Prowling Copacetic Buffalos

Another eloquent explanation of how Old Liberalism is a dead ideology: Cinnamon Stillwell - The Making Of A 9/11 Republican

Indeed, liberals had become strangely conservative in their fierce attachment to the status quo. In contrast, the much-maligned neoconservatives (among whose ranks I count myself) and Bush had become the "radicals," bringing freedom and democracy to the despotic Middle East.

Philadelphia Weekly - All Your Life Belong to Us

Today's photo - a Philadelphia Weekly box. I like the slogan...
"Where to go, What to do, Where to live"

No ambiguity there. Given their strident political views, they might like to add:
What to think

The Left v The Left

Great piece by Jeff Jarvis. It seems to me that indeed a new 'left' (or perhaps a new 'right') is emerging.

Village Voice Columnist Calls for Columbia President and Provost to Resign

Provost Brinkley and President Bollinger are coming under fire in the NY press for setting up a Kangaroo Court to investigate professorial intimidation of Columbia students.village voice - Liberty Beat by Nat Hentoff

It would also help clear the increasingly murky air at Columbia if eventually there were a new president and a new provost who know how to shoot straight to assure academic freedom for everyone on campus.

Divest from the World Council of Churches

First it was the Presbyterian Church, now the World Council of Churches (described in some news reports as the primary umbrella organization for non-Catholic denominations) iis urging its members to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

... between 2000 and 2003 the WCC issued 36 human-rights complaints against Israel and two about Sudan, where close to two million black Africans, many of them Christian, were killed and tens of thousands enslaved in a self-declared jihad waged by the Islamist regime in Khartoum. Jerusalem Post - Divest from the World Council of Churches

How should we react to this? No doubt the WCC feels that by supporting the Palestinians as underdogs, it's guaranteed to be on the right side of the dispute. This ignores the injunction in Exodus regarding the impartiality of justice: "neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause", and thus suggests that the WCC is no longer interested in the Old Testament. Internet Hanganah suggests that this being the case, we Jews might like to take it back ;-)

Egypt - a Small Step Toward Democracy

Bush declared during the presidential election debates "freedom is on the march". And it really is. Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine... Thanks to the US administration's 'unrealistic' foreign policies, the successful elections in these places has turned up the pressure on other Arab nations to give citizens similar opportunities. In Lebanon the streets are filled with protestors demanding elections untainted by the presence of Syrian troops. In Saudi Arabia local elections gave people their first taste for democracy. And now in Egypt...
Yahoo! News - Mubarak Orders Egypt Election Law Changes:

CAIRO, Egypt - In a surprise and dramatic reversal, President Hosni Mubarak (news - web sites) took a first significant step Saturday toward democratic reform in the world's most populous Arab country, ordering the constitution changed to allow presidential challengers on the ballot this fall.

Read the whole article - the opening is small and limited - candidates must be vetted by Parliament, much like the mullah's approve candidates in Iran. But its a significant step forward for a dictatorship.

I'd previously predicted that by the time Bush leaves office, two more Arab countries would have held more-or-less free elections and be on the path to democracy and liberty. I guessed two of Lebanon, Libya and/or Jordan. But the resilience of democracy is even more impressive than I'd hoped. Let's up that to four. Reforms in any one nation set a new standard for other Arab countries - and an endorsement of the Bush administration's position that liberty is for everyone, not just the West.

Alt-Energy Absolution

Very cool, Xootr, the company that makes my scooter, is now involved in TerraPass, described by the LA Times as 'Kyoto for commuters'. If you can't scoot, bike, walk or take public transport to work, this company lets you neutralize your carbon emissions. Of course, this doesn't make up for the oil resources squandered, but its a good start. And cheap - for a standard car, a year's worth of clean conscience is only about $50.

Tyrant's Unlimited

PARADE Magazine has out its lineup of the World's 10 Worst Dictators. They are (in decreasing order of vileness): Omar al-Bashir (Sudan), Kim Jong Il (North Korea), Than Shwe, Burma), Hu Jintao (China), Crown Prince Abdullah (Saudi Arabia), Muammar al-Qaddafi (Libya), Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan), Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Teodoro Obiang Nguema (Equatorial Guinea). Regarding Kim Jong Il, Parade comments that:

Disloyalty to Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung, is a punishable crime: Offenses include allowing pictures of either leader to gather dust or be torn or folded. The population is divided into “loyalty groups.” One-third belong to the “hostile class.” These people receive the worst jobs and housing and may not live in the capital, Pyongyang. Below the hostiles are the estimated 250,000 held in prison camps, some for crimes allegedly committed by relatives. Executions often are performed in public.

Seal Hunting in Canada

I don't know that online petitions ever do any good - but this is a particularly good cause...

Nearly 1 million baby seals will be clubbed or shot to death in Canada in just three years. Shockingly, the hunt is subsidized by the Canadian government!

Stop Canada's Cruel and Senseless Seal Hunt! Petition

Undersize me!

As a response to the film 'Supersize Me', a guy in Canada is going on a 30 day McDonald's only diet. However, it seems that he's not trying to consume 5000 calories a day and is exercising. The result - so far he's lost 13 pounds in 17 days - better than my progress exercising on a vegan diet.

Why We're All Going to Enjoy Life Just a Little More Quite Soon

Salt makes dirty science. On the advice of the health authorities, from years now we've all been holding back that extra dash from the shaker. Reduced salt intake fights hypertension and saves lives, right? Nope. There was an exhaustive review of the subject in a news article in Science five years ago. Amazingly, only 10 of 78 salt-hypertension trials conducted to 1998 were randomized - in part probably reflecting the lousy quality of research that MDs without scientific training tend to produce. Taken together, these studies suggest that although extreme reductions in salt intake are of benefit to hypertensives, blood pressure in normal individuals is barely effected. The push for reduced salt intake by the whole population benefits only the hypertensive subset of the population - everybody else pays in reduced enjoyment of food. Now, Salt companies are using the new Data Quality Act to demand access to the data produced by NIH sponsored salt research. Presumably, they want to reanalyzed the raw data to demonstrate that non-hypertensives derive little or no benefit from current low salt guidelines. In a news article in the current issue of Nature, researchers defend their stance, claiming the companies already have all the necessary data. Yet one of the requests is for access to the initial blood pressures of test subjects - surely a crucial piece of information for interpreting any results. Here's hoping that the courts will rule that the data be released and the obfuscation of health researchers will exposed. In the meantime, if you're not hypertensive, add a pinch of salt for good luck. And maybe later, some of that good ol' MSG!

Frozen Sea on Mars

Europe's Mars Express has found evidence of a huge frozen sea on the red planet - around the dimensions and depth of the North Sea - covered by a few centimeters of volcanic ash. The authors comment:

Micro-organisms found within deep-sea hydrothermal vent communities are common ancestors to many forms of life on Earth, and a Martian aquifer having intermittent contact with the surface might provide an opportunity not only for troglodytic life to develop, but to be disgorged on to the surface, and the frozen sea described here would be a prime candidate area for the preservation and discovery of its remains.

I guess all we need now build a highway across the plains of Eastern Elysium, get some SUVs on the road and wait for global warming to do its work.

Oversized Underwhelming Croquet Hoops

... aptly describes the Cristo Gates project in Central Park. There might be seven and a half thousand of the orange eyesores, but you can only see a few dozen at any moment, the rest being obscured by trees, hills or other gates. Apparently the original vision called for three times as many, which might have made a difference - as it is, the gates don't so much transform the park, as become buried inside it. Moreover the individual gates aren't much to look at, being squat and painted a uniform construction-color orange. While any kind of happening is a welcome addition to the Park, my friend Victor pointed out that in his hometown, they occasionally mixed things up by painting the garbage cans green, but nobody made quite such a big deal of it. That's pretty much how I feel. Those who enthuse about the gates don't lose any time in informing you that the materials used are completely recyclable. In my view, the artist's vision would have been even more grand if the gates had gone straight from manufacture to recycling without the hiatus in Central Park.

Vegetarian Taliban

A very funny paragraph in an otherwise fairy dull review ...

How many vegans does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It takes three: One to do it, one to read the package very carefully, and a third to scrutinize the proceedings with a dour expression. In the outside world, vegans -- who eschew all animal products in their diet -- have a reputation for self-righteous sanctimony that makes even egg- and milk-swilling vegetarians look Rabelaisian by comparison. During a Dateline interview last year after the death of Atkins Diet creator Dr. Robert Atkins, his widow Veronica Atkins lambasted the outspoken vegans who were denouncing her late husband's meaty, cheesy regimen. She called them 'the vegetarian Taliban.' Eastbayexpress.com - It's Good for You!

Ok, so I'm happy to be called sanctimonious and self-righteous, but 'vegetarian Taliban' is a little harsh...

Contrition Accepted Here

Many people, having opposed the war in Iraq, were understandably embarrassed by the jubilation of Iraqis voting in free elections. Rather than admit a lack of moral clarity, they tell us that the war was about "WMDs period" - and now that we know Iraq wasn't a threat, the war was necessarily a mistake. This is a just rewriting history. In the public debate before the invasion, the 'liberating the oppressed' argument was paramount in convincing people like me. Moreover the Bill authorizing the use of force in Iraq explicitly proclaimed this as an objective and Bush dwelled on it in his 2003 state of the union. And linked on Normblog is a 2002 address Bush gave:

America believes that all people are entitled to hope and human rights, to the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. People everywhere prefer freedom to slavery; prosperity to squalor; self-government to the rule of terror and torture. America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children. The oppression of Kurds, Assyrians, Turkomans, Shi'a, Sunnis and others will be lifted. The long captivity of Iraq will end, and an era of new hope will begin.President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat

It's time for all people of conscience who opposed the war to fess up. You are welcome to do it in my comment section below ;-)

A Prophetic Speedometer of End-Time Activity

Spectacular - a Christian group has created a Rapture Index. The Rapture, for those of you who haven't yet read all 12 of the Left Behind series, is the instant in which Christ's True Believers are whisked up to heaven while the rest of us hang round on Earth wondering where they went. Shortly after this, the anti-Christ arrives, followed by the Messiah, Armageddon and the rest is history so to speak. The Rapture index is described as:

...a Dow Jones Industrial Average of end time activity, but I think it would be better if you viewed it as prophetic speedometer. The higher the number, the faster we're moving towards the occurrence of pre-tribulation rapture.

The index is currently reading 152, down from an all time high of 182 on September 24, 2001. But don't despair - anything above 145 shows we're getting warm indeed. Just a couple more false prophets, a little extra global turmoil and a fall in moral standards and we should be there... (thanks to Florida Blues for the link)

Update: Also check out their mug shots of candidates for position of anti-Christ

Tony Blair is the acting Prime Minster of England, and
he is mostly regarded as a light weight contender.

Immigrant Genes

Contrasting the temperament of Israeli and Australian jews, I'd concluded that there might be a genetic contribution to 'craziness'. That sector of the jewish population crazy enough to settle in a swamp infested desert (!) passed on behavioural traits that make Israelis quite a distinctive bunch. Now there's a book out, arguing much the same for America versus Europe:
Slate - Crazy Rich - Are Americans successful because they're nuts

Another great column from Mark Steyn on the manifold failures of the UN.

It's one thing to invent humanitarian disasters to disparage Bush's unilateralist warmongering, but a month ago the UN was reduced to inventing a humanitarian disaster in order to distract attention from the existing humanitarian disaster it wasn't doing anything about.

Publication Quality Data for Life on Mars?

Space.com - Exclusive: NASA Researchers Claim Evidence of Present Life on Mars

A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here Sunday that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water. The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

Global Warming Cycles

In the most recent edition of Nature, Anders Moberg and colleagues from the University of Stockholm, present a new analysis of global temperatures over the last 2000 years. Their analysis demonstrates that the poster-child of the Global Warming movement - the famous 'hockey stick' graph published by Michael Mann in Nature in 1998 is misleading.

As you can see below, the Mann graph suggests stable global temperatures over the last 1000 years, with the sharp rise since around 1900 strongly suggesting that anthropogenic emissions are altering the climate.



In contrast, the Moberg study (the colored lines in the graph below - the black line is the Mann study for comparison), emphasizes large variability in global temperatures compared across centuries. Global temperatures have fluctuated cyclically, and we are currently in a recovery period from a cold period that bottomed out around 1600.



So why the difference? The Swedish group emphasizes their use of a technique that combines measurements of average temperatures over different time-scales. However, the statistical techniques used to produce the original hockey-stick shaped graph have been questioned before ; Nature however rejected a submission rebutting the Mann results.

However this latest paper doesn't reject an anthropogenic cause of recent spikes in global temperature. In fact, the authors explicitly argue that "... the post-1990 warmth seen in the instrumental data ... appears to be unprecendented.". Their contribution is to show that we are currently in the 'upswing' phase of global temperature cycles - human emissions are likely causing temperature increases even beyond that.

Social Networking and Liars on the Internet

The blogosphere is aghast that a popular blog, Libertarian Girl, was actually written by 30-something guy who adopted the personality of a fun 22 year old girl, in order to boost readership. His admission and comments on the experience are here.

Does it really matter? Surely the quality of his comments should speak for themselves (or not). On the other hand, as I mentioned discussing Spengler's column, we are inevitably influenced by knowing the identity of the author of a particular opinion. In Spengler's case, because the content is provocative and intelligent, anonymity adds to his credibility.

All this is intriguing in terms of social networking theory and evolutionary biology. I'm great fan of Amotz Zahavi's Handicap Principle, which argues that (1) In any biological context involving communication, 'liars' will arise and that (2) This provides the substrate for mechanisms to evolve which guarantee truth in communication. The 'Libertarian Girl affair' shows that part 1 of his theory applies to the blogosphere. It will be interesting to see how it evolves to deal with the challenge.

The Hebrew Hammer

Speaking of oddball jewish heros, its a good time to mention The Hebrew Hammer in which a circumsized superhero detective, complete with black leather trenchcoat, confronts an evil Santa determined to undermine the religious affiliation of jewish kids.

Like Everything is Illuminated, this movie runs through a checklist of staple items in the jewish cultural identity kit, yet unlike the book, is not purely exploitative. It's sympathetic and yet honest in its portrayal of american jewish life. It's funny in a wonderfully nebish way, and if you didn't understand that phrase, you won't get most of the film either ;-)

European Separation Fence

There hasn't been much media attention to the separation fence Europe is building to keep out the poor huddled masses from the former Soviet Union. Here's an older Guardian article - just so we don't lose track of the subject until the next MSM article... Guardian - On patrol along the EU's new eastern frontier

Kinky Friedman for Governor

Kinky Friedman's detective novels are hilarious. I remain deeply impressed the character Ratso,who repeatedly stressed that his favorite pair of shoes were distinguished by previously belonging to a dead man. Whatever - Kinky Friendman is running for Governor of Texas. His campaign motto - 'How hard can it be'.
HoustonChronicle.com - Kinky Friedman joins race for governor

Kong Hey Fat Choy

Happy Chinese New Year!

Personally, I'm comfortable being a tofu-hawk...

but, still, this is a hilarious repost to the 'chickenhawk' accusation.

Dershowitz Speaks at Columbia

The Columbia Spectator - Dershowitz Speaks On MEALAC, Israeli State

“The prospects for peace in Israel itself are greater than they would be on this campus,” he said. “People who deride Israel as a racist, apartheid, Nazi state ... those are not just rhetorical statements, they are barriers for peace—they encourage the terrorists.”

Licensed to Clone

Ian Wilmut, the scientist who produced the first cloned sheep, received approval to inject nuclei from the cells of people with motor neuron disease, into embryonic stem cells (derived from discarded fetuses). The idea is apparently to make an ES cell line, that can be differentiated into neurons, whose properties can be studied in the lab.

This is an unusual approach to studying a genetic disorder. The normal strategy would be to identify the genetic lesion causing ALS, engineer a mouse with that mutation and then study the characteristics of neurons in that mouse at leisure. However in the case of ALS, its tricky. Only one gene underlying ALS (SOD1) has been identified with certainty, and mutations in SOD1 are only responsible for a small fraction of ALS cases. Engineered mice are a valuable tool for studying the role of SOD1 in producing ALS, but the concensus now is that the disease progression in those mice is a complex process.

So studying how motor neurons degenerate in the other 98% of ALS cases, might yield novel insights. For example, it might be obvious that all ALS neurons produced in this manner have similar cellular defects. The advantage of using cloning techniques, is that its not necessary to know what the mutations are. This is a good example of the power of cloning as a research tool, although it should be acknowledged that the disease in question is an unusual one.

The Space Station Budget Boondoggle

The NASA Budget is very disappointing, not so much in the total amount - about 16 billion, but in how its allocated. Almost 2 billion is being directly wasted on building the Space Station, and 4.5 billion on the Space Shuttle. However according to the budget document

[The Space Shuttle] is currently the only vehicle that can support assembly of the ISS. NASA will phase-out the Space Shuttle in 2010 when its role in ISS assembly is complete.

In other words, the Shuttle is being maintained purely to support the Space Station. In total, the ISS is absorbing almost half of NASA's budget - 6.5 billion just this year.

What's galling, is that this necessitates cuts to other, much more exciting projects: keeping Hubble in action and developing the nuclear propulsion mission to Jupiters moons in search of life. Unlike the Space Station, these projects are both scientifically rewarding and arouse public enthusiasm. Keeping an invisible chunk of metal floating in space is merely lame.

Moreover, the financial burden of the 'International' Space Station is nowhere near equally shared. The total European contribution has been less than 3 billion Euros in the last 10 years - about half what the US will spend this year alone. Ditto the Japanese. Russia is putting in about $130 million a year, and only managing to raise that much by selling trips to wealthy businessmen - an outrageous way for the rich to leverage US government funds.

The Space Station should be made either truely international, with costs shared fairly - or scrapped. $6.5 billion could be much better spent for real research and bold exploration.

A European Leader with Moral Clarity

These seem to be pretty rare. Just as the EU is instructing European embassies in Cuba to shut their doors to Cuban dissidents, its very refreshing to hear the Danish PM repudiate the endemic populist anti-semitism among the European establishment.

Rasmussen was challenged over his support for the US and asked why Iraq was attacked for violating UN Security Council resolutions while Israel was able to do so with impunity.

Rasmussen, whose country began a two-year rotating stint on the Security Council on January 1, said that whereas Israel was not completely implementing all the Security Council resolutions, 'it is not run by a dictator without a conscience, and that is an essential difference.'

'Moreover,' he said, 'Israel is surrounded by enemies that want to throw it into the sea, and we should recognize that it has a special history. Israel must use somewhat tough measures to defend itself. (from Jerusalem Post)

The Three Legged Exit Strategy

There's been a lot of discussion about 'exit strategies', and the shocking fact the administration doesn't have one. My training as a neuroscientist didn't cover exit strategies and I've been very curious as to what they look like. My local deli doesn't stock them and I couldn't even find one on Amazon.com. I am very grateful to Nancy Pelosi for her compelling description tonight of the elusive exit strategy. Apparently, it is a beast with three limbs:

1. Train more Iraqi security forces.
2. Spend more on Iraqi infrastructure.
3. Engage in regional diplomacy.

Obviously I'm new at this, but now that I have an identification kit, I think I might be able to hunt down an exit strategy in the wild. Here we go... climb up a tree... scan the horizon... By Jove, there's one just over to the right. And... no... incredible - it's very same one that Bush has been stalking these last few weeks: keep training Iraqi policemen, get another $80 billion to spend in Iraq (and Afghanistan) and send Condoleeza Rice to encourage the burgeoning Israeli-Palestinian rapport.

Terraforming Mars

In an interview with Astrobiology Magazine, Mars researcher Jean-Loup Bertaux outlines a plan for creating a local habitat on the red planet, suitable for humans and plants. Suggestions for converting the hostile environments of other planets into more Earth-like substrates, are always impressively bold. But this guy has a really ambitious plan. A 45 kilometer deep hole...

"The idea is you dig a big hole, maybe at a 45-degree inclination, in the Hellas crater, which is already at low altitude. Maybe you need a hole of 45 kilometers [28 miles], which is not so easy. But the whole atmosphere of Mars is going to go down into the hole. Two things would happen. First of all, the pressure at the bottom of the hole would be about 1 bar - much higher than at the surface. It would also be a much warmer temperature, because when you go down, the pressure increases and the temperature also goes up." (from Space.com)

Just for comparison, the deepest point on the Earth's surface is 11km down, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Of Shitake Mushrooms and Rice Bubbles

The idea lingered in my mind as I seesawed on the threshold of consciousness. A vague, dreamlike idea of a batter, made from shitake mushroom and rice bubbles. Later, in conversation with Shosh, it became clear that nuggets of seitan would be the perfect carrier for such an ambitious crust.

And it was no mere dream. I am pleased to report that seitan nuggets, rolled first in a batter of blended shitake mushrooms and egg-replacer powder, then encrusted with rice bubbles before being briefly deep fried - are 100% spectacular. Let it not be said that a vegan diet is bland or unappetizing.

If you dream it, it is no swill.

What Becomes of Yesterday's Propaganda

Yesterday the mainstream news was full of reports of the IDF callously killing an innocent schoolgirl in Gaza.

According to Reuters "Witnesses said Deeb was killed by gunfire from an Israeli army post down the road while she and classmates were exercising in their schoolyard during morning assembly." Moreover the United Nations Agency for Work and Relief of the Palestinian Refugees also claimed that the gunfire originated from an Israeli border post.

Yet today we learn from the Jerusalem Post - PA arrests suspect in girl's murder.

... at the time the girl was killed, officials at the District Coordinating Office received reports that in the same area Muslim worshippers returning from the Hajj in Mecca fired warning shots in the air to celebrate their return.

I tried looking on the Reuters site for an update. The result: "Sorry no results were found for your search." Thats about as much as we can expect from the UNRWA too.

But lets face it, even a full fledged retraction wouldn't make much difference. The original story is there, etched into peoples minds.