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Sunday, June 30, 2002
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Good Morning, Well June is mostly done. I made great progress on my new book about Human Knowing and Intelligence. I hope to finish it in July. Don Steehler finished scanning Haskell's Full Circle. It should be up this week. As always too busy.
I hope we all have a safe and pleasant July 4.
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Jim Douglass writes: Nuclear weapons--which represent the end not only of New York City and Washington, D.C., but of our entire world--are already accessible to small groups of people. No billion-dollar "missile shield" will stop a suitcase holocaust weapon from being carried into downtown Manhattan. We are living literally at the end of the world. Will we recognize that? Or will our talking heads take us blindly to Armageddon? Martin Luther King, Jr., understood our situation profoundly. He summed it up in his contingent prophecy for the rest of human history: "Nonviolence or nonexistence." King knew humanity had passed beyond the imaginable limits of violence at Hiroshima. Today, God and history challenge us to pass equally beyond the imaginable limits of nonviolence. King, like Gandhi and Jesus, felt there were in truth no limits to nonviolence. Like the prophets before him, King was a realist. By "nonviolence" he did not mean a world without conflict. He meant a deepening, widening commitment to meet every conflict with unflinching compassion, noncooperation with evil, and an effort to see through the eyes of one's opponent. "Love your enemies," Jesus said; see through their eyes while resisting all evil, Gandhi and King interpreted. In the nuclear age, this is not a counsel of perfection, but a ground rule of survival. (06/30/02) | |
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Denis Hayes writes: Several salmon and steelhead populations were recently listed as threatened or endangered in the Pacific Northwest. Similar collapses have affected many other major fisheries, from New England cod to Peruvian anchovies. In recent years, the global wild fish catch has fallen in all but two of the world's 15 major marine fishing regions. This bleak situation has been masked by two factors that have keep total worldwide fish "tonnage" relatively stable. From the mid-1980s to 2000, aquaculture production grew from 7 million metric tons to 36 million metric tons. Second, fishers are turning to smaller, less valuable fish (pilchard, mackerel, pollock, dogfish, monkfish and other species) that once were considered trash. They are fishing their way down the food chain; the South Pacific catch of orange roughy fell 70 percent in six years. Fish are at the top of the marine policy agenda because they are an important part of human diets and regional economies. Worldwide, humans obtain more of their animal protein from fish than either beef or pork. (06/30/02) | |
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New York Times -- LAN YU, Taiwan, June 27 - Steep volcanic slopes carpeted with tropical vegetation vault out of crystalline waters and magnificent coral reefs here, while a peaceful tribe of aborigines, largely insulated from the outside world until the early 1970's, tries to cling to ancient ways. This island seems like a tropical paradise except for one problem: it is also home to one of the world's most troubled nuclear waste dumps. Up to 20,000 barrels of radioactive debris need to be fixed because chemical reactions inside are cracking the concrete with which the waste was mixed, the site's director says. The barrels are in seaside concrete trenches on the most windswept tip of this typhoon- and earthquake-prone island, at the base of a 1,500-foot-high bluff prone to rockslides. ... Construction of the dump was finished in 1982. Workers at nuclear reactors on the main island of Taiwan began mixing radioactive waste with concrete, sealing it in 55-gallon steel drums and shipping it here for storage in the 23 reinforced-concrete trenches. But until 1993, the drums were made of inexpensive steel that was not treated to prevent corrosion, and many of these barrels are now rusting, Mr. Wu said. ... Low-quality cement was mixed with the radioactive waste in many of the early barrels, and is now expanding and cracking the steel barrels, said Paul T.H. Huang, the director of the site. As a result, the government is preparing to grind up to a fifth of the 98,000 barrels here and remix them with fresh cement. ... "I've been catching crabs here since I was a kid," said one of the women, who said she was in her early 50's. "Before there were plenty of crabs and fish; now there are not so many." (06/30/02) | |
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New York Times -- It was not an easy sell when the Forest Service came to people living among the crowded trees of the Rockies last summer and said it wanted to set the woods on fire. What the men in green had in mind was not just a little burn, but a big blaze, 8,000 acres of national forest land bordering some very expensive new houses. Homeowners were incensed. Suburban communities said the smoke would hurt people's health. Colorado politicians, from the governor to legislators, tried to stop it and other planned fires, citing fears of flames getting out of control. But this week, the biggest wildfire in Colorado history, the Hayman fire, dropped dead in its tracks when it met the boundary of the fire set deliberately by the Forest Service last year. ... But this summer's blazes show that controlled burns can be crucial in fire prevention. Forest Service officials note that these intentional blazes — one in Colorado and the other in Arizona — almost did not happen because of opposition from homeowners and politicians. (06/30/02) | |
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New York Times -- A third dry summer in a row has brought another wave of forest fires to the American West. With two million acres already gone and summer just begun, it would seem logical for everyone to set differences aside and pursue the sound firefighting strategy devised by the Clinton administration and ratified by President Bush last year. ... In 2000, in the midst of roaring fires that eventually consumed 8.4 million acres, the Clinton administration and six Western governors agreed on a fresh approach. It consisted essentially of controlled burns plus an aggressive program to thin the underbrush, especially in vulnerable areas known as the "wildland/urban interface," where an increasing number of people have built homes near the forests. (06/30/02) | |
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What do you get when you mix nuclear weapons and religious fanaticism? Two great tastes that taste great together! For the last several years, India and Pakistan have teetered on the very brink of nuclear holocaust. To the informed observer, it's clear that sooner or later, these bitter enemies are going to get in the ring again. (Remember, India and Pakistan have already fought three wars in the last sixty years.) Only this time, it's going to be one heck of a fireworks show. Their nukes are in control of the military and can presumably be used at the discretion of one or more commander(s) in the field. Just one loopy officer who's willing to die for Allah, or Vishnu, or his own personal three-headed goat god, and BLAMO! It's on, Baby! Seems it's not a matter of "if." It's only a matter of "when." Which brings us to The Indo-Pakistani Deadpool. "But," you ask, "what on earth is a deadpool?" It's really simple. It's a "pool" (like a sports pool) in which one bets on the exact instance of death. All you have to do is guess when the first Indian or Pakistani nuclear device will be detonated in anger to win fantastic prizes! Whoo-hoo! What could be easier? It's fun and exciting for the entire family! (06/30/02) | |
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Ed Loring writes: Housing precedes employment. In the United States, you cannot live in a house until you've earned the rent money. Job training, literacy initiatives, self-esteem programs, all assume that housing will follow employment. But George's experience indicates otherwise: You cannot hold a job or build a life until you have housing. The cheap labor and temporary employment that drive the U.S. economy demand a steady supply of new workers. So policy-makers and corporate bigwigs are unwilling to interrupt the flow by first providing housing for the people who fill those jobs. But putting employment before housing fits the needs of employers, not workers. The same revolving door that fills the slots in the factories is chewing up the people who pass through it. (06/28/02) | |
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Eric Stewart writes: One of the first things that grabbed my attention during my week long tutelage, workshop, and exercise in setting aside my personal differences with people for the attainment of a common goal, was that the bison had NEVER been listed as an endangered species. Apparently, the "reasoning" behind this fallacy is that they are, genetically, not appreciably different from cattle. This is baseless as such a study has never been conducted. So goes the argument, a female bison's ovum can be fertilized by the sperm of a domesticated bull, something that never occurs in nature, i.e. all "beefalo" are a result of artificial insemination. By this reasoning, your Rottweiler is a wolf merely because it can become impregnated by one and this DOES occur without the meddling hand of man. In fact, Yellowstone's bison don't even officially exist, managing to not be listed as a species even present there by the National Park Service. They're there alright - and they're big. You can't miss them. Given the fact that there is a considerable mandate for their protection, one can only conclude that their exclusion is political in nature. (06/28/02) | |
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Jim Tull writes: When we state that "the poor will always be with us," we are expressing a reality we accept as a given ... But it isn't true. Marshall Sahlins, one of today's most prominent anthropologists, has identified hunter-gatherer tribal peoples who enjoyed--and enjoyed equitably--a kind of wealth that far surpasses in value the benefits we associate with having wealth in our culture. He dubbed these people "the original affluent societies." (Using this lens, Columbus and other European explorers and colonists did not discover poverty here in the Americas. They created it.) Yet the belief persists that poverty is inevitable. In fact, this belief is one of those collectively held assumptions that constitute the mythology of our culture and our contemporary global civilization. And it is not an idle myth, but rather a vital one, a powerful and essential means of sustaining the dominant political and economic structures of our society. (06/27/02) | |
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Interview with Thomas Homer-Dixon: In The Ingenuity Gap, Homer-Dixon explains that our ability to solve problems depends on the relationship between our requirements for, and supply of, ingenuity. While human scientific and technological understanding has never been greater, we have simultaneously created greater and more complex problems. The difference between our need for ideas to solve complex problems and our actual supply of those ideas is the “ingenuity gap.” It is the size of this gap, rather our level of sophistication or the magnitude of our problems, that ultimately determines our ability to overcome the challenges that our societies face. (06/27/02) | |
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Wayne A. Hunt writes: The final moments of the Cold War were explained by one memorable phrase: The End of History? The phrase, with a question mark left dangling at the end, appeared in an article in the journal The National Interest which appeared in the summer of 1989. The words were borrowed from Hegel and were used not just to describe, but to encapsulate, a world were the big ideas which drive events had been taken away — they had just evaporated! But on one fact there was little disagreement: the western way of organizing society had triumphed over all rivals. ... The return of the business cycle changed this scenario, just as the events of 11 September, 2001, changed it further still. Technology-driven growth in the stock market shifted from the Internet revolution to the revolution in nanotechnology and biotechnology. Cultural commentators did not hesitate to draw a lesson from these events. Naomi Klein announced that History, with a capital “H”, had returned. Epic struggles were back, as were the “grand narratives” that postmodernist thinkers had consigned to oblivion. (06/27/02) | |
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It has been said by many who have had limited access to the prophecies in the past, that the Hopi prophecies of the coming earth changes are among the most ancient and accurate available. The Elders have come forth at this time because they believe that we have passed the point of no return and major changes are imminent, beginning within the next few months. It is their hope to “soften” the effects by appealing to all to return to a simpler, more spiritual way of life. (06/27/02) | |
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"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." ... "If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose." ... "Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer."... "You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on." (06/26/02) | |
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Yahoo News -- The political jockeying came amid estimates that the current debt limit of $5.95 trillion would probably be reached on Friday. While that would prevent further borrowing, officials said Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill had other measures at his disposal that could prevent a government default for an unspecified period of time. ... The Democratic-controlled Senate approved legislation unanimously two weeks ago to raise the debt limit by $450 billion. ... The debt limit impasse lingered while lawmakers reported no progress in their attempt to agree on a compromise spending bill for the war on terrorism. (06/26/02) | |
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USA Today -- Public confidence that the United States and its allies are winning has slipped to 33%, the lowest level since Sept. 11. In January, amid news reports that the U.S. military had al-Qaeda terrorists on the run, 66% said the United States was winning the war. (06/26/02) | |
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Washington Post -- WorldCom Inc. said last night it had improperly accounted for $3.8 billion in expenses and would restate its financial results for the last five quarters. ... It had swept $3.8 billion in ordinary expenses off its profit-and-loss statement by counting them as capital expenditures, which are deducted from revenue over a longer period, not immediately. The company had previously reported profits of $1.5 billion for 2001 and $130 million for this year's first quarter. Company financial statements based on this maneuver were approved by Andersen, the company's outside auditors until May. ... In the past year, as telecommunication companies nationwide have crashed, investor faith ebbed in Ebbers's ability to guide the company out of debt. He resigned under pressure in April and was replaced by Sidgmore, the former UUNet chief, who promised to reduce debt, sell underperforming divisions, and cut costs dramatically. His plans included laying off 17,000 people. (06/26/02) | |
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John Brockman writes: Sitting with Lloyd in the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Boston, overlooking the tranquil Boston Public Gardens, I am suddenly flooded with fantasies of licensing arrangements regarding the nuclear spins of my brain. No doubt this would be a first in distributed computing. "You've got a heck of a lot of nuclear spins in your brain," Lloyd says. "If you've ever had magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, done on your brain, then they were in fact tickling those spins. What we're talking about in terms of quantum computing, is just sophisticated 'spin tickling'." This leads me to wonder how "spin tickling" fits into intellectual property law. How about remote access? Can you in theory designate and exploit people who would have no idea that their brains were being used for quantum computation? (06/26/02) | |
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As introduction to a new essay by wiseman Daniel Quinn, Reason Wilken writes: For generations we have embraced the notion that industrial civilization evolved naturally from hunter-gatherer societies, when in reality it was a distinct split that began with the dawn of the Agricultural Age. Hunter-gatherer societies have not been entirely replaced by industrial civilization, and there a number existing today. Despite this fact, our cultural attitude has created a stigma surrounding smaller self-sustaining societies like these. Non-industrial people are “uncivilized”, “primitive” and “ignorant” no matter how organized or self-sufficient they are. Gradually, our culture is beginning to realize that we are flawed in some ways and we cannot sustain our current drain on natural resources indefinitely. But even if it were widely accepted that industrial culture has a finite lifespan (which is quickly running out), it is unlikely that we would all be capable of adopting a simpler style of life. Even if the life of the earth were at stake (as it might soon be), it is still not plausible to believe that we would make the switch. The very philosophy underlying industrial culture runs contrary to hunter-gatherer principles. (06/26/02) | |
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The Nation -- Mark Hertsgaard writes: The journalist I.F. Stone used to joke that the government issues so much information every day, it can't help but let the truth slip out every once in a while. The Bush Administration's recent report on global warming is a classic example. Though far from perfect, it contains some crucial but awkward truths that neither George W. Bush nor his environmentalist critics want to confront. Which may explain why the Administration has sought to bury the report, while critics have misrepresented its most ominous conclusion. ... The worst thing about the new global warming report is that it is absolutely correct about a fundamental but often unmentioned aspect of the problem: the lag effect. Most greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere for approximately 100 years. The upshot of this undeniable chemical fact is that no matter what remedial steps are taken today, humanity is doomed to experience however much global warming the past 100 years of human activities will generate. That does not mean we should make matters worse by continuing to burn fossil fuels, as Bush foolishly urges; our children and grandchildren deserve better than that. It does mean, however, that we as a civilization must not only shift to green energy sources immediately but also begin planning how we will adapt to a world that is bound to be a hotter, drier, more disaster-punctuated place in the twenty-first century. (06/26/02) | |
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Boston Globe -- Every year, thousands of Americans die waiting for an organ transplant. To meet the demand, researchers - many of them in the Boston area - have been trying to grow hearts, lungs, and other organs in the laboratory. But they have been stymied: As the new organ tissue flourishes and grows thicker, the cells are starved of blood and die. The Boston team, which includes researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital, has been working to grow a new circulatory system to feed the organs. They created a vast network of tiny plastic tubes - many smaller than a human hair - and then coaxed cells to line the insides and form a network of live capillaries. The plastic tubes are designed to dissolve in the body, leaving the capillaries to supply oxygen and nutrients deep into any tissue, sustaining it. As news of the team's progress has spread, other scientists have let out a ''cheer of good will,'' said Michael Sefton, director of the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. ''This is central enabling technology for tissue engineering.'' To create a liver, for example, the team hopes to alternate thin layers of capillary networks with thin layers of liver cells. When the scaffold melts away, patients would be left with a functioning mass of liver cells fed by its own blood supply. (06/25/02) | |
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BBC News -- Argentina: Millions were plunged into poverty after the government posted the biggest sovereign debt default in history, devalued the peso by over two thirds and froze millions of bank accounts last year. And now there are numerous reports across the country of people suffering severe malnutrition. ... One of the volunteers, Rosa Mina, said: "The parents don't have work, they don't have food, so for many of the children, the only opportunity they have to eat is what we provide here in the kitchen. Like 80% of people in the district, she and her husband are unemployed. But they work with the volunteers to run the feeding centre for the children who would otherwise starve. ... Argentina's Health Minister Ginez Gonzalez Garcia acknowledges the paradox of children living in a country that was once the breadbasket of South America, relying on food handouts. (06/25/02) | |
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BBC News -- Planetary scientists claim: Humans are making more demands on the Earth than it can cope with. ... In 1961, the authors say in their "preliminary and exploratory assessment", humans were using 70% of the capacity of the global biosphere. By 1999, that had risen to 120%. ... They say: "The calculation provides evidence that human activities have exceeded the biosphere's capacity since the 1980s. "This 20% overshoot means that it would require 1.2 Earths, or one Earth for 1.2 years, to regenerate what humanity used in 1999. (06/25/02) | |
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Brian Abernathy writes: I think that the mechanism for turning off globalization will be the depletion of fossil fuels and their subsequent impact on global economic systems. Whether or not globalization is bad or good is not really the question, for me at least, but rather it's the question of whether or not it (globalization) is sustainable. I suspect that it is not because it relies very heavily on fossil fuels. The effects of its demise will likely be the same from your scenario or mine, painful and deadly. However, the last thing we should be doing is trying to get more people more deeply involved in the global economy. (06/25/02) | |
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If you read the newspaper, surf the net, or watch the evening news then you have heard a lot lately about global warming. Earlier this week, I linked to one of the more startling stories in The New York Times where Timothy Egan wrote an article about Alaska's climate is which he stated that: "The average temperature has risen dramatically in the past 30 years and where mosquitoes have shown up in normally frigid Barrow, the northernmost town in North America. Large portions of Alaska are melting and other strange things are happening. Just a few hours' drive from Anchorage, a 1.6-million-hectare spruce forest has been killed by beetles. It is believed to be the largest loss of trees to insects ever recorded in North America. "Government scientists," wrote Egan, "tied the event to rising temperatures, which allow the beetles to reproduce at twice their normal rate. Meanwhile, enormous fires have been raging in bone-dry regions of western and south-western America." (06/25/02) | |
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The Times of India -- President Bush said on Monday, "For too long, the citizens of the Middle East have lived in the midst of death and fear. The hatred of a few holds the hopes of many hostage. The forces of extremism and terror are attempting to kill progress and peace by killing the innocent. And this casts a dark shadow over an entire region. For the sake of all humanity, things must change in the Middle East. ... The United States, along with the European Union and Arab states, will work with Palestinian leaders to create a new constitutional framework and a working democracy for the Palestinian people. And the United States, along with others in the international community, will help the Palestinians organize and monitor fair, multiparty local elections by the end of the year, with national elections to follow. ... So I challenge Israel to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state. ... You have a right to security. And I deeply believe that you need a reformed, responsible Palestinian partner to achieve that security. ... The choice here is stark and simple. The Bible says, "I have set before you life and death; therefore, choose life." (06/25/02) | |
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For eight days in 2002, 14 student teams will compete to capture, convert, store, and use enough solar energy to power our modern lifestyle. Solar Decathletes will be required to provide all the energy for an entire household, including a home-based business and the transportation needs of the household and business. During the event, only the solar energy available within the perimeter of each house may be used to generate the power needed to compete in the ten Solar Decathlon contests. (06/24/02) | |
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One of the more remarkable discoveries of the late 20th century was that nature builds nanostructures in the form of geodesic domes. The prototype molecule of such materials, consisting of 60 carbon atoms arranged in a pattern resembling a soccer ball, was aptly named buckminsterfullerene. ... Our interest, as solar cell specialists was sparked both by its optical properties and by the fact that the material can be synthesized from graphite and purified using nothing but heat–that is without chemicals. The optical properties of C60 have much in common with a theoretically ideal (albeit environmentally questionable) photovoltaic (PV) material, cadmium telluride. This fact, together with the exciting possibility that it may be possible to generate and purify C60 using merely an intense beam of sunlight, suggest that buckyballs might be the ideal material for solar cells. (06/24/02) | |
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Win Wenger writes: The trick is to put the frogs live into luke warm water, then gradually heat it. At any time until they lose consciousness, the frogs could, if alarmed, hop out of the pot and escape. But they don't, because they don't notice that the gradually-warming water is heating up. Thank goodness we clever human beings, on this gradually warming Earth of ours, aren't stupid like those frogs! Well, as a matter of fact, we have noticed it — some of us, at least. We even have the data projecting the continuing ocean-rise swamping most of our major cities, and the pending disruption and collapse of our agriculture. Far more is going on than perhaps would suffice to alert a frog, even a very stupid frog. Actually, at any given point we could fairly readily stabilize or reverse the temptrend, by any of a great many different means, but chances are that we won't, so settled are we within the walls of our stew pan. (06/24/02) | |
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MIT TECHNOLOGY Review -- What makes Wind Turbine’s Rocky Flats design such a departure is not only its hinged blades, but also their downwind orientation. The Danish design faces the blades into the wind and makes the blades heavy so they won’t bend back and slam into the tower. The Wind Turbine design can’t face the wind—the hinged blades would hit the tower—so the rotor is positioned downwind. Finally, it uses two blades, rather than the three in the traditional design, to further reduce weight. ... Advances in the computer modeling of such dangerous forces as vibration helped the design’s development. Flexible blades add an extra dimension to the machine’s motion; so does the fact that the whole machine can freely swivel with the wind. Wind power faces plenty of obstacles, but there’s more reason than ever to believe these obstacles will be overcome. Worries over the environmental effects of burning fossil fuels and political concerns about an overdependence on petroleum are spurring a boom in wind turbine construction. But it is advances in the technology itself, created by continued strong research efforts, that could provide the most critical impetus for increased use of wind power. (06/24/02) | |
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Science News Online -- A protein that links gluttony and weight gain may be a novel target for antiobesity drugs. Mice lacking this protein can indulge in fatty food but remain as slim as mice on a lower-fat diet, a new study reports. The finding suggests a new avenue to help morbidly obese people lose weight. When food is scarce, stockpiling energy in fat cells is a survival advantage. But when food is plentiful, as in industrialized countries, genes that promote fat storage lead to obesity The molecular mechanisms that translate extra calories into fat deposition are largely unknown. Now, researchers at Kyoto University in Japan have identified a key pathway in the process. Scientists have long known that the hormone called gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP) is secreted into the bloodstream by the small intestine in response to ingested foods, particularly fatty ones. GIP binds to cell-surface receptors on distant fat cells, signaling food intake. (06/23/02) | |
7:23:40 AM 
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© TrustMark
2002
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
7/1/2002; 6:28:32 AM.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves
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