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Tuesday, March 25, 2003
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Permaculture is practiced by farmers in Vietnam, by bushmen in Namibia -- and by a college professor near downtown Greensboro. Founded by Australian-born Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in 1978, permaculture has been defined as “a system of applied design for the creation of sustainable human habitat.” The word combines “permanent” and “agriculture” or “permanent” and “culture. “It’s basically a way of designing our landscapes so that whatever we do ends up having the look and feel and functional workings of an ecosystem,” says Dr. Charles Headington, a UNC-G lecturer who promotes permaculture by word and deed. “We try to imitate natural ecosystems. We even intensify what ecosystems do. Headington regularly conducts workshops and classes on the topic, but he also integrates the system into his life. His family’s 50 X 150-foot lot on Mendenhall Street in Greensboro is a living, breathing testimony to the joys of this sustainable way of being in the world. (03/25/03) | |
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John Brady Kiesling writes: It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer. The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America’s most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security. ... Mr. Secretary, I urge you to listen to America’s friends around the world. Even here in Greece, purported hotbed of European anti-Americanism, we have more and closer friends than the American newspaper reader can possibly imagine. Even when they complain about American arrogance, Greeks know that the world is a difficult and dangerous place, and they want a strong international system, with the U.S. and EU in close partnership. When our friends are afraid of us rather than for us, it is time to worry. And now they are afraid. Who will tell them convincingly that the United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty, security, and justice for the planet? (03/25/03) | |
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Washinton Post -- Iraq, March 24-The Iraq war's first deep assault by attack helicopters turned into a frenzied battle early this morning as U.S. pilots came under intense fire from anti-aircraft artillery and individual Iraqis with rifles, pilots said. One AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter went down in Iraqi-held territory, due either to enemy fire or mechanical failure. The pre-dawn attack was aimed at tanks and other armament of President Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard around Karbala, south of Baghdad. Col. Bill Wolf, commander of the Army's 11th Aviation Regiment, said the air assault by Longbows crippled four or five Iraqi tanks and several light vehicles. But pilots said they were forced to abandon most of their targets because of an intense curtain of fire that rose from streets, roofs and backyards, hitting nearly all their aircraft. "It was coming from all directions-I got shot front, back, left and right," said pilot Bob Duffney, 41, a chief warrant officer 4 from Springfield, Mass., who flew combat helicopters in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "In Desert Storm, we didn't have a firefight like this," he said. ... One of the pilots, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Steven Kilgore, 34, of Gary, Ind., said it was not surprising that the sophisticated helicopters faced such a challenge from relatively primitive weaponry. "The Longbow is designed for going after armor and high-tech air defense," he said. But with low-tech air defense "until they start firing, you don't know they're there." ... "As long as I live, I'll never forget that sound: tink-tink-tink," said the pilot, Capt. Chad Lewis, 30, of Rolla, Mo. "There were trees and houses. People were firing everywhere." (03/25/03) | |
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New York Times: Science -- Working with new evidence and a trove of re-examined relics, many of them recovered from the basement of a Yale museum here, archaeologists have revised their thinking about the significance of Machu Picchu, the most famous "lost city" of the Incas. The new interpretation comes more than 90 years after the explorer Hiram Bingham III bushwhacked his way to a high ridge in the Andes of Peru and beheld a dreamscape out of the pre-Columbian past. ... But finding Machu Picchu proved to be easier than solving the mystery of its place in the Inca empire, arguably the richest and most powerful in the New World when Europeans arrived. The imposing architecture attested to the skill and audacity of the Incas. But who had lived at this isolated site and for what purpose? ... The spectacular site was not, as Bingham supposed, the traditional birthplace of the Inca people or the final stronghold of the Incas in their losing struggle against Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Nor was it a sacred spiritual center occupied by chosen women, the "virgins of the sun," and presided over by priests who worshiped the sun god. Instead, Machu Picchu was one of many private estates of the emperor and, in particular, the favored country retreat for the royal family and Inca nobility. It was, archaeologists say, the Inca equivalent of Camp David, albeit on a much grander scale. This interpretation and other new research inform a major exhibition at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale. The show, "Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas," will be here until May 3. Then it is to travel to Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Denver, Houston and Chicago. (03/25/03) | |
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New York Times: A Science Book Review -- DARWIN'S BLIND SPOT: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection by Frank Ryan: ''Symbiosis,'' Ryan says, ''is very different from Darwin's idea of natural selection,'' and Darwinians have constantly campaigned against fellow biologists who study symbiosis. Even now, ''the majority of Darwinians still resist the notion that symbiosis has played an important role in the evolution of complex life-forms.'' Most biologists will be surprised to learn this. But let's take Ryan's other theme first. Just how important is symbiosis? Ryan's argumentative strategy is to enumerate examples of it, and then conclude that it underlies much of evolution. The examples have a natural-history interest of their own, though Ryan has subordinated them to his general argument. The real problem is that a list alone cannot tell us the relative importance of any evolutionary process. Someone else might compile a list 100 times as long of examples in which evolution occurred without symbiosis. Some other method is needed. In recent years, we have gained several lines of evidence from the Human Genome Project and related research that could answer the question. For instance, consider the sequence of human DNA. The preliminary sequence, published in 2001, was first thought to contain about 30,000 genes; the most recent estimates are nearer 22,000. The earliest forms of life, about 3.5 billion years ago, would have had about one gene, though it was probably not recognizable as a gene at that stage. So, we can ask what fraction of that increase, realized through our ancestors over 3.5 billion years, was contributed by symbiotic mergers and how much by nonsymbiotic increases. Uncovering the ancestry of a gene is tough work, and analysis of the human genome is just starting, so we can't be sure. But it looks as though symbiosis contributed only a small number, perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 genes. Currently, it is a good guess that more than 90 percent of human genes have nonsymbiotic origins. Other studies have pointed to the same general conclusion: in evolution symbiosis is important, but relatively rare. And what of Ryan's other theme, the conflict between symbiosis and Darwin's theory of natural selection? He concentrates on political history, and finds that the wicked Darwinians supported, or inspired, imperialism, eugenics and social Darwinism, selfish capitalism, sexism and, finally, Hitler. ''Altogether revealing is the title of the book by the French science historian Andre Pichot: 'La Societe Pure: De Darwin a Hitler.' '' By contrast, Ryan's writers on symbiosis created ''a more sympathetic and cooperative ethos.'' (03/25/03) | |
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New York Times: Science -- The Republic of Palau in the western Pacific is working with Saga University in southern Japan to build a system that can produce enough drinking water to meet the needs of its 20,000 residents, while producing electricity, said the country's president, Tommy Remengesau Jr. The concept was highlighted this week at one of the 350 sessions at the Third World Water Forum, which is under way here. It has attracted 10,000 participants from around the world, along with ministers and some heads of state from more than 150 countries. The university is preparing to build an experimental power plant off the coast of Palau that brings up cold seawater from the depths of the sea to an evaporator chamber near the ocean surface. As the water is heated by the surrounding warm surface water, it releases ammonia gas, which then drives the system's power generator, said Yasuyuki Ikegami, deputy director of the Institute of Ocean Energy at Saga University. Meanwhile, the heated water would be transferred to a separate low-pressure chamber where it boils at a lower temperature, producing steam, which would be condensed and collected as fresh water for human consumption, leaving salt crystals behind. One experimental system, which produces power but no usable water, is scheduled to be put into use off the coast of India this month, Mr. Ikegami added. (03/25/03) | |
6:09:33 AM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
4/1/2003; 5:17:04 AM.
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