Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Which Button would you Push? Ron Patterson writes: The tsetse fly, pronounced tet’-se, looks much like the common house fly, occupies a swath of African territory from just south of the Sahara Desert in the north almost to Zimbabwe in the south. The fly carries a parasite that causes Trypanosomosis (sleeping sickness) in humans and Nagana or Animal Trypanosomosis in animals that are not native to the area. Animals that are native to the area have long become immune to the disease. That is, they carry the parasite but do not get the disease. "African sleeping sickness affects as many as 500,000 people, 80 percent of whom eventually die, and the bite of the fly causes more than $4 billion in economic losses annually." Now I ask you, who could be against saving 400,000 Africans from a death due to sleeping sickness, not to mention $4 billion in losses, mostly due to dead cattle? Well, there are two sides to this story. And it is a perfect example of Garrett Hardin’s assertion that the choice is never between good and evil, but always between the greater evil verses the lesser one. (06/03/03) Optimizing Human Intelligence Timothy Wilken, MD writes: A major division of synergic science is the study of human intelligence.  In my search to understand human intelligence, I have discovered seven states of mind that when accomplished increase human intelligence, they are:  calmness, awareness, synergy, validation, motivation, adaptability & responsibility.  Creativity and productivity are optimized in an environment that is highly supportive of these vectors of human intelligence.  (06/03/03) Learning from Nature BBC Science -- Scientists in the UK have created a sticky tape which works in the same way as gecko feet. The researchers say the material clings so well to a surface that by covering the palm of one hand with the tape, a person could hang from the ceiling - just like the remarkable lizard. So far, however, Professor Andre Geim and colleagues have only been able to make a very small square of their gecko tape because of the difficulties involved in the fabrication process. Nonetheless, the University of Manchester scientists are confident they can refine their work so that commercial quantities of the new sticky material can be produced. (06/03/03) Crisis in the Congo Yellow Times -- Paul Harris writes: Since 1998, a civil war has been a daily reality for the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). ... Unfortunately, the headlines are gloomy reading. Just in the past week: "Congolese beg for U.N. protection"; "DR Congo pygmies appeal to U.N."; "Congo tragedy shows up the U.N."; "Congo death toll: 2,500 per day"; "Canada missing in action"; "The shaming tragedy of Africa"; and "There will be no excuses for not knowing" have appeared in various media around the world. DRC's recent history has been one of internal conflict. Much of this arose as the nation absorbed large numbers of refugees from the fighting in Rwanda and Burundi in 1994. While the current conflict dates back at least to its independence from European colonial rule in 1960, DRC also bears the scars of hundreds of years of inter-tribal animosity and, sometimes, violence. ... Africans themselves are getting very disillusioned about the value of the U.N. and the warm wishes of the rest of the world. They know that Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter provides for just the kind of military help that is needed, but they keep wondering if it is ever going to arrive. Africans have become inured to the indifference of the rest of the world (except for foreign interest in Africa's fabulous resources) and they would really prefer to find an African solution to their problems. But even they know that help is going to be needed. This continent with 12 percent of the world's population has 80 percent of the world's AIDS victims; it has massive areas of drought and famine currently affecting about 40 million people; it has many wars and skirmishes occurring every day throughout multiple countries where several million people have died in the past 10 years or so. If international goodwill means anything, if the Charter of the United Nations means anything, if the chatter from all the world's leaders about ethics and humanity means anything, now is the time to step up to the damn plate. (06/03/03) U.S. needs to clean up its Nuclear Trash! Christian Science Monitor -- At a roadside produce stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, business is brisk for Latifa Khalaf Hamid. Iraqi drivers pull up and snap up fresh bunches of parsley, mint leaves, dill, and onion stalks. But Ms. Hamid's stand is just four paces away from a burnt-out Iraqi tank, destroyed by - and contaminated with - controversial American depleted-uranium (DU) bullets. Local children play "throughout the day" on the tank, Hamid says, and on another one across the road.  No one has warned the vendor in the faded, threadbare black gown to keep the toxic and radioactive dust off her produce. The children haven't been told not to play with the radioactive debris. They gather around as a Geiger counter carried by a visiting reporter starts singing when it nears a DU bullet fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser. It registers nearly 1,000 times normal background radiation levels on the digital readout. The Monitor visited four sites in the city - including two randomly chosen destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles, a clutch of burned American ammunition trucks, and the downtown planning ministry - and found significant levels of radioactive contamination from the US battle for Baghdad. ... "If you have pieces or even whole [DU] penetrators around, this is not an acute health hazard, but it is for sure above radiation protection dose levels," says Werner Burkart, the German deputy director general for Nuclear Sciences and Applications at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. "The important thing in any battlefield - especially in populated urban areas - is somebody has to clean up these sites." (06/03/03) Watching History Merle Borg writes: Watching History is much like watching gravity. Forces remain hidden - only the results are visible. In our current "single-superpower" world, two forces are slowly revealing their ominous existence. Suicidal terrorism can be an effective weapon and America's military force can be exerted safely enough to make invasion acceptable. The world is now an open battlefield. Decency trembles in wait. ... Although they seem purely expansionary and punitive, decency is also at issue in the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Admittedly, the tiny countries had been crippled by previous war or embargo, the weaponry was mismatched, and neither nation could mount a credible defense. Historically however, these countries have unblemished records of throwing invaders out. They have close brotherly allies, and as Korea and Vietnam demonstrated, death and devastation do not necessarily signal defeat. A meaningful confrontation is shaping up. Change is in the air, change that makes military victory counterproductive. Suicidal missions are rewriting the rules of conquest and the Mid-east is at the cutting edge of this change. In Vietnam, Buddhist monks tried to shame American invaders into leaving by dousing themselves with gasoline and lighting matches. Unfortunately, the little saffron torches were barely noticed. In the Arab world, Muslim clerics urge members to take invaders and their countrymen with them when making the ultimate protest. The practice is hotly denied, widely feared, and deadly effective. Right now, in the ancient cradle of civilization, the world's most powerful nation is eye to eye with the one thing that brings this fractious area together; the sacred pleasure of throwing invaders out. Perhaps, in epic fashion, it had to happen. The old, invoking its divine right to outposts and oil, is pitted against the new, with its terrorist weapons. (06/03/03) The War Profiteer Card Deck Better than a card deck of wanted Iraqi officials, here's now the War Profiteer Card Deck. It exposes some of the real war criminals in George W's war on terror. Spades: oil, gas, energy. Hearts: US government officials. Clubs: military/defense contractors. Diamonds: heads of industry, media, policy, and hype. The War Profiteers Card Deck exposes some of the real war criminals in the US’s endless War of Terror. This is no Sunday bridge club. These are individuals and institutions that stack the deck against democracy in the rigged game of global power. Exposing their place in the house of cards illuminates the links among corporations, institutions, and government officials that profit from endless war. The US War of Terror is not about liberation, democracy, or UN resolutions. Plainly put, the War of Terror--whether in Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan, or the USA--is about subjugation, resource extraction, and opening markets: a practice once referred to more honestly as colonialism. (06/03/03) Want to Live Forever? Be a Stem Cell New Scientist -- The key gene that keeps embryonic stem cells in a state of youthful immortality has been discovered. The breakthrough may one day contribute to turning ordinary adult cells into those with the properties of human ESCs. This would end the need to destroy embryos to harvest the cells for new medical treatments. ESCs are unique as they are "pluripotent" - capable of differentiating into the different cells in the body - and hold great potential for treating damaged or diseased organs. But until now scientists did not know how a stem cell renews itself or develops into an new kind of cell. The gene found in mouse ESCs and some human equivalents appears to be the "master gene", co-ordinating other genes to allow stem cells to multiply limitlessly while still retaining their ability to differentiate. It has been christened Nanog after the land in Celtic myth called Tir nan Og, whose inhabitants remain forever young. (06/03/03) 5:40:41 AM

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