Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
Flour power
This story about Paul Stitz is from http://www.uwalumni.com/media/documents/pdf/onwisconsin/2005summer/Ovens.pdf
Archive for November, 2007
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
An epidemic of suicides
It’s a disgrace, but no more so than the rest of the current maladministration’s policies, which seem to amount to this: Loudly proclaim that you support our military, and quietly cut veteran’s benefits, while tightening restrictions on assistance of any kind. This is from the Times (London) on line: http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2873622.ece
November 15, 2007
America suffers an epidemic of suicides among traumatised army veterans
Tom Baldwin in Washington
More American military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq, it was claimed yesterday.
At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.
Such statistics compare to the total of 3,863 American military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 - an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website ICasualties.org.
The rate of suicides among veterans prompted claims that the US was suffering from a “mental health epidemic†– often linked to post-traumatic stress.
Monday, November 19th, 2007
Turning away from cloning?
Can be put the genie back into the bottle? Probably not, but perhaps we can hope that at least a few scientists will start to question whether anything that could be done should be done. From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=XFT2IYJUHGB4FQFIQMFSFF4AVCBQ0IV0?xml=/earth/2007/11/16/scidolly116.xml via the ever-interesting Schwartzreport.
Dolly creator Prof Ian Wilmut shuns cloning
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 6:30pm GMT 16/11/2007
The scientist who created Dolly the sheep, a breakthrough that provoked headlines around the world a decade ago, is to abandon the cloning technique he pioneered to create her.
Prof Ian Wilmut’s decision to turn his back on “therapeutic cloning”, just days after US researchers announced a breakthrough in the cloning of primates, will send shockwaves through the scientific establishment.
Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the Sheep
He and his team made headlines around the world in 1997 when they unveiled Dolly, born July of the year before.
But now he has decided not to pursue a licence to clone human embryos, which he was awarded just two years ago, as part of a drive to find new treatments for the devastating degenerative condition, Motor Neuron disease.
Prof Wilmut, who works at Edinburgh University, believes a rival method pioneered in Japan has better potential for making human embryonic cells which can be used to grow a patient’s own cells and tissues for a vast range of treatments, from treating strokes to heart attacks and Parkinson’s, and will be less controversial than the Dolly method, known as “nuclear transfer.”
His announcement could mark the beginning of the end for therapeutic cloning, on which tens of millions of pounds have been spent worldwide over the past decade. “I decided a few weeks ago not to pursue nuclear transfer,” Prof Wilmut said.
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
The two-tier economy
Do you feel left out? Maybe you should.
The new chief of Merrill Lynch will make nearly $1 million PER WEEK, more than most educated people make in ten or twenty or thirty YEARS of work.
A million a week. And he’s not the only one, of course, merely the latest example. His predecessor got about $70 million but it was spread over four whole years, for a measly $17.5 million or so a year, hardly more than $336,500 a week. A little better than minimum wage, but not much. And this is the guy who lost $8 billion and got a kiss-off package of $151 million!
John Kenneth Galbraith described the phenomenon 40 years ago in The New Industrial State: Big business is no longer being run for the benefit of the owners, and certainly not for the benefit of consumers, but for the managers. Managers, having the bit in their teeth, are taking all they can get, and — big surprise! — American business and industry is being out-performed everywhere.
Here’s the New York Times story that details the latest money grab. And, to be clear, I am not particularly blaming John Thain for taking what he can get; rather, I view this as one more in a bill of particulars in the indictment that ought to be (but won’t be) drawn up against the way things are in what George Bush calls “the ownership society.”
Successful or Not, if They Leave They Get Paid
By ERIC DASH
Published: November 17, 2007
John A. Thain, the new chief executive of Merrill Lynch, can expect nearly $50 million a year as he tries to restore the firm’s reputation and risk- management practices as it grapples with the subprime mortgage problems.
The pay package, largely made up of stock and options, could be worth more than $120 million if Merrill stock rises more than $40 a share in the next two years.
The compensation, detailed in a regulatory filing yesterday, will make Mr. Thain one of Wall Street’s highest-paid chief executives as he steps in for E. Stanley O’Neal, who was ousted about three weeks ago.
Saturday, November 17th, 2007
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml via Schwartzreport. I swear, Stephan Schwartz is the most interesting news editor alive!
Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 14/11/2007
Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt).
In winter, he heads to the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where he snowboards. “Being poor sucks,” Lisi says. “It’s hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you’re trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month.”
Despite this unusual career path, his proposal is remarkable because, by the arcane standards of particle physics, it does not require highly complex mathematics.
Even better, it does not require more than one dimension of time and three of space, when some rival theories need ten or even more spatial dimensions and other bizarre concepts. And it may even be possible to test his theory, which predicts a host of new particles, perhaps even using the new Large Hadron Collider atom smasher that will go into action near Geneva next year.
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Pullman’s confused ideology
Because Hampton Roads put out a book called Discovering The Golden Compass, by George Beahm, I first learned of the existence of this very interesting trilogy by English author Philip Pullman. I bought the books and read them straight through. He is a good writer, able to hold you and interest you in characters and plot. But his metaphysical assumptions are — well, pathetic.T
The story line, and his intent as an author, have a certain appeal to anyone fighting despotism and cruelty — but his materialist bias and his total lack of experience of anything beyond This World/This Time are embarrassingly obvious.
Summing it up to myself after finishing the third volume, I listed several things that must seem clear to him, but are actually severely confused. I know it’s fiction, but what a writer creates sheds light on what he believes is possible given certain assumptions.
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
Frazier’s choice
As I have said elsewhere, in watching the Ken Burns film “The War,†I was deeply moved by Quentin Aanenson’s thoughtful comments showing how great the sacrifice soldiers make, not only in their suffering and in the danger they endure, but in their laying down their innocence. Tonight (I write this Wednesday night, after watching the re-broadcast of the final episode) I was struck by the choice Glenn Dowling Frazier had to make, and the price he paid until he was able to make it.
Frazier had been a prisoner of the Japanese from the fall of Bataan in the spring of 1942 to the very last day of the war. He and his friends had endured sadistic cruelty that could only have been matched halfway around the world in the death camps of Nazi Germany. He had survived the Bataan Death March. He had survived four different POW camps inside Japan. He had spent months expecting to be killed the moment that American troops set foot on Japanese soil.
Unexpectedly, he had survived. He had made it home. He was safe – except, then the nightmares began. He had plenty of reason for nightmares, of course, but in 1945 there was little help to be found for the scars that veterans brought home that didn’t show. Ultimately, though, what nearly destroyed his life wasn’t nightmares, but something much worse. He found himself unable to stop hating.
Thursday, November 15th, 2007
Talking ponts on the presidential election
Michael Ventura is always thinking. Such a refreshing change from the run-of-the-mill political commentary. This is from his “Letters at 3 a.m.” column for the Austin (Texas) Chrionicle.
UNSAID TALKING POINTS
MICHAEL VENTURA
This newspaper is dated November 9, 2007. We will (probably) elect a president in one year, less five days. Primary season begins in two months. But who the nominees will be, and who will get elected, could be determined by at least four factors that most commentators and candidates have yet to take seriously.
1) How can someone as astute as Hilary Clinton fail to notice that she’s placed her fate in the hands of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? She voted for the White House-sponsored Senate resolution to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. She seems to think that Iran won’t be bombed — even though, as she herself pointed out during MSNBC’s Oct. 30 debate, MSNBC debate, Bush “has been filling up [U.S. oil reserves] beyond any expectation of need.” There are many reasons not to bomb Iran, and most of them Bush-Cheney are proud to ignore. But the purely domestic, purely political reason is that bombing Iran sends oil prices through the roof. However, that consequence might be mitigated if U.S. oil reserves are overflowing. Our reserves aren’t enough to help with long-term rises in price, but they’re enough to blunt the sudden spike which would follow an attack on Iran. It’s alarming that the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination can’t connect those dots. In fact, to my knowledge, no candidate has.
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
Don’t wait too long
I was having dinner with friends of a friend, a couple that I have come to like quite a bit. At some point in the evening she said that she had three sisters but hadn’t much to do with any of them because she and they had nothing in common, because among other reasons her sisters were Republican, conservative fundamentalist Christians. Sticking my nose in where it doesn’t necessarily belong (not for the first time!) I suggested that perhaps my recent experience might be relevant.
In 1958, when I was 12, my older brother joined the Air Force. In a very real way that was the end of our interaction for most of our lives. The following year, the brilliant meteor that was John F. Kennedy lighted my skies, and I became the first Democrat my family had ever known. A few years later I became a college graduate. And I had always been an avid reader of books. All these things sent me in one direction, my brother John in another. Plus, I left the Church while I was in my teens, and John stayed.
This only accelerated as time went on. Politically, his 22 years in the Air Force pushed him ever more to the right, it seemed to me, and no doubt to him I seemed to move ever more to the left. He liked to work with his hands at something tangible, and I liked working with my mind at something intangible. He lived among tools, I lived among books. Without antagonism, we went our separate ways. In the years between 1958 and 2007, I think we each visited the other’s home twice, and we didn’t often call, either.
In a way, nothing wrong with that. There’s no guarantee that being born to the same parents will make any two people close intellectually or spiritually. We had a certain respect for each other and we recognized that we were following different stars.
And yet -
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
The American Empire Is Falling With The Dollar
The American Empire Is Falling With The Dollar
11-08-2007
Online Journal
Paul Craig Roberts
The US dollar is still officially the world’s reserve currency, but it cannot purchase the services of Brazilian super model Gisele Bundchen. Gisele required the $30 million she earned during the first half of this year to be paid in euros.
Gisele is not alone in her forecast of the dollar’s fate. The First Post (UK) reports that Jim Rogers, a former partner of billionaire George Soros, is selling his home and all possessions in order to convert all his wealth into Chinese yuan.
Meanwhile, American economists continue to preach that offshoring is good for the US economy and that Bush’s war spending is keeping the economy going. The practitioners of supply and demand have yet to figure out that the dollar’s supply is sinking the dollar’s price and along with it American power.
The macho super patriots who support the Bush regime still haven’t caught on that US superpower status rests on the dollar being the reserve currency, not on a military unable to occupy Baghdad. If the dollar were not the world currency, the US would have to earn enough foreign currencies to pay for its 737 oversees bases, an impossibility considering America’s $800 billion trade deficit.