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Wednesday, May 21, 2003
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Arundhati Roy writes: In these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the speed at which our freedoms are being snatched from us, and when few can afford the luxury of retreating from the streets for a while in order to return with an exquisite, fully formed political thesis replete with footnotes and references, what profound gift can I offer you tonight?  As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our brains by satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the move. We enter histories through the rubble of war. Ruined cities, parched fields, shrinking forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Craters left by daisy cutters, our libraries. So what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit around my brain like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake at night. Some of you will think it bad manners for a person like me, officially entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an "Indian citizen," to come here and criticize the U.S. government. Speaking for myself, I'm no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king. (05/21/03) | |
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Giancarlo Livraghi writes: People in power are more powerful that other people. That isn’t as obvious as it sounds. One might argue that this is not always so. There are apparently powerful people with less real influence than some who are much less visible. But for the sake of this discussion we must stay away from that problem. Regardless of how and why actual power is held and used, this is about real power. The uneven relationship caused by the fact that some people have a stronger influence on circumstances than others – and in many situations a few people can do good or harm to many. A basic definition in the Cipolla theory is that the effect of behavior must be measured not by the yardstick of whoever does something, but from the other end – the point of view of whoever is subject to the effects of that person’s acts (or lack of action.) The clear result of this basic concept is a drastic shift in the Cipolla grid. The harm (or good) is much larger, depending on the number of people involved and the impact of actions and decisions. If a person in an “equal” relationship gains as much personal advantage as the damage it causes to someone else, that person is a “perfect bandit” in the Cipolla definition, someone else is “perfectly hapless”, and the system as a whole is balanced. This is obviously not so when there is a difference in power. In theory, we could assume that as the percentage of intelligent or stupid people is the same the effect of power will be balanced. But when power deals with large numbers of people the one-to-one relationship is lost. It is much more difficult to listen, to understand, to measure the effect and the perceptions. There is a “Doppler effect”, a shift, leading to an increase of the stupidity factor. All serious studies of power systems (while they are not necessarily based on the notion that power is stupid) point to the need for power separation, and for power conflicts to be formalized to that they don’t lead to violence, in order to avoid “absolute power” (i.e. extreme stupidity.) That’s a big enough problem to keep us all on constant alert against any exaggerated concentration of power – and to explain why so many things aren’t working as well as they should. (05/21/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Chimpanzees are so closely related to humans that they should properly be considered as members of the human family, according to new genetic research.  We shared a common ancestor many millions of years ago Scientists from the Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, US, examined key genes in humans and several ape species and found our "life code" to be 99.4% the same as chimps. They propose moving common chimps and another very closely related ape, bonobos, into the genus, Homo, the taxonomic grouping researchers use to classify people in the animal kingdom. Humans, or Homo sapiens to give the species its scientific name, are the only living organism in the genus at the moment - although some extinct creatures such as Neanderthals (Homo Neanderthalis) also occupy the same grouping. ... The Detroit team says its work supports the idea that all living apes should occupy the higher taxonomic grouping Hominidae, and that three species be established under the Homo genus. One would be Homo (Homo) sapiens, or humans; the second would be Homo (Pan) troglodytes, or common chimpanzees, and the third would be Homo (Pan) paniscus, or bonobos. (05/21/03) | |
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New York Times: Environment -- Last August, President Bush seized upon the wildfires then raging throughout the West to offer a fire-prevention plan that alarmed environmentalists even as it delighted the logging industry. The worst features of that plan, and more, have now found their way into a bill that will be offered in the House today by Scott McInnis of Colorado. The bill appears to be aimed as much at opening up remote parts of the national forest to the timber companies as it is at protecting obviously vulnerable communities from fire. Mr. McInnis, of course, would disagree. But unlike a far more precise bill that will be offered by George Miller, a California Democrat, the McInnis bill does not require the federal government to focus its resources on communities that are clearly at risk. Indeed, it is so loosely drawn as to allow tree-thinning and other "fuel reduction" projects in backcountry areas where fire offers no threat to human safety but where the trees are biggest and the timber companies have the most to gain. The bill would also weaken longstanding environmental protections, suspending key parts of the National Environmental Policy Act, the nation's bedrock environmental law, and making it more difficult for anyone opposed to Forest Service decisions to seek and win injunctions in the courts. Mr. McInnis and his friends in the administration assert that short-circuiting the review process is necessary because "frivolous" appeals have hamstrung the Forest Service's efforts to prevent fires by thinning and other means. There is no basis for that claim. A recent survey by the General Accounting Office shows that 95 percent of these thinning projects have proceeded in a timely manner, even when challenged. (05/21/03) | |
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BBC Science -- "The living world is disappearing before our eyes. Around one in 10 of all the world's bird species and a quarter of its mammals are officially listed as threatened with extinction, while up to two-thirds of other animal species are also endangered.  "These losses have accelerated over the last 200 years as a direct and indirect consequence of the growth in human populations, wasteful use of natural resources and associated changes to the environment. "Although we have a feel for the scale of the loss, we often lack specific and accurate information about how badly individual species and their habitats are suffering." So it was hard to decide whether efforts to save these species were working. Professor Crane said: "It is essential that they do succeed, because many of the world's poorest people directly depend for their livelihoods on the diversity of plant and animal species and their habitats." (05/21/03) | |
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BBC Science -- A common herb may provide a new and effective treatment for the sexually transmitted infection herpes. Scientists have successfully used an agent derived from the herb, Prunella vulgaris, to prevent the disease in animals. The herb, commonly found in Britain, Europe, China and North America, has been used in the past to treat sores in the mouth and throat. There is also some evidence that it has been used as a crude anti-cancer drug and to lower high blood pressure. Dr Song Lee and his colleagues from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, extracted a compound from the plant. This was then added to a cream and tested on mice and guinea pigs who had been infected with two types of the herpes simplex virus. Use of the cream significantly cut the death rate among mice, and the development of skin lesions in guinea pigs. (05/21/03) | |
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BBC Science -- A huge website designed to provide an electronic safe haven for endangered animals and plants goes online on Tuesday. ARKive is described as a 21st Century 'Noah's Ark' which will house information about species in danger of extinction. Anyone wanting to research the natural world will have free access to audio and video "portraits" of endangered animals. Highlights of the £4m resource include the only surviving film of the extinct Tasmanian tiger and the last known shots of the golden toad, believed to be extinct. ARKive is split into two sections: a UK chapter celebrating Britain's natural heritage and a section for globally endangered species. (05/21/03) | |
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BBC Science -- The worst of the vCJD problem could be over, researchers suggest. As few as 40 people in the UK could die from the human form of BSE over the next 80 years, according to researchers from Imperial College London. Statistics from the CJD Surveillance Unit show 129 people have died from vCJD in the UK since it emerged in 1995. Deaths are thought to have peaked in 2000 when 28 people died from the condition. In 2001, 20 died, falling to 17 in 2002. So far this year, eight people have died from the disease. Dr Azra Ghani, who carried out the work, said at worst, only another 540 cases would be reported in the UK by 2080. (05/21/03) | |
5:22:25 AM 
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2003
Timothy Wilken.
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