The
hot
movie at Cannes is a documentary--Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. This
article includes the five questions Moore wants everyone to ask the White House, before noting
that this is the first documentary since 1956 to be in the competition. The 1956 entry,
The Silent World, won the top prize.
20 May 2002
Featherless
bipeds are funny-looking, but could revolutionize the poultry industry.
14 May 2002
Thirty years of carefully
bouncing laser beams off
the Moon suggest that it has a molten core, and a partially molten area around that.
The measurements keep improving, now to a precision of less than an inch: good enough to
detect a four-inch rise in the lunar surface, on a monthly cycle.
This article is mostly about the laser reflectors and the work done with them, but mentions that seismometers left by Apollo, and the Lunar Prospector mission, also support this theory.
They're planning a new and better terrestrial observatory, and hope to use the laser reflectors to look for effects of the cosmological constant. [Yes, a NY Times link, registration required.]
13 May 2002
Hugo Chavez had
advance warning
of the coup against him from the head of OPEC, in enough detail to prepare to counter it.
Troops loyal to Chavez were hiding in the presidential palace as the coup took place.
Mr Chavez told Newsnight that, after receiving the warning from Opec, he had hoped to stave off the coup entirely by issuing a statement to mollify the Bush adminstration. He pledged that Venezuela would neither join nor tolerate a renewed oil embargo.But Mr Chavez had already incurred America's wrath by slashing Venezuelan oil output and rebuilding Opec, causing oil prices to nearly double to over $20 a barrel.
His opponents had made it clear that they would not abide by Opec production limits and would reverse his plan to double the royalties charged to foreign oil companies in Venezuela, principally the US petroleum giant Exxon-Mobil. The US government's panic over the calls for an oil embargo, made public by Iraq and Libya on April 8 and 9, also explains what Venezuelans see as the state department's ill-concealed and clumsy support for the coup attempt.
Mr Chavez told Newsnight: "I have written proof of the time of the entries and exits of two US military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters - their names, whom they met with, what they said - proof on video and on still photographs."
12 May 2002
Last September's "full ground stand-down" has produced solid evidence that
jet contrails affect climate,
specifically reducing the diurnal temperature difference.
The Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and the Northeast--areas of the country typically blanketed with aircraft contrails in mid-September--showed the largest changes in diurnal temperature range, mostly from increased daytime high temperatures. This bolsters the argument that contrails can significantly affect climate,
Whatever IQ tests measure,
boasting about
one's child's IQ is not just a weird form of snobbery, it can be bad for the
children. The author also notes that many of the tests are being given by the same
private schools that will offer to give high-IQ children what they claim is a
better education.
10 May 2002
But that's
not
period!: Missouri has authorized special license plates for members of the
Kingdom of Calontir.
[From Goliard, via the potsmaster]
8 May 2002
This could prove very useful: researchers have
sequenced Streptomyces
coelicolor the bacterium that makes most natural antibiotics, including
tetracycline and erythromycin, and a variety of other drugs.
The Streptomyces family use teams of genes to create these medically useful molecules. S. coelicolor's genome reveals around 20 such clusters - most of which were previously unknown. "There may be genetic information for compounds which have never been found," says [Craig] Townsend.Using genetic engineering, pharmacuetical and biotech companies hope to splice together parts of the cell machinery from different clusters to build new potential drugs. This 'combinatorial biosynthesis' might create compounds that can overcome the antibiotic resistance that is now prevalent in many bacteria.
5 May 2002
Lacking any great comments on the state of the world this fine afternoon, here
is an essay on
the metaphysics of the tangerine.
2 May 2002
Rats again: prolonged use of
the common insecticide
DEET causes diffuse brain
cell death and behavioral changes in rats. Risks to humans are still being
debated, but
rats treated with an average human dose of DEET (40 mg/kg body weight) performed far worse than control rats when challenged with physical tasks requiring muscle control, strength and coordination. Such effects are consistent with physical symptoms in humans reported in the medical literature, especially by Persian Gulf War veterans, said Abou-Donia."If used sparingly, infrequently and by itself, DEET may not have negative effects - the literature here isn't clear," he said. "But frequent and heavy use of DEET, especially in combination with other chemicals or medications, could cause brain deficits in vulnerable populations."
If you are going to use DEET--and almost any commercial insect repellent that isn't citronella is at least part DEET--follow the warning instructions on the package, and make sure to wash it off as soon as you're out of the place where the insects are. I just use the weird natural stuff (which is a repellent, not an insecticide--you'll have mosquitos a centimeter from your skin, but they won't land), but I don't live where malaria is endemic, and I think the risks of West Nile virus are overblown.
1 May 2002
Yes,
radio-controlled
rats are "kind of creepy". Some of that is that rats are creepy; maybe they
should try radio-controlled squirrels instead.
30 April 2002
Thank goodness, someone
has read the Constitution: Judge Shira Scheindlin
threw
out perjury charges against a Jordanian student, ruling that jailing material
witnesses in a grand jury case is unconstitutional.
The ruling, if upheld, could have far-reaching implications for the government's crackdown on terrorism.Dozens of people have been jailed as material witnesses since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In a rebuke of Attorney General John Ashcroft, U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin said: "Relying on the material-witness statute to detain people who are presumed innocent under our Constitution in order to prevent potential crimes is an illegitimate use of the statute."
The Justice Department is calling the ruling an "anomaly" and reviewing appeal options. The judge, after quoting the Bill of Rights, points out that the statute the Bush administration is using is specifically limited to witness in the pretrial phase of a criminal proceeding, and only until they can give depositions.
"Detaining Awadallah solely for the purposes of a grand jury investigation was therefore unlawful," Scheindlin wrote. "Such an interpretation poses the threat of making detention the norm and liberty the exception."
I just hope this holds up on appeal: it looks as obvious as 2+2, but if the Attorney General and his boss can ignore it, they may find judges who will do the same.
27 April 2002
These are
supposed to be the good guys, the "moderates", our allies:
I am against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment;Any odds on whether Shrub will use his alleged close friendship with Crown Prince Abdullah, this guy's boss, to point out that slavery and anti-Semitism are evil, and that we don't sell fighter planes to people whose goal is to destroy our nation? [via Electrolite]I am against America even if the stone liquefies
My hatred of America, if part of it was contained in the universe, it would collapse....
Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women?
The FBI is now allowed
to demand information about the books people buy or borrow: and librarians
and booksellers are
forbidden
by the same law from telling anyone that they've been asked for the
information.
My information is that there have been, as of this writing, at least three FBI searches of the reading preferences of people under suspicion. That is all the information I have, and I cannot reveal my sources lest they be subject to penalties for breaking the gag order.Or maybe not. We'll never know. Even if the law is repealed, I doubt we'll find out what was done using it.By what criteria will the FBI place certain readers under suspicion? Under the USA Patriot Act, one of the definitions of "domestic terrorism" covers "acts [that ] appear to be intended ... to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion" (emphases added). This broad and vague language sounds like a justification for imaginative fishing expeditions.
Copyright 2002 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page or my online journal.