Earl Bockenfeld: Mind

George Carlin - Modern Man

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:33:09 GMT

George Carlin - Modern Man

Ah...did in 3 plus minutes at 68 yrs old which any "new" comic couldnt even fathom of thinking nor delivering. George Carlin is still the best there is, the best there was and the best there ever will be.

I am absolutely in awe of his ability to masterfully work the English language .. "I'm in the moment, on the edge, over the top, but under the radar .. a high-concept low-profile medium-range ballistic missionary" .. "a raging workaholic, a working rageaholic" .. something this clever, kitschy, and lyrical doesn't need to make you guffaw to have you in stitches.

A Geek's Book List

Mon, 07 Aug 2006 01:42:48 GMT

A Geek's Book List

Well, I was tagged by Glenda to answer these questions!

(1) One book that changed your life?

It's really a shame that I can't recall this book. I read it in my small school's library and unlike any other textbooks, it was breath-taking and exciting.

As I remember it, young men were invited to a mysterous place to do some big-game hunting. After a fancy meal and a good night's sleep, they were awakened and told that they were going to be the big-game being hunted. The story then told of their experiences and how they survived.

I don't think it was the book, just the experience of learning that books don't have to be like textbooks - Reading can be fun! I've been a friend of books ever since.

(2) One book you have read more than once?

This is a little sad, but the book I read a little bit everyday is "HTML for the World Wide Web by Elizabeth Castro."

(3) One book you would want on a desert island?

This one is a little funny, I would want "The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker". It would be even greater with a CD player to also be able to look at the 68,647 cartoons ever published in the magazine.

(4) One book that made you laugh?

The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams

(5) One book that made you cry?

Big boys don't cry, but a book that shattered my belief in technology is "The Day The Phones Stopped" by Leonard Lee. Human error or computer malfunction? January 15, 1990 nearly half of AT&T long distance lines around the nation were disabled for almost nine hours. In 1988 the USS Vincennes accidently shot down an Iranian airliner killing 290 passengers on board. On Dec 3, 1990, eight people died when a Northwest DC-9 wandered onto the wrong runway. In 1986, two cancer patients at a Texas hospital were killed when they accidently received lethal doses of radiation. And so on...

(6) One book you wish you had written?

That would have to be "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Cliff Stoll a story of a unbelievable ingenious astronomer who trapped a spy ring, that was reporting to the KGB, and had been hacking US missile bases and satellites, using a simple teletype connected to his lab's computer.

(7) One book you wish had never been written?

I'm not one to censor books, but I would have to say Mein Kampf by Adolph Hilter

(8) One book you are currently reading?

I have a few started, but Fiasco by Thomas Hicks the American Military Adventure in Iraq is first in line.

(9) One book you've been meaning to read?

The Pretext For War by James Bamford a fearless account of the failures of America's intellengence agencies and the Bush's Administration's calculated efforts to sell a war to the American people.

(10) And tag five bloggers to do this, too.

I won't tag any bloggers to do this, but I invite all readers to give it a try

That's my list! Not a beauty contest, just books - I like that.

Colbert Tells Knox Grads: Get Your Own TV Show

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 05:33:25 GMT

Colbert Tells Knox Grads: Get Your Own TV Show

At the close of his commencement speech before 250 graduates (and 4000 others) at tiny Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. on Saturday, satirist Stephen Colbert left them with a piece of advice: Get your own TV show. "It pays well," he observed, "the hours are great and you have fans. Eventually, some nice people will give you an honorary degree for doing jack squat."

This advice could be crucial, for earlier he had observed: "I don't know if they've told you what's been happening in the world while you've been matriculating. The world is waiting for you people with a club....They are playing for KEEPS out there, folks."

Colbert, who slipped in and out of his rightwing blowhard TV persona on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” received an overwhelmingly positive response compared with the mixed reaction at the recent White House Correspondents Dinner. Afterward, students presented him with a purple “Veritasiness Tour” t-shirt (which translates, very roughly, as "truthiness").

He had opened his speech with: "My name is Stephen Colbert, but I actually play someone on television named Stephen Colbert, who looks like me, and talks like me, but who says things with a straight face he doesn't mean."

In that vein, Colbert considered the immigration debate: "It’s time for illegal immigrants to go — right after they finish (building) those walls." People keep saying immigrants built America, "but here's the thing, it's built now. I think it was finished in the '70s sometime. From this point it's only a touch-up and repair job."

His suggestions for securing the U.S.-Mexico border went beyond walls to include moats, fiery moats and fiery moats with fire-proof crocodiles.

He added that the border with Canada also has to be secure so Canadians cannot bring their "skunky beer" into the country. He backed English as the official language of the United States — "God wrote (the Bible) in English for a reason: So it could be taught in our public schools."

Noting the college was founded by abolitionists, Colbert came out against slavery. "I just hope the mainstream media gives me credit for the stand I’ve taken today," he said.

Recently picked as one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine, Colbert quipped: "If you do the math, there are 6.5 billion people in the world. That means that today I am here representing 65 million people. That's as big as some countries. What country has about 65 million people? Iran? Iran has 65 million people. So, for all intents and purposes, I'm here representing Iran today. Don't shoot."

Colbert, 42, graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston 20 years ago. He said that instead of a diploma on his commencement day, he got a scrap of paper, which informed him he had an incomplete in one class. He said he happily waved it in the photos with his parents that day. At the next graduation, half a year later, he didn’t receive his diploma because of a library fine, he claimed.

He closed his speech on an apparently semi-serious note, urging the grads to learn how to say "yes." He noted that saying yes will sometimes get them in trouble or make them look like a fool. But he added: "Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don't learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blinder, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.

"Cynics always say no. But saying yes begins things. Saying yes is how things grow. Saying yes leads to knowledge. Yes is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say yes.

"And that's The Word."

Dance, Monkey, Dance!

Sat, 06 May 2006 21:55:20 GMT

Dance, Monkey, Dance!

If the above video won't play for you, click on this link. Monkey Blogging Video

It's worth watching again even if you've seen it before.

'Snakes on a Plane' Sure Box-Office Gold

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 02:32:03 GMT

'Snakes on a Plane' Sure Box-Office Gold

This movie needs a cameo from Harrison Ford. Just a quick shot of a man in an airplane seat shaking his head and saying, "Snakes. Why does it always have to be snakes?"

Who needs advertising when you've got a really dumb title for your movie? Snakes on a Plane is still five months from takeoff but has already been declared the "worst film of 2006" by Wired magazine, according to a Wikipedia entry, anyway. Think that will hurt its opening-weekend box office? Not a chance.

As the hot topic in online movie circles, Snakes (or SOAP) is inspiring the blogosphere to create freelance movie trailers, posters and story lines. In online vernacular, it's one of the hotest memes since The Blair Witch Project. Star Samuel L. Jackson, who threatened to quit when someone proposed changing the name of the movie to Pacific Air Flight 121, signed up for the project based on the name alone.

I just hope no snakes were harmed in the making of this film. And maybe a William Castle touch would be nice: "In Viper-Vision with Cobra-Rama!!" People can read comments and blogs all over the internet about this fabulous movie and they will make you laugh SOOO much . Anyone know what rating it will be? You need to see this movie.

Plot Outline: On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who's a witness in protective custody, lets loose a crate full of deadly snakes.

For the posters to come, may we suggest this headline: "You've read the title. Why see the movie?"

Good To The Last Drop - UMR Team Wins Mug Drop

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 03:24:57 GMT

Good To The Last Drop - UMR Team Wins Mug Drop

Advancing the science of Ceramic's engineering - 6-inches/drop!

With a tape measure, a stepladder and an anxious crowd of ceramic students looking on, the official Mug Drop Contest recently shattered the dreams of indestructible chalices.

Meanwhile the winning cup, made of a tough ceramic composite by students from the University of Missouri-Rolla, left a dent in the pavement.

The long-established team crushed the competition—nearly 20 other undergraduate schools. Newcomers New Mexico Tech placed second with their clay cup.

The competition

Keramos, a fraternity of students studying ceramics, has sponsored the Mug Drop for more than two decades. This year’s competition was held at the American Ceramic Society’s annual meeting in Cocoa Beach, FL in January.

Entrants abide by a slew of rules. The mug must be made solely of ceramics, have a handle, and be fired to a minimum temperature of 572 degrees Fahrenheit.

To prove the materials aren't toxic, students have to drink out of their mug in front of a judge before the drop.

"A winning mug takes ingenuity, creativity and a really strong material," said Keramos president Matt Dejneka, a materials scientist at Corning Incorporated.

Similar to a high-jump competition, contestants can pass on dropping their mug at shorter heights and enter at their chosen elevation. The contest starts with a dead-drop at 6 inches above ground, and increases in 6-inch increments to a maximum height of 12 feet.

To move on to the next drop, the mug mustn't leak.

Brimming with strategy

New Mexico Tech took second place with a cup made of New Mexican stoneware clay and full of strategy. They designed a sacrificial bulbous bottom that broke on their first attempt, safely moving the protected inner-mug on to its next and final round.

But without the cushioning of the double bottom, New Mexico Tech couldn't match the 12-foot drop of the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR) mug. Jeff Rodelas and his UMR teammates entered the blue-ribbon mug that dropped unscathed. They depended on the tried-and-true mug design of their predecessors.

"Simplicity is the key. Every year we can rely on this design that can perform pretty well," Rodelas told LiveScience. "We're trying to come up with a way to make the mug better with new materials."

The team made the hardy winning mugs out of aluminum oxide and zirconium oxide. Zirconium in another form, cubic zirconia, looks a lot like diamonds and is used in jewelry. Aluminum oxide makes a sturdy artificial hip. The zirconium oxide in the mug makes the aluminum oxide tougher to crack.

Now the group is looking at silicon dioxide fiber used on space shuttles for possible inclusion in future mugs.

The society holds the mug drop competition and a ceramic golf ball and golf club competition each year at its annual meeting, said Hammetter, who also is a manager at Sandia National Laboratories.

"That is a tradition that has been going on at least the 20 years that I have been involved" with the society, Hammetter said. "It's kind of neat."

The competitions typically draw big crowds and give students a chance to show their ingenuity in front of ceramics manufacturers and other future employers — such as national laboratories, Hammetter said.

"Ceramics are a class of materials that have been around since ancient times," he said. "People usually think of them in terms of pots or whitewear like porcelain. But they're also used in structural things: automotives, space shuttle tiles and electronics."

Contestants generally try to design mugs out of high-tech materials so they won't break.

Only one member of a team was required to successfully drop his or her mug from each height, so some of the UMR students were able to minimize damage to their personal mugs until the later rounds.

Sheena Foster of UMR says she got the "most-dropped mug" award.

"My mug was kind of a sacrificial mug in the team effort," says Foster, a junior in ceramic engineering from Camdenton, Mo. "I dropped it from every height. I think it eventually broke at about nine feet and was eliminated."

Contestants were allowed to continue, as long as their mugs could still hold liquid.

Jeffrey Rodelas, also from Camdenton, says his mug never even chipped and, in fact, "it actually dented the asphalt a few times."

After designing and strategy meetings, it took the UMR students about two weeks to create their mugs in anticipation of the contest. The mugs were made in a slip-cast mold and heated to 1,550 degrees Celsius.

Rodelas, a senior in ceramic engineering, says the keys to making a strong ceramic mug are to keep the handle small and make sure all of the surface edges are rounded.

Winning teams don't get any big prizes, but they do get recognition, Hammetter said.

"They'll probably get their pictures in the Ceramic Society magazine," he said. "That's good advertising for the school."

I Was Tagged by Tina at Fuzzy and Blue

Sun, 26 Feb 2006 18:15:06 GMT

I Was Tagged by Tina at Fuzzy and Blue

Not again... I was tagged by Tina @ Fuzzy and Blue. I hate these things because I get a "brain cramp" trying to think of clever little things, and then feel disgusted because I overlooked hundreds of better choices I should have thought about instead.

1: Black and White or Color; how do you prefer your movies? Usually color, BUT all film noir movies can ONLY be enjoyed the way they were filmed in black and white especially "Good Night and Good Luck". Ted Turner should be drawn and quartered for colorizing Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Blue Dahlia (1946) , The Third Man (1949), and D.O.A. (1949) among others.

2: What is the 1 single subject that bores you to near-death? Anything that can be heard coming from George Bush, Dick Cheney and Fox News.

3: MP3s, CDs, Tapes or Records: what is your favorite medium for prerecorded music? MP3s, after all the 'good CD songs' have been ripped and burned to CDs or downloaded to my iPod.

4: You are handed one 1st class trip plane ticket to anywhere in the world and $10 million cash. All of this is yours provided that you leave and not tell anyone where you are going â€¦ Ever. This includes family, friends, everyone. Would you take the money and ticket and run? Nope, I can't see that happening.

5: Seriously, what do you consider the world's most pressing issue now? Lethal Violence and the will and means to deliver it on fellow humans like in GUNS, BOMBS and LANDMINES.

6: How would you rectify the world's most pressing issue? Make a "New Rule #1", No one can have any kind of weapon more lethal than a stick, stone or fist. The budget of the giant Military-Industrial-Complex recycled into free nursing homes for the elderly, free hospitals for children and channeled into food-production to eliminate the world's hunger.

7: You are given the chance to go back and change 1 thing in your life; what would that be? I guess it would have been to choose to be "richer and better looking" instead of merely studly and intelligent.

8: You are given the chance to go back and change 1 event in world history, what would that be? I can go with Tina on this one. I would render Barbara and George H. Walker Bush infertile. But I could also live with a miscarriage or an abortion as well!

9: A night at the opera, or a night at the Grand Ole' Opry â€“Which do you choose? WOW, that's pretty much a toss-up! I would go to the Grand Ole' Opry to see Willie Nelson and the Opera for the Student Prince to hear 'Drink, drink, drink' or Carmen to hear the 'Toreado Song' are just a few on a very short-list of possibilities.

10: What is the 1 great unsolved crime of all time you'd like to solve? What ever happend in 1947 around Roswell, New Mexico when something crashed, or was shot down.

11: One famous author can come to dinner with you. Who would that be, and what would you serve for the meal? George Orwell. A fine pork roast with all the trimmings. "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more tasty than others".

12: You discover that John Lennon was right, that there is no hell below us, and above us there is only sky â€” what's the 1st immoral thing you might do to celebrate this fact? Very little, but "Give Peace A Chance" and "All You Need is Love" comes to mind for starters

For the moment, I won't tag anybody else, but don't anybody mess with me, OK!

The Manchester Bobber Electric Generator

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 02:54:19 GMT

The Manchester Bobber Electric Generator

A Newly Electric Green – Sustainable Energy, Resources and Design

Power generation based on the "motion of the ocean" offers significant long-term value, and arguably could eventually displace solar and wind generation for large-scale renewable energy projects. Hydrokinetic power (encompassing wave, current and tidal power) doesn't have the "intermittency" problems facing solar and wind, nor are there as many issues about ruined views and overrun landscape. Costs remain high, however. There are numerous ocean power projects in testing, and while most show promise, I don't believe we've yet seen the real breakout project putting ocean power at the front of the renewable energy race.

The latest contender is the "Manchester Bobber," an ocean power platform design from the University of Manchester. The up-and-down motion of the water surface drives a generator; a full-size unit should be able to produce a mean power output of around 5 megawatts:

[Professor Peter Stansby, co-inventor of the Manchester Bobber :] "Energy from the sea may be extracted in many ways and harnessing the energy from the bobbing motion of the sea is not a new idea. It is the hydrodynamics of the float employed by the Manchester Bobber that provides the vital connection to generating electricity."

The devices unique features include:

The vulnerable mechanical and electrical components are housed in a protected environment well above sea level, which makes for ease of accessibility.
All mechanical and electrical components are readily available, resulting in high reliability compared to other devices, with a large number of more sophisticated components.
The Manchester Bobber will respond to waves from any direction without requiring adjustment.The ability to maintain and repair specific 'Bobber' generators (independent of others in a linked group) means that generation supply to the network can continue uninterrupted.

One interesting proposal is that the Bobbers be built on decommissioned oil rigs. Aside from reducing the construction costs, this idea has a significant symbolic value.

Phase 1 tests of a 1/100th working model completed early this year, and Phase 2 tests of a 1/10th scale version are now underway. The university group is working on a preliminary design of the full-size version, and hope to have a time frame for construction by the end of this year.

I believe that hydro energy production is even more promising than wind or solar because it is more concentrated energy source. It is also a steady source of power as opposed to the intermittancy of wind and solar. Another benefit is the proximity of large urban centres to large bodies of water.

Rita's Long-term Impact on US Oil Unknown

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 06:49:18 GMT

Rita's Long-term Impact on US Oil Unknown

There is a rather odd side to human nature. Take a problem, present it to the audience in its maximum horror and suggest it is about to happen, then ameliorate it a little, and tell everyone how the world is not nearly as bad as it is painted. And everyone agrees that things are looking up. But you are still facing a very bad situation - only the way the news has been presented makes it seem that there is no longer a problem.

Consider that, just yesterday, Texas was facing the third worst storm in known history and things looked very dire. The storm has now got just a bit less intense and folk are already talking about Houston having "missed the bullet." All of a sudden a Category 4 hurricane becomes news enough to ease oil prices.

We have seen this over the past year with oil prices themselves. Prices rise from $30 to $40 to $50 and then they fall back $3 and we discuss the "collapse of the price of oil." It rises to $60 and then $70 and then slips $4 and suddenly "the crisis is over."

The worst case scenario for U.S. oil and gas infrastructure after Hurricane Rita reaches land could have gasoline supplies strained further than they already are and prices reaching record levels, some analysts said on Thursday. Other analysts say prices have the "Rita effect" built in and that once the storm clears land, refineries will come back, imports will start to arrive and prices will decline.

But until Hurricane Rita reaches land, the impact it has on U.S. Gulf Coast energy infrastructure and on the price of gasoline and heating oil remains a wildcard. Hurricane Rita, now downgraded to a Category 4 storm, has veered toward the east and now is expected to make landfall early Saturday just north of Houston, Texas, shifting the focus away from refineries in Corpus Christi and toward the Louisiana border.

[.....]

Katrina blew a big hole in the product market. If Rita doubles that, we are in for some serious problems," said Jamal Qureshi, an oil analyst at Washington-based PFC Energy. Already tight U.S. refining capacity was strained further after four refineries in Louisiana and Mississippi closed after flood damage from Katrina, sending the average price of a gallon to a record $3.06 a gallon.

"This could be almost worse than Katrina because there are 4 million barrels of refining in Texas areas, much more than there was in New Orleans," said Tim Evans, analyst at IFR Energy Services in New York. "(Texas) is the other major refining heart," he said, adding that Rita will be a stress test for Gulf Coast refineries.

Lack of power has kept the Louisiana refineries closed for more than three weeks, so any sustained closure of Texas area refineries will hit supplies of gasoline and heating oil needed for winter fuel. But some analysts think that Rita won't have that much of a sustained effect. "The market has already bid up the price of gasoline. It's been buy the rumor and sell the fact," said Sarah Emerson, director of petroleum at Boston-based ESAI Inc.

[...]

As the storm neared, Texas refiners intensified efforts to prepare for the hurricane by shutting down operations, taking down about 29 percent of U.S. total refining capacity. According to Qureshi, the best case scenario would be 2 million bpd of refining capacity out for four or five days. The worst case, he said, is if a big chunk of refining capacity is out for weeks or months, much like Katrina knocked out four refineries in Louisiana, which are still not back in operation after more than three weeks.

"The market is certainly tightened by this event," said IFR's Evans, who said he wouldn't be surprised to see gasoline stocks fall substantially but with demand limited by a slowdown of gasoline demand which has fallen to 6.5 pct below August levels over the past two weeks.

But some industry observers think that there will be a big difference between Rita and Katrina, which wreaked havoc on Louisiana and Mississippi. "After Katrina, there were a bunch of refineries which didn't sustain structural damage but couldn't turn the power back on," ESAI's Emerson said. While Houston isn't below sea level like New Orleans, it still can see some damage from flooding. "Houston isn't as vulnerable, but there could still be dangerous storm surges," said Aaron Brady, analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

It has been fairly easy for FEMA to meet the needs they have to hand out water, and to hire (purportedly at $24/hr with 16 hours days allowed and a credit card for all expenses) a sufficient work force for that purpose. Unfortunately for the real work in getting the oil and natural gas supplies on hand for the winter they will likely be less lucky. Unfortunately for the real work in getting the oil and natural gas supplies on hand for the winter they will likely be less lucky. The nation and the universities which carry the responsibility to train the technical support that must underpin our economy, has fallen into the management trap of purely meeting the immediate need. Petroleum Engineering Departments are high cost, and have not been strongly supported by an industry that has been more remiss than many in funding the research and development that it now has need of. Thus Departments have closed, and support infrastructure has declined.

And no one expects folks in Boston to go without heat this winter. However, we might expect fewer to heat their offices or homes to the borderline-sweltering temperatures that are not uncommon. And maybe the the usually-sweltering winter temperatures on busses and trains could be cranked down to something reflecting the way people actually dress in wintertime. And maybe a few people might close off some rooms in their palatial houses (compared to any other part of the world). And no one needs to travel a hundred miles to a fifth-grade hockey game, maybe others would make many other adjustments. None of this would all be bad, though, of course, many adjustments are not indefinitely scalable. Still we have the impacts of global warming and country debt load to add to the mix of energy shortages. Both will probably make the rebuilding of the coast and energy infrastructure problematic.

Katrina and Public Health Truths and Myths

Sun, 04 Sep 2005 00:44:47 GMT

Katrina and Public Health Truths and Myths

Hat Tip to Revere at Effect Measure

During the anthrax episode, the Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson repeatedly provided incorrect information to the news media on the number of spores required to produce an infection. The same misinformation was often repeated by public health authorities. Failure to communicate the fact that the risks from even a small number of spores could result in infection may have contributed to the deaths of two postal employees at the Brentwood facility in Washington, DC.

Misinformation from those who should know better is also occurring in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. DHHS Secretary Leavitt, for example, has warned of the risk of "typhoid and cholera" as a result of contaminated water, while others have talked generally of mosquito-borne disease and the hazards caused by dead people and animals. It is time to separate the real risks from the phantom risks.

Diarrheal disease from contaminated water is a concern, but not cholera and probably not typhoid. In order to get these diseases the water has to be contaminated with the organisms that cause those diseases, neither of which is endemic in that region. What is more likely is gastroenteritis or hepatitis A from enteric viruses or bacteria. Most are spread by the fecal-oral route, which means they are not spread directly person to person. If they get in a contaminated, piped water supply they can cause an epidemic, because piped water is an efficient way to distribute pathogens to a population. But localized contamination of flood waters is not. Individuals can get serious diarrheal disease and even die of consequent dehydration, but there is not likely to be a point source epidemic of cholera or typhoid or even diarrheal disease, only sporadic cases (which may be relatively numerous but not epidemic in nature). Lack of clean water and food can produce a risk of diarrhea and dehydration and must be attended to quickly, but not to prevent an epidemic.

Similarly the presence of dead animals and people is not a health hazard. Dead animals decompose naturally in the environment. Unless they were infected with a contagious organism before death, they will not themselves become the source of disease. The persistent concern in mass disasters over unburied bodies is an urban myth. Mass disasters like floods rarely cause epidemic disease and to suggest otherwise results in misplaced concern and potential diversion of resources from more important issues.

Mosquito-borne illness is a potential concern for some, but needs to be properly understood. Being bitten by mosquitoes is not a health hazard. The mosquitoes themselves must be vectors for a pathogenic agent like malaria or West Nile. Almost all malaria cases in the US are in people exposed and infected elsewhere who travel to this country and become sick shortly after arriving. We do not have endemic malaria, at least not at this point (global warming might change that, of course). West Nile is a possibility, because there are an unknown number of infected birds and possibly other animals in that region. However the mosquitoes that multiply in the wake of the flooding have to be the kind that both bite infected birds and bite humans. We don't know what the disaster did to the ecological niches of the potentially infected animal population nor do we know whether any increase in s specific mosquito population will be in the kind of "bridge vector" capable of biting both humans and whatever existing infected animals are around. So even a huge increase in the mosquito population does not necessarily, or even probably, mean an outbreak of West Nile or other mosquito-borne illnesses. This is important because the fear of "an epidemic" might encourage interventions that themselves carry undue risk, such as broadcast spraying of pesticides to kill adult mosquitoes. Mosquitoes reproduce exponential quickly and these techniques have not been shown to interrupt the transmission of human disease. They have the potential to just add one more biologically active toxin to the environment.

The biggest health hazards may well be those we would classify under "injury." Heat-related illness might be at the top of the list here. As body core temperatures rise above 105 degrees F., mortality increases quickly. The high heat and humidity of the area, coupled with dehydration are a significant health hazard that requires intervention by providing fluids and cooler shelters. The many sources of physical injury, whether from feral animals (snakes, alligators, etc.), sharp metal debris, falls and injuries in an environment where the hazards are numerous and not easily visible can result in substantial accumulated morbidity and even mortality. The only remedy is removal of people to a safer environment, which should be the top priority. this is also true for the many chronically ill and vulnerable people who require medication, external support from power dependent devices and supervision.

The situation is complex but the bottom line here is simple: mobilize resources to remove people from the area as quickly as possible, while providing fresh food and water to those waiting evacuation. This is something a well-organized military force, like the National Guard, should have been equipped to do from the outset. If they can plan how to put hundreds of thousands of soldiers to invade an area in a twelve hour period, they can also plan how to remove civilians in a three day period.

Or can they?

Thursdays Prayer

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 15:37:27 GMT

Thursdays Prayer

Dear Intelligent Designer:

I hope you don't mind getting mail from your designees, I figure a little feedback is always healthy. When I first heard that evolution wasn't just a natural process, but was actually all done on purpose, I was kind of pleased by the idea. It was nice to know there was somebody out there looking out for us. Or well, I guess you're not a person, but a being, anyway. I try to think the best of beings.

So, I appreciate all the good stuff you've done. Flowers, songbirds, sex, all very nice. Or, mostly nice. But the more I thought a bout it, the more I started to get, I don't know how to say this any more nicely, kind of disappointed in a few things. So if you'll just give me a moment of your time, here are some things you might want to reconsider.

Are you really looking out for us after all? For one thing, you really ought to stop intelligently designing those bacteria to be resistant to antibiotics. Evidently you originally designed the bacteria to kill us and make us sick, and I'm sure you had your reasons. Intelligent doesn't have to mean nice. So now you're probably a little annoyed with us for coming up with ways to kill the the bugs first, but give us a break! It seems to me if we start to figure out how to stay alive for a while, you should just accept that. We get to design things too, okay? Same goes for HIV. What's that all about anyway? It was bad enough you intelligently designed it in the first place, now you keep redesigning it so the drugs don't work. Enough already. And then there's the flu virus. Don't get me started with that one. Don't you have anything better to do?

Then there's the whole question of the human body. It has a lot of great features, but a few of them just seem -- sorry to have to say this, but it's true -- not very intelligent. To begin with, there's that stupid appendix, that doesn't seem to do anything except get infected. Then there's the birth canal. It's not a problem for me personally but it is for at leat half of my friends. It's too small for the baby's head, causes no end of trouble. I could go on and on with that. The lower back. I don't expect perfection, everything has to wear out and break down eventually, but there are some pretty obvious improvements you could make there.

Then, as if an appendix isn't bad enough, you made it even worse by giving me a solitary cecal diverticulum. Damn near killed me, for no good reason that I can see.Then there are allergies. Multiple sclerosis. Schizophrenia. Huntington's disease. Neurofibromatosis. These appear to be manufacturing defects, rather than design flaws per se, but shouldn't you exercise better oversight? (By the way, can you give me the name and phone number of the being in charge of manufacturing? Or at least the mailing address? I promise I'll be civil.) The quality of the product is a reflection on you, after all, and I'd think you'd take more pride in it.

Next, I don't want to call you a hypocrite, but I hear that you get really, really angry when people kill those innocent preborn babies. But then I read that you do it yourself! Specifically, out of 100 zygotes, about 50 fail to implant in the uterus and uhh, well, there goes a Sacred Human Life down the toilet. Of the remaining 50, 30% (that's 15) are simply sloughed off in what appears to be a normal, perhaps late, menstrual cycle and the woman probably will never know that she was preganant. The remaining 35 embryos will last at least 35 days, after which pregnancy may be recognized. Of these, 25% will die in utero, perhaps recognized as a miscarriage. That leaves about 26 of the original 100 innocent preborn babies unslain by you. So why is it okay for you, and not for us? Just asking.

Now, there are some things that bother some people that are okay with me. For instance, I have nothing against beetles. You're entitled to your obsessions. It's kind of ridiculous that the whales keep stranding themselves on the beach but it's not my problem. And kudzu is a major pain but I guess it's our own fault for putting it where it doesn't belong. (That's still no excuse for poison ivy.)

Anyhow, just a few thoughts, I hope you don't mind. I know I've mostly been pretty critical, but I hope you'll take it professioally, not personally. If you're interested, I have some more ideas.

Your artifact,

Cervantes
(reprinted from http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/2005/08/saturday-prayer.html)

State-Of-The-Art: Not Good Enough

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 22:26:00 GMT

State-Of-The-Art: Not Good Enough

After weeks of exhaustive testing, Motor Trend editors found the Toyota Prius to be a user-friendly gas/electric hybrid capable of delivering an impressive 60 miles per gallon in city driving. However, all this is related to larger issues we as a people have with technology. It's all about the grand gesture -- Bush promises to dump billions into the hydrogen economy, which is still decades away. The Space Shuttle should have been retired or evolved away ten years ago minimum, but we needs our bipeds in space. Our biggest threat now is loose nukes, but we spend pennies on that while pissing money up a rope to build our magical missile defense space shield. Instead automakers promise hydrogen-powered vehicles hailed by President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though hydrogen's backers acknowledge the cars won't be widely available for years and would require a vast infrastructure of new fueling stations. "They'd rather work on something that won't be in their lifetime, and that's this hydrogen economy stuff,".

"They pick this kind of target to get the public off their back, essentially." But Ron Gremban says that such a car is parked in his garage, right now.

It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret — a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel.

Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car.

Like all hybrids, his Prius increases fuel efficiency by harnessing small amounts of electricity generated during braking and coasting. The extra batteries let him store extra power by plugging the car into a wall outlet at his home in this San Francisco suburb — all for about a quarter.

He's part of a small but growing movement. "Plug-in" hybrids aren't yet cost-efficient, but some of the dozen known experimental models have gotten up to 250 mpg. With mass-production, the high battery cost would come down a lot.
-------------

Green Car Congress writes about a very cool project by Canadian engineer Steve Lapp who modified his 2001 Prius by installing solar panels on the roof. It is admitted that the car is still a rough prototype, but so far the fuel economy improvement are of 10%, a respectable figure; for reference, Honda completely redesigned the Honda Civic engine for the 2006 model and achieved a 6% increase in fuel economy (the comparison is not quite fair, but I just want to point out that it can take lots of engineering efforts to gain even a few percents). "Lapp’s modelling predicts a 10%–20% fuel efficiency improvement for the 270 watts of PV (to be bumped up to 360 watts with the additional of a fourth panel)".

Here's a quote from Lapp's plan:

...the fact that [current Toyota hybrids] can run on electricity alone, with their gasoline engines off, offers the opportunity to provide them with more electricity and therefore drive further with the gasoline engine off.

Electricity can be provided from the electrical grid by charging an onboard battery, and depending on where that electricity comes from, it will have various emissions associated with it. [The plug-in concept.] However if it is provided from renewable energy sources, such as photovoltaic panels, then it is "green".

This begs the question of why not put the PV panels directly on a hybrid car and generate electricity onboard while the car is parked outside, or even while driving. The general reaction of people to this idea is that there could not be enough energy striking the roof of a car to provide enough electricity to drive any meaningful distance.

This is where the incredible efficiency of the hybrid car must be taken into account. To drive a hybrid car about 1 km, takes about the same electricity as to light a 150 watt bulb for one hour! The point is not to drive the car using only solar power, but to effectively use solar power to improve gasoline fuel efficiency.

How much gasoline can this photovoltaic hybrid car save? Well let’s look at the energy available from the sun on the roof of the car. For June and July in Kingston Ontario, about 6 kWh of energy from the sun strikes each square meter of horizontal surface. If we install 2 square meters of photovoltaic panels on the car and we collect 10% of the energy from the sun as electricity (well within present PV efficiency), we can theoretically go about 8 km each day on just the sun’s energy. If we drive 24 km on a sunny day, that is enough to reduce our gasoline consumption by 33%. This would take the Prius from 5.0 l/100km [47 mpg] to 3.3 l/100km [71.2 mpg].

-----

While the big focus today is on battery-assisted hybrids, research is going into the use of supercapacitors to offer a regenerative power boost. Able to quickly charge and discharge, supercapacitors could be used in place of batteries in some applications, or as an additional energy source to add power when a vehicle is climbing hills. Check this article for more info. Meanwhile, we’re waiting for the übercapacitor, on which Bosch is working with Doctor Emmett Brown.

--------

Our man Bruno, at the University of Michigan’s Automotive Research Center, hipped us to the fact that the EPA has been playing around with hydraulic drive systems for a while. He notes, “They work especiall well for larger vehicles, where batteries are becoming very expensive. Also, the large mass of SUVs & delivery trucks requires a very high rate of energy charge & discharge, which is where hydraulic accumulators excel in comparison to batteries.” We still wonder why this system hasn’t been adapted to cars, as it seems to us that while hydraulic fluid can be made recyclable, batteries inherently cause lots of waste. Not to mention that the electrocution factor’s a lot lower when hydraulics are involved.

Of all the inanities uttered by former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, perhaps none was more inane than his May 2001 assertion that burning fossil fuels was part of the "blessed" American way of life. Those driving giant cars, he suggested, were not only exercising some fundamental right of citizenship but proclaiming American exceptionalism.

After 9/11, Hummers became a cocky symbol of American greatness. Driving the biggest, baddest, least-fuel-efficient car on the planet was tantamount to giving the finger to environmentalists, Arianna Huffington, and all those who suggested that the involvement of Saudi citizens in the attacks should lead us to rethink our dependence on foreign oil. You could be an active home-front warrior by buying an expensive Hummer—imitating our troops in Iraq and stimulating the economy at the same time. (Hummers also come in handy in case you need to mount a motorized assault on the Stop-n-Shop.)

Comparing the Prius and the Hummer is like comparing apples and oranges, or apples and watermelons. Since the new 2004 model was introduced in the fall, the Prius has been stomping the Hummer. In November 2003, the Prius outsold the H2 by a 2-to-1 margin, according to Autodata. In January 2004, Prius sales were up 82 percent from January 2003.

For the 2004 model year, Toyota initially boosted production 50 percent to 36,000. But demand has been strong enough that production has already been increased to 47,000. And that's still not enough. My Toyota dealer doesn't have a Prius on the lot and says that interested purchasers must put down a deposit today and wait six months. By contrast, my local Hummer dealer has several on the lot.

The demand for the Prius is pushing Toyota to install hybrid technology in other models, including SUVs. Also, it's spurring other automakers to adapt hybrid motors. Apparently, there's even a hybrid version of the Hummer in the works.

NASA's Big Gulp

Sat, 13 Aug 2005 23:19:11 GMT

NASA's Big Gulp

NASA pisses away millions hauling H2O into orbit. But there's a better way - recycle astronaut urine. Just one question: How does it taste?

By Tom McNichol

People head to Reno for all sorts of reasons. Some want to gamble. Others are looking for a hasty wedding or quickie divorce. I've come to the Biggest Little City in the World to drink my own pee. Not straight up, of course. First, I'll run it through a new NASA water purification system that collects astronaut sweat, moisture from respiration, drain water, and urine - and turns it all into drinking water.

NASA desperately needs this technology. Water makes for a heavy - and expensive - payload. Over the past five years, the agency has spent $60 million delivering potable water to the International Space Station on the space shuttle (6 tons at a cost of about $40,000 per gallon). Deploying the Water Recovery System on the ISS will cut the volume of water hauled into space by two-thirds and free up enough room on the shuttle for four more astronauts.

I'm in Reno because this is the home of Water Security, a new company that is finding ways to use the NASA technology in extreme environments here on Earth. Company president Ray Doane can't wait to show me his magic box. "This is whiz-bang technology," he boasts, with an emphasis on the whiz.

Water Security has added a special filter to the NASA unit, creating a system that can scrub away 99.9 percent of all waterborne viruses, which could prove particularly useful in the developing world. The United Nations estimates that more than 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and that 10 million die each year as a result of contaminated water supplies and inadequate sanitation.

The six-stage system starts with a prefilter that removes large particles of sediment and debris, such as hair or lint, from contaminated liquid. Next, a carbon filter strips out the organic waste products contained in urine, like urea, uric acid, and creatinine, as well as pesticides and herbicides, which frequently leech into water supplies from farmland. The liquid then flushes through a cartridge developed by Water Security that contains tiny black beads of iodinated resins. Any microorganisms collide with the beads, which release iodine to kill the bugs.

"The iodine is released gradually into the water and is very stable over a wide range of temperatures and pHs," company vice president Ken Kearney says. "It's very predictable, and that's what you want in space. It can also take some of the dirtiest, nastiest water on the planet and produce clean, safe drinking water."

The water lingers briefly in a holding tank to give the iodine enough contact time for a complete kill. Next, a resin filter strips out the iodine, along with nitrates and heavy metals. Finally, the water moves through a filter that eliminates cryptosporidium (a waterborne parasite that's resistant to iodine) and provides a final "polish" for good taste.

At least that's what they tell me. A Water Security system is set up here at company headquarters, ready to be put to my own uric acid test. A big yellow bucket next to the unit is filled with water and then tainted with "Arizona dust," a common contaminant used by laboratories. I discreetly retire to a side office and emerge clutching a warm plastic cup. I pour the urine into the yellow bucket, taking care not to splash. The chemist stirs the brew with a long stick.

Human waste has bedeviled NASA engineers from the get-go. Alan Shepherd's first 15-minute suborbital flight was so short that no one thought to install a urine receptacle in his space suit. At T-minus 15 minutes, an electrical problem caused an 86-minute delay on the launchpad. Shepherd's bladder soon reached the bursting point, and he radioed the first-ever "Houston, we have a problem" message. After some deliberation, mission control had an answer: "Do it in the suit."

Gemini and Apollo astronauts wore plastic bags taped to their buttocks. After defecation, the crew member was required to seal the bag and knead it, mixing in a liquid-bactericide to provide the desired degree of "feces stabilization." The first men to walk on the moon stepped onto the lunar surface wearing astrodiapers - undershorts layered with absorbent material. Which may explain all the jumping up and down.

As a 1975 NASA study put it, "In general, the Apollo waste management system worked satisfactorily from an engineering standpoint. From the point of view of crew acceptance, however, the system must be given poor marks." For the space shuttle, the agency designed a $23 million toilet that freeze-dries solid waste so it can be transported back to Earth. Until recently, the gray water was dumped overboard, becoming an orbiting monument to mankind.

The water filtration system allows NASA to solve two problems at once. It eliminates the gray water disposal issue and recycles urine into drinking water for the astronauts. The agency is testing the system at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama - where employees run on treadmills as their sweat, respiratory moisture, and urine are collected, cleansed and consumed.

Water Security has already begun putting the technology to work in areas where freshwater is in short supply. This summer, global relief agency Concern for Kids deployed a foot-powered purification unit in northern Iraq. Robert and Roni Anderson, Concern's founders, loaded it onto the back of a Toyota pickup and drove to dozens of villages to purify their groundwater. The unit pumps out 5 gallons per minute, and a single day of purification can sustain a village of 5,000 people for a month. The cost is about 3 cents a gallon. Iraqi water companies, by comparison, charge $4 a gallon.

It's not just war-torn regions that are short on potable water. After the tsunami hit Indonesia last December, much of the freshwater supply became contaminated with salt water and toxic street runoff. Kearney says the Water Security system is perfectly capable of working in such natural-disaster scenarios. After all, the technology was originally tested on an open sewage ditch in Jakarta and produced water that met Environmental Protection Agency standards.

Back at Water Security HQ, the contents of the bucket get a final stir, and the experiment begins. The water is sucked through an intake hose and into the purification system - prefilter, carbon filter, iodinated resin, disinfectant holding tank, iodine scrub, and a polish. (Don't be shy with the polish, guys.)

After 30 seconds, water dribbles out of a nozzle and into a plastic cup. I raise it with a trembling hand. A toast to Alan Shepherd and all the brave astronauts who endured the wrong stuff in their space suits for the advancement of science: This number one's for you. I take a big astronaut gulp, lower the cup, and wait for the noxious aftertaste. Nothing.

The water tastes pretty good - it's definitely not Evian, but it is better than most city tap. Certainly more palatable than many light beers I've had, and not at all, uh, urinous. Move over, Tang: There's a new space drink in town!

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 19:53:36 GMT

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD

Here's another critique of Intelligent Design creationism that suggests that the Flying Spaghetti Monster should be taught in schools. I love the iconography.

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m
sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.

I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your students are taught this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Furthermore, it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia. I cannot stress the importance of this, and unfortunately cannot describe in detail why this must be done as I fear this letter is already becoming too long.

The concise explanation is that He becomes angry if we don’t.

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.

In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to hear our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of teaching this theory to your students. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.

Sincerely Yours,

Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.

08/05/05 UPDATE: Responses from two members of the Kansas School Board

Response from Mrs. Janet Waugh - District 1 - Received 6/25/05

From: JWaugh1052@aol.com
To: bobby.henderson@gmail.com
Date: Jun 25, 2005 6:34 AM
Subject: Response from a member of the Kansas Board of Education

Thanks for your comments about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and all the supporters who have sent their support to members of the Kansas Board of Education. I am supporting the recommendations of the science committee and am currently in the minority. I think your theory is wonderful and possibly some of the majority members will be willing to support it.
Thanks again,

Janet Waugh
District 1

Response from Mrs. Sue Gamble - District 2 - Received 6/26/05

From: msgamble@swbell.net
To: bobby.henderson@gmail.com
Date: Jun 26, 2005 6:34 PM
Subject: Reply

Dear Mr. Henderson, Thanks for your message. Thanks for the laugh. Your web site is fascinating. I will add your theory to a long list of alternative theories I intend to introduce when it is appropriate. I am practicing how to do this with a straight face which is difficult since it's such a ridiculous subject; it is also very sad that we are even having the discussion. I will be one of the four member minority who will be voting against the flawed science standards currently being proposed by the six member majority.

Sincerely, Sue Gamble

And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last
slouches toward Bethlehem to be born? W. B. Yeats
In the song of the musical duo of Sonny & Cher - "The Beat Goes On"

Bobby,

Today I was blessed to receive a divine revelation from our Almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster. I have the privilege of informing you that it is His will that I become His Bride, in order that the Savior of mankind (who is to be called Macaroni) may be born on this earth. The FSM has revealed to me that your body is to be the vehicle by which his holy seed shall be transmitted in earthly form.

To that end, I have reserved a room for us at the Best Western Airport Inn, Boise, Idaho, for the evening of [removed]. I will be the woman wearing the WWFSMD t-shirt and eye patch.

I look forward to meeting you and fulfilling the will of our noodly master.

Julie
Boise, Idaho

MACARONI!! Watch for a Bright Star In the East!

Orgasm blows the mind - literally

Thu, 21 Jul 2005 01:54:57 GMT

Orgasm Blows The Mind - literally

Orgasm is literally a mind-blowing experience for a woman, scientists revealed on Monday.

Much of her brain shuts down when she reaches a sexual climax, including areas that deal with emotion.

The discovery was made during a bizarre set of experiments in the Netherlands in which couples were asked to stimulate each other while undergoing brain scans.

It seems to explode the myth that while men switch off during sex, the part of women that is most turned on is in their heads.

By looking at the brain scans, researchers had no trouble telling when women were "faking it".

The brains of volunteers who were asked to simulate orgasm after a period of stimulation remained fully active and in conscious control.

Neuroscientist Dr Gert Holstege, from the University of Groningen, who led the research, said: "The main thing we saw in females is deactivation of the brain, which was unbelievable; really very pronounced.

"I think that's the major outcome of the study. What you see is deactivation of large parts of the brain, especially the emotional brain, the fear centres."

The only part of a woman's brain that was activated during orgasm was the cerebellum. Although chiefly associated with the control of movement, scientists think it may also play an emotional role.

The cerebellum was also active during fake orgasms, but elsewhere the picture was very different.

"If you look at the women who faked orgasm, we see the same kind of thing in the cerebellum taking place, but the cortex, the conscious part of the brain, is also active," said Dr Holstege.

"Women can imitate orgasm quite well, but in the brain it's not the same."

Even the body movements made during a real orgasm were unconscious and did not involve the "thinking" part of the brain, he said. This was not the case with a fake orgasm.

Shutting down the brain during orgasm ensured that obstacles such as fear and stress did not get in the way.

"Deactivation of these very important parts of the brain might be the most important necessity for having an orgasm," said Dr Holstege.

"When you are fearful or have a very high level of anxiety, then it's hard to have sex because during sex you really have to give yourself and let go."

Men were studied in the same way. But because the male orgasm during ejaculation takes such a short time - typically 20 seconds - it was difficult to obtain meaningful brain scan data.

The scans showed a similar activation of the cerebellum in men. Dr Holstege suspected other parts of men's brains mirrored those of women and became deactivated during orgasm.

However, another part of the study in which couples stimulated each other for two minutes without reaching orgasm showed distinct differences between men and women.

In both, a "fear centre" called the amygdala was deactivated. But in men alone, the scientists saw activation of an ancient, primitive part of the brain linked to emotion called the insula.

There was also a difference in the way touching the genitals affected the somatosensory cortex of the brain. Women merely experienced a sensory feeling, whereas in men emotions were involved.

"Men are seeing it as a big deal, the interpretation of what is happening is important to them," said Dr Holstege. "Women apparently do not have this idea that, OK, this is so important. With women the primary feeling is there, but not the interpretation."

Another odd observation was that the hippocampus, which deals with memory, was deactivated in women. The researchers have no idea why.

A total of 13 women and 11 men, ranging in age from 19 to 49, took part in the experiments at Dr Holstege's laboratory.

Presenting the findings today at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Copenhagen, Denmark, he admitted it was a not the easiest of studies to carry out.

The volunteers, all partners, were recruited through advertisements placed in Dutch magazines.

To put participants in the right mood, members of Dr Holstege's team spoke reassuringly to them, and dimmed the lighting in the scanning room.

Since it was vital to remain completely still in the scanner, volunteers had to have their heads restrained while being sexually stimulated. The rest of the body was free to move.

"We are neuroscientists, so we're only interested in the brain," said Dr Holstege.

The men and women, who were all heterosexual and right-handed, stimulated each others' genitals, but did not have full intercourse.

Participants lay naked on a table with their head inside the scanner. Dr Holstege said a major problem was that they got cold feet - literally. A solution was found in the form of socks supplied by the scientists.

Dr Holstege added that the research could in future lead to better treatments for sexual dysfunction.

The key appeared to be to reduce fear and anxiety - as was illustrated by the aphrodisiac effect on alcohol.

"Alcohol brings down the fear level," said Dr Holstege. "Everyone knows if you give alcohol to a woman it makes things easier."

Of course it's genetic--what else could it be?

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 17:55:36 GMT

Of course it's genetic--what else could it be?

PZ Myers has gotten deluged again by anti-feminists because he dared inject some actual scientific understanding of genetics into the debate about whether or not men are "naturally" smarter than women. In this case, of course, it's all about men's big ol' math brains and women's superior diaper-changing brains. It's a lengthy thread, but highly funny.

I won't quote at length, though, but I do want to address this ridiculous belief that there is any socialization has anything with differences between men and women's willingness to enter fields like science or mathematics or compete at chess or any of these other things. Of course it's pure genetics--that or you don't believe in science and are a creationist or something. It's as simple as that.

That being said, I want to address this interesting T-shirt I found at a livejournal on feminism.

I have never seen this particular biological theory advanced before, so you can imagine how surprised I was to see it first on a T-shirt. But that's okay--you can get first class biological thinking on the inherent differences between men and women's intellectual capacity on the op-ed page of the NY Times, so why shouldn't a T-shirt be a way to publicize the cutting edge of biological thinking? While the correlation between being female and being stupid has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by male wannabe scientists, who are equipped with the masculine ability to theorize about female inferiority without having their thinking muddled by wishful thinking, I have never seen anyone propose that there is a genetic link between prettiness and inaptitude at math.

It is an interesting theory, of course. We all know that prettiness is strictly a result of genes and has no enviromental component, or what little it does is mere window dressing. (Sorry, ladies, but Mother Nature is no feminist.) You can tell prettiness is pure genetics because women put forth hysterical and emotional arguments about diet, exercise, hair care, shaving, make-up and clothing--if women have an emotional investment in having men believe that prettiness takes effort, then clearly that demonstrates that it's nothing but ruthless evolution that creates prettiness. And since prettiness is genetic like intelligence, it's certainly possible and downright likely there is a link between prettiness and intelligence.

And, as this T-shirt suggests, there is plenty of clothing-related evidence that there is an inverse relationship between prettiness and mathmatical aptitude. And of course, that makes perfect evolutionary sense, if you understand that prettiness would be an indicator of inability to challenge the male ego in primitive societies, and men would select mates with traits we deem pretty so as best not to feel that there's a chance they were with someone who might make more money than them one day after money was invented.

Of course, this explains the ovary-infested temper tantrum that female scientists threw when non-biologist but very much male and intellectually superior Larry Summers indicated he was willing to face the truth about female inability to do math. They weren't mad that he was speaking the truth about the average woman's lack of aptitude--they were simply angry, as women get in all their silliness, that they were being told that they were never going to be Homecoming Queen. Frankly, I think a nice pair of shoes is all it's going to take to calm them down, or perhaps a dozen roses sent to each scientist to let them know that certainly it's not them he was speaking about when he slurred women, just every woman that's not them.

Words To Live By

Wed, 18 May 2005 06:23:45 GMT

Words To Live By

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." Hunter Thompson

And if you swear that there's no truth and who cares, how come you say it like you're right? - Conor Oberst

The greatest paradox in life is that the average person believes themselves to be better than the average person.

A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person

"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Marijuana, pornography and illegal labor account for 10% of the American economy.

"Fellatio is the ultimate act of trust" - Albert Einstein.

"90% of everything is crap." - "Sturgeon's Law"

Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go it's one of the best. -Woody Allen

you don't need to be religious to be moral and ethical.

It takes courage to be happy

don't search, stumble!

If your glass is half empty, fill it.

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."- Albert Einstein

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." - Aldous Huxley

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography

Know thyself

American are 6% of the world population, but consume 30% of the resources.

The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers; it takes a creative mind to spot wrong questions.

"I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers" - Thomas Watson (IBM Chairman) 1943.

Moderation in everything.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. Oscar Wilde

"It isn't necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy." Groucho Marx

Creationism in Schools at Fault for Dwindling Science Skills

Sun, 01 May 2005 18:06:16 GMT

Creationism in Schools at Fault for Dwindling Science Skills

According to a 2004 article from The New York Times, "The United States has started to lose its worldwide dominance in critical areas of science and innovation."

Our Republican-dominated government hasn't exactly leapt into action. Although, to be fair, the issue of science has never been a high priority for them. They're kept pretty busy running up record deficits, undermining church/state separation, engaging in pre-emptive wars and enriching the wealthy at the expense of the poor. The title of a February 2004 CNN article, "Scientists feel stifled by Bush administration," nicely captures President Bush's feelings for science.

Numerous factors contribute to our slipping science and technology leadership. Most would undoubtedly agree that a robust science education is crucially important for our children to be internationally competitive. Such an education, despite the protestations of theocrats, requires comprehensive instruction in the central, unifying concept of modern biology: evolution. As the eminent geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky observed, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

The gradual and insidious imposition of religious beliefs (creationism) in public science classes represents more than a violation of church/state separation; it's a waste of valuable time. As the National Academy of Sciences bluntly put it: "Creationism, intelligent design and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science."

Each creationist victory promises increasing numbers of students who are poorly informed about evolutionary theory and hostile toward the topic. In fact, these students might be indoctrinated with serious misconceptions about evolution.

With this problem in mind, I have a suggestion for how introductory evolutionary theory might be more effectively taught. Educators could exploit creationist-spawned misinformation by using commonly held misconceptions of evolutionary theory as a springboard to the introduction of central concepts.

Misconception #1: "Evolution is random, and randomness can't produce complexity."

Like many creationist falsehoods, this one contains a kernel of truth. Chance does, indeed, play a role in the evolutionary process; mutation is a random change in a gene or chromosome. However, the process of natural selection is decidedly nonrandom. Put simply, natural selection acts like a filter on genetic variations within a population, weeding out deleterious genetic changes, while favoring mutations that tend to improve reproductive fitness. Beneficial mutations (largely defined by environmental conditions) increase in frequency within a gene pool. Fast-evolving antibiotic resistant bacteria provide a great example. Evolution is not random.

Misconception #2: "Evolution is just a theory."

This misunderstanding provides a superb opportunity to remind students what science is, what a scientific theory is and how science differs from other ways of knowing. Although in the common vernacular the word "theory" denotes a rudimentary idea or guess, a scientific theory is far more than that. Scientific theories are well-substantiated explanations of natural phenomena. Evolutionary theory is accepted as fact by an overwhelming majority of scientists all over the world. In contrast, creationism represents a mere unsubstantiated belief or guess.

Misconception #3: "There are gaps in the fossil record, and transitional fossils don't exist."

Of course there are gaps in the fossil record - fossilization is a rare occurrence. However, despite this limitation, numerous and superb examples of transitional fossils have been found. This common fallacy that evolution is poorly supported offers an excellent opportunity to discuss examples of transitional forms and the vast corroborating evidence for evolution drawn from various disciplines. A recent article in Scientific American put it well: "We know evolution happened ï¿½ because of the convergence of evidence from such diverse fields as geology, paleontology, biogeography, comparative anatomy and physiology, molecular biology, genetics and many more."

Numerous additional misconceptions about evolution exist, including one of my favorites, "If we came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?" "Teaching to the misconception" provides an effective means of introducing fundamental principles of both evolution and the scientific method, while simultaneously undermining the well-funded creationist misinformation campaign. It's all good.

Call it creationism, or call it intelligent design, it has no basis in the scientific method, and thus it is not science, and thus it doesn't belong in science class. It is analogous to require a discussion of Darwinism in Sunday School or comparative religion--an interesting concept, but it has nothing to do with doctrine or chapter and verse. Anyone who does not grasp that there is a bright line dividing these concepts has not been taught science adequately. It may be useful for teachers to discuss creationism, ID or criticisms of Darwinism in class, but there certainly should be no mandate for it. Science rejects strict theism out of hand, just as theism rejects strict empiricism out of hand. Only one group is forcing children to have their educations muddled and diluted in the name of pushing dogma.

Remember the Kennewick Man some years ago and all the controversy that it generated, partly because it contradicted some of the cherished beliefs of local Native American tribes? Science is not PC--it often offends someone. It might be Christian fundamentalits some day, it might be Native Americans another, or it could be industrialists one day, and environmentalists another. But, if we are to be committed to science, we can't be partisan about its implications.

And God Annointed Them With Shell, And Exxon, And Texaco...

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 02:31:38 GMT

And God Annointed Them With Shell, And Exxon, And Texaco...

Now, have you ever met an atheist this dim?

A Texas oilman is using his Bible as a guide to finding oil in the Holy Land.
John Brown, a born-again Christian and founder of Zion Oil & Gas of Dallas, can quote chapter and verse about his latest drilling venture in Israel, where his company has an oil and gas exploration license covering 96,000 acres.

"Most blessed of sons be Asher. Let him be favored by his brothers and let him dip his foot in oil," Brown quotes from Moses's blessing to one of the 12 Tribes of Israel in Deuteronomy 33:24.

Ed Brayton straightens him out:

How absurd. The men who wrote the bible would not even have known what oil (petroleum, that is) was, nor, one would think, would they even have had a word for it. The Hebrew word in this passage is shemen. Strong's Concordance defines this word as "grease, especially liquid (as from the olive, often perfumed)", which is consistent with biblical notions of annointing and a culture in which washing and annointing one's feet was a sign of wealth. It has precisely nothing to do with petroleum. Proof yet again that PT Barnum was an optimist. Then again, I've always found it amusing that God allegedly led his "chosen people" to a "promised land" that just happened to be practically the only spot in the Middle East without any oil.

All together now for John Brown: DUH! Christians often use the Bible as a sort of divination tool, taking verses out of context and applying them to their lives.

On the other hand, there are a lot of atheists who were once ministers or theology students. Dan Barker, Charles Templeton, and Micheal Shermer are a few examples. When a person stops playing games with the Bible and studies it earnestly, faith becomes very hard to maintain.

La Vida Robot

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 02:34:10 GMT

La Vida Robot

With all the anti-illegal-immigrant nonsense flying around the media these days I think it's important to remember that your legal status in this country has nothing to do with your value to society.

The winter rain makes a mess of West Phoenix. It turns dirt yards into mud and forms reefs of garbage in the streets. Junk food wrappers, diapers, and Spanish-language porn are swept into the gutters. On West Roosevelt Avenue, security guards, two squad cars, and a handful of cops watch teenagers file into the local high school. A sign reads: Carl Hayden Community High School: The Pride's Inside.

Across campus, in a second-floor windowless room, four students huddle around an odd, 3-foot-tall frame constructed of PVC pipe. They have equipped it with propellers, cameras, lights, a laser, depth detectors, pumps, an underwater microphone, and an articulated pincer. At the top sits a black, waterproof briefcase containing a nest of hacked processors, minuscule fans, and LEDs. It's a cheap but astoundingly functional underwater robot capable of recording sonar pings and retrieving objects 50 feet below the surface. The four teenagers who built it are all undocumented Mexican immigrants who came to this country through tunnels or hidden in the backseats of cars. They live in sheds and rooms without electricity. But over three days last summer, these kids from the desert proved they are among the smartest young underwater engineers in the country.

Cameron and Ledge, as the students called Lajvardi, formed the robotics group for kids like Cristian. He was probably the smartest 16-year-old in West Phoenix - without even trying, he had one of the highest GPAs in the school district. His brains and diminutive stature (5'4", 135 pounds) kept him apart at Carl Hayden. That and the fact that students socialized based on Mexican geography: In the cafeteria, there were Guanajuato tables and Sonora tables. Cristian was from Mexicali, but he'd left Mexico in the back of a station wagon when he was 6. He thought of himself as part American, part Mexican, and he didn't know where to sit.

So he ate lunch in the storage room the teachers had commandeered for the underwater ROV club. Cristian devoted himself to solving thrust vector and power supply issues. The robot competition (sponsored in part by the Office of Naval Research and NASA) required students to build a bot that could survey a sunken mock-up of a submarine - not easy stuff. The teachers had entered the club in the expert-level Explorer class instead of the beginner Ranger class. They figured their students would lose anyway, and there was more honor in losing to the college kids in the Explorer division than to the high schoolers in Ranger. Their real goal was to show the students that there were opportunities outside West Phoenix. The teachers wanted to give their kids hope.

Wired is running a great article on how a group of illegal immigrant kids won the underwater vehicle competition, beating MIT and much better financed teams along the way. See more robotics project pictures here.

If you've got some extra cash send it their way and let these kids go to college.

Eye Foreign Eye

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 02:36:18 GMT

Eye Foreign Eye

What are the factors in play when we see more "westernized" images of women wearing the hijab. This style of dress not only calls up stereotypes as to who is underneath, it also stimulates an urge to make them more like us. In those instances where they actually do look more like us, however, to what extent is this a factor of Islamic liberalization, western glamorization, commercial exploitation or just plain voyeurism?

This image comes from the MSNBC "Pictures of the Week" gallery from the period of February 24- March 3. They titled it: Eye to eye. Here's the caption:

Supporters of terror suspect Babar Ahmad, who is facing extradition to the United States, protest outside a court in London on March 2. Britain began extradition hearing for Ahmad, who is wanted in the United States for allegedly running terrorist Web sites, but Muslim groups said he should be tried at home.

So, should we start with the positive space, or the negative?

I assume there are standard ways the western eye (or guy) tends to glamorize these cloaked women -- starting with the "eye window" as some kind of teaser. What really tilts this photo to the west, however, is the fact these eyes and lashes are so made up. You can almost hear the sigh of assurance that these women are more educated and middle class.

Or, you could start with one blue pair of eyes and one brown pair. Because the blue associates more with white culture while the brown associates more to, well... brown, one could say the image sets up an East-West dichotomy.

If you subscribe to the East-West argument, you could also say that the blue or west-leaning eyes are "good," while the brown represent those followers of Islam we have to look out for. The picture also reinforces this interpretation through facial gesture. The "good" blue eyes, for example, bear a decidedly more benign expression. The other figure, however, has a look that could almost be read as scheming.

You can also get a conspiratorial sense from how the figures interact. It looks like they are literally "putting their heads together." The impression is that the one on the right is discretely whispering something, while the one on the left is playing it low key.

If you think I am overplaying the association to threat, it's easy to say that I've been set up by the caption. But then, this caption is guilty of a lot of things. By linking the photo to a court proceeding, it implies the picture is newsworthy. So, are these women protesters? Or, more libelously, are they supporters of the suspect, or even "supporters of terror?" Before answering that, however, perhaps one needs to consider the virtue of associating such a suggestive photo (politically, and otherwise) to a provocative news event few readers have ever heard of. (If you ask me, I'd say it puts us back in the neighborhood of exploitation and voyeurism again.)

At my very first look at this pricture I saw something totally different at first. What I saw was one face being formed by the two faces. Not the faces of woman but of one face looking straight at the viewer. I don't know what this says about the meaning of this image but to me it conveys the idea that these women can or could be as hostile towards the west as anyone else involved with terror. The positive—negative effect in "Islamic Eyes" that I see now is the classic "vase or face" optical illusion.

MSNBC wouldn't be doing any kind of Subliminal Seduction propaganda would they?

Brits Seek Missing WIMPs of Universe

Thu, 01 May 2003 04:42:04 GMT

Brits Seek Missing WIMPs of Universe

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

LONDON (Reuters) -- British scientists equipped with state-of-the-art detectors deep underground in northern England have begun a search for one of the most tantalizing secrets of the universe -- Dark Matter.

"If we are successful in our quest then we are looking at a place in the history books," Neil Spooner of Sheffield University said Tuesday. "This will be one of the great discoveries of our time."

Scientists around the world are racing to be the first to discover the truth about Dark Matter, which cannot be seen because it does not emit light. They believe it makes up the vast majority of the universe.

Scientists say stars account for less than 1 percent of the mass of the universe, with gas clouds and other objects accounting for close to another 5 percent.

[Via Hypocrites]

Iraq TV Battle Reporting: War Porn

Wed, 26 Mar 2003 05:56:35 GMT

Iraq TV Battle Reporting: War porn

Wednesday March 26, 2003
The Guardian

With their jazzy graphics, fact boxes and breathless statistics, the military pundits are everywhere. But aren't they enjoying themselves a little too much? And who wants to know all this stuff anyway? Could sex have something to do with it, wonders Emma Brockes?

Consider an exchange that took place last week on Sky News, between the studio anchor and defence expert of the hour, Colonel Mike Vickery. With the aid of the Skystrator, Sky's hi- tech version of the Etch a Sketch, footage of a tank trundling across the desert was freeze-framed and decorated with red arrows to highlight its selling points.

Vickery: Moving at 35mph, that is a hell of a pace for not just an armoured vehicle, but a whole bunch of armoured vehicles.

Anchor: Does that surprise you?

Vickery: It doesn't really surprise me, but it's very impressive.

Anchor: OK. What are we looking at now?

Vickery: Here you can see the tank in its UK guise and you can see they've got that 120mm gun on the front there, that's got a range of over two miles. On the top you can see a hunter-killer sight, that is to say that the commander can look at one target while the gunner is engaging another one. And then you've got, of course, the armour, if you can see that square chunky appearance on the sides and at the front of the vehicle.

Anchor: Have these tanks been adapted for the desert?

Vickery: Indeed yes. I hope we can see in the moment, a desertised Challenger 2.

The war has authored lots of odd media moments, none odder, perhaps, than that witnessed by anyone who crashed home at 3am on Sunday morning and turned on the telly to find Angela Rippon, live on the ITV News Channel, describing the skyline of Kuwait as "elegant". But one of the most consistently striking things about the coverage of the conflict - and every other conflict of the modern TV era - is the way it has been dominated by an endless flow of facts, stats and graphics about military hardware, from the sort of spoddy experts usually banished to minority satellite channels aimed at men you would rather not sit next to on the tube.

The press is just as bad. Before the war had started, newspapers were cranking out "Path to War" supplements, which, in their fiddly, fact-boxey layout looked like those special- interest magazines that come with a free ring binder.

While Vickery was on Sky, over on BBC News 24 defence analyst Paul Beaver was pouring over a slightly less jazzy version of the Skystrator and speculating, "If I was a military commander, I'd be putting B52s into this sort of area."

The rolling news channels consume such vast amounts of material that, for practical reasons, it makes sense for them to deploy every scrap of trainspottery detail in the fight against oblivion - that exquisite moment when the news anchor realises just how far from the shores of meaningful speech he's drifted and fear shines in his eyes. Still, the undisguised enthusiasm with which, for example, Sky's Francis Tusa describes a particular sort of jet as a "little beastie", is not, one suspects, about practicality. Even without the Sun's explicit conflation of war and sex images (see Kelly Brook in a camouflage bikini and a series of topless women behind barbed wire entitled "weapons of mass seduction"), the connection isn't hard to make. War porn is everywhere and lots of people, men and women both, have found themselves responding to it.

"As a scholar of porn, I look at this and say 'these are boys with phallic toys'," sighs Linda Williams, professor of film studies and rhetoric at UC Berkley. It's not a new observation, but what is new, is the extent to which it is amplified by technology. "CNN have this special thing they do whenever they introduce a new weapon. It reminds me of the way athletes are introduced in coverage of the Olympics: a little inset comes out with their bio and stats. This weapon they had just now was something called the AC130H-Spectre - some dreadful machine - it came flying out and turned this way and that so that you could see it from all angles." (A similar thing happens on ITN: "It's amazing to see the Abrams tank and we've put together a little fact file.") "This," says Williams, "is the kind of spectacular vision you get in porn - where the point is to see the sex act from every angle. It's narcissistic; boys getting together admiring their toys. It is about us proudly displaying our weapons and there is something sexual about that."

It is also about the thrill, for non-combatants, of affecting familiarity with militaria: slang such as "bite and hold" and "use them or lose them" delivers a visible jolt of pleasure to its users, but even without this, so much of the language of war is borrowed from sex, sport and entertainment that it constantly undermines attempts by those who use it, to seem serious. Ten minutes of channel hopping produced this sequence:

"Flank protection."

"The thrust is actually going on outside Basra."

"Tanks tanks..."

"The big push."

"Kick off outside the airfields..."

"Deadly game of cat and mouse."

"Pounding the earth."

"We were barrelling along the main road with these missiles flying overhead. It was an extraordinary show."

This showbiz element of war is, to a limited extent, encouraged by the military. Witness the rabble-rousing speeches given to troops by their US commanders: "it's hammer time" and "resistance is futile," which is what the Borg, a race of cybernetic beings, say before they assimilate you in Star Trek.

"War films, that whole boys-own approach and language, is what they call the John Wayne syndrome," says Professor Joanna Bourke, historian at Birkbeck University in London and author of An Intimate History of Killing. "It is men in combat getting over their fear state by using the language and mythology of Hollywood."

Soldiers might be encouraged to imagine that they are on the frontier, fulfilling a heroic duty, in the style of the old westerns. "We've heard that in this conflict, soldiers were shown Band of Brothers before going into battle, which is extraordinary." It is also, says Bourke, an attempt to overcome the fact that "one of the worst things about the modern battlefield is that it's the loneliest place on earth. The military puts enormous effort into trying to personalise the conflict and to use every scrap of adrenaline, even sexual adrenaline, to this end."

Inevitably, John Wayne syndrome rubs off on people outside of the military, particularly those covering it, and sharing some of its risk, in the media. Some of them says Bill Durodie, senior research fellow at the Centre for Defense Studies, go native. "They don't take a step back. The fact that they are wearing gas masks in some ways means they are participating in the propaganda that Saddam has chemical weapons. It's this obsession with feeling the feeling, this emotionology."

Strangely, however, the most porny of war porn behaviour - the barely suppressed subtext of "fwor, check out the grenades on that" - is non-partisan, since pure weapons enthusiasts don't care about the politics of conflict so much as the specifications of the gear they are using. OK, so it's a cliche, but, says Dr Krista Cowman, senior lecturer in history at Leeds Metropolitan University, "Boys are both innately and through programming turned into obsessive collecting from an early age. My son collects Digimon cards at the moment; my husband, though an early modernist, has an anal obsession over first-world-war aircraft. It's about categorising and sorting; it's about the way the sexes communicate. Girls talk about their hopes and dreams and fears; boys communicate through the swapping of lists and football cards."

Among the weapons geeks, there is also, possibly, the over- compensatory stance adopted by people deeply, psychologically involved in war, but physically removed from the action. "People with the highest level of psychological breakdown are often behind the front lines," says Joanna Bourke. "The medical and supply corps, who can see the horror, but can't fight back, who don't have the purpose of the frontline soldier. That's why people at home - women, often - can express more virulent hatred of the enemy than soldiers. Soldiers understand that, in reality, the enemy is just obeying orders."

For the most part, the representations of war don't put too much store in reality. "I've never had a great deal of sympathy for Baudrillard," says Linda Williams, "but there is something to be said for the hyper-reality of this situation: it is intensified reality, verging on the unreal."

All the lavishly reproduced fact files and whizzy graphics, the 3D cartoon missiles and gleaming formation of tanks, photographed from above, seem to be engaged in an enterprise as unreal as their equivalent in the sex industry - an attempt to pass something ugly off as something beautiful.

[Via Guardian UK]

Principal Pays Up For Reading Pigout

Wed, 05 Mar 2003 06:40:18 GMT

Principal pays up for reading pigout

by David Weber
Tuesday, March 4, 2003

The best thing about reading books is you get to see the principal kiss the pig.

At least that's what Cambridge second-grader Zemam Beyene thought yesterday after she watched Tobin Elementary School Principal Donald Watson kiss Daisy, a pot-bellied pig, to honor a bet won by his students after they read more than 2,003 books in a year.

Yesterday was the National Education Association's Read-Across-America Day, and it culminated the reading challenge accepted by the 410 students (kindergarten through eighth grade) at the Tobin School.

By reading or having books read to them, the children were exposed to countless new ideas and new parts of the world. And after all that new exposure, what stood out above all else for Zemam?

``That we got to see Mr. Watson kiss the pig,'' she replied without hesitation.

Daisy, a black 8-year-old pig, rested comfortably in a modified baby carriage on the stage in the school auditorium while Paul Minor of Bristol, Conn., described the cushy life the pig has on his farm.

Daisy and ``Farmer Minor,'' as he calls himself, travel throughout the country to promote reading among schoolchildren.

Along the way, Minor said, he and Daisy have visited the U.S. Capitol (``They told us Daisy was the first four-legged pig to ever visit'') and received a thank-you letter from first lady Laura Bush.

Minor also played a tape recording of the various sounds Daisy makes when she is just waking up or is eating.

``If you don't want to sound like Daisy when you're eating, chew with your mouth closed,'' Minor advised.

[Via Boston Herald]

Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer

Mon, 03 Mar 2003 06:50:28 GMT

Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer

18:13 28 February 03
Shaoni Bhattacharya

Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured.

On 28 February 1953 biologists James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA - the chemical code for all life. The breakthrough revealed how genetic information is passed from one generation to the next and revolutionised biology and medicine.

But in a documentary series to be screened in the UK on Channel 4, Watson says that low intelligence is an inherited disorder and that molecular biologists have a duty to devise gene therapies or screening tests to tackle stupidity.

"If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. "The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent."

Watson, no stranger to controversy, also suggests that genes influencing beauty could also be engineered. "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."

Complex traits

But other scientists have questioned both the ethics and plausibility of his suggestions.

Nikolas Rose, a bioethics expert at the London School of Economics, says such genetic engineering may not
be possible: "These are complex traits, with multiple genes interacting with the environment."

"These are characteristically casual and provocative statements by James Watson," Rose adds. "I think they should be treated just as amusing rather than as a serious account of what behavioural genetics or any genetics should be doing, or will be able to do."

Geneticist Steve Jones, at University College London, dismisses Watson's comments about beauty as "daft". "The concept of beauty is a subjective one," he told New Scientist.

No fool

But he adds: "The IQ suggestion is a little bit less silly, if you turn the logic on its head. Watson likes to annoy -
no question - but he's no fool." Genetics could and does help people with severe disorders like Fragile X syndrome and phenylketonuria, both of which affect IQ, says Jones: "The problem is where do we draw the line?"

Series producer David Dugan, of Windfall Films, said the programmes also show Watson visiting a family who greatly value their child with Down's syndrome, as well as their child without Down's.

"We were keen to confront Jim with this - he was genuinely moved," but insisted that geneticists should work to eliminate the disorder. Dugan believes Watson's views emanate from his own family's experiences with his son, who has a mental illness resembling schizophrenia.

DNA begins in the UK on 8 March on Channel 4.

Some Questions On Obscene And Indecent Speech

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 03:41:25 GMT

Some Questions on Obscene and Indecent Speech.

The goal of this essay is to cause the curious reader to ponder the following questions:

Does there exist a right not to be offended?
Does there exist anywhere an example of someone who was injured by exposure to "obscene" or "indecent" words, images, or ideas?
Does there exist a definition of "obscene" or "indecent" which is universally applicable and therefore, useful?
That is, can we construct a list of all obscene, indecent or profane words, and can we say that all uses of these words are offensive by definition?
Can there be no legitimate use of these words?
And what about words not on the list, are they always safe?
Is it possible to describe all objectionable images?
Does not a specific law against obscenity itself become obscene?
Are all cases of exposure to obscene or indecent material actionable?
Do contracts placed upon community media producers and journalists which attempt to coerce producers into self-censorship, denote Prior Restraint, and are therefore unconstitutional under the First Amendment?
[Thanks kuro5hin.org]

The future of mind control

Mon, 27 May 2002 06:01:44 GMT

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1143583

The future of mind control

May 23rd 2002
From The Economist print edition

People already worry about genetics. They should worry about brain science too

IN AN attempt to treat depression, neuroscientists once carried out a simple experiment. Using electrodes, they stimulated the brains of women in ways that caused pleasurable feelings. The subjects came to no harm—indeed their symptoms appeared to evaporate, at least temporarily—but they quickly fell in love with their experimenters.

Such a procedure (and there have been worse in the history of neuroscience) poses far more of a threat to human dignity and autonomy than does cloning. Cloning is the subject of fierce debate, with proposals for wholesale bans. Yet when it comes to neuroscience, no government or treaty stops anything. For decades, admittedly, no neuroscientist has been known to repeat the love experiment. A scientist who used a similar technique to create remote-controlled rats seemed not even to have entertained the possibility. “Humans? Who said anything about humans?” he said, in genuine shock, when questioned. “We work on rats.”

Ignoring a possibility does not, however, make it go away. If asked to guess which group of scientists is most likely to be responsible, one day, for overturning the essential nature of humanity, most people might suggest geneticists. In fact neurotechnology poses a greater threat—and also a more immediate one. Moreover, it is a challenge that is largely ignored by regulators and the public, who seem unduly obsessed by gruesome fantasies of genetic dystopias.

A person's genetic make-up certainly has something important to do with his subsequent behaviour. But genes exert their effects through the brain. If you want to predict and control a person's behaviour, the brain is the place to start. Over the course of the next decade, scientists may be able to predict, by examining a scan of a person's brain, not only whether he will tend to mental sickness or health, but also whether he will tend to depression or violence. Neural implants may within a few years be able to increase intelligence or to speed up reflexes. Drug companies are hunting for molecules to assuage brain-related ills, from paralysis to shyness (see article).

A public debate over the ethical limits to such neuroscience is long overdue. It may be hard to shift public attention away from genetics, which has so clearly shown its sinister side in the past. The spectre of eugenics, which reached its culmination in Nazi Germany, haunts both politicians and public. The fear that the ability to monitor and select for desirable characteristics will lead to the subjugation of the undesirable—or the merely unfashionable—is well-founded.

Not so long ago neuroscientists, too, were guilty of victimising the mentally ill and the imprisoned in the name of science. Their sins are now largely forgotten, thanks in part to the intractable controversy over the moral status of embryos. Anti-abortion lobbyists, who find stem-cell research and cloning repugnant, keep the ethics of genetic technology high on the political agenda. But for all its importance, the quarrel over abortion and embryos distorts public discussion of bioethics; it is a wonder that people in the field can discuss anything else.

In fact, they hardly do. America's National Institutes of Health has a hefty budget for studying the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics, but it earmarks nothing for the specific study of the ethics of neuroscience. The National Institute of Mental Health, one of its component bodies, has seen fit to finance a workshop on the ethical implications of “cyber-medicine”, yet it has not done the same to examine the social impact of drugs for “hyperactivity”, which 7% of American six- to eleven-year-olds now take. The Wellcome Trust, Britain's main source of finance for the study of biomedical ethics, has a programme devoted to the ethics of brain research, but the number of projects is dwarfed by its parallel programme devoted to genetics.

Fri, 24 May 2002 16:21:18 GMT

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all
The lack of education hasn't hurt me
I can read the writing on the wall.
(Kodachrome.... Paul Simon)

http://www.fabulamag.com/archives/matters/0108_unschooling.htm

UNSCHOOLING AMERICA
HAVING THE GUTS TO LEAVE A CRIPPLING SCHOOL SYSTEM
TEXT :: STEPHANIE GROLL

Junior high and high school were a complete waste of time for me academically. The bad study habits I'd picked up made my transition into university harder than it had to be. My attitude about learning left me disinterested in pretty much everything.

But you can't quit, right? I mean, everybody goes to school. Only losers drop out.

Not according to a growing group of teens who choose to educate themselves outside the school system.They call themselves unschoolers, deschoolers and dropouts, among other things. And for different reasons, they drop out of school, despite statistics that suggest that dropping out of school can lead to a financially hard life.

Compared to high school graduates, dropouts are likely to earn less money, collect unemployment, and receive public assistance and be single parents, according to a 1999 report by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

What these stats don't measure, however, are the teens who thrive when they ditch the school system to take control of their learning process.

What Is Unschooling?
First let's clear up a few things – there's an important distinction between education and schooling. Education is the active development of knowledge and lasts a lifetime. Schooling is merely the act of going to school.

The idea is this: If you're free to use your time, your natural curiosity will lead you to everything you need to know.

Schooling can be passive. You sit and receive whatever lecture is on the teacher's syllabus, regardless of what you're interested in. Attending formal classes is no guarantee that you're learning, just as dropping out doesn’t keep you from getting an education.

Also, unschooling is not homeschooling, where your parents set up a school system at home. Unschooling is self-directed education.

Unschoolers can read what they want, volunteer, do internships, or become an apprentice. The can also write a novel, tackle advanced math problems, go on hikes, or even audit classes in college (which are very different from high school classes). The point is to do whatever they’re excited about.

They even have time to do it all because they're not wasting time in boring classes and then hours of homework. When unschoolers gone as far as possible on their own, they’re encouraged to approach a parent, librarian or mentor to get to the next step.

The idea is this: If you are free to use your time, your natural curiosity will lead you to everything you need to know. And you'll find it in a way that really means something to you.

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