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Friday, January 23, 2004
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 Arundhati Roy writes: The tradition of 'turkey pardoning' in the U.S. is a wonderful allegory for New Racism. Every year since 1947, the National Turkey Federation presents the U.S. President with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the President spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press. (Soon they'll even speak English!) That's how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys -- the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) -- are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically they're for the pot. But the Fortunate Fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the WTO -- so who can accuse those organisations of being anti-turkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee -- so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalisation? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way? Part of the project of New Racism is New Genocide. In this new era of economic interdependence, New Genocide can be facilitated by economic sanctions. It means creating conditions that lead to mass death without actually going out and killing people. Dennis Halliday, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq between '97 and '98 (after which he resigned in disgust), used the term genocide to describe the sanctions in Iraq. In Iraq the sanctions outdid Saddam Hussein's best efforts by claiming more than half a million children's lives. (01/23/04)
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 BBC Science -- Scientists say that they have shown how the brain can crack complex mental puzzles while its owner is sleeping. Research at Luebeck university, in Germany, says tests on 106 volunteers back up anecdotal evidence that a good night's sleep can help solve problems. The volunteers were shown a number puzzle in which was embedded a "hidden code" revealing the answer, the journal Nature reports. Those kept awake overnight reportedly had far less chance of solving it. The scientists believe that because the brain appears to restructure information from the previous day during sleep hours, a period of sleep may produce insight into problems such as these. Other experts say it is the first hard evidence that creativity and problem-solving may be assisted by the activity of the brain during sleep. Dr Jan Born, who led the study, said: "This restructuring might be occurring in such a way that the problem is easier to solve." He highlighted a period of sleep called slow-wave sleep - a deep sleep not thought to be punctuated by dreams. Even small reductions in this sleep phase have been linked by other studies to a decrease in memory function, and in decreasing ability to recognise "hidden structures". Their 106 volunteers were all given a quick look at a test that involved sorting numbers based on a couple of set rules. However, underlying these rules was a third, "hidden" rule which, when spotted, dramatically simplified the completion of the puzzle. Some of the volunteers then got a full eight hours' sleep, while others had various degrees of sleep deprivation. The scientists then sat back to see which volunteers had a flash of inspiration and spotted the third rule and how quickly they managed it. Twice as many of the rested participants caught on to the rule than volunteers from the sleepless group. Dr Carl Hunt, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health in the US, said that the study was important. (01/23/04)
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 BBC Technology -- India's hundreds of millions of farmers have a new friend in the eternal battle against failing crops and cattle diseases. Under a government scheme, agricultural workers in India's ancient, rural economy will have access to an innovation symbolic of India's booming new economy - the telephone call centre. Farmers who make the free phone call to the centre will find themselves speaking to one of many multi-lingual agricultural science graduates, trained to troubleshoot farming problems. ... The aim is to educate millions of farmers up and down the country about better methods in farming, animal husbandry and horticulture. Speaking to the BBC, junior agriculture minister Hukamdeo Narayan Yadav termed the move a revolutionary step in the agricultural history of the country. "These channels and call centres will also help in augmenting agricultural produce in the country and help India [become] a world leader in this field," said Mr Yadav. In total, there are eight call centres, each one manned seven days a week. They are expected to handle traffic from every state in India. The call-centre workers will address queries ranging from seed quality to the processing, packaging, transport and storage of produce. They will also tell the farmers about market rates and prevailing trends for their produce. "Those queries which the agriculture graduates fail to reply [to] will be passed on to specialists and if questions still remain unanswered, experts would send their replies through phone, post or personal visit", said Rahul Bhandari, who is associated with the project. (01/23/04)
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 BBC Science -- The European Space Agency has released the early results from its Mars Express probe now orbiting the Red Planet. The data include a batch of remarkable pictures taken at very high resolution. The images show what appear to be sediments left in the bottoms of river-cut valleys, and details as fine as dust blowing over the rims of craters. "This is no ordinary spacecraft," said David Southwood, Esa's head of science. "This is only the beginning. There is more to come in the next two years." The science results were released at a news conference at Esa's Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. ... The spacecraft's instruments have also revealed new information about the stores of water-ice at the planet's south pole and the way it is mixed in with frozen carbon dioxide. In addition, Esa scientists say they can see, for the very first time, water being lost from Mars' atmosphere. But it is the images taken with the probe's High Resolution Stereo Camera that have generated the greatest excitement. The camera can see details down to two metres and German researchers working on the mission have even constructed computer-generated movies from the pictures to show what it would be like to fly over the Red Planet in an aircraft. The camera's lead scientist, Professor Gerhard Neukum, from the Free University in Berlin, said Mars Express had already imaged nearly two million square kilometres of the Martian surface. The area, covered at a resolution of 10 to 15 metres per pixel, was equivalent to the area of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Austria combined, he said. His team has already received more than 100 gigabytes of processed data - most of which has not even been looked at yet. (01/23/04)
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5:50:01 AM 
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2004
Timothy Wilken.
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2/2/2004; 6:15:31 AM.
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