Which 'Serenity' Character Are You?

You scored as Kaylee Frye. The Mechanic. You are a natural mechanic, and you are far too sweet and cheerful to live out here. How you can see the good in everyone around you boggles the mind occationally. Still you don't seem to be any crazier than that, and it is a nice kinda crazy. Kaylee Frye 81% The Operative 81% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 69% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 69% Capt. Mal Reynolds 69% Simon Tam 63% Shepherd Derrial Book 50% Inara Serra 44% River Tam 31% Jayne Cobb 6% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Well, the quiz got me pegged... :)

Computer Greeks

From the ABC :

A reconstructed version of the world's oldest computer has been unveiled in Greece.

The 2,000-year-old device was found by chance on the ocean floor more than a century ago.

Michael Wright, a former senior curator at London's Science Museum, unveiled the complex collection of gears and dials at a conference on ancient Greek inventions.

Experts attending the symposium praised the model as the best yet of a device that is believed to have calculated the motions of the sun, moon and planets.

Mr Wright said the shoe-sized box object not only illustrated the ancient Greeks' love for gadgets but how advanced they were technologically.

And from the June 1959 Scientific American :

Among the treasures of the Greek National Archaeological Museum in Athens are the remains of the most complex scientific object that has been preserved from antiquity. Corroded and crumbling from 2,000 years under the sea, its dials, gear wheels and inscribed plates present the historian with a tantalizing problem. Because of them we may have to revise many of our estimates of Greek science. By studying them we may find vital clues to the true origins of that high scientific technology which hitherto has seemed peculiar to our modern civilization, setting it apart from all cultures of the past.
From the evidence of the fragments one can get a good idea of the appearance of the original object [see illustration on page 62]. Consisting of a box with dials on the outside and a very complex assembly of gear wheels mounted within, it must have resembled a well- made 18ih-century clock. Doors hinged to the box served to protect the dials, and on all available surfaces of box, doors and dials there were long Greek inscriptions describing the operation and construction of the instrument. At least 20 gear wheels of the mechanism have been preserved, including a very sophisticated assembly of gears that were mounted eccentrically on a turntable and probably functioned as a sort of epicyclic or differential, gear-system.
Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known. from any ancient scientific text or literary allusion. On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic Age we should have felt that such a device could not exist. Some historians have suggested that the Greeks were not interested in experiment because of a contempt-perhaps induced by the existence of the institution of slavery-for manual labor. On the other hand it has long been recognized that in abstract mathematics and in mathematical astronomy they were no beginners but rather "fellows of another college" who reached great heights of sophistication. Many of the Greek scientific devices known to us from written descriptions show much mathematical ingenuity, but in all cases the purely mechanical part of the design seems relatively crude. Gearing was clearly known to the Greeks, but it was used only in relatively simple applications. They employed pairs of gears to change angular speed or mechanical ad- vantage, or to apply power through a right angle, as in the water-driven mill.
Even the most complex mechanical devices described by the ancient writers Hero of Alexandria and Vitruvius contained only simple gearing. For example, the taximeter used by the Greeks to measure the distance travelled by the wheels of a carriage employed only pairs of gears (or gears and worms) to achieve the necessary ratio of movement. It could be argued that if the Greeks knew the principle of gearing, they should have had no difficulty in constructing mechanisms as complex as epicyclic gears. We now know from the fragments in the National Museum that the Greeks did make such mechanisms, but the knowledge is so unexpected that some scholars at first thought that the fragments must belong to some more modern device.
[...]
The Antikythera mechanism must therefore be an arithmetical counterpart of the much more familiar geometrical models of the solar system which were known to Plato and Archimedes and evolved into the orrery and the planetarium. The mechanism is like. a great astronomical clock without an escapement, or like a modern analogue computer which uses mechanical parts to save tedious calculation. It is a pity that we have no way of knowing whether the device was turned automatically or by hand. It might have been held in the hand and turned by a wheel at the side so that it would operate as a computer, possibly for astrological use. I feel it is more likely that it was permanently mounted, perhaps set in a statue, and displayed as an exhibition piece. In that case it might well have been turned by the power from a water clock or some other device. Perhaps it is just such a wondrous device that was mounted inside the famous Tower of Winds in Athens. It is certainly very similar to the great astronomical cathedral clocks that were built all over Europe during the Renaissance.
[...]
It is a bit frightening to know that just before the fall of their great civilization the ancient Greeks had come so close to our age, not only in their thought, but also in their scientific technology.

SF Covered

Today's Interesting URL : A pastiche of a few thousand science fiction covers, anotated with artist, date and publication.
Doesn't work in Opera, but is fine on Firefox.

Seen originally over at Prof Hall's Spacecraft.

Operatic Golf

Today's interesting URL : Go to Venables, Bell and Partners, and click on "work" for Operatic Golf, and other amusing adverts.

Site courtesy of Ninme, whose blogging output is so prolific I couldn't find out where I'd seen the original link.

Keep Off On The Grass

A Brain Link from the ABC :

Canadian researchers have discovered that smoking marijuana could improve a person's memory and mood.

A team at the University of Saskatchewan headed by Xia Zhang found that injections of a potent HU210 synthetic substance that mimics the active ingredients in cannabis increases the production of neurones in the hippocampus area of the brain in rats.

The region is associated with learning and memory, as well as anxiety and depression.

Mr Zhang and his colleagues believe that these negative emotions are caused by a lack of cell growth in this region of the brain.

Other recent studies showed growth in brain cells in the hippocampus lessened anxiety and depression.

In contrast, other recreational drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, cocaine and heroine suppress growth of new brain cells.

"The implication is that smoking marijuana is a good thing," Mr Zhang told AFP.

The discovery may eventually lead to the next blockbuster anti-depressant drug treatment, he says.

"It is possible this might overtake Prozac," he said.

Of course, it has only been proven in rats so far. And, HU210 is a purified substance 100 times stronger than the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in marijuana.

The study will be published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation in November.

Before everyone leaves no turn unstoned, it's worth looking at the details: To get a therapeutic dose of THC large enough might take really significant quantities of hash oil. And refined THC is difficult to get, what's available "on the street" is stuff of unknown purity and strength, and of course isn't purified THC, but a concoction of lots of chemical compounds, including carcinogens. Smoking the stuff is hazardous to your health, even if it does have the benefits stated.

Oh yes, it also makes you dysfunctional, "stoned". There's evidence to show that if you don't use a lot, the neurotransmitters get "fatigued", and you get semi-permanent depression and memory loss. The other neuroactive chemicals also may produce some really bad effects.

I have far too much respect for my own neuroanatomy to take anything too powerful without medical supervision, be it a MAO inhibitor, selective Serotonin Uptake inhibitor, or more than small amounts of alcohol. I don't overclock my computer CPU for safety reasons, and I'll be darned if I'm more careful with my computer than with my cerebral cortex.

There's also the matter of my security clearance... recreational drug use is right out. Apart from Chocolate, which when combined with high levels of oestrogen and low levels of testosterone in the system has a most intriguing effect....

Finally, I'm allergic to the plant, Cannabis Sattiva (Indian Hemp). I used to go fishing woth my father when young, and we mixed hemp seeds (it grew wild on the river banks) with the bread we used as burley to attract the fish. Made them much easier to catch. But I must have gotten a seed under my nails, or some husk in my skin when I accidentally pierced myself with a fishhook. Anyway, I'm sensitised. Not to THC, just the rest of the chemical mix. I reckon I must be one of the few students of the 70's never to have tried it in any form. I had to leave the room if someone lit up, and not enter again for days.

Maybe it's just a case of Sour Grapes, but I don't believe that the Grass is Greener.
HU210 on the other hand might be useful pharmacologically. And with 100 times the effect of THC, might give a buzz that's astronomical.

Welcome Home

From the ABC :

China's second manned spacecraft, Shenzhou VI, has touched down successfully in Inner Mongolia after orbiting the Earth for five days.

Xinhua news agency reports the two astronauts are in good health after the space capsule touched down in the remote steppes of the northern Inner Mongolia region.

The astronauts have completed 76 orbits of the Earth and travelled millions of kilometres since Wednesday morning's launch of the mission.

"Our journey in space was very smooth," Mr Fei said. "The living and working conditions inside the cabin were very good. Our health is okay."

A member of one of the recovery teams reports the capsule landed upright after touching down just one kilometre from the intended landing site.

Emerging from the module, television pictures showed the two take a few seconds to adjust to the Earth's gravity.

Now that's significant. At a similar stage in the US and Soviet space programmes, they were lucky to hit the right ocean/continent, let alone make a lnding so close. And that it was close is evidenced by the TV pictures of them emerging, there wouldn't be time to relocate the TV crews quick enough if it had been far away.
Not that I'm suspicious of anything the Xinhua news agency says, of course.

Also significant is that they were in a "shirtsleeves" environment for much of the flight, not strapped in like the proverbial Spam-in-a-Can in the cramped Voskhods and decidedly snug Geminis.

Worth watching.

The Heyday of Islamic Science

Appears to have ended in the 13th Century.

Personally, I blame the Ottoman Turks.

Shopping with Wittgenstein

Todays's interesting URL is from the UK Telegraph :

1.17 Which is the right chocolate spread and which is the wrong chocolate spread?

1.18 In the world constituted as it is, there is no right chocolate spread or wrong chocolate spread. In a manner of speaking, all chocolate spreads are the same.

1.19 Try telling that to the children when you arrive back with the wrong one.
[...]
2.1 But another choice now confronts you. At the check-out area, there are nine ordinary queues (9q), and one for six-items-or-less (6i]q). (6i]q) is three times (3X) as long as each of (9q), but the number of items in the (9q) trolleys (NiT) may be infinite (~). A swift calculation is necessary in order to determine the relative time to be spent in each queue.
[...]
3.1 The logic of the car park is transcendental. The place the car is parked exists beyond memory. It is always possible to forget where the car is parked, as it looks like just like other cars.

More on Wittgenstein and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus over at Wikipedia.

Rockets, Radiation, Reliability and Recycling

From Science@NASA :

Research is underway into a new generation of liquid-fueled rocket designs that could double performance over today's designs while also improving reliability.
[...]
You might assume that, by now, every conceivable refinement in liquid-fueled rocket designs must have been made. You'd be wrong. It turns out there's room for improvement.

Led by the US Air Force, a group consisting of NASA, the Department of Defense, and several industry partners are working on better engine designs. Their program is called Integrated High Payoff Rocket Propulsion Technologies, and they are looking at many possible improvements. One of the most promising so far is a new scheme for fuel flow:

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The basic idea behind a liquid-fueled rocket is rather simple. A fuel and an oxidizer, both in liquid form, are fed into a combustion chamber and ignited. For example, the shuttle uses liquid hydrogen as its fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidizer. The hot gases produced by the combustion escape rapidly through the cone-shaped nozzle, thus producing thrust.

The details, of course, are much more complicated. For one, both the liquid fuel and the oxidizer must be fed into the chamber very rapidly and under great pressure. The shuttle's main engines would drain a swimming pool full of fuel in only 25 seconds!

This gushing torrent of fuel is driven by a turbopump. To power the turbopump, a small amount of fuel is "preburned", thus generating hot gases that drive the turbopump, which in turn pumps the rest of the fuel into the main combustion chamber. A similar process is used to pump the oxidizer.

Today's liquid-fueled rockets send only a small amount of fuel and oxidizer through the preburners. The bulk flows directly to the main combustion chamber, skipping the preburners entirely.

One of many innovations being tested by the Air Force and NASA is to send all of the fuel and oxidizer through their respective preburners. Only a small amount is consumed there--just enough to run the turbos; the rest flows through to the combustion chamber.

This "full-flow staged cycle" design has an important advantage: with more mass passing through the turbine that drives the turbopump, the turbopump is driven harder, thus reaching higher pressures. Higher pressures equal greater performance from the rocket.

Such a design has never been used in a liquid-fueled rocket in the U.S. before, according to Gary Genge at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Genge is the Deputy Project Manager for the Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator (IPD)--a test-engine for these concepts.

Right: A rendering of the Integrated Powerhead Demonstrator, showing its innovative plumbing for routing fuel and oxidizer to the combustion chamber.

"These designs we're exploring could boost performance in many ways," says Genge. "We're hoping for better fuel efficiency, higher thrust-to-weight ratio, improved reliability--all at a lower cost."

"At this phase of the project, however, we're just trying to get this alternate flow pattern working correctly," he notes.

Breath-holding contra-indicated then. But it's just a matter of time before someone gets the idea working.

Also from Science@NASA :

Most household trash bags are made of a polymer called polyethylene. Variants of that molecule turn out to be excellent at shielding the most dangerous forms of space radiation. Scientists have long known this. The trouble has been trying to build a spaceship out of the flimsy stuff.

But now NASA scientists have invented a groundbreaking, polyethylene-based material called RXF1 that's even stronger and lighter than aluminum. "This new material is a first in the sense that it combines superior structural properties with superior shielding properties," says Nasser Barghouty, Project Scientist for NASA's Space Radiation Shielding Project at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
[...]
Barghouty is one of the skeptics: "Going to Mars now with an aluminum spaceship is undoable," he believes.

Plastic is an appealing alternative: Compared to aluminum, polyethylene is 50% better at shielding solar flares and 15% better for cosmic rays.

Left: Cosmic rays crash into matter, producing secondary particles. [More]

The advantage of plastic-like materials is that they produce far less "secondary radiation" than heavier materials like aluminum or lead. Secondary radiation comes from the shielding material itself. When particles of space radiation smash into atoms within the shield, they trigger tiny nuclear reactions. Those reactions produce a shower of nuclear byproducts -- neutrons and other particles -- that enter the spacecraft. It's a bit like trying to protect yourself from a flying bowling ball by erecting a wall of pins. You avoid the ball but get pelted by pins. "Secondaries" can be worse for astronauts' health than the original space radiation!

Ironically, heavier elements like lead, which people often assume to be the best radiation shielding, produce much more secondary radiation than lighter elements like carbon and hydrogen. That's why polyethylene makes good shielding: it is composed entirely of lightweight carbon and hydrogen atoms, which minimizes secondaries.

Parenthetically, Water is an excellent radiation shield.. but heavy, and structurally not so wonderful. On the other hand, raw sewage is mainly water. Have a cylinder composed of independant cells of drinking water, fill them with liquid waste when empty, and you have a decent storm shelter should a solar flare erupt. Cosmic rays are another matter.

Despite their shielding power, ordinary trash bags obviously won't do for building a spaceship. So Barghouty and his colleagues have been trying to beef-up polyethylene for aerospace work.

That's how Shielding Project researcher Raj Kaul, working together with Barghouty, came to invent RXF1. RXF1 is remarkably strong and light: it has 3 times the tensile strength of aluminum, yet is 2.6 times lighter -- impressive even by aerospace standards.

"Since it is a ballistic shield, it also deflects micrometeorites," says Kaul, who had previously worked with similar materials in developing helicopter armor. "Since it's a fabric, it can be draped around molds and shaped into specific spacecraft components." And because it's derived from polyethylene, it's an excellent radiation shield as well.
[...]
Some "galactic cosmic rays are so energetic that no reasonable amount of shielding can stop them," cautions Frank Cucinotta, NASA's Chief Radiation Health Officer. "All materials have this problem, including polyethylene."

Cucinotta and colleagues have done computer simulations to compare the cancer risk of going to Mars in an aluminum ship vs. a polyethylene ship. Surprisingly, "there was no significant difference," he says. This conclusion depends on a biological model which estimates how human tissue is affected by space radiation--and therein lies the rub. After decades of spaceflight, scientists still don't fully understand how the human body reacts to cosmic rays. If their model is correct, however, there could be little practical benefit to the extra shielding polyethylene provides. This is a matter of ongoing research.

Because of the many uncertainties, dose limits for astronauts on a Mars mission have not been set, notes Barghouty. But assuming that those dose limits are similar to limits set for Shuttle and Space Station flights, he believes RXF1 could hypothetically provide adequate shielding for a 30 month mission to Mars.

There's still a lot we need to find out before going to Mars. The more I see of it, the more I think the Chinese have got the right idea. First, set up a space construction facility for assembling interplanetary craft of arbitrary size. Then go about colonising the Moon, with research applicable to deeper space missions. Then onwards and outwards.

From Space Daily :

China's achievement in sending taikonauts Cols. Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng into orbit on the manned Shenzhou-6 space craft for a four or five day mission is the second step in a long campaign of amazing vision mapped out by the genius founder of its space program half a century ago.

Within the next 10 to 15 years, China is determined to become the dominant space power and build first its own massive, permanent, orbiting space station as a stepping stone into the Solar System and then even build and man a long-term base on the Moon.

Can they do it? Yes.

The first thing to recognize about the Chinese vision is that it is serious and backed by a profound political commitment. Former President Jiang Zemin was the first Chinese leader determined to make his nation a major space power, and eventually the dominant one. And his successor, current President Hu Jintao, shares that commitment. But the program they have backed had been created decades earlier by a U.S.-educated genius called Tsien Hsue-Shen.

Tsien was a member of the first heroic generation of U.S. rocket scientists and space visionaries. He was a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He was even included on the team of U.S. scientists who went to investigate Nazi Germany's groundbreaking V-2 rocket program after World War II. Researcher Mark Wade, writing about China's space program on the www.astronautix.com Web site described him as "one of the senior scientists advising the U.S. military on postwar development of rocket technology."

But in 1950 Tsien, according to Wade, was accused of being a Communist Party member and his security clearance was revoked. He was then held under virtual house arrest for five years before being allowed to return to China in 1955. He then led China's space program for decades.

Of course, there's many a slip, and all may not be "nominal" on Shenzhou 6 at the moment. I wish the Taikonauts good luck, a safe return, and happy landings. No doubt, as with the near-disasters and minor glitches that both the US and USSR had in the 60's and 70's, we'll hear the complete story sooner or later. Maybe in 25 years.

Monthly Mugshot Update

One of the problems with having a rapidly changing appearance is that I no sooner update my pic on the blog before I really should start thinking about getting a more recnt, and accurate, one put there instead.

This one was taken on 12th October, a month and 2 days after the previous one.

Old :


New :

This will put a Cat amongst the Pigeons...

From Opinion Journal :

Evolutionary biologists have some theories that feed into an explanation for the disparity. In primitive societies, men did the hunting, which often took them far from home. Males with the ability to recognize landscapes from different orientations and thereby find their way back had a survival advantage. Men who could process trajectories in three dimensions--the trajectory, say, of a spear thrown at an edible mammal--also had a survival advantage. Women did the gathering. Those who could distinguish among complex arrays of vegetation, remembering which were the poisonous plants and which the nourishing ones, also had a survival advantage. Thus the logic for explaining why men should have developed elevated three-dimensional visuospatial skills and women an elevated ability to remember objects and their relative locations--differences that show up in specialized tests today.

Perhaps this is a just-so story. Why not instead attribute the results of these tests to socialization? Enter the neuroscientists. It has been known for years that even after adjusting for body size, men have larger brains than women. Yet most psychometricians conclude that men and women have the same mean IQ (although debate on this issue is growing). One hypothesis for explaining this paradox is that three-dimensional processing absorbs the extra male capacity. In the past few years, magnetic-resonance imaging has refined the evidence for this hypothesis, revealing that parts of the brain's parietal cortex associated with space perception are proportionally bigger in men than in women.
[...]
Women have their own cognitive advantages over men, many of them involving verbal fluency and interpersonal skills. If this were a comprehensive survey, detailing those advantages would take up as much space as I have devoted to a particular male advantage. But, sticking with my restricted topic, I will move to another aspect of male-female differences that bears on accomplishment at the highest levels of the arts and sciences: motherhood.

Regarding women, men and babies, the technical literature is as unambiguous as everyday experience would lead one to suppose. As a rule, the experience of parenthood is more profoundly life-altering for women than for men. Nor is there anything unique about humans in this regard. Mammalian reproduction generally involves much higher levels of maternal than paternal investment in the raising of children. Among humans, extensive empirical study has demonstrated that women are more attracted to children than are men, respond to them more intensely on an emotional level, and get more and different kinds of satisfactions from nurturing them. Many of these behavioral differences have been linked with biochemical differences between men and women.

Thus, for reasons embedded in the biochemistry and neurophysiology of being female, many women with the cognitive skills for achievement at the highest level also have something else they want to do in life: have a baby. In the arts and sciences, 40 is the mean age at which peak accomplishment occurs, preceded by years of intense effort mastering the discipline in question. These are precisely the years during which most women must bear children if they are to bear them at all.

Among women who have become mothers, the possibilities for high-level accomplishment in the arts and sciences shrink because, for innate reasons, the distractions of parenthood are greater.
[...]
I have omitted perhaps the most obvious reason why men and women differ at the highest levels of accomplishment: Men take more risks, are more competitive and are more aggressive than women. The word testosterone may come to mind, and appropriately. Much technical literature documents the hormonal basis of personality differences that bear on sex differences in extreme and venturesome effort, and hence in extremes of accomplishment--and that bear as well on the male propensity to produce an overwhelming proportion of the world's crime and approximately 100% of its wars.

But this is just one more of the ways in which science is demonstrating that men and women are really and truly different, a fact so obvious that only intellectuals could ever have thought otherwise.

Now that the Radical Feminists are going ballistic, I'll quote another part of the article, and this one is the key:

Here are three crucial points to keep in mind as we go along:

1. The differences I discuss involve means and distributions. In all cases, the variation within groups is greater than the variation between groups. On psychological and cognitive dimensions, some members of both sexes and all races fall everywhere along the range. One implication of this is that genius does not come in one color or sex, and neither does any other human ability. Another is that a few minutes of conversation with individuals you meet will tell you much more about them than their group membership does.

2. Covering both sex differences and race differences in a single nontechnical article, I have had to leave out much. I urge that readers with questions consult the fully annotated version of this essay, which includes extensive supplementary material; it is available here at Commentary's Web site.

3. The concepts of "inferiority" and "superiority" are inappropriate to group comparisons. On most specific human attributes, it is possible to specify a continuum running from "low" to "high," but the results cannot be combined into a score running from "bad" to "good." What is the best score on a continuum measuring aggressiveness? What is the relative importance of verbal skills versus, say, compassion? Of spatial skills versus industriousness? The aggregate excellences and shortcomings of human groups do not lend themselves to simple comparisons. That is why the members of just about every group can so easily conclude that they are God's chosen people. All of us use the weighting system that favors our group's strengths.

Obvious, yes, but how many people will ignore that and call for the author's public execution?

Especially since the author then goes on to say this :

Turning to race, we must begin with the fraught question of whether it even exists, or whether it is instead a social construct. The Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin originated the idea of race as a social construct in 1972, arguing that the genetic differences across races were so trivial that no scientist working exclusively with genetic data would sort people into blacks, whites or Asians. In his words, "racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance."

Mr. Lewontin's position, which quickly became a tenet of political correctness, carried with it a potential means of being falsified. If he was correct, then a statistical analysis of genetic markers would not produce clusters corresponding to common racial labels.

In the past few years, that test has become feasible, and now we know that Mr. Lewontin was wrong. Several analyses have confirmed the genetic reality of group identities going under the label of race or ethnicity. In the most recent, published this year, all but five of the 3,636 subjects fell into the cluster of genetic markers corresponding to their self-identified ethnic group. When a statistical procedure, blind to physical characteristics and working exclusively with genetic information, classifies 99.9% of the individuals in a large sample in the same way they classify themselves, it is hard to argue that race is imaginary.

Homo sapiens actually falls into many more interesting groups than the bulky ones known as "races." As new findings appear almost weekly, it seems increasingly likely that we are just at the beginning of a process that will identify all sorts of genetic differences among groups, whether the groups being compared are Nigerian blacks and Kenyan blacks, lawyers and engineers, or Episcopalians and Baptists. At the moment, the differences that are obviously genetic involve diseases (Ashkenazi Jews and Tay-Sachs disease, black Africans and sickle-cell anemia, Swedes and hemochromatosis). As time goes on, we may yet come to understand better why, say, Italians are more vivacious than Scots.

Here we have a vexatious problem. Junk Pseudo-Science has been used as a justification for all sorts of atrocities and injustices. So what happenes when, being as objective as we possibly can, we come across some results that we don't like, that can and will be misconstrued by the ignorant and bigotted to justify great Evil? Do we stay silent and "Politically Correct", judging that we have a responsibility to actively prevent such happenings? Or do we abdicate our social responsibility in favour of telling the Truth as it has been revealed to us by experiment and objective measurement?

I'm torn between the two. But on balance, monster of arrogance and ego that I am, I don't feel confident enough in my own righteousness to do anything other than to call em how I sees em. If I have a duty of care, a responsibility, it is to be as objective as possible, and ignore whether the results I get are in accordance with what I think they should be, or otherwise. They are what they are. By all means cross-check and try to eliminate my own cultural bias and prejudice, and state many disclaimers as to why I may be in error. But publish the results, and be damned. As I'm sure the author, Charles Murray, will be.

Mmmmm... Brains...

Lots of Yummy Brain links over at the Carnival of Tomorrow, hosted by The Speculist.

Highlights:

• a new molecular brain cancer treatment
• the not-so-inevitable failure of our brains
• The Mind Molester, a fiendish device that does all it claims to do in the way of interrupting pretty much everything
• Dolphin Brains and Batman Dolls. Batman Dolls? Yes, Batman Dolls.

...and much, much more.

Like this : The Brain Pattern Test. I couldn't decide which of a pair of the examples was my favourite, so here they both are.

Your Brain's Pattern Your brain is always looking for the connections in life. You always amaze your friends by figuring out things first. You're also good at connecting people - and often play match maker. You see the world in fluid, flexible terms. Nothing is black or white.

Your Brain's Pattern Structured and organized, you have a knack for thinking clearly. You are very logical - and you don't let your thoughts get polluted with emotions. And while your thoughts are pretty serious, they're anything from boring. It's minds like yours that have built the great cities of the world!

Unflagging Interest

Updating a previous post, the Right Wing Death Bogan is having a fascinating mail conversation with Chris Doyle over what he said. It's worth reading in full, soundbytes and selected quotes in papers hardly ever tell the complete story :

As for all the other atrocities, in Bali and the like, these people are extremist Jihadis, One cannot hold the entirety of over 1 billion Muslims responsible for all their actions. Just because these things happen does not mean that we should not be maintaining our values. One of the main aims of these groups is to drag us into the gutter with them, to abandon legal and human rights standards, to abandon our democratic systems. Our greatest strength must be to remain countries where justice and fairness prevails.

Many changes are desirable in the Arab/Islamic world and other areas and indeed here. But we should not hold off changes on the basis that they are not happening elsewhere. We should lead by example, showing respect and understanding. Then we can take the moral high ground...

Of course there are far more serious examples of this than this story which is relatively insignificant in the scheme of things.
Chris Doyle
Director

CAABU (Council for Arab-British Understanding)

I'm not saying I agree with him, in fact, I have some serious differences of opinion. But I am saying that the story isn't as simple and clear-cut as it sounded.

One of the best things about blogs and blogging is that even a fulltime mother in Australia can do the deep research on a matter in England. And engage in "constructive dialogue" that for once isn't just a cliche, it really is constructive, and a true dialogue. This one's worth more attention than it's getting.

Forget Norway

We're going to see Kenya.

From Lighter Fluid Makes You Go Boom. Whose subtitle is:
We're Australian, we're women, we're better than you.

Right On Time

Or even a day early. From Space Daily :

China launched its second manned space mission Wednesday, sending two astronauts into orbit as it opened a new chapter in its ambitious drive to become a global space power.

Shenzhou VI, based on Soviet Soyuz technology, lifted off on a Long March 2F carrier rocket from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 9 am (0100 GMT) for a five-day mission carrying air force pilots Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng.

It entered a fixed orbit 21 minutes later.

Having two crew on board is a departure from October 2003, when Yang Liwei spent 21 hours on a solo odyssey -- a mission that made China only the third country after the United States and former Soviet Union to achieve the feat.
[...]
Fei, 40, and Nie, 41, were seen off by Premier Wen Jiabao, who was at the launch pad to drum up nationalistic sentiment, saying he believed "the astronauts will accomplish the glorious and sacred mission".

"You will once again show that the Chinese people have the will, confidence and capability to mount scientific peaks ceaselessly," Wen said, adding that the whole country expects "their victorious return from the mission."

Maybe it loses something in the translation...

The fact that Wednesday's mission carried two astronauts reflects the twin purposes of China's space program, which aims for both scientific gains and kudos at home and abroad.

"Part of it is technical. If you are two people, you can do more complicated and more sophisticated types of work and experimentation," said Joan Johnson-Freese, an expert on China's space program at the US Naval War College.

"Part of its also too is prestige. Two people is harder than one person," she said.
[...]
Unlike Yang Liwei two years ago, the two astronauts will leave their capsule for lengthy experiments in the orbital module at the nose of the spacecraft, observers said.

"They'll do quite a lot of medical tests, they'll take blood tests, urine tests, and they will also work out what kind of space food works for them" said Brian Harvey, the Dublin-based author of a book on China's space ambitions.

"Because ultimately what they are planning is a space station... and to do that they will need to learn how do they survive on longer missions."

The flight of Shenzhou VI will also be a thorough and comprehensive test of China's tracking network, which includes tracking stations as far away as Namibia and four tracking ships placed around the oceans of the world.

In Jiuquan city, several hours' drive away from the satellite launch center, a sense of local pride was clearly visible.

"Wishing a successful launch of Shenzhou VI," said a large red poster in front of one of the city's hotels, while billboards advertised special "Shenzhou Rice Wine."

"We're very happy about all this," said Ma Li, a teenage resident of Jiuquan city. "It's amazing that we Chinese gradually have the know-how to pull this kind of thing off," she said.

Not so amazing. The Chinese space programme has been remarkably well-managed, and their capsule design is very good indeed.

The Russians launched Gagarin in 12 April, 1961. It wasn't until 12 August 1964, over 3 years later, that they launched a multi-crew spacecraft, Voskhod 1.

The USA launched Glenn into orbit on 20 February, 1962. It wasn't until 23 March 1965, 3 years later, that they launched Gemini 3.

China launched Shenzhou 5 on 15th October, 2003. Shenzhou 6, their first multi-crew mission, is only 2 years later, with no intervening flights. The first one was a "proof of concept". This one is a test of the systems that will be used in future flights, rather than doing much useful scientific work other than learning by doing what works and what doesn't.

The Chinese aren't in any tearing hurry. They're not in a "Space Race". But they are slowly, surely, and methodically engaging in a crewed space programme, and that's something that no other country is doing at the moment. The USA has dreams, and money, but also it has Congress. And Con is to Pro as Congress is to Progress. The Russians have old but good hardware, but are strapped for cash.

I would not be at all surprised if the next person to step on the moon is Chinese.

ReGeneration X

From the Sunday Times :

SCIENTISTS have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.

The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail.

The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.

The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine.

Details of the research will be presented next week at a scientific conference on ageing, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, at Cambridge University. Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at the Wistar Institute, an American biomedical research centre, says that the ability of mice at her laboratory to regenerate appears to be controlled by about a dozen genes.

She is still researching their exact functions, but it seems almost certain that humans have comparable genes.
[...]
The researchers suspect that the same genes could confer greater longevity and are measuring the animals’ survival rate. The mice are, however, only 18 months old and the normal lifespan is two years so it is too early to reach conclusions.

There's still so much we just don't know about the way our bodies work. But if, as seems likely, all mammals have the potential capability to revert specialised cells back to stem cells, then have the stem cells multiply and then re-specialise into whatever is needed, then that has enormous (I won't say enormouse) implications for the treatment of many illnesses. And if somehow we can repair the telomeres of the stem cells so they don't degrade as they multiply, then the accumulated damage caused by aging can be prevented, and reversed.
Immortality? Nope. But if you can hold out for another 50 years, it's just possible you may be able to gain a few centuries after that. Not certain, but not impossible either.

Robotic Race

From CNN :

Four robotic vehicles finished a Pentagon-sponsored race across the Mojave desert Saturday and achieved a technological milestone by conquering steep drop-offs, obstacles and tunnels over a rugged 132-mile course without a single human command.

The vehicles, guided by sophisticated software, gave scientists hope that robots could one day wage battles without endangering soldiers.
[...]
Thron says the technology developed for the race will help the Pentagon reach its goal of having one-third of its vehicles be driverless within ten years, but will mean safer cars within a few years.
[...]
The so-called Grand Challenge race is part of the Pentagon's effort to cut the risk of casualties by fulfilling a congressional mandate to have a third of all military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015.

Last year's much-hyped inaugural robot race ended without a winner when all the self-navigating vehicles broke down shortly after leaving the starting gate. Carnegie Mellon's Sandstorm chugged the farthest at 7 1/2 miles.

Of the 23 robots that competed Saturday, 18 vehicles failed to navigate the entire 132-mile course, but most still managed to beat Sandstorm's mileage last year.

The unmanned vehicles must use their computer brains and sensing devices to follow a programmed route and avoid hitting obstacles that may doom their chances.

Vehicles have to drive on rough, winding desert roads and dry lake beds filled with overhanging brush and man-made obstacles. The machines also must traverse a narrow 1.3-mile mountain pass with a steep drop-off and go through three tunnels designed to knock out their GPS signals.
[...]
The military currently has a small fleet of autonomous ground vehicles stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the machines are remotely controlled by a soldier who usually rides in the same convoy. The Pentagon wants to eliminate the human factor and use self-thinking robotic vehicles to ferry supplies in war zones.

Coming Soon, probably sooner than 2085 too.

Risk Factors : A Full House

For some odd reason, I've always been interested in how the brain works. The name was part of it of course, but I always knew mine was wired up rather differently from most. Hence one of the subjects of this blog.

The traditional "Female Brain trapped in a Male Body" is more common than I thought - latest good data indicates at least 1 in 500 women have that problem, and rather less, but still substantial, evidence exists that 1 in 500 men have a similar one. It's also well correlated with other incomplete or abnormal brain differentiation syndromes such as dyslexia, ambidexterity, and Asperger's.

Fortunately you do get a 2 standard deviation IQ increase on average compared to the normal population. It also correlates well with aptitude for Computer Science, Teaching, creativity, military planning, and mechanical ability. Hence the number of Computer or Electrical Engineer academics (like Lynn Conway), electronic music pioneers (like Wendy Carlos), computer game designers (Danielle Berry, Catherine Mataga, Jennifer Reitz...) , model or actual railroad fans (Jessica Brisbane), Rocket Scientists (Zoe Brain)...

From Game Designers Just Wanna Be Girls :

Could the physical cause of transsexualism be directly related to high intelligence?

The physical causes are not well understood. The prevailing theory has neurological changes being triggered by prenatal hormonal events. Supposedly transsexual babies don't get masculinizing hormones and then develop "female brains." It is also believed that much of the neurological development in the later stages is subtractive. Maybe transsexuals grew better hardware to start with, but I suspect the nerd factor is more important.

When did you first notice that the percentages seemed higher than among, say, auto mechanics?

We have a support group here in Silicon Valley and one night several of us just showed up. It was something like three out of twelve people there. That's when I started keeping a list.

This higher percentage has been observed in other populations. For example: railroad fans. Supposedly many of the engineers that worked for NASA were also transgender. Of course, during those days, you were more likely to hide it.

Looking back on it, being a mildly dyslectic, ambidextrous gamer and model railway fan with mild Aspergers, who was into game design, and who taught Computer Science at the Australian Defence Force Academy and was involved in a space programme, should have sent a pretty strong hint about my condition - had I known any of this stuff before it hit me.

Damn the Torpedos!

Seen over at Against a Dark Background :

New Scientist : "The US navy wants to protect its warships with a system that will destroy incoming torpedoes by firing massive underwater shock waves at them.

The ships would be equipped with arrays of 360 transducers each 1 metre square - effectively big flat-panel loudspeakers - running along either side of the hull below the waterline. When the ship's sonar detects an incoming torpedo, the transducers simultaneously fire an acoustic shock wave of such intensity that the torpedo either detonates early or is disabled by the pulse's crushing force, according to the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is funding the project."

Active Sonars - very expensive machines that go PING! - can put out significant amounts of energy. One of the major problems of some High Frequency sonars is stopping them from flash-boiling several tonnes of seawater every time they operate. They make one heck of a noise.

But "crushing" a torpedo? Nope. Disabling it by effectively "blinding" it, yes. Because torpedos have got their own small sonars in their guidance system, sometimes passive (listen only), but often active (they go *ping* too). And to avoid having these sensitive devices deafened by nearby explosions - such as when the first of a salvo of torpedos hits its target - there are "cut-out" circuits that prevent damage to the relatively fragile sensors. I say "relatively fragile", because the output energy of thses relatively tiny torpedo sonars often exceeds not just a Jet engine at takeoff, but a Black Sabbath concert.

Make a loud enough noise, often enough, and the cut-out circuits will operate continuously, and the torpedo won't be able to home in. Unless the designer is sneaky, and adds a second homing circuit, one that when the first one fails for predetermined time, homes in on the noise...

One thing such a noisemaker will do though: often a submarine's torpedos are "wire guided", they are steered close to the target by the firing submarine before the torpedo's own homing system takes over, and the wire gets cut. (A submarine guiding such a torpedo has to move slowly, they prefer to cut the weapon loose as soon as they can). Anyway, with a setup like the one above, the target ship can make a very good imitation of a torpedo hitting its target - which will screw up the damage assessment by the firing sub, so they don't re-attack in case they miss. And such a system would make a really loud PING that could be used for detecting submarines in the first place.

But "crushing" a torpedo that's designed to withstand tonnes per square cm pressure (when fired at a deep depth)....I'm sceptical in the extreme. Even if the transducers are fired "in sequence" so that they constructively interefere in a massive pulse at a particular point. Because you would get a greater effect, cheaper and easier, just by putting a dirty great big mortar that fires a depth charge to that place, and get a far more powerful shock than any transucer system could produce.

It Ain't Neccessarily So (Reprised)

From the Times :

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.

“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.
[...]
In the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be approached in the knowledge that it is “God’s word expressed in human language” and that proper acknowledgement should be given both to the word of God and its human dimensions.

They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways “appropriate to changing times, intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries”.

The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: “We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters.”
[...]
UNTRUE

Genesis ii, 21-22

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man

Genesis iii, 16

God said to the woman [after she was beguiled by the serpent]: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
[...]
TRUE

Luke i

The Virgin Birth

John xx,28

Proof of bodily resurrection

Oh well, it's progress of sorts, I guess. More like a (partial and halting) recognition of the Enlightenment after a few centuries to mull it over.

Simply the best

.. article on Global Warming I've ever read.

I'll have to crunch the numbers, and I'm not sure about his conclusions regarding the effect of solar insolation, but that trivial cavil aside, Lloyd has covered all the important issues, and with great insight.

A must read.

Croc 0, Aussie Kids 1

From the Australian :

A Teenage boy punched a 3m crocodile while his father wrestled his 10-year-old sister from its jaws in Western Australia's remote Kimberley region, a family spokeswoman said today.

Chantal Burnup was swimming in the Sale River with her father Richard and brother Simon, 14, about 1pm (3pm (AEST) yesterday when a crocodile grabbed her by the torso and began pulling her underwater.

She suffered bruises, puncture wounds and lacerations in the attack but was today considered to be in a satisfactory condition.
[...]
"When the crocodile hit, Simon's first instinct was to get up and out of the water and his dad grabbed hold of the crocodile and yelled for Simon to come and help," Ms Bussell said from their home in West Busselton, 230km south of Perth.

"He did, and I can't believe he did it because he's not a big 14-year-old.

"He swims well and he is quite fit and ... he wouldn't have hesitated to do something like that for his sister.

"Gabby said last night when she spoke to him that he had punched it."
[...]
Chantal suffered bruises, puncture wounds and lacerations in the attack, and after a helicopter was diverted to pick her and Simon up, she was treated by a doctor at Mt Hart Wilderness Lodge.

She was airlifted today to Derby hospital, 2400km north of Perth, where a spokeswoman said she was in satisfactory condition, with her mother by her side.

Ms Bussell said Chantal was in shock last night but was "bossing Simon around so she seemed to be getting back to her old self".

Onya, Simon. You've upheld the finest tradition of big brothers. And Chantal, make sure it doesn't go to his head. The reputation of little sisters everywhere depends on it.

A New Player?

From the BBC :

The European Space Agency (ESA) is proposing joining forces with Russia to develop a new vehicle for human spaceflight, the Clipper.

The six-person spaceplane would give European astronauts autonomous access to the space station and the Moon.

ESA will ask its member states to fund a 30-40m-euro preparatory study at its next ministerial meeting.
...
"The objective is to have a vehicle which is more comfortable than the Soyuz capsule which will be used with pilots and four passengers," Alain Fournier-Sicre, head of the ESA permanent mission in the Russian Federation, told the BBC News website.

"It's meant to service the space station and to go between Earth and an orbit around the Moon with six crew members."

The Clipper is essentially a "people carrier" designed to transport astronauts, said Alan Thirkettle, head of the ESA's Human Spaceflight Development Department.

By joining forces with Russia, Europe would have access to a fixed number of seats on the vehicle, perhaps one or two per flight, for use by its own astronauts.

"At the moment we have to ask the Russians or ask the Americans to fly an astronaut," said Mr Thirkettle. "Through participation in the Clipper, we would have the right to seats when we want them."

European industry would benefit, too, from Russia's years of experience in human spaceflight, he said. Russia, in return, would have access to certain technologies that are more sophisticated in Europe.

"It potentially is a fairly happy marriage," said Mr Thirkettle.

Given the less-than-stellar history of multinational co-operation in space (why do you think the multi-national ESA is in the state it's in), I wish them the Best of British (and French and German and....) Luck.

Deus Veult!

From CNN :

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said Tuesday the red cross was an insensitive reminder of the Crusades.

"A lot of Muslims and Arabs view the Crusades as a bloody episode in our history," he told CNN. "They see those campaigns as Christendom launching a brutal holy war against Islam.

"Muslim or Arab prisoners could take umbrage if staff wore a red cross badge. It's also got associations with the far-right. Prison officers should be seen to be neutral."

Doyle added that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is "not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with."

I suspect this one would be more to his liking :


No associations with violence there, and the writing "There is no god apart from Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.", well, that's quite neutral, isn't it?

Just listen to the words of Abu Bakar Bashir :

Scott Atran: What can the West, especially the US, do to make the world more peaceful?
Abu Bakar Bashir: They have to stop fighting Islam. That's impossible because t is sunnatullah [destiny, a law of nature], as Allah has said in the Koran. If they want to have peace, they have to accept to be governed by Islam.
SA: What if they persist?
ABB: We'll keep fighting them and they'll lose. The batil [falsehood] will lose sooner or later. I sent a letter to Bush. I said that you'll lose and there is no point for you [to fight us]. This [concept] is found in the Koran.
...
SA: So this fight will never end?
ABB: Never. This fight is compulsory. Muslims who don't hate America sin. What I mean by America is George Bush's regime. There is no iman [belief] if one doesn't hate America.
SA: How can the American regime and its policies change?
ABB: We'll see. As long as there is no intention to fight us and Islam continues to grow there can be peace. This is the doctrine of Islam. Islam can't be ruled by others. Allah's law must stand above human law. There is no [example] of Islam and infidels, the right and the wrong, living together in peace.

Well, they've said it themselves, co-existence between the Islamofascists and anyone else - such as Shi'ites or Moderate Muslims - is impossible. It takes two to make a war, but only one to make a massacre, and those are the only options. There can be no peace. Time to stop pussyfooting around and counter-attack, and if the Muslim World doesn't like that, well, as the Islamofascists said, God Wills It. Deus Veult. The only problem is target discrimination - only hitting the guilty, and not the innocent.

The Black Flag indicating no quarter opposite is the only alternate to St George's cross: if they push too far with Jihad, they will provoke a Crusade. I know that's what the want, in order to get the rest of Islam on their side, but I suspect that they underestimate our capacity for viciousness when defending ourselves. I hope I'm not overestimating our ability to distinguish the guilty from the innocent.

If that means the Islamofascists have won, then I'll concede. As long as they're extinct, the point is moot. I hope the rest of Islam isn't rendered extinct along with them. We've committed enough sin. But if it come to a choice between 1.2 Billion Muslims or 4.8 Billion non-Muslims surviving.... I hope that Islam gets its house in order soon, for its own sake. And for the sake of our souls.

Happy Birthday

To TexasBestGrok, 2 years old as of October 1st.

I'm a Texan, a husband, a father, a lawyer, a musician, an SF fan, a soccer coach, a cyclist, and an amateur theologian. This is my first try at blogging, and I hope to weave the many interests I have into a cohesive narrative on life, the universe, and everything.

On my "often visited" list, I'd recommend he be on yours too.

Today's Interesting URL

The Museum of Unworkable Devices

Perpetual Motion Machines of all Kinds.

A Closed Cycle Mill, 17th Century

Imperial Ambitions - A Review

Imperial Ambitions by Noam Chomsky, Metropolitan Books, ISBN-10:0-8050-7976-X

Imagine looking through a window, through glass less than perfect. Through a very few parts, you will see clearly, even a marvellously magnified image that brings out detail you would have lost by merely using the naked eye. In large parts, the view will be completely occluded, leaving you to guess what may have been obscured. But for the most part, the view is distorted and bent beyond recognition, you know that what you see bears some resemblance to reality, but everything is bent out of shape, bearing little resemblance to its true appearance.

Reading "Imperial Ambitions" is like that.

This book is an editted collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky, and is relatively clear and easy to read. A good first approximation to the relentless theme of the piece is that the USA (under whatever Administration) has never done anything except out of purely ulterior motives, that while pretending to be a Democracy it is actually a debased and corrupt Empire, that nothing it has ever done has ever had a good outcome, and that it is bent on oppressing Mankind as a whole. A secondary theme is that a grassroots campaign of a mobilised and politically activated "silent majority" can tie the hands of the System, and render it impotent to work its evil. It harkens back to the good old days, when the US withdrew from SE Asia, and was unable to use its crushing military power, to, well, crush anything.

Chomsky's view is that the US has too much power: and such a thing is inherently dangerous. Not "Power tends to corrupt" but "Power Corrupts", and "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely". The most jaundiced eye imaginable is cast on any and all US actions that have ever been performed, while only the most charitable view possible is taken of those of America's opponents.

Chomsky is at his best, and most accurate, the further back in time you go (though even there there are exceptions, which I'll note below). He's at his worst, and most inaccurate, the closer you get to the present. As for his predictions for the future, they have already revealed how completely off-beam he was when he made them.

Up until now, officially at least, the United States has been opposed to expansion of the illegal settlement programs that make a political solution impossible. But now Bush is saying the opposite : Go on and settle. We'll keep paying for it, until we decide that somehow the peace process has reached an adequate point. This represents a significant change towards more aggression, undermining of international law, and undermining of the possibilities of peace.
March 2003

It is at best difficult to reconcile this with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a withdrawal that was accompanied by extreme US pressure for Israel to go. But it would not surprise me if Noam Chomsky in a new speech blamed the US for encouraging Israel to engage in de-facto Apatheid and ethnic cleansing of their own citizens, and not continuing a constructive engagement with the peaceful Gaza Palestinians who relied on trade with Israel for a workable economy. Because the central thesis is that when the US acts, whatever it does, it cannot help but be wrong. And the wrong is viral, it infects anything or anyone the US supports. To see how viral, there's this:

This Morning's New York Times has an op-ed by Mohamed El-Baradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Agency (IAEA), which begins by noting that weapons proliferation is increasing, which is an extrememly dangerous theat to the world. Yes, it's increasing. Why? There are many reasons, but one of them is that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, as well as chemical and biological weapons, which is not only a threat in itself but encourages others to proliferate in response and in self-defence.
February 2004

Libya's weapons programme? Out of self-defence, as it is fearful that the Israelis will attack them. Iran's? Likewise. Pakistan? Well, Israel might invade them too. North Korea? Those pesky Zionists are everywhere, don't you know. I mean, there are maybe 4 million of them in Israel, vs only 0.6 billion muslims in the middle east, and another 0.6 elsewhere. Trying to find a state suspected or known to have a nuclear weapons program that could conceivably be threatened by an Israeli incursion - with the noted exception of the National Socialist (Ba'athist) Dictatorship of Syria - is basically impossible.

Of course, while anyone not supported by the US is assumed to have nothing but conventional arms, providing there is no absolute proof they don't, well, anyone supported by the US is assumed to have massive stockpiles of genocidal weaponry, providing only that there is a suspicion they might have some, and no denial.

Being fair, Chomsky does not that there are "many reasons" for proliferation. But Israel's alleged stockpile is the only one he adduces, and at some length - because it's the only one that doesn't directly contradict his thesis. There's a lot of that.

Getting back to the proposition that Chomsky is better and more accurate, the further back you go, his exposition of British Propaganda and the "Manufacturing of Consent" to America's involvement in WW I is illuminating and insightful. I own a volume containing selected facsimiles of the front pages of the New York Times for the period 1914-1918, and the shadowy hand of Anglo-American Consent Manufacturers, Inc is visible everywhere. But what Chomsky fails to mention is that the Prussian Military made such an easy target of themselves. Their arrogance, and complete lack of awareness of anything called "Public Opinion" must have had German diplomats in the US tearing their hair out. They didn't go so far as to publish videos of Americans having their heads slowly sawn off by their side (as the Islamofascists have), but they didn't exactly make friends and influence people.

The sequence of events re Nurse Cavell is a typical example of Prussian Military insensitivity at its worst.

1. "Of course she won't we shot, who do you think we are, Barbarians?..."
2. "Appeals for clemency from Neutrals must go through formal channels..."
3. "The point is now moot, we shot her last week, let's move on..."

Finally, any discussion of British Propaganda and the US entry into WW I without mention of the Zimmerman Telegram is like a discussion of Moby Dick without mentioning Whales.

Moving on to WW II, Chomsky's remarks about the US Navy's Unrestricted Submarine Warfare against Japan, and the judicial murder of Japanese General Yamashita are spot on. Such things deserve far more publicity than they're given. But to equate the Rape of Nanking with Hiroshima... and to completely disregard the concept of "reprisal" for past perfidies, a concept actually written in to the Law of Armed Conflict ever since the Hague Protocols of 1899, that shows either woeful ignorance or deliberate obscuranticism. And then there's this:

The (Nuremberg) tribunal had to decide what would be considered a war crime, and they made the operational definition of a war crime anything the enemy did that the Allies didn't do.
February 2004

Yes, the Nuremberg tribunals were essentially making New Law, and in my opinion, had far too much of "the winner makes the laws" about them - and how could it be otherwise when Stalin's regime (you know, the Russian Front... 25 million dead... did over half of the fighting vs the Nazis...) was a major partner. Though from Chomsky you wouldn't know that. But the law was in the main firmly grounded on violations of the Geneva Protocols and Hague Conventions dating back to half a century earlier, even the St Petersburg declaration before that. And most importantly when it came to the crime of "Waging aggressive ear", a very iffy charge indeed, it was the Kellog-Briand pact that Germany was a signatory to that specifically outlawed this. For Chomsky not to be aware of this is, frankly, unbelievable.

In fact, real commitment to Ideology denies and tries to avoid evidence. But I wasn't trained in the hard sciences. I have some background in the hard sciences - I even worked in Mathematics for a while - but I don't want to exaggerate. As I said, I have almost no formal training in any field, including linguistics. I'm mostly self-educated. But I don't see any particular erason not to study history, society, and economics by essentially the same methods that one uses in the sciences. Empirical evidence is critically important. You're flooded with it. You have to try to select what's significant. You inevitably approach evidence with certain beliefs and principles, which you should keep open to question.
February 2005

From the evidence in this book, Chomsky is committed to an Ideology, that of America as a Giant that cannot help but be corrupted absolutely. Like myself, he is self-taught when it comes to history, society and economics. Unlike Chomsky, I do have some formal qualifications, in Computer Science, Ethics, Philosophy, Mathematics and some other disciplines, but that's neither here nor there. And unlike Chomsky, I know that the Scientific Method does not involve just "keeping an open mind" and discarding facts that seem irrelevant, it involves deliberately trying to find evidence that falsifies your hypothesis, not merely hunting for empirical evidence that confirms what you believe a priori. A positive act of disbelief that your own ideas are Gospel. To do otherwise is to fool yourself into believing you have an "open mind", while subconsciously discarding as irrelevant or unimportant anything that contradicts your own prejudices. Sometimes, when I was reading Chomsky about Yamashita, or Nuremburg, I thought "YES! He has grasped an unpleasant and ill-publicised truth!" But then he gilds the lilly so much that it becomes a gold brick, discarding any evidence not directly supportive of his own case. Even when I agree with him (not often, I am forced to admit), it's on the balance of probabilities, but to Chomsky there's never any contrary evidence to balance.

It is because I constantly try to falsify my own beliefs, to test them, that I read books like this one. I urge everyone to do the same, and not follow Chomsky's path.

Contrary to my own thesis about Chomsky never giving the US the benefit of the doubt, there is one glaring exception where he does - but where a careful researcher might come to a directly opposite conclusion:

Incidentally, one outcome of the 1953 coup (in Iran) was that the United States took over about 40 percent of Britain's share in Iranian oil. This wasn't the goal of the effort - it just happened in the normal course of events - but it was part of the general displacement of British power bu U.S. power in that region, and in fact throughout the world.
September 2003

"Just happened in the normal course of events". Sure it did. If you look at the Dramatis Personae involved, you'll see the same old Internationalist gang from the Donovan OSS days.The ones who believed that it was time for Good Old Yankee ingenuity to sweep away all the dusty old European empires, and make the world safe for Good old US Democracy. And what's good for General Motors Standard Oil is good for the USA. This mob of New Deal idealists had fought a 3-way contest in Thailand in the early and mid 40's (OSS vs Mi5 vs KempiTai), had lobbied to give Ho Chi Minh support against both Japanese and French imperialism, and generally behaved in a way Eleanor Roosevelt would have heartily approved of. (That, by the way, is a high compliment in my book). They were anti-Imperialist to a tee. And though I'm of British extraction, and had I been there at the time, I would have been on the opposing team... I have to admire them. Worthy opponents, who played as dirty as we did.

But the idea that starry-eyed anti-Imperialist idealists in the CIA could possibly exist would be so anathema to Chomsky's central thesis of an American Empire dating back to time immemorial that no wonder he takes a "charitable view" of US Realpolitik and underhanded dealing at the time.

There's so many gems of genuine insight in this book.... the Mexican War as a means of diminishing British power by gaining a cotton monopoly... the analysis of British Realpolitik in the early 20th century... the deterrant effect of massed North Korean artillery holding Seoul hostage... and some genuinely thought-provoking stuff that has sent me scurrying to do further research. Did the US harbour, not Anti-Castro "militants", or "dissidants", or even "insurgents" or "guerillas" but outright Terrorists back in the 60's? Chomsky seems to think so, and given some of the other shenannigans that happened at the time, I can't say that the thesis is unbelievable. I'll have to do research. That's the trouble, the whole work is so one-sided that I can't take anything whatsoever on trust.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. The flaw in any book of this type - an edited selection of brief, impromptu and unprepared answers to questions - is that the answers are neccessarily brief, impromptu and unprepared. There's no time to give all the facts, to state the evidence pro and con, just the "salient" details that won't confuse the issue. Maybe the one-sidedness of the book is inevitable. Maybe.

Glennon's position - which is shared by many other defenders of U.S. aggression - such as Yale University law professor Ruth Wedgwood - is that U.S. actions like the illegal bombing of Serbia have changed the nature of law, because law is a living doctrine, a living system of principles, which is continually modified by international practice. Was it modified by Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait? No. was it modified by Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, one of the few actions that might properly be called a humanitarian intervention?...
February 2004

Leaving aside the equating of Saddam Husseins "Grand Theft Nation" with any action the US has ever performed... Leaving aside the description of a multinational NATO-led attempt to stop a Fascist Ultra-Nationalist genocidal regime from committing further atrocities as "illegal" and "U.S."... leaving aside Chomsky's entire accurate description of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia as something any traditional Liberal or NeoCon should have cheered (but the US stayed silent, mouthing Cold War pro-forma disapproval).... this last line from the most notorious apologist for Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is the most arrant and breathtaking hypocracy.

Was I Too Harsh? I think not.

Anyway, there's enough gems in here to make worthwhile reading for anyone interested in the US's moral compass, and making sure that it doesn't stray too far from its lofty ideals, as it has all too many times in the past. For those who believe the US is the "Great Satan", it will no doubt re-affirm your belief, as it's pure anti-US propaganda, the best kind, that which contains the germ of truth.

But overall, to use the Australian vernacular, the gems are buried in a great fragrant pile of fresh steaming bullshit. Happy digging.

UPDATE:
A recent comment from Noam Chomsky on Gaza

The “Gaza disengagement plan” is, in fact, a US-Israeli West Bank expansion plan, designed to incorporate valuable land and resources of the West Bank into Israel, and leave Palestinians in a few unviable Bantustans which the US and Israel can call a “state”—rather as South Africa called the Bantustans “independent states.”

vs my prediction (not having read the above when I wrote it)

...it would not surprise me if Noam Chomsky in a new speech blamed the US for encouraging Israel to engage in de-facto Apatheid

Scientific analysis involves not just formulating hypotheses about past data, but also using them to make predictions, and testing those for correctness.
Can I call 'em or what?

Now why would we think that?

From News.com :

The latest bombings in Bali were not the work of Muslim militants, the head of an Islamic extremist organisation said today.
The spokesman for Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, or Indonesia Council Of Holy Warriors, Fauzan Al Anshari, said the blasts were a plot by unnamed countries to implicate the head of MMI, radical cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.

Well, why should we possibly suspect Muslims of doing such a thing? Obviously it was, er.... Oh yes, the JOOS! And George Bush! The CIA! Mossad!

Bashir is serving a 30-month jail term for involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, among 88 Australians.

I'd say that he had a pretty good alibi, being in Jail and all. Unless there was some collusion with elements in authority, but that's ridiculous. After all, he got a whole 30 months - less the time off for good behaviour, the mandatory reduction every year on the President's birthday... so will have served over a year before he gets out.

Drink Warning

From Tram Town :

The secret to enjoying a good wine is:

1 - Open the bottle to allow it to breathe.
2 - When it does not breathe, give it mouth-to-mouth.

What's it Like?

Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink, Say No More.

I've tried to keep my peculiar personal situation from intruding overmuch on my Real Life(tm). But I'm a member of various support groups, mailing lists, and forums. Mutual support is important, because if we don't help ourselves, no-one else will. Sometimes, it gets to you, and this post comes straight from the heart.

This is what it's like. Fragments from posts or e-mailings from the last 24 hours. I must emphasise that. Just one day. Posts from Australia. From the UK. From the USA.

From someone just forced out of a senior position :

Of course wonderful people aren't sarcastic either. Is my halo slipping yet? Hmm not quite.. needs a good knock..

Of course wonderful people NEVER have to feel sorry for themselves either, they are always without fear, worry and never scared of the future. Just like me!

Oh dear.. I guess thats a no again. Yep.. I can put my hand on my heart and say enough! Thank you world and thank you to all of those kind souls who ever considered me to be of any value. It seems I am not. But don't worry, its just life dealing me another lesson from the text book, "A day in the life of a Transsexual"

And before you think I am just feeling sorry for myself, think again. Life is turning this wonderful person into a hard edged cynic because I deal with those who would deal me ill because of who and what I represent.

I am a leper, a refugee, a yellow man, black man, a christian, a muslim, a jew.

A transsexual, a non-person.

I am stripped bare of dignity, hope and friendship and eat at the table of despair and tears.

No more will I endure their remarks in silence, no more will I bow my head, no more tears will I cry alone in the dark at night. Through all I am dealt each day another stone to carry. Christ I must have really pissed God off in another life....

You see, the well is dry of tears. The only people I really have are those who endure the stones with me, those who are in pain for me. My family, and you..my friends. It would be a cowards way out to let the bastards win wouldn't it? Always loved a fight..

So, ok.. I have my friends and family, I can pick up my halo again, it looks as if my career is in the toilet again, hmm well, less stress, thats good.. polish the halo a little, I am at home with my family more..thats got to be good. I have friends who are asking if I am ok.. now thats a definate plus.. I can dry that tear now..

Do you know what? my heart isn't that heavy any more.. thats wonderful isn't it? I can read a book, smile and take a walk without a 16 hour working day..thats wonderful too.. I can be myself and walk hand in hand in a supermarket, a cafe or my home. Thats peace.

I just realised why too.. its the darn reason I wrote this, you see, the only reason its wonderful is because I'm not ! The really wonderful thing the past week has shown me is that despite the underhand, lying, cynical and greedy grasping world that we know exists in abundance and bites us everyday, there is another side to the coin, a counter balance to the ignorant, the abusive and the prejudice.

I have Decent friends, Decent ones who love and live in the way of life that values respect, values truth and integrity and lives with their own honour.

Straighten that halo and look in the mirror.. dam who is that wonderful person? thats not me its you.

Thank you for being there, each and every one of you in my dark days.
I love you all.

And this, from someone giving advice about Safety :

I remember when I first began my transition back in 1996, everything was wonderful, I was a functioning member of society, I was a sub editor for a national publication on HIV, very well known and respected in the community, then one night at the end of 1997 whilst in the heart of the gay community (Oxford Street Sydney) I was attacked by two guys who obviously had something against me for being trans. They hit me with iron bars, steel capped saftey boots, fists, elbows and everything else that they could find, they dragged me alomst a full mile by my hair so that they could kick into me some more. They nearly killed me,
I spent three and a half weeks on life support and another 3 months learning to do everyday things again. The reason that I share this story with you is to show that it doesn't matter where you are (a small community or the main street of Sydney where the Gay community is supposed to be there for each other) there is still a chance of being hurt. That is why I say that you need to set your own types of safety nets. Now-a-days, the people who I call my friends would never let anything like that happen to me. If I need to go somewhere I call someone and I am either taken to the appoinment or am escorted by a friend, and thats something that you need to surround yourself with, people who will accept you for you, and will be there when you need
help.

Or this one from a woman with fabulous good looks, almost a Supermodel's, and about to get the surgical "finishing Touches" (SRS - Sex Reassignment Surgery) put on her womanhood.

On tuesday night i picked my 16 yearold daughter up from her town centre . when i arrived there was a group of about 8 boys and they were shouting and one had hit my daughter , i pulled up in my car and got out and got my daughter put her in the car and said a few things to these Boys , and they just threw things at my car .
when we got back to my place we called the police and then called my wife to let her know what has happened .
The police turned up at my house at midnight , 3 hours after the incident so i got my wife to come over and we were talking to the police and i was asked who i was ..then my wife told them !!
apparently my daughter had been defending me as these boys knew about me and that i was a transexual and had been verbally abusing my daughter and she said something back and these boys had chased her and hit her ,,
she said she don`t want to press charges and when i asked why , she just turned on me along with my wife and started shouting at me saying it`s all my fault anyway and that im Embarrasing and laughable . will never be a woman , and that she hates me and never wants to see me again ...i stood there in total shock wondering what brought this verbal assault on then my wife said to me " see look what you`ve done you fuckin queer " and told me to get out of their lives " as they don`t need you go kill yourself " and then they left , i was Dunbstruck i didn`t sleep much on tuesday night through crying . and i woke up yesterday mornin and phoned my wife and she just told me to stay away and put the phone down , i was so upset and spent all wednesday drowning my sorrows and crying ,
What have i done wrong now ? what have i done to deserve all this ? i can handle most things ..But i just can`t handle this .. i have NEVER felt this low in my life honestly ..i knew transitioning is hard but it aint as hard as this not by a long shot .... when your child tells you she hates you and means it ...is hell i feel like ending it all i have srs on monday and should be happy but i`m not at this moment , i need my kids they are all i`ve got and i love them so so much i thought we were getting on fine me and z.... [ my daughter ] obviously i was wrong !!
I feel like shit , i cant take this anymore.

This one from a month ago:

Well everyone it is official, Got word today that my wife can't get back her green card. So I am left with few choices.

1. travel to Sweden to see my daughter for two weeks per year
2. move to Sweden and give up any chance I have to transition
3. Fight for custody for my daughter in international court and have no money for my surgries.

Except for choice 1 I lose my chance to transition. If I take choice one slowly but surely M....... will grow to forget me and resent me for "leaving her". I already see the signs of that.

M....... is getting more and more distant when I talk to her on the video. I am just not real to her.

I have lost my daughter and it hurts so much. Spent all day crying.

Why does finding yourself entail so much loss. I had a knife in my hand today thinking how easy it would be. I don't think I could do it but it is very appealing to make the pain go away.

I wish there was an answer.

And in the last 24 hours...

I got the suprise of my life today. Without telling me, my wife and daughter came to US from Sweden. She had to talk her way into the country but she got in as long as she goes to b....... immigration within the next week and sign some paperwork.

I am just so estatic. It is also the first time that H.... has seen me in full Femme as K..... I was having a dinner party with some friends of ours and it became a great big welcoming party.

Monday was the worse day of my life and this is the best. I hope we can take care of some issues and continue to be friends and parents to M......

That's what it's like for most. There are few happy endings, and most of those we have to make for ourselves. I can't read those posts without crying, in sympathy, in admiration, in joy, in heartbreak. Wondering why I have it so incredibly Easy, when others are having it unbelievably Hard?

That slightly shorter than average guy with the beard you see walking down the street. The thickset one. He had to tell his young son, the child he carried and bore, that Mummy was a Guy. He went through a painful divorce, lost custody, had to get a double mastectomy, and other surgery, but he's met a nice girl and he's thinking of getting married again.

That tall, middle-aged woman with the broad shoulders who's waiting at a bus stop. She has a sackful of decorations from the military, and she had to tell her teenage daughter that Daddy was a Girl. They haven't spoken since then, that was nearly 10 years ago. She's about to go to the electrologist, for yet another hour of excruciating torture to rid herself of facial hair. One hundred hours down, another 200 to go, if she can afford it. She's saving up for her surgery. But since losing her job as senior engineer at an aerospace firm, well, waitressing doesn't pay very much. Her wife got the cars, the house, the joint savings, the kids, and is living in another state. Her military pension just covers the child support.

That hearse going past. Maybe the Dear Departed was one of the few that couldn't take the Hormones. Heart Attack, Deep Vein Thrombosis, Liver failure.. all possibilities. More likely she was one of those who tried to Transition and failed. A Fate worse than Death, so she chose Death instead. And you know what? I don't blame her. Not my style, but I can't condemn.

Transition is the hardest thing I've ever done. But I've had it easy compared with just about every other woman who's had to do it. Sure, you get the 2 Standard Deviation IQ increase from a somewhat nonstandard neuroanatomy. Greater creativity too, sometimes ambidexterity, occasionally Dyslexia and/or Asperger's as downsides. (I got the complete set). You need the extra smarts just to survive, and so many don't.

But after the unbelievably wonderful feeling of just being able to be me at last - something everyone else takes for granted as their birthright - the very best thing about my situation is being introduced to the courageous individuals above. Before my little metabolic whoopsie, there was a whole world of tenacity, struggle against adversity, and sheer heroism whose existence I didn't suspect.

I'm proud to have known them. I'm proud to even share the same planet.

A Sign for Intelligent Designers

Please consider doing your own signing - of the petition to prevent UnIntelligent Design from being taught as "Science". It may even be true, I don't know, but it's not Science. It's Religion wearing a mask. Purest Supernatural Phlogiston.
Consider: if it were "Science", there could be experiments that would be able to detect whether the hypothesised Intelligent Designer was Thunderbird, the Rainbow Serpent, Osiris, YWVH, Allah, the Arisians, the Queen of the Space Unicorns or whoever. The fact that such experiments are inconceivable pushes it firmly outside the scientific realm.