|
|
Thursday, April 24, 2003
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Craig Russell writes: It’s easy for those of us who oppose the Government’s immoral slaughtering of Iraqis to blame George W. Bush & Co. But perhaps this war is not as “cut and dried” as we might want it to be. Each of us has to ask himself if he doesn’t bear some responsibility, no matter how indirect, for these deaths. The war is for oil. And certainly those at the top stand to profit a great deal in acquiring access to the rich Iraqi oil fields, just as they stand to profit from the pipelines through Afghanistan that will bring to tankers in the Persian Gulf oil from the former Soviet republics to its north. But that brings up the question of why they will profit from this, and the obvious answer is that they will profit because you and I want that oil. We need it. Our American way of life depends upon it. ... What if, in the minds of G. W. Bush & Co., conquering and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq are necessary, an emergency measure to keep the power on in the United States? Let’s be as blunt as possible: What if this war is not metaphorically but literally a battle for “our way of life”? What if that way of life depends on killing those people and taking that oil, and taking it now? What if not killing them and not taking it means an end to our ease and our comforts? Are we willing to kill others to sustain our lifestyle? If we knew killing X number of people out of sight on the other side of the world would guarantee our way of life for the rest of our lives, would we go along? Conversely, would we be willing to give up this way of life so that these others might live? These are difficult, horrible, terrifying questions that I think each of us has to ask himself. (04/24/03) | |
|
|
|
Dirk Laureyssens writes: The beginning? In most cosmological models space evolves, starting from a point-like entity, around 15 billion years ago and expanding in size. Steven Hawking stated that - under Einsteins conditions of General Relativity - that a configuration of a large mass concentrated in a small volume of space (suggested by the Big Bang models) must have singularity at the beginning, and that means that the Universe had a definite beginning. Hawking said also on Black Holes that the final state of a mass contracting down to inside that Event Horizon is that of a Singularity, of a point with infinite mass concentration and curvature of space, a knot in the fabric of space and time. Interesting. The origin of the gravitation membrane is an absolute gravity field should - in our hypothesis of an unbreakable and infinite elastic membrane (check 'tensegrity of Buckminster') - implicate that gravitons are linked to neighboring gravitons by transversal (90° on the gravitron influencing direction) operating intermediaries. When the membrane curls it curls of course also. The most opportune gravitron structure in a tensegritic membrane is the Buckyball 5-6 binding or triangle shapes which goes over in 'nano-tube'-type tubes (which are hollow) after zillions of pelastrations on the start of the Universe. (04/24/03)
| |
|
|
|
New York Times -- History strongly suggests that Iraq's reconstruction will require a kick-start of substantial foreign capital, particularly to modernize the antiquated oil industry. Can the United States provide the necessary cash, even in the form of private-sector money? The answer is yes — so long as foreign countries are willing to lend it to the United States. For the fact is that America is not only the world's biggest economy. It is also the world's biggest borrower. Its muscular military power is underwritten by foreign capital. ... Thus President Bush's vision of a world recast by military force to suit American tastes has a piquant corollary: the military effort involved will be (unwittingly) financed by the Europeans — including the much reviled French — and the Japanese. Does that not give them just a little leverage over American policy, on the principle that he who pays the piper calls the tune? Balzac once said that if a debtor was big enough then he had power over his creditors; the fatal thing was to be a small debtor. It seems that Mr. Bush and his men have taken this lesson to heart. (04/24/03) | |
|
|
|
CNN Technology -- Sarah Wille didn't get sick when she dissected a fetal pig in science class, because she'd seen its innards before. The 12-year-old had studied the diagrams ahead of time on the Internet over a wireless laptop computer. "Lots of kids were nervous about what the pigs were going to look like and pretty confused because we'd never looked at the inside of anything. It was much easier when we knew what to expect," Sarah said. ... WiFi is already available in many universities, which generally have more resources, but now the technology is trickling down into lower-level schools. It is one of the fastest-growing budget items for technology. Learning anywhere, anytime WiFi, or 802.11b, is an ultra high-speed wireless Internet connection usually available within a radius of a few hundred feet. By setting up multiple access points or "hot spots," schools can make wireless Internet access available throughout their campuses. "A big part of what wireless makes possible is the flexible reconfiguration of classrooms, so students can take with them whatever tools they need and use them wherever they happen to be," said Chris Dede, a professor specializing in learning technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. (04/24/03) | |
|
|
|
New York Times: Environment -- Warning that unchecked real estate development has threatened New Jersey's drinking water supply, Gov. James E. McGreevey announced today that the state would impose new regulations that would sharply restrict building near 15 reservoirs, rivers and streams. ... "The decision today is not antidevelopment, it's about balance," he said. "It's about protecting our water supply for our children." Many builders were quick to criticize the plan, though, and they predicted that the new rules would carry a heavy cost by exacerbating the housing shortage that already makes New Jersey housing costs among the highest in the nation. (04/23/03) | |
|
|
|
New York Times -- The City of Los Angeles, which had been sued by local groups and state and federal officials over repeated sewage spills, accepted liability today for more than 3,670 spills over the past decade. City officials said they hoped that the move, coupled with improvements to the city's vast wastewater collection system, would lead to a settlement of the lawsuit, originally filed in 1998 by the Santa Monica Baykeeper, an environmental group based in Los Angeles. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board and several community groups later joined the suit. "The point of this was to get the liability behind us and move forward," said Judith A. Wilson, director of the city's Bureau of Sanitation. In December, a federal judge found the city in violation of the Clean Water Act, holding it liable for 297 sewage spills in the year ended July 2002. (04/24/03) | |
|
|
|
New Scientist -- Human liver cells harbouring the hepatitis C virus can be selectively targeted and destroyed by a new gene therapy approach, according to new research. The key is a genetically-engineered "suicide" gene, delivered aboard a harmless virus, which is triggered only when it enters a hepatitis-infected cell. The two current treatments for the debilitating liver disease - alpha interferon and ribavarin - can reduce the level of infection, say researchers, but the virus usually comes back. The new gene therapy approach could one day "offer the potential of a total cure" for many people, says virologist Christopher Richardson, at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto, Canada, and one of the research team. It might also help tackle other viruses, such as HIV. (04/24/03) | |
|
|
|
New Scientist -- Baby teeth, also called milk teeth or deciduous teeth, appear from the age of about six months and then fall out when children are between six and 13 years old. Previous work by Shi in 2000 had already shown that extracted adult wisdom teeth contain stem cells in the pulp at the centre of the tooth. So when his six-year old daughter and her friends started losing their baby teeth, he decided to see if they also contained stem cells. Whenever a tooth fell out, instead of putting it under the pillow, the parents stored the tooth in a glass of milk in the refrigerator overnight. To isolate the stem cells, Shi extracted the pulp and cultured the cells for several days, then tested the survivors for markers of stem cell activity. About 12 to 20 cells from a typical incisor tooth turn out to be stem cells. (04/24/03) | |
|
|
|
BBC Nature -- In November 2002 the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) agreed in principle to allow the sales. The demand came from South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, who want to sell 60 tonnes of ivory amassed over the years, much of it seized from poachers. ... The International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) says: "Poachers go into action when there is talk of Cites approved legal sales, which they can use as a 'smokescreen'. "It is almost impossible to tell the difference between legal and illegal smuggled tusks or ivory pieces once on the market." ... Ifaw says it thinks the cost of tackling the increased poaching it believes certain to follow the sales would dwarf any profits they realised. It wants governments or international groups to buy the ivory and withdraw it from the market, so countries could benefit from the income while safeguarding their elephants. There were about 1.3 million elephants in Africa in 1980, but within a decade the poachers had reduced the number to roughly 600,000, prompting Cites to ban the ivory trade in 1989. Ifaw says there are only 300,000-450,000 African elephants today. No more than 35,000-50,000 Asian elephants are thought to survive in the wild. (04/24/04) | |
8:29:25 AM 
|
|
|
|
© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
5/1/2003; 8:14:20 AM.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves
(blue) Manila theme. |
|
|
