A suicide bomberdetonates a bomb outside the French embassy in Nouakchott, Mauritania , wounding two. The attack is the first suicide bombing in Mauritania’s history.
Silent Spring: Enduring, Legendary
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
In 1962 with a formal background in biology, countless publications for the Bureau of Fisheries and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Rachel Carson added to her volumes of work Silent Spring
, arguably the most enduring, controversial, and legendary books of the modern Sustainability Era.
Doubting her ability to find a magazine willing to publish a single article on the pessimistic topic of the effect of chemicals on the environment, Carson decided instead to produce a full length book. Serialized in the New Yorker (desribed at the NRDC) prior to the 1962 publication, Silent Spring
quickly became the focus of incredible public attention. Coupled with this growing attention, the chemical industry responded to Silent Spring with a focused quarter-million-dollar campaign aiming to discredit Carson. Despite the concerted effort by the chemical industry, a Presidential commission began looking into the issues – and Congress began considering tougher restrictions on chemicals. (Carson testified before Congress.)
Poignantly, Silent Spring is essentially a survey of research on pesticides, begins artistically with a story depicting a town having suffered a series of plagues. At the end of this chapter, Carson tells us that the town is fictitious, however, she adds that each of the events recounted “has actually happened somewhere.”
Lending substance to the original story, Carson goes on to describe the source of the plagues as newly designed man-made chemicals applied in massive quantities almost everywhere. In doing this Carson introduces the singular analogy that runs through Silent Spring: “pesticides are like atomic radiation—invisible, with deadly effects that often manifest themselves only after a long delay.” Further, she identifies the qualities that are increasing the danger of these new chemicals/pesticides over their predecessors:
- Greater chemical potency
- Slower breakdown and decomposition of the chemicals
- A tendency for the chemicals to become concentrated in fatty tissue.
For Carson, it is also important to note that while a toxin may not constitute a severe danger in limited exposure and dose, danger occurs with ultimate accumulation in the body, and concentration up the food chain.
Michael Allen and Julie VanDusky of Quantitative Peace on Blackwater
Michael A. Allen and Julie VanDusky – both founders of the blog Quantitative Peace – have published Employing Force: The Decision to Use Private Actors in Inter-State Wars
. An excerpt:
The contemporary rise to infamy of Blackwater Worldwide and the private corporation’s misdeeds in the Iraq War has historical precedents. That is, it is not unheard of for a state to employ non-state actors to carry out traditional state activities such as the use of force – something the modern
state is supposed to have a monopoly over. In this paper, we build a game theoretic model that determines the prospects for using non-state actors in combat on behalf of the state. From this model, we hypothesize that despite the risk of agency loss by these private combatants, certain
conditions increases the likelihood of their use. Specifically, autocratic polities are predicted to have a positive influence on the employment of non-state combatants while their democratic peers will prefer to abstain from such activities. We test these hypotheses using a censored probit model for all bilateral wars from 1816-2002.
Separating signal from noise, or re-reading a message with the expectation of different words
Writing in the context of the discovery process in civil litigation, Anne Kershaw and Joseph Howie write in Law Technology News of the fallacy of reviewing identical copies
of electronic messages as if each were, in effect, a separate paper document.
In civil litigation, this increases delay and cost.
In the context of intelligence analysis – particularly open-source – it’s a point ignored at the risk of missing important data – or reviewing it too late. A single item duplicated in volume is still a single item – the first is signal, the others merely noise.
Health Care – Medicare for All
I have a good full-time job. I buy the health insurance my Human Resources Dept tells me to buy. (This is not, by the way, a “free market” as described by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and other neo-classical economists.) I pay enough that I could be driving a Hummer about 2,400 miles per month (at current gas prices).
But my coverage is rationed by insurance company beancounters. When I need a doctor, I see one of their docs. A complete physical is free once a year. It takes about two hours and 30 seconds – two hours waiting and 30 seconds in which the doctor says “You’re breathing. That’s good. You’re blood pressure is high, if it gets higher we’ll put you on meds.”
That’s ok, or what passes for ok. As long as I don’t get sick I’m ok. That’s why my blood pressure is high. I’m worried about getting sick. Or losing my job. Or losing my job and getting sick. In that case I’ll lose my house.
One thing I don’t worry about is that my father. He’s well over 80, and he has good health, and good health care. He’s on Medicare. It’s great. Efficient. Government run. Not sexy like the Apollo Mission to the moon, but very important. And for the health care that my kids teachers get. They go to public school. The teachers are in the unions. And the health care is good. The kids too get good health care. My kids, my kids friends, even if their parents work but don’t get health care, then, thanks to Presidents Clinton and Obama, and despite the efforts and vetos of President Bush, they get health care.
But one of the things that really gets me, the thing that makes my blood boil – which is why I’ll need blood pressure meds – is that close to 50 Million Americans – one out of six – have no health insurance. And it’s people between the age of 18 and 65. People who work, or would work, if they could find jobs. This is wrong on many levels. It’s not just that I have friends in that position, and that I was in that situation – working hard, falling backwards, no health insurance – barely able to afford food. According to Paul Krugman, in the New York Times, “many of the protesters who don’t want “Government Run Health Care” are on Medicare.” While that’s almost funny, it’s also very sad.
Robert Baer on Brian Lehrer/WNYC
A conversation worth listening to: Robert Baer, former CIA officer, interviewed by Brian Lehrer. Link to WNYC archive here .
Baer – we’ll try to update later with links to his books – I’ve read all but the most recent – is also a columnist for Time . Here’s a link to his latest piece, The CIA Is Keeping Secrets. Hello?
I’ve found Baer to be thoughtful, incisive and unpretentious. Agree with him or not (I confess that I do, for the most part), his contribution to the public discussion about terrorism/counter-terrorism is invaluable.
Bottled Water is Safe Yet Bottled Tap Water is Unsafe?
The idea that bottled water is safe but that bottled tap water is unsafe doesn’t hold water. The basic fear of refilling bottles with tap water is that molecules of plastic from the bottle, which is no longer “brand new” can leach into the water. While it may be true that molecules of the plastic can dissolve into the water, if I fill a bottle at 8:00 AM, take it with me to drink that morning, and drink the water by 10:00 AM, the water has only been in the bottle for two hours. If I buy a case of bottled of water on a Monday at 8:00 PM, put it in my refrigerator at 8:30 PM, grab a bottle on Tuesday morning at 8:00 AM, then the water has been in the bottle in my possession for 12 hours. It probably was in the store for at least since Monday morning. If it’s the store’s house brand then it was bottled at the latest Friday, so the water was in the bottle for at least 72 hours. If molecules of the plastic dissolve into the water at a steady rate over time there will be SIX times the amount of plastic in the store bought bottled water.
In Rethink What You Drink, on Readers’ Digest Online, Janet Majeski Jemmott gives an overview of the regulations, or lack thereof that govern bottled water, and what can go into the bottles with the water. The National Resources Defense Council, NRDC, put a comprehensive discussion. on their Environmental Health and Safety Online pages.
The thing is, many brands of bottled water – Dasani for example – contain bottled TAP water. This is actually good news, because while the purity of bottled water is regulated by the FDA, the purity of tap water is regulated by the EPA, and the EPA rules are much stricter for tap water in big cities – disinfecting, testing for bacteria, including E. coli and fecal coliform. So if the water going into the bottle comes from a big municipal tap, then you know it’s pure.
There is no question that disposable water bottles are bad for the environment (NY Times, Pocono Record , Tappening). Of all the “disposable” bottles sold, 85% become litter or are stored in landfills. Only 15% are recycled. Vive le tap!
On The Road From Walden to The Sierra
Cathedral Peak, Tolumne, by Matt Smith
“It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur.”
“My notes and pictures, the best of them printed in my mind as dreams.”
“I scrambled home through the Indian Canyon gate, rejoicing, pitying the poor Professor and General, bound by clocks, almanacs, orders, duties, etc., and compelled to dwell with lowland care and dust and din, where Nature is covered and her voice smothered, while the poor, insignificant wanderer enjoys the freedom and glory of God’s wilderness.”
John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra,
My First Summer In The Sierra, by John Muir reads like On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. It is however, calm, serene, and enlightened. A sequel and companion piece to Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. Kerouac, the “Beat Hipster” had Muir’s joy and focus on the here and now, but focused on the characters: Neal Cassady, Alan Ginsberg, himself; their mad rushes between New York and San Francisco. Muir, the naturalist, focuses on the Sierra; the trees, flowers, brush, insects, lizards, bears, dear, dogs, humans, and on the rocks, mountains, and waterfalls that more than set the stage are players in the drama. The only mad rushes in My First Summer In The Sierra are those of the sheep into and out of streams, and Muir has little use for sheep, shepherds, or even the money shepherding can bring. While the beat hipster wrote about meditating, he lacked the naturalist’s serenity, perspective, and comfort in the wilderness. Kerouac’s pursuit of intoxicants and stimuli may have indicated a lack of comfort in his own skin, his own self. Muir’s intoxicant was life and the Sierra. He was comfortable in his own skin – as comfortable editing it in 1904 as he was writing it in 1869.
HOW WE WILL READ IN 100 YEARS
Google asked “How will we read in 100 years?”
Here’s what I think.
If we reinvent our economy to run on solar, geothermal, and kinetic energy, we will get our news and technical information electronically. We will still read classics on paper and mount on our walls images of loved ones and special places. If we don’t those left will struggle for survival.
Fetchdog: sound advice and three useful products
If your household disaster planning doesn’t include your pets – well, we’ll leave that aside. We think it should. Fetchdog has some useful advice, and reasonable prices on a few useful products.
Human-Powered Monorail
This has many of the advantages of bicycles – and several more:
- resistant to weather –
- because they’re on a predefined, car-free path, bicycle/vehicle accidents seem highly unlikely (assuming the routes are planned reasonably);
- the bicycle theft problem which plagues bicycle-friendly cities like Amsterdam seems unlikely to be a problem.
– and in turn via TreeHugger.
From Jorge Chapa’s post on Inhabitat
What could be more fun than gliding along on an eco-chic bicycle
? How about shooting through the skies in a pedal-powered monorail capsule! A bunch of entrepreneuring New Zealanders has created just such a human-powered monorail system, known as the Shweeb. Their creation does double duty, acting not just as an innovative transportation system, but also an amusement ride. Are our cities the next step?
The technology behind the Shweeb is remarkably simple – the only infrastructure required is a network of interconnected single rails. A number of pods are hung from this these lines, which are powered by the people sitting inside them. In principle, these pods are no different than recumbent bicycles – they can achieve close to 25 mph, are comfortable to use, and can be used by nearly anyone.
Although we don’t expect to see cities connected by pedal-powered monorail systems anytime soon, there are a number of applications where they could be useful. Think of guided tours through natural parks, scenic routes, adventure camps, and developments that require large pieces of land and a reasonable amount of population.
For now the system is in use on Schweeb’s grounds in New Zealand. If you are feeling adventurous, feel free to visit them at Ngongotha, New Zealand.
As noted above, Via Inhabitat – and in turn via TreeHugger.
NOAA/OSEI – image of the day – fire in Saskatchewan
Via the Operational Significant Event Imagery team’s Image of the Day
:
OSEI Image of the Day - 24 July 2009
Sonic Battle
A recent issue of The New Yorker (June 29, 2009) included a short piece on a City College professor who has studied “the role of music in military recruiting, combat, interrogations, and morale” during the ongoing conflict in Iraq.
Of course, even Garry Trudeau has caught on to this. The Doonesbury character “Toggle”–a trooper in Iraq–routinely “got crunked” on heavy metal not only before, but during missions. (By the way, the current story arc that has him coping with Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI incurred in a roadside bomb blast is one of the best the strip has run in a long time).
Of necessity, the profile only scratched the surface, but it prompts the following scattered reflections.
Historically, there are lots of precedents for soldiers psyching themselves for operations with music. Cromwell’s Ironsides sang hymns as they went to into battle. French Revolutionary armies roared the sanguinary lyrics of the Marseillaise as they defended France and poured across its borders in the name of liberte, egalite, fraternite. Union troops marched to “John Brown’s Body” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” during the Civil War.
Besides the fictional Air Cav unit in “Apocalypse Now” that flew into battle to the strains of “Ride of the Valkyries,” Michael Herr reported in his classic Dispatches how Vietnam grunts kept Jimi Hendrix and the Jefferson Airplane high up on their personal playlists.
In my own experience, soldiers frequently prepared themselves before high stress operations by pumping up the volume. “Guns ‘n Roses” and Metallica were particular faves then, as apparently they are today.
Mordant parodies also abound. Long before the Jimmy Buffet take-off (“Mortaritaville”) described in the New Yorker article, Vietnam-era soldiers crooned a variant of the Lennon-McCartney ballad “Yesterday” that included the lyric “Blown away/I’m not half the man I used to be/A Claymore [type of mine] just got through with me…” It was still around when I went on active duty in the 1970s.
The piece also describes soldier-created music videos coming out of Afghanistan and Iraq that marry lurid images with angry, loud music. In the aftermath of the First Gulf War, I recall seeing a soldier-produced and circulated bootleg video that combined the track to Lynyrd Skynryd’s “That Smell” (“Ooooh that smell/The smell of death surrounds you”) with raw footage of the so-called “Highway of Death’ leading out of Kuwait City–miles of burned out vehicles and charred corpses created by our airpower as the terrified Iraqis fled north.
And an analog, of course, exists in just about every weight room and locker room where young men with elevated testosterone levels prepare themselves for violent sport by listening to ear-splitting music.
Solar Power Enhanced Prius
Solar Prius
Toyota solves the micro-greenhouse effect of the sun heating a parked car, in the Prius III. The new Prius has a Photovoltaic Solar option. The PV Solar Modules, from Kyocera, power the air conditioner and fan to keep the car cool when it is parked on a hot sunny day. In this generation of the car, the PV Modules will only power the air conditioning system; they will not charge the batteries or the transmission. That, however, may be coming. While it’s expensive, and perhaps more whiz-bang than practical, which can perhaps be said for things like radios, cd players, MP3 players, automatic transmissions, air conditioning, heat – in short everything but the engine, transmission, wheels, seats, doors, and windows, it’s a very cool whiz-bang feature. More observations at the Environment Blog
.
According to Rory Reid, at CNET ,
“By using a combination of a solar panel and an electric motor, Toyota is able to use the power of the sun against itself, save gas, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
“It’s a shame that these particular solar panels can’t be used to power the entire vehicle, but there is hope: A U.S. company called SEV has already demonstrated a modified, solar-powered Prius that improves fuel economy by about 29 percent. According to SEV, this gives you a daily electric-only range of 20 miles.”
As Dylan said, “The times, they are a-changing.” This is a step in the direction of a plug-in solar and bio-diesel powered car.
How China Polices the Internet: Kathrin Hille of the Financial Times
Kathrin Hille of the Financial Times (London) with a detailed, nuanced – and very disturbing contemporary account of how China suppresses and deters dissent in How China Polices the Internet Excerpts follow:
On the night of January 29 this year, five peasants were delivered into Jinning detention centre, a dark little facility in the province of Yunnan in southwestern China. They were accused of illegal logging, a lucrative sideline for many farmers in this impoverished region.
It was a routine arrest. But 10 days later one of the men, a 24-year-old named Li Qiaoming, was dead. Presenting his bruised and swollen corpse to shocked parents on February 12, the police said Li had died accidentally during a game of blind man’s buff, or “elude the cat” as it’s called in China. Officers explained to the elderly couple that their son had been chosen as the “cat”, was blindfolded by cellmates, and while chasing the “mice” banged his head into a wall with such force that he died of his injuries four days later. The case was closed and Li’s parents sent back to their village.
But the next night, a Friday, officers on duty in a different department of the Yunnan police – the internet security management division – detected some unusual online activity. The story of Li’s death was being discussed with fervour. Two prominent local bloggers asked how stumbling into a wall could possibly kill someone. Internet bulletin-board users ridiculed the official explanation, suggesting instead that Li had been beaten to death by jail wardens. A cartoon appeared, showing three men in striped prison outfits with their heads stuck in the walls and the floor of a cell.