Algunas veces los amigos terminan siendo enemigos y los enemigos terminan siendo amigos, pero es difícil de entender exactamente cómo puede darse lugar este cambio. En este nuevo estudio se muestra que cuando el cambio de aliados o rivales es interpretado usando los principios de la psicología social, el comportamiento general puede ser modelado como si surgiera de un proceso de minimizado de energía.

El estudio es parte de un proyecto de investigación que usa herramientas teóricas de la Física para analizar sistemas sociales complejos. En el artículo que lo describe, Seth Marvel, Steven Strogatz y Jon Kleinberg, todos de Cornell University, usan teoría de psicología social para clasificar qué configuraciones de amigos o enemigos son más estables que otras. Muestran además que estas configuraciones pueden ser representadas por un perfil de energía potencial en el que la disminución de estrés social se correspondería a una energía que se relaja (o aumento de la coherencia de las relaciones) según las relaciones cambian de signo, es decir, de amigos a enemigos y viceversa.

Es parecido a lo que ocurre en otros sistemas físicos, como los sistemas Ising de espines, en los que el sistema puede caer en un mínimo de energía local. Si el sistema cae en uno de esos mínimos es más difícil que se mueva de ahí y, por tanto, esa configuración es estable. Si el sistema está en un máximo de energía entonces es muy fácil que el sistema caiga hacia cualquier otro estado de energía más baja y que el sistema se relaje.

A house's sphere of influence extends beyond its own lot, because housing can encourage the spread of invasive species, alter drainage patterns and foster increased recreational use of the conserved land, which can, ironically, harm wildlife.

Ground-nesting birds are particularly vulnerable to houses and the dogs and cats they contain, as well as to the raccoons, opossum and skunks that are attracted to residential areas, says Pidgeon. The affected species in Wisconsin's northern forest include the ovenbird and black and white warbler.

Many of the effects of housing are unintended, Pidgeon observes. "People are not building houses intending to kill cougars, but that may be the effect if a cougar starts to threaten children and has to be removed."

Migratory animals such as elk need to summer in the mountains and winter in the valleys, Pidgeon notes. "But in the Cascades, the valleys are now filled with orchards and houses."

Another area of concern is light pollution, Radeloff adds. "People don't always think about this, but a lot of wildlife species base their way-finding on the stars or the moon, and a lot of outside light can be confusing and harmful."

El Informe sobre la Democracia de 2009 recoge la evolución ideológica de las audiencias de diferentes medios españoles, atendiendo a su voto declarado en las campañas electorales. Llama la atención que, mientras los lectores del diario EL PAÍS se mantienen en un posicionamiento de centro izquierda (3,6 siendo 1 la extrema izquierda y 10 la extrema derecha), los de los medios conservadores giren firme y paulatinamente a la derecha. De un lado, los de sus representantes tradicionales acentúan el conservadurismo: Abc pasa del 6,0 en 1993 al 6,3 en 2008; la Cope, del 5,5 al 6,5. De otro, los lectores de El Mundo giran por completo y cruzan el Rubicón, pasando de la izquierda (valor 4,2 en 1993) a la derecha (valor 6,0 en 2008).

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Dice Sánchez Cuenca que en la derechización de los intelectuales españoles hay una cuestión generacional que no cabe soslayar. Sin duda y es ahí donde conviene destacar el trabajo realizado por El Mundo. Desde su posición de primera línea en la pinza IU-PP que atenazó a Felipe González entre 1993 y 1996, cuando entre sus lectores contaba con un 15% de votantes comunistas, su concurso ha sido determinante para canalizar la evolución de una generación para la que no era difícil identificar corrupción y terrorismo de Estado con PSOE. Su habilidad ha consistido en sacar de foco al franquismo y a la derecha de UCD, hoy en el PP, quizás porque era para su director la forma de autoexculparse de su conformidad con el derecho a la autodeterminación de Euskadi o su defensa de la guerra sucia contra ETA, defendidas por él durante parte de la transición. El hecho es que ha sabido galvanizar los sentimientos antisocialistas de antiguos votantes comunistas y mezclarlos con la filosofía de los nuevos cínicos del 68, "ex" de las más extravagantes izquierdas, y conducirlos hacia la exultante y sectaria vitalidad de la nueva derecha.

¿Por qué la relación entre la mano y la cabeza es básica?
Nuestra potencia mental se desarrolló a través de las manos, de la manipulación de cosas. Hoy pensamos en las actividades materiales como cosas estúpidas, percibimos nuestros cerebros como una maquinaria autosuficiente. Es erróneo. Hay un proceso abierto entre mejorar las capacidades físicas y el pensamiento, una relación estrecha entre la mano, la cabeza y el corazón. Pensamos un diseño y creemos que esa imagen mental puede proyectarse al mundo. Una política malísima: no aprendemos de la práctica.

Parece aquella vieja división filosófica entre alma y cuerpo.
No es la filosofía sólo, la política también. El capitalismo ha alentado esta división. En las últimas décadas los bancos han negociado con abstracciones, teorizan sobre los valores y pierden el contacto con lo que es una fábrica, una tienda. Muchos compran y venden empresas que no entienden. Ni lo necesitan, porque compran su valor monetizado. Y no hay posibilidad, artesanía, de hacer que la empresa sea buena o mala, no hay conocimiento. Compran una empresa de colchones y la venden a otra pero con más deuda, esta hace lo mismo. La empresa cada vez tiene menos capital y tiende a la quiebra. Le pregunté a uno de los compradores: ¿Has visto cómo se fabrica un colchón? Me dijo que para qué, si sólo iba a ser propietario tres meses. Así se desarrolla ahora la economía capitalista, se desprecia la praxis, las manos en la masa, no saben qué hacer porque de hecho nunca han gestionado nada.

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Usted rechaza lo que implica la idea de sostenibilidad.
Porque no somos propietarios de la naturaleza. Sostenibilidad significa mantener las cosas como están. Es una metáfora errónea. Podemos funcionar con mucho menos. Menos tráfico, menos carbono. Distintos tipos de edificio. Debemos cambiar la noción de la modernidad de que el ser humano siempre dominaría la naturaleza. Produce autodestrucción. Copenhague ha sido terrible, especialmente los chinos, que cinco días antes decían verde verde, y luego que no, que no quieren que nadie interfiera con ellos ni conozcan su tecnología. Aterrador. Y los europeos, fuera de juego.

There was no one moment that crystallized my thinking or relieved me of my guilt. Rather, it was a series of observations: Most of the classic songs and movies that celebrate Christmas don't even mention God or Jesus. Santa doesn't check church attendance to decide whether he's going to give a child a present—he checks whether she's been naughty or nice. He's the perfect secular judge of moral fiber. To say that the secularists injure the Christmas spirit is much like the claim that two men getting hitched will besmirch the sanctity of marriage. Why should the way I mark Christmas bother anyone? Christians appalled by my secular holiday will no doubt argue that I am depriving myself of the greater joy that comes with accepting Jesus into your heart. But I'm not attempting to take away anyone's right to go to church or to display a Nativity scene. All I need to celebrate Christmas is a tree, stockings, baked goods, some people I love, and some gifts to give (and, yes, receive).

My family is not alone in celebrating a Christless Christmas. According to a February 2008 survey by the Pew Forum, 16.1 percent of Americans are unaffiliated with any faith. For those of us without a religion to call our own, Christmas is the most enjoyable holiday—I've always preferred it to Thanksgiving, whose accoutrements and traditions I've never been able to enjoy. Professional football, turkey, and Black Friday pale in comparison with the trappings of Christmas. What was the last great Thanksgiving song you sang or movie you saw?

Some evidence suggests that Christmas itself was merely a reappropriation of the pagan festival of Saturnalia. If that is in fact the case, my godless Christmas is more an insult to ancient Romans than to Christians. Since there aren't too many of them left, I won't let it worry me.

The best thing we nonbelievers can do, in fact, is be honest about not celebrating the religious side of Christmas. Each Christmas and Easter, churches have to struggle to accommodate the extra crowds who show up for holiday services. While pews may be partially filled or even deserted on a Sunday over the summer, the holidays see a huge increase in attendance as the CEOs (Christmas and Easter Onlys) stop by. The problem is particularly pronounced in Catholic churches, as Christmas is a holy day of obligation. When holiday church attendance is motivated by guilt instead of a genuine state of religious worship, it creates headaches for everyone—and takes up valuable pew real estate.

In this highly partisan year, we did not see a sharpening of the battles over religion and culture.

Yes, we continued to fight over gay marriage, and arguments about abortion were a feature of the health care debate. But what's more striking is that other issues--notably economics and the role of government--trumped culture and religion in the public square. The culture wars wentinto recession along with the economy.

The most striking transformation occurred on the right end of politics. For now, the loudest and most activist sections of the conservative cause are not its religious voices but the mostly secular, anti-government Tea Party activists.

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At the same time, President Obama has been unabashed in offering his views on religious questions. Two of the most important speeches of his first year--his addresses at the Notre Dame graduation in May and in Oslo this month when he received the Nobel Peace Prize--were suffused with the language of faith. At Notre Dame, the president lavishly praised the Catholic social justice tradition. In Oslo, he spoke as a Christian realist clearly conversant with the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr, the great 20th-century theologian.

On President Bush's faith-based initiative, Obama has made reforms but largely avoided or postponed dealing with the most controversial questions.

Even the cultural and religious conflicts that have persisted were debated at a lower volume. Going into the health care skirmishes, both supporters and opponents of abortion rights pledged that they would not try to upset current arrangements that bar federal funding of abortion. Although they feuded bitterly over what this meant in practice, their opening positions reflected a pulling back from the brink.

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In the meantime, religious progressives are mobilized to a degree not seen since the civil rights years. They weighed in regularly on health care, providing energy for the compromises on abortion that would otherwise have won little organized support.

Of course, it was inevitable that cultural and religious issues would at least partially recede during a sharp economic downturn. Such matters also declined in importance during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and none more so than the previous decade's struggle over the prohibition of alcohol.

Today, the situation is much bleaker. After George W. Bush's two terms, conservatives must reckon with the consequences of a presidency that failed, in large part, because of its fervent commitment to movement ideology: the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy; the blind faith in a deregulated, Wall Street-centric market; the harshly punitive "culture war" waged against liberal "elites." That these precepts should have found their final, hapless defender in John McCain, who had resisted them for most of his long career, only confirms that movement doctrine retains an inflexible and suffocating grip on the GOP.

More telling than Barack Obama's victory is the consensus, steadily building since Election Day, that the nation has sunk —or been plunged— into its darkest economic passage since the Great Depression. And, as Obama pushes boldly ahead, apparently with public support, the right is struggling to reclaim its authority as the voice of opposition. The contrast with 1993, when the last Democratic president took office, is instructive. Like Obama, Bill Clinton was elected in hard economic times and, like him, promised a stimulus program, only to see his modest proposal ($19.5 billion) stripped almost bare by the Senate minority leader, Bob Dole, even though Democrats had handily won the White House and Senate Republicans formed nearly as small a minority as they do today. The difference was that the Republicans —disciplined, committed, self-assured— held the ideological advantage, which Dole leveraged through repeated use of the filibuster. Today, such a stratagem seems unthinkable. There is instead almost universal agreement —reinforced by the penitential testimony of Alan Greenspan and, more recently, by grudgingly conciliatory Republicans— that the most plausible economic rescue will involve massive government intervention, quite possibly on the scale of the New Deal/Fair Deal of the 1930s and '40s and perhaps even the New Frontier/Great Society of the 1960s. All this suggests that movement doctrine has not only been defeated but discredited.

Yet, even as the right begins to regroup, it is not clear that its leaders have absorbed the full implications of their defeat. They readily concede that the Democrats are in charge and, in Obama, have a leader of rare political skills. Many on the right also admit that the specific failures of the outgoing administration were legion. But what of the verdict issued on movement conservatism itself?

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What conservatives have yet to do is confront the large but inescapable truth that movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead. And yet they should, because the death of movement politics can only be a boon to the right, since it has been clear for some time the movement is profoundly and defiantly un-conservative--in its ideas, arguments, strategies, and above all its vision.