Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Right for the Times Nico Pitney writes: I passionately supported the Greens in 2000 and 2002. I traveled 125 miles to see Dennis Kucinich speak when he came to Los Angeles in May, and had the pleasure of introducing him to a crowd of several hundred when he visited Santa Barbara recently. Kucinich is a guiding light in Congress and, of the nine Democratic presidential contenders, his views most closely mirror my own. Yet I won't be voting for Kucinich in the Democratic primaries, nor will I vote Green in the general elections. My support will go to Howard Dean. ... Dean should be commended by progressives for accomplishing what social justice movements so often work toward and only rarely achieve - his campaign is creatively utilizing the internet to facilitate large-scale independent organizing, and drawing significant numbers of new and disillusioned voters into the political process, getting many of them to contribute their time and energy away from the computer screen. Dean's campaign has developed an infrastructure to support grassroots activism unmatched by any in American history. The uniquely interactive nature of the campaign "creates, embraces, enhances, validates, and rewards intimacy," as one supporter wrote on the campaign's weblog. Dean has dropped in on threads and message boards at unofficial websites set up by supporters and fielded any questions that were asked of him. Author David Weinberger, commenting on Dean's guest-blogging at Stanford law professor Larry Lessig's website, asked, "Has any presidential candidate ever in history been dropped into a free-for-all quite like this? Could it be any more different than Bush's scripted press conferences and tailored, crotch-enhancing photo opps? Democracy just got a little real-er." Even some establishment commentators recognize the fundamental reforms being rushed in by Dean's campaign. Dick Morris, hardly cheering on such changes, recently argued that the "larger message of the Dean candidacy is that the era of TV-dominated politics is coming to a close after 30 years. ... [T]he inevitable replacement of television with the Internet as the fundamental tool of political communication is destined to accelerate. The true answer to campaign-finance reform, the Internet will open a real possibility of a transfer of power to the people." (08/12/03) Values and Education Joël de Rosnay writes: Our education remains hopelessly analytical, centered on a few disciplines, like a puzzle whose pieces overlap rather than fit together. It is an education that prepares us neither for the global approach to complex problems nor for the interplay between them. Nevertheless the present generation of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds itself poses problems globally. It seems that through a thousand parallel channels, passing from the traditional media to those of the counterculture by a sort of osmosis with nature and society, the young people have learned to discover for themselves a form of the systemic approach. In their own way they are applying it to the resolution of problems that previously defied the analysis and logic of their elders. Quite naturally they have taken advantage of the macroscope as a commando weapon. Yet this emergent thought, this new manner of seeing and judging the world, is not the monopoly of one generation alone. Other men and women, of all ages and at all levels of society, share it today. Thus I prefer to call it simply the "new way of thinking." ... One very profound criticism of society and the nature of human relationships is elaborated in the turmoil of modern society. This is chiefly the fact of a generation that is often as foreign to traditional customs and values as the inhabitants of another world would be, were they suddenly dropped in our midst. It is difficult to regroup the principal criticisms and to identify the basic values on which the new way of thinking rests. Nevertheless I should like to try to do this, but not without taking some precautions. These new values are not destined to be substituted abruptly for the old; there is no linear or sequential evolution here. But there is juxtaposition, coexistence, and sometimes complementarity, according to the degree or the speed of evolution of the various social groups for which the new values are relevant. In attempting to answer the question so often asked by the generation in power--"What do the young people of today offer in place of what they are trying to destroy?"--I shall consider the major criticisms that the new way of thinking directs at contemporary society. Later in the chapter I shall bring them together in a summary table that stresses the main points of transition between traditional values and emergent values. (08/12/03) China's Energy Crisis Financial Times -- China's orders for new power equipment so far this year have outstripped its purchases for the whole of 2002 by 50 per cent, as a restructured local industry attempts to keep pace with surging demand for electricity from industry and households. The purchases of power equipment in the seven months to July will add 30 gigawatts of new capacity to the national grid, equal to nearly 10 per cent of existing capacity, according to a survey of orders conducted for foreign energy executives. ... "The bottom line is they need to generate more power, so they are ordering equipment," said Joseph Jacobelli, an analyst with Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong. The survey for the foreign executives covers purchases only for thermal plants, which are mainly coal-fired, and does not include new capacity for hydro-electric or nuclear power. The greatest growth in demand has come from increased industrial production, barely interrupted during the Sars crisis, and investments in power-hungry aluminium smelters. The rapid expansion coincides with an extended heatwave in parts of China, especially around Shanghai, which has forced the government to ration power to some factories and even close them on some days. (08/12/03) European Heat Wave Creating Power Crisis Yahoo! News -- Scorching temperatures threaten to cut output at Europe's nuclear power stations as homes and businesses crank up air conditioners in search of relief from a second week of searing heat. In France, where temperatures have hit about 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in the past few days, the government on Monday warned there could be blackouts if electricity production continued to be stretched. At emergency talks to try to stave off cuts, it agreed to allow the country's nuclear power plants to pour cooling water back into rivers at a hotter temperature than usual to help them meet surging demand. State power utility Electricite de France had been forced to lower production at some of the nuclear plants due to the environmental rules. "For the moment they have been driven to reduce their capacity for production, bit by bit to conform with the rules that have been fixed for them," French Environment Minister Roselyne Bachelot told a news conference. "Evidently, if this situation continues it could lead to (a) fall in electrical voltage and...we cannot not envisage significant blackouts," she added. "We have to prepare for that." Nuclear plants pour water back into rivers, but usually only once it has been cooled to a safe temperature. About 80 percent of France's electricity needs are met by 19 nuclear power stations. (08/12/03) Pertussis Genome Mapped BBC Science -- The complete genome of a bacterium that kills hundreds of thousands worldwide each year has been published by researchers. The genome of Bordetella pertussis - the complete sequence of all the DNA in the organism - is likely to speed up the search for better vaccines and treatments. The bacterium causes the infectious disease whooping cough. Scientists in Cambridge, UK, in collaboration with academics in the US and Germany, have taken years to decipher the DNA and describe the 3,800 genes written in the biological "code". They also deciphered two other related microbes, B. parpapertussis, which can also cause whooping cough in humans, and B. bronchiseptica, which causes respiratory infections in many animals. While the full genome has only just been completed, and is announced for the first time in the journal Nature Genetics on Monday, sections of the genetic code completed over the past four years are already benefiting scientists. ... Whooping cough is so named because the chest infection it produces leads to a distinctive-sounding cough. There are an estimated 20 to 40 million cases worldwide every year, and between 200,000 and 400,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. (08/12/03) 6:11:49 AM

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