Rabin described it as a “loathsome, criminal act of murder”, and the Israeli media unanimously condemned it in similar terms. Hamas have taken a slightly different approach, being so proud of the attack that they even claimed responsibility for it. In my view, that pretty much tells you all you need to know.

Rabbi David Simchon, director of the yeshiva, bravely declared that “No terrorist will succeed in stopping our faith, our values, the justice of our cause or what we teach here at the yeshiva.” Whilst the moderate Mahmoud Abbas rightly condemned the attack due to its targetting of innocent civilians, in Gaza, Hamas asserted that they “bless the operation. It will not be the last.”

Hamas ask the world to give them financial aid. They ask to be considered at the negotiation table for a future peace settlement. They demand that they are taken to be serious political players due to their democratic mandate. Yet they practice the mantras of their charter; their unwillingness to recognise Israel’s right to exist and in so doing support the most heinous of crimes against the most innocent of young religious Jewish men who have dedicated their life to Torah study. They are terrorists since the only bargaining chip they use is the tool of coercion, through which innocent lives are needlessly lost.

If Hamas want peace, if they want a Palestinian state, if they want to be taken seriously as politicians and not criminals, and above all, if they want to continue to exist they must rapidly change. Terrorism will only cause more deaths, not least their own. I guess we can hope.

Editor: The world continues to be full of ignorant prejudice, and unjust hatred. Sticks and Stones does not lay claim to educating the world on all that must be highlighted, but we endeavour to shine our spotlight on what we can. Today marks 100 posts at Sticks and Stones but we will not be celebrating, because we are in mourning. 8 innocent people died today.