Thursday, June 12, 2003

We, the People Bill Moyers writes: In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether "we, the people" is a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality – one nation, indivisible – or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others. Let me make it clear that I don't harbor any idealized notion of politics and democracy; I worked for Lyndon Johnson, remember? Nor do I romanticize "the people." You should read my mail – or listen to the vitriol virtually spat at my answering machine. I understand what the politician meant who said of the Texas House of Representatives, "If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents." But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That difference can be the difference between democracy and oligarchy. (06/12/03) Creative Nets in the Precambrian Age Howard Bloom writes: Eshel Ben Jacob, at the University of Tel Aviv, and James Shapiro at the University of Chicago have been studying bacterial colonies from a radically original perspective - and have emerged with surprising results. Their findings explain why the ripple effect is a mark of bacterial networking - and of much, much more. For generations bacteria have been thought of as lone cells, each making its own way in the world. Ben Jacob and Shapiro, on the other hand, have demonstrated that few, if any, bacteria are hermits. They are extremely social beasts. And undeveloped as their cellular structure might be, their social structure is a wonder. The work of Ben Jacob and Shapiro has demonstrated that bacterial communities are elaborately interwoven by communication links. Their signalling devices are many: chemical outpourings with which one group transmits its findings to all in its vicinity; fragments of genetic material, each of which spreads a different story from one end of the population to another. And a variety of other devices for long-distance data transmission. These turn a colony into a collective processor for sensing danger, for feeling out the environment, and for undergoing - if necessary - radical adaptations to survive and prosper, no matter how tough the challenge. The resulting modular learning machine is so ingenious that Eshel Ben Jacob has called it a "creative net." (06/12/03) Brain Cells caught Learning BBC Science -- Scientists have detected evidence of individual brain cells signalling the formation of new memories. Neurons that scientists call "changing cells" in the hippocampus - sometimes called the brain's memory hub - give off specific types of signals as a monkey commits tasks to memory. It is well known that new associative memories - such as learning the name of a new acquaintance - require the involvement of the hippocampus. But this is the first time that researchers have pinpointed the details of memory formation at the neural level. "When hippocampal cells undergo these striking changes in neuronal activity, it's like watching a new memory being born," says Wendy Suzuki, of New York University, US. (06/12/03) Oldest Human Skulls found in Ethiopia BBC Science -- Three fossilised skulls unearthed in Ethiopia are said by scientists to be among the most important discoveries ever made in the search for the origin of humans. The crania of two adults and a child, all dated to be around 160,000 years old, were pulled out of sediments near a village called Herto in the Afar region in the east of the country. They are described as the oldest known fossils of modern humans, or Homo sapiens. What excites scientists so much is that the specimens fit neatly with the genetic studies that have suggested this time and part of Africa for the emergence of mankind. "All the genetics have pointed to a geologically recent origin for humans in Africa - and now we have the fossils," said Professor Tim White, one of the co-leaders on the research team that found the skulls. "These specimens are critical because they bridge the gap between the earlier more archaic forms in Africa and the fully modern humans that we see 100,000 years ago," the University of California at Berkeley, US, paleoanthropologist told BBC News Online. (06/12/03) Downsizing and Privatizing Iraq Naomi Klein writes: The streets of Baghdad are a swamp of crime and uncollected garbage. Battered local businesses are going bankrupt, unable to compete with cheap imports. Unemployment is soaring and thousands of laid-off state workers are protesting in the streets. In other words, Iraq looks like every other country that has undergone rapid-fire "structural adjustments" prescribed by Washington, from Russia's infamous "shock therapy" in the early 1990s to Argentina's disastrous "surgery without anesthetic." Except that Iraq's "reconstruction" makes those wrenching reforms look like spa treatments. Paul Bremer, the US-appointed governor of Iraq, has already proved something of a flop in the democracy department in his few weeks there, nixing plans for Iraqis to select their own interim government in favor of his own handpicked team of advisers. But Bremer has proved to have something of a gift when it comes to rolling out the red carpet for US multinationals. For a few weeks Bremer has been hacking away at Iraq's public sector like former Sunbeam exec "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap in a flak jacket. On May 16 Bremer banned up to 30,000 senior Baath Party officials from government jobs. A week later, he dissolved the army and the information ministry, putting more than 400,000 Iraqis out of work without pensions or re-employment programs. (06/12/03) Return to Chauvet Cave New Scientist: Book Review -- A must for anyone interested in art, let alone cave art, Return to Chauvet by Jean Clottes is a large-format, beautifully illustrated celebration and analysis of the remarkable artistic talents of our remote European ancestors. Stunning charcoal and ochre drawings of the animals of southern Europe's late Ice Age "game park" adorn the walls of this Ardèche cave system. Horse, bison, giant deer, bear, mammoth, rhino, big cats and so on are all depicted with the curious sensitivity and wariness of the big-game hunter's trained eye. (06/12/03) Battle for Earth's Whales BBC Nature -- Days before the International Whaling Commission's annual meeting, a leading animal welfare group says regulating whaling is part of conservation. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) remains implacably opposed to whaling. It says regulating the industry does not necessarily mean any more whales will be killed. But it says conservation does mean regulating how or whether whale populations are exploited, one way or another. Other conservationists sometimes say privately that limited commercial whaling may be necessary to prevent an explosion of illegal catches beyond the commission's control. In July 2001, WWF, the global conservation campaign, which also opposes whaling, told BBC News Online a limited hunt might be the only way to prevent a free-for-all. The commission's 2003 meeting in the German capital, Berlin, runs from 16 to 20 June. It is not expected to agree to end the moratorium on commercial whaling in force since 1986. Two members, Japan and Norway, each continue to catch 6-700 whales a year despite the ban. (06/12/03) 7:34:00 AM

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