Monday, November 04, 2002

Beyond Belief Barry Carter writes: Imagine telling a person from the Agriculture Age that one day their children will no longer be taught at home. Their children will go off to a building where the parents have never visited and be taught and disciplined by people that the parents have never met. They will be grouped with hundreds of other children in one building. The father and mother will no longer work at home with their family. The mother and father will work inside of separate buildings many miles apart. They will have so little control over their work that they will have to request permission for a drink of water or to relieve themselves. Since both parents will work outside the home, the grandparents will be warehoused in a building with dozens of others and taken care of by people who don't know or love them. The parents and children will be away from home all day doing different things in different places and controlled by people who have little stake in their long-term well-being. (11/04/02) Fiftieth Birthday of the H Bomb BBC Science -- Fifty years ago on Friday, November 01, 1952, one of the more significant events in the era of mushroom clouds, megaton yields and mutually assured destruction took place. It was the detonation of the world's first hydrogen bomb, set off at a United States test site in the Pacific Ocean. The blast, timed at 1915 GMT, produced a light brighter than a 1,000 suns and a heat wave felt 50 kilometres away. Although successive international treaties have sought to reduce the nuclear stockpile, there are still enough hydrogen bombs in the world to destroy humanity many times over. ... The first H-bomb, nicknamed "Mike", was a singularly impractical device. It weighed around 70 tonnes and was as big as a house - but it worked. The US lead in the arms race was short-lived, however. Less than a year later, the Soviet Union too had a working hydrogen bomb. Each side went on testing and building bigger and more sophisticated H-bombs over the next few decades, as did other global powers - France, China and the UK. --They call that progress!  (11/04/02) USA's New Weapons The London Guardian -- Britain has been involved in secret talks with the United States over the development of so-called non-lethal weapons, including lasers that blind the enemy and microwave systems that cook the skin of human targets. The Observer has established that British and US military leaders met at the Ministry of Defence HQ in London to discuss the operational benefits of such technology when used as a 'persuasive tool' against people from enemy regimes. Documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act detail talks about battlefield uses of the weapons and whether they could be used to back up economic sanctions against target countries. The weapons include lasers that can blind and stun an enemy and cut through metal to disable vehicles. Another weapon discussed was a system that uses microwave beams to heat the water in human skin in the same way as a microwave oven cooks a meal. The third category of weapons was the use of gases similar to those deployed to end the terrorist siege in a Moscow theatre, which killed more than 100 hostages. (11/04/02) Seafood Only $20,000 a Pound BBC Science -- The crisis of dwindling fish stocks worldwide is being addressed at a summit in Malaysia on Sunday. Demand is outstripping supply as stocks are depleted with disastrous consequences for roughly one sixth of the world's population who use fish as their primary source of protein. ... The rising taste for luxury fish like farmed salmon is exacerbating the situation: salmon are fed on low-value fish and can consume up to four times their own weight, so further reducing overall supply.  The summit in Malaysia will look at ways of reducing unregulated or illegal fishing, which accounts for as much as a third of the catch in some fisheries.  And it will aim to reduce the amount of fish caught in trawler nets but then discarded as unwanted. But these measures alone would not balance supply and demand. (11/04/02) For Whom the Bell Tolls Scientific American -- Almost half of all plant species could be facing extinction, according to new research by botanists in the United States. Until now the official tally of endangered plants, compiled by the World Conservation Union, has suggested that only about one in eight plant species could disappear. But the researchers, writing in the journal Science, now believe this figure to be a gross underestimate. They say the old assessment does not include a reliable tally of species at risk in the tropical latitudes, where most of the world's plants grow. ... Drs. Pitman and Jorgensen tell Science: "Only with the species-by-species information generated by such an undertaking will conservationists be able to monitor and prevent the large-scale plant extinctions foreseen to occur in the tropics in this century."  Nigel Pitman is from the Duke Center for Tropical Conservation, Duke University, North Carolina; Peter Jorgensen is attached to Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis. (11/04/02) Black and White in New Haven, Connecticut Ed Vulliamy writes: New Haven's tent city was established after the authorities closed down a homeless overflow shelter a few weeks ago. At sundown yesterday it was to be cleared by the police, with Charlene, Scott, Rod and 150 others sent on their way into what promises to be a vicious winter. New Haven is a metaphor for the America which on Tuesday elects its Senate and House of Representatives. It is the country's fourth poorest city, where the ghetto laps at the walls of a university worth $11 billion (£7bn) in tax-exempt endowments, educating America's next generation of rulers. A sign at the freeway turn-off advertises New Haven as the birthplace of President George Bush. It is a city with the same infant mortality rate as Malaysia and a terrifying rate of deaths from AIDS - one day care center alone commemorated the loss of 600 clients at a memorial service on Wednesday. But it is located in America' richest state, Connecticut, which has, proportionally, more millionaires than any other. This is the super-rich New York hinterland for those too wealthy even to feel the pinch on Wall Street. It is called the 'Zebra Coast', laid out in strips of black/white, black/white; poor/rich, poor/rich. And in New Haven the polarity is underpinned by the history of Yale University's engagement in the slave trade - currently being excavated by some of its own students. (11/04/02) http://www.SynEARTH.net/ 5:44:25 AM

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