Tuesday, October 29, 2002

[Colin Glassey 6 PM] Some links for today. A good essay by James Q. Wilson titled The Reform Islam Needs. Summary: Islam needs to chart a course already laid by the West which he says is fundementally based on Freedom of conscience. This is, he argues, a development which can be traced back to the late 1600s in England, France, and Germany. It came later to the colonies which became the United States. Yet another news story from the New York Times detailing the destruction and fall of the World Trade Center. Key point: the second tower hit was so badly damaged by the high speed of the plane that the most sophisticated computer models show is should have collapsed immediately. As we know, the second tower hit did fall before the first tower, but it didn't fall instantly. Engineers who built the computer model suggest that office walls provided some additional support or the path of the destroyed plane, once inside the building, can not be known in exact detail. Still, pretty shocking that the building could have been destroyed in one blow. An odd science story also from the New York Times which says that the current analysis of bones show a degradation in health for the American Indians before the Europeans arrived. A couple of questions: is the data set large enough to make the study worth-while? If it is large enough, why would more modern (but still pre-Columbian) Indians be in worse shape than Indians from earlier time periods? Were they, perhaps, degrading their environment? Several news stories today about a new device called The Thermator. This is from Britannica - India: The working principle of the generator is rooted in the crystals that lie between hot and the cold surfaces. These crystals also operate as semi-conductors, which induce an altered energy state when used as a medium of heat flow. Part of the heat gets transformed from heat energy into electric energy. This is known as the thermo-electric effect. 5:45:08 PM

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