Friday, September 19, 2003

Synergic Disarmament: Wisdom, they shouldn't have Timothy Wilken, MD writes:  Michael Moore's Academy Award winning film Bowling for Columbine  has brought renewed interest in the subject of weapons and their role in our present society.  ... Think of the power of the tools we humans use everyday—a Boeing 747 airplane, our automobiles, computers, cell phones, televisions, household appliances, the tools in our garages and at our places of work. The knowing in these tools multiply our human power by orders of magnitude. They allow us to do what was considered impossible just a few years ago. It is the power of the knowing embedded in these tools that give them their power. You don't have to be wise to use a tool full of wisdom. You don't even have to be knowledgeable to use such a tool. McDonald's fast food restaurants, use picture icons of the food and drinks on the buttons of the check out computers, so that the illiterate and innumerate humans working there can operate the computers without reading, adding or subtracting. The computer even tells the operator the correct amount of change to return to the customer. However, there is risk in using tools you don't understand. Remember, "a little knowing is a dangerous thing." Today, we commonly put enormously powerful tools into the hands of those who do not understand them. This means the risk of using these tools in an unsafe manner is high. And since weapons are specifically designed to hurt or kill, they are among the most dangerous tools available in today's society. And yet they are easily available to anyone who desires them. They can be purchased legally by any adult who passes a background check for criminal record. If you are not a convicted felon, you can legally purchase all the weapons and ammunition you desire. You are not legally required to be literate, numerate, or have any knowledge of science or physics. No knowledge of weapons or the consequence of their use or misuse is required before becoming armed. As to felons, minors, or non-citizens—anyone wishing to avoid the background check of legal purchase, they can be purchased illegally in any town in America. (09/19/03) Our American Nonage Craig Russell writes:  The American Heritage Dictionary defines nonage (non-age) as “the period during which one is legally underage” or “a period of immaturity.”  The great philosopher Immanuel Kant, however, offered a slightly different definition of that word in his 1784 essay What is Enlightenment? “Enlightenment,” he said, “is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage,” with nonage being “the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance.  This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance.  Dare to know! Modern State-dominated American society, however, despite its constant protestations to the contrary, strives mightily for the very opposite of enlightenment. It uses means great and small in its never-ending efforts to keep people in a permanent state of nonage – a permanent state of immaturity and dependence on the guidance, and thus the control, of some officially approved authority. ... Interestingly, while the main headline talks about “learning,” the beginning of the article deals instead with “preparing.”  The caption to the picture, for instance, talks about Mom’s “efforts to prepare (her daughter) for school.”  And the article twice in the first three paragraphs talks not about learning, not about education, but instead about preparation for school: Mom used these everyday situations primarily to “help prepare her” daughter for kindergarten, and “parents can prepare their children for kindergarten by using teachable moments.”  The writer drives this thought home in the next paragraph, when she quotes an expert (who, by the way, is the only male mentioned in this entire article) as saying that “Everything you do from birth to the start of kindergarten is in one way or the other helping your child to prepare for the start of kindergarten. Now none of this will probably bother very many people. Most simply accept the necessity of their children attending kindergarten.  In many cases, they actually look forward to it.  They accept, perhaps without much critical thought, the stated premises of forced government education. I do not accept those premises.  I see government “schools” as a prime way in which the State works to keep people as dull and stupid as possible.  What the State insists on calling “kindergarten” is just the first step in that long daily indoctrination process – a process which will teach reading in such a way that few will ever actually read anything on their own, for their own reasons; a process that will teach history in such a way that few will ever see any value in it for today and tomorrow or look into it and interpret it on their own without expert guidance and interpretation; a process that will teach writing in such a way that almost none of them will ever sit down to focus their thinking onto a page and thus actually find out what they believe and why.  Shouldn’t the idea that “everything you do from birth . . . is in one way or another helping your child to prepare” for the takeover of his mind by the authorities scare you, or at least make you wonder its validity? (09/19/03) Going Farther and Deeper for Fish BBC Nature -- Sorry, cod's off. And with stocks of other staples also creaking under pressure, fish-eaters are being encouraged to sample unfamiliar alternatives. Is there an appetite for these monsters from the deep? Even the humble fishfinger has got a little more exotic. Instead of flakes of the expected cod, the crumbed morsels are more likely to contain hoki, a white-fleshed fish sourced from abundant stocks at the opposite end of the Earth. ... Cod, which thrives in the cold, deep waters of the North Sea, has long been a popular dish. Archaeological digs show that Britons have eaten this fish for 7,000 years. Today, polls show that despite warnings that cod stocks are on the verge of collapse, it accounts for more than one-third of household purchases and last year restaurants served 136m cod meals. But cod is not the only fish in the sea. There are enough species caught around the UK for a fish-eater to have a different dish each week of the year. A single haul can include up to 20 different species, many not recognised as being local but which may be familiar to those who holiday in the Mediterranean. Marine conservationists want us to rediscover a taste for these local delights, which include pilchards - or Cornish sardines, as West Country fisherfolk have rebranded the maligned species - and Thames herrings. Other alternatives include pollack, megrim, huss and mahi-mahi - which tastes not dissimilar to the under-threat swordfish. ... The hunt for sustainable alternatives does have its pitfalls. By going to New Zealand for hoki or Alaska for pollack or South Africa for hake, we could just be exporting the problem of over-fishing further around the planet. ... Going deeper isn't the answer either. Fish from the mid-depths such as sea bass, monkfish and some types of tuna are now endangered. The prized Patagonian toothfish - on the menu at fashionable eateries in Tokyo, London and New York - is now virtually worth its weight in gold it is so scarce. (09/19/03) A Biological Battery? New York Times: Science -- Two scientists at the University of Massachusetts have discovered a novel sugar-loving micro-organism, Rhodoferax ferrireducens, that may one day serve as a stable source of low power. "It's a sort of bacterial battery," said Derek R. Lovley, an environmental microbiologist who led the research. The results are reported in the current online issue of Nature Biotechnology. Dr. Lovley cultured the bug in an Amherst laboratory, far from the aquifer in Oyster Bay, Va., where he found it. Then he housed it in a simple two-compartment fuel cell. As it fed on and metabolized sugar, the electrons freed in the process accumulated on an electrode in the fuel cell, producing a current. "It can transfer more than 80 percent of the electrons available in the sugar," Dr. Lovley said, "contrary to most previous microbial fuel cells that use sugar and deliver in the range of 10 percent." The bacterial battery might one day have many applications, for example, in sensors in remote locations, or in household devices that would draw on agricultural or other sugar-based waste for power. Dr. Lovley's organism did its job not only with sucrose, fructose and glucose - the simple sugars found, for instance, in fruits, beets and sugar cane - but also with xylose, a part of wood and straw. Many research groups in the United States and abroad are working on biofuel cells that use microbes to convert organic matter like sugar into electricity, said G. Tayhas R. Palmore, an associate professor of engineering at Brown University who does research on biofuel cells.  "People have been trying to make microbial fuel cells for decades," she said, but have been vexed by low returns. "Typically the bug uses all of the energy from the sugar to grow and live," Dr. Palmore said, instead of giving up electrons from the oxidative process. But Dr. Lovley's bug is highly efficient. "He's found an organisms happy to give its electrons to the electrode," she said. Many microbial fuel cells increase their efficiency by using a special compound to enter the organism, collecting the electrons that accumulate and carting them off to an electrode. Such mediators must typically be replenished. "But Dr. Lovley's bug does the work all by itself," Dr. Palmore said, "without the intermediate components we all put in to facilitate electron transfer." Dr. Lovley's fuel cell has an electrode at either end. As it dines, the micro-organism converts the glucose solution into carbon dioxide, simultaneously generating electrons that are deposited on the electrode and travel through an external circuit to the other electrode.  "We need only a small number of organisms because they gain energy and rapidly increase in number," Dr. Lovley said. In his laboratory the organism flourished, colonizing the surface of the electrode and producing stable long-term power for up to 25 days. The current, about 200 microamps per square meter, was modest, about enough to run a calculator. Minor technical improvements increased its output. "When we used graphite felt rather than rods for the electrodes, we had an approximate threefold increase in current,'' he said. R. ferrireducens belongs to a group of micro-organisms Dr. Lovley and colleagues have discovered only in the past few years. Often described as iron-breathing, they use iron for metabolic energy just as humans use oxygen to burn food. (09/19/03) What is wrong with this picture? New York Times -- A senior official said today that the United States had stepped up the timetable for creating a new Iraqi army, with plans for 40,000 troops in the field by next year in a program that brings back and retrains midlevel officers from the old army to run boot camps for recruits. ... Mr. Slocombe said that the old Iraqi Army "did a perfectly competent job of basic training," and that approved Iraqi military personnel, from noncommissioned officers through lieutenant colonels, would train the new force. ... in the interest of forming an army more quickly, the American authorities had decided to take a more flexible approach to former Iraqi officers. Saddam Hussein's army was disbanded in May by L. Paul Bremer III, the head of the American-led occupation authority. At the time, the idea of re-employing Iraqi officers was rejected. ... Mr. Slocombe described a significant difficulty facing the effort as one of infrastructure, since military installations and warehouses have been looted. "They didn't just steal stuff that was not nailed down; they stole the toilet fixtures, and they stole the pipes and the tile in the latrines," he said. Pentagon officials said late today that $2 billion of the $87 billion request by the administration was for the new Iraqi army. Although the United States government officially disbanded the former army, some Pentagon officials have said in subsequent private conversations that it might have been prudent to keep some units in place to provide security for postwar Iraq. In addition, some looting and other anti-American violence was attributed to the anger of idled former soldiers. "The Iraqi army disbanded itself, with a little help, little encouragement from the coalition military," Mr. Slocombe said. "When the war was over, when the major maneuver fighting was over, there were simply no units still in existence. Everybody had gone home." Officials are prepared to offer financial incentives for the recruits. New Iraqi privates will be paid $70 a month, he said, compared with their previous military salaries of $2 a month. Recruits are to receive six weeks of basic training, shorter than originally planned. In contrast, American soldiers take nine weeks of basic training, before going on to training in their specialties. Mr. Slocombe said senior Baath Party officials, intelligence service officers and members of the Special Republican Guard would be banned from military service. He said that "only a very small percentage" of former senior officers in the Iraqi army "are going to have military careers." (09/19/03) 6:59:16 AM

© TrustMark 2003 Timothy Wilken. Last update: 10/1/2003; 9:49:36 AM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.