| Tuesday,
June 21, 2005 Subject: FW: cool website
for those times of needed distraction
>
http://www.eyesofnye.org/
Steven Dunn
It's certainly cool, not to say flashy. Too
much so for me I fear; I gave up trying to find actual content. But it's
cool.
==========
Subject: Letter from England
On Sunday, I manned a booth for a bat conservation
group at a conservation fair near Durham. This was held in a sheep
pasture--a working sheep pasture--so you had to watch where you walked. We
had a couple of common pipistrelles with us (the smallest and most common
bats in England) and next to the bat habitat, we had a plastic box with live
mealworms (Tenebrio sp.) for them. The kids would come by, look at the bats,
spot the mealworms and say 'maggots!', and I would use that as the lead-in
for my mealworm spiel.
I'd open the box, take out a mealworm, and say "These
aren't maggots; these are mealworms. They're clean. We feed them to the
bats. They're salty and crunchy, and they wiggle as they go down." I'd
present it to my mouth, palm it, chew, and swallow. (Some of the parents
would spot the trick.) Then I'd show the mealworm to the kids again and tell
them that graduate students in research labs that used mealworms would
sometimes have mealworm-eating contests after a half dozen beers. Next, I'd
talk about feeding the worms to the bats--how you have to present them
head-first to the bat because the worms didn't want to be eaten, how the bat
would grab hold and start chewing it down head-first, and how you had to let
go quickly once the bat reached the other end as the bats often kept
chewing. (Both of us at the booth had been bitten that way.) It was gross,
but it was fun, too.
There were a couple of heavy thunderstorms during the
afternoon. It was very hot and muggy, and people from the North of England
aren't used to that. See <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/
4109692.stm> , <http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/Story/
0,2763,1510184,00.html> , and <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/
0,,2-1661496,00.html> for the national stories. The Government is
thinking about banning public smoking like Ireland has. <http://
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4104088.stm> <http://
observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1509843,00.html>
Since I'm asthmatic, I personally wouldn't mind, but I wonder whether it
would work. Smoking is banned in European airports, but they don't do
anything to enforce the ban in most countries, so I suspect it will be more
of the same.
The National Health Service is taking the usual flak:
MRSA <http://
observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1509846,00.html> <http://
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1661517,00.html> and staffing
problems <http://society.guardian.co.uk/NHSstaff/story/
0,7991,1510424,00.html> .
I picked up Jablonka and Lamb, Evolution in Four
Dimensions, MIT Press, 2005. They look at evolutionary theory in a more
general context of genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic
inheritance, each with its own dynamics. It challenges a lot of the old
orthodoxies, although the anti-evolutionists will not find it comforting,
either. Report later.
-- "Truth is the intersection of independent lies."
(Richard Levins, 1966)
Harry Erwin, PhD
=============
From another
conference:
Study: Extra Folic Acid May Help Memory
http://www.latimes.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.intercept
[Thanks to Laird for this. I take 1200 mcg. a day. I
take a lot of stuff like this, since unpatentable medicines don't generally
get tested and are pretty inexpensive. It looks like at least one of these
substances will pay off.]
Frank
By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP Medical Writer
5:02 PM PDT, June 20, 2005
WASHINGTON — Taking large amounts of folic
acid improved the memory of older adults, Dutch scientists reported Monday
in the first study to show a vitamin pill might slow the mental decline of
aging.
The research adds to mounting evidence that a
diet higher in folate -- a B vitamin found in grains and certain
dark-colored fruits and vegetables -- is important for a variety of
diseases. It's proven to lower women's risk of devastating birth defects of
the brain and spinal cord, and research suggests it helps ward off heart
disease and strokes, too.
As people age, some decline in brain function
is inevitable. The Dutch study tested whether otherwise healthy people could
slow that brain drain by taking double the recommended daily U.S. dose of
folic acid -- the amount in 2.5 pounds of strawberries.
The study divided 818 people ages 50 to 75 to
take either a vitamin containing 800 micrograms of folic acid a day, or a
dummy pill, for three years.
The folic acid protected users' brains, lead
researcher Jane Durga of Wageningen University reported Monday at a meeting
of the Alzheimer's Association.
On memory tests, the supplement users had
scores comparable to people 5.5 years younger, Durga said. On tests of
cognitive speed, the folic acid helped users perform as well as people 1.9
years younger.
The witches' brew I take has
about 1200 mcg folic acid as well. The FDA minimum dosage recommendations
were responsible for retarded children in those who stayed with the dosages
some years ago: they were far too low for pregnant women, and probably too
low for normal adults. This was back in the days when the FDA hated the idea
that someone might be taking something without their approval or a company
might be making money selling something the FDA hadn't tested in their
inimitable and slow way. The result was horrible tragedy but I have yet to
see any apologies from those busybodies.
I have never seen any signs that fairly
large amounts of folic acid (such as are found in the B-100 formula
supplements) do any harm; if any of my medical readers have evidence on this
I would love to see it since I do take quite a lot of it, Alzheimer's being
one of the things I really fear.
And see below
===============
Subject: 110/220 chargers
Hi, Jerry.
I can sympathize with your Italy trip difficulties
regarding your 110v only charger, and have a recommendation. We are planning
a trip to Germany, and I was on a shopping expedition to find a replacement
for my old style 12 hour charger, which overheats the cells if not unplugged
when done. It was purchased before the newer "quick charge" units were
available at reasonable prices.
I recently purchased a "generic" charger which
included 4 2200mA AA cells at WalMart for less than twenty bucks with tax.
It appears to have a switching power supply rated 100 - 250V 50/60Hz. I have
not tried to disassemble it, but the light weight augers for such. It is
labeled "Digital Concepts" model CK1404 1 hour charger. As I recall, the
mains voltage was indicated on the back of the package, but not obviously
so.
I was initially attracted to it for the light weight
as well as the dual voltage, as the charger and cells weighed less than two
packs of 4 AA's. The 1 hour moniker is misleading, however. When one reads
the minimal instructions (which were, of course, not accessible until after
purchase due to the anti-shoplifting packaging, grumble grumble . . .) only
1800mA cells are charged in one hour. Higher capacity cells take
proportionally longer. Otherwise the unit is great, shutting off when the
cells are charged to prevent overcharge. I have three sets of four myself,
and have not yet managed to run out of power before a depleted set is
recharged (Nikon Coopix 2500).
I realize this is relatively expensive for a 1 - 2
hour charger, but the convenience of dual voltage using only a cheap round
to flat adapter is worthwhile. In fact, in a related vein, my wife's new
keyboard (Rolland FP2) uses a similar power block, very light weight and
dual voltage, hardly gets warm when operating. Her Yamaha keyboard has a
~5lb power brick which runs quite warm when in use and a bit warm even when
the keyboard is off. Yes, I know she should unplug it after use, but . . .
Thanks for your weekly column in BYTE, online edition.
Richard Colvin Alamogordo, NM
Actually the one that came with
the Olympus camera is small, light, and 110-220. Alas I didn't take it with
me last trip. I sure will in future! Thanks for the kind words.
===============
More on the Death
Star!
An alternate view on the Death Star construction
timeline
Jerry, I had no problem accepting the Death Star in
the closing scenes of Star Wars III for the same reason that I had no
problem accepting what would later become Leia's diplomatic ship (helmed by
a much younger Captain Antilles) flying around a few scenes before.
The reason is simply this: There is no external,
arbitrary scale to indicate the passage of time, no subtitled numbers like
"Year 15 of the Galactic Empire". This means that there is no means by which
we can measure how much time elapses between any two scenes at the end of of
the movie, except where one or more characters overlap and doesn't look
noticeably older -- which is why the baby princess was recently born when
she was presented to her adoptive mother. And I defy anyone to prove that
Vader looked any older at the beginning of Episode IV than he did at the end
of Episode III. <grin>
The Death Star would have taken a few years to build,
yes. This isn't a problem because Vader doesn't walk out of the operating
theater/garage where they made him better, stronger, faster than bef...
Wait, wrong character, wrong series, wrong medium even. As I was saying,
Vader doesn't walk directly out of the operating theater and onto the
command deck where they show him the nascent Death Star. It could easily
have been a few years later after putting down much rebellion and knocking
many heads in for the Emperor.
Now I did initially object to them setting up Princess
Leia's ship for the next episode -- because there are so many starships that
they must be relatively cheap and because governments don't make Big
Important People fly around in old birds (warbirds and military personnel
are another matter entirely).
So why would Leia be running around in Dad's old
starship? Well, probably because Dad had a new one by now and the economy
wasn't nowhere near good enough since the Empire started taxing everyone out
the wazoo for Dear Old Dad to buy his little princess a new starship of her
own, especially with the price of hyperdrive fuel these days! Much more
sensible to give her the keys to his old classic when she graduated from the
Imperial equivalent of High School. Or maybe by then it had been replaced
and transferred to the State Department, making it legitimately a diplomatic
vessel as Leia claimed.
But why would Antilles still be piloting her? One
doesn't usually pilot Air Force One and then go to work for some other,
lesser job, does one? I'd have thought they'd keep those guys on deck until
they retired or screwed up royally. If they kept the ship in the family, it
would be a nice sinecure for him to ease off into retirement with.
Let me say that I could be wrong about all this --
I've only seen the movie twice, after all. But this was the conclusion I
came up with the first time I saw the film, and it survived the second
viewing.
Okay, that's entirely too much thought and too many
words written about somebody else's fictional universe. I should go put some
time and energy into my *own* fictional universes instead.
--Gary Pavek
================ "Too many people simply give up
too easily. You have to keep the desire to forge ahead, and you have to be
able to take the bruises of unsuccess. Success is just one long street
fight." -- Milton Berle (1908-2002)
Yeah but it's fun to play in
other people's yards. And less work...
==
Ill-organised observations on Knighthood and the Jedi:
The Jedi are referred to as knights. But "Knight" has
become a very ambiguous term for us.
In Roman and European, including British, history,
Knights were minor nobility, a sort of "hinge" between peers and common
people. In the early modern period, Francis Drake was made a knight but his
contemporary Shakespeare was not. Later it was a title frequently bestowed
on outstanding British Naval officers, judges, etc. who were "professionals"
rather than nobles.
In the myths of King Arthur etc., the Knight Errant
was an idealistic figure who combined warrior ferocity with chivalry and
tenderness. This is defined in a peculiar way with Don Quixote. Here
knighthood was not a grade of nobility but something outside it. Even a
Prince or King, for example, might not be a knight unless he had passed a
series of tests. Nor was this confined to mythology. On Malta the Knights of
St John, headquarterd near the Grand Harbour and later at Valletta, and the
old Maltese nobility with Norman titles, headquartered at Mdina in the
centre of the island, apparently lived separate lives and each rather looked
down on the other.
Modern British knighthoods are given to political
figures etc. but even fifty years ago were considerably less degraded than
they are now. As late as 1939 Commodore Henry Harwood was knighted for
beating the Graf Spee. The knighting of Mick Jagger marked the end of
British Orders being taken seriously for the foreseeable future. Still I
have met some British-created Knights who take the obligations of their
Order seriously. In the time between leaving Mexico and joining the US Texas
also created Knights.
There are also the Hospitalar Orders of Knighthood -
the various Orders of St. John, St. Lazarus etc., of varying authenticity.
Some of these continue to do charitable work of the noblest kind. It would
take a large book to set all this out in detail.
This is a roundabout way of saying that "Knight" has a
complex of associations, but does retain an idea of something like
"dedicated and idealistic warrior." The Knight was not meant to be
politically very powerful, but to combine physical and moral strength and
authority and is sometimes a loner. The term is used in this sense in The
Lord of The Rings for the Dunedan, but also for Denethor's guards.
The Jedi seen to have departed gradually from this
Knightly ideal - not, by the time of Revenge of the Sith, very far, but they
are starting to become a political power in their own right, as the Knights
Templar did (the fact the Jedi have their own "Temple" may give them some
association, conscious or otherwise, with the Templars). It is easy to
imagine the next generation of Jedi, if left to their own devices, becoming
dictatorial and tyrannical.
They also seem to have become compromised in that they
have done nothing to put a stop to slavery on Tattooine or to Jabba's
gangster-dominion. Do they have a policy of only intervening when things
have come to a certain pass? (Actually, the slavery on Tattooine does not
look too bad, as slavery goes. Young Anakin Skywalker has a good deal of
freedom). Maybe things on Tattooine aren't bad enough for their intervention
- though perhaps if they had intervened there it would have prevented
disaster later. (Would the Jedi have invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam
Hussein? Would they have been compromised if they had not done so?)
With their numbers drastically thinned in Attack of
the Clones, the Jedi by the end of Revenge of the Sith have dwindled to two,
and with the death of Yoda in Return of the Jedi to Luke alone, though with
the repentance of the dying Anakin Skywalker their number presumably
increases to two again for a few moments. It does not seem much of a
"Return" for the Order as a whole, important as Anakin's salvation is. At
the end of the series Luke is apparently the only surviving Jedi. Is he
interested in training successors? There is no indication that he is so
interested except that, unlike his father, he has no female to distract him.
Perhaps what is needed is a redefinition of what Jedi knighthood actually
means. And perhaps we in this galaxy could do worse than redefine it
ourselves.
Hal Colebatch
Indeed. I like that. J. E. Pournelle,
Kt. C. St G K, Chev SLJ...==========
============
David K. M. Klaus thinks you'd be interested in the
following tvnz.co.nz article.
Brothel takes council to court:
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411366/593097/
Here's a message from David K. M. Klaus:
"Brown's lawyer, QC Barrister Gerard McCoy, says the
area is too restrictive and the legal challenge is the first to local
government powers since the prostitution law reform act was introduced.
"'It inverts a central principle of the act, namely
that sex workers ought to be able to practice in a safe, open and secure
environment,' says McCoy.
"The Prostitutes Collective is supporting those
claims, saying the bylaw denies the very rights given to sex workers by the
new act.
";It immediately takes away the personal choice,
autonomy and dignity of these individuals,' says McCoy.
Amazing. How...Heinleinian.
Indeed...
=======
Subject: Was it worth it?
From Jim Woosley
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2005/06/17/AR2005061701217_pf.html
Whether This War Was Worth It In Analyzing Iraq,
Consider the Effects of Having Done Nothing
By Robert Kagan Post Sunday, June 19, 2005; B07
Serious scholars still debate whether the Civil War
was necessary, never mind the more obvious "wars of choice" such as World
War I, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the Korean War, wars in
Vietnam and Kosovo, and the Persian Gulf War. To a certain brand of American
isolationist, even World War II was unnecessary and counterproductive. So
there is nothing remarkable about polls showing Americans wondering whether
the recent Iraq war was "worth it." It is a great American myth, voiced by
John Kerry last year, that the nation goes to war only when there is no
question about the necessity of going to war. There's always a question.
Even if the Iraqi insurgency disappeared tomorrow, George Ibrahim al
Washington became president of Iraq and every liter of Saddam Hussein's
onetime stockpile of chemical and biological weapons suddenly appeared in
the desert, historians would still spend the next century debating whether
the war was "worth it."
Wars remain subjects of debate not just because their
"necessity" is in doubt but also because their results are mixed. <snip>
One problem is that we always know what did happen as
a result of war, but we never know what didn't happen. <snip>
To assess whether the Iraq war was worth it requires
seriously posing the question: What would have happened if the Bush
administration had not gone to war in March 2003? That is a missing but
essential piece of the current very legitimate debate. We all know what has
gone wrong since the Iraq war began, but it is not as if, in the absence of
a war, everything would have gone right. <snip> The most sensible argument
for the invasion was not that Hussein was about to strike the United States
or anyone else with a nuclear bomb. It was that containment could not be
preserved indefinitely, that Hussein was repeatedly defying the
international community and that his defiance appeared to both the Clinton
and Bush administrations to be gradually succeeding. He was driving a wedge
between the United States and Britain, on one side, which wanted to maintain
sanctions and containment, and France, Russia, and China, on the other,
which wanted to drop sanctions and normalize relations with him. The main
concern of senior officials in both administrations was that, in the words
of then-national security adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger, containment was not
"sustainable over the long run." <snip>
It is entirely possible, in short, that if the Bush
administration had not gone to war in 2003, the United States might have
faced a more dangerous and daring Saddam Hussein later on and felt compelled
to act. <snip>
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.
And see below
=========================
Subject: Reagan Budgets
Hi Jerry,
According to The Statistical Abstract of the US(1987)
page 293 (page 143 of this pdf):
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1987-03.pdf
Federal Income:
1980: $517 billion
1985: $734 Billion (42% increase)
Expenditures:
1980: $591 Billion
1985: $946 Billion (60% increase)
These numbers are unadjusted for inflation, but it is
obvious that there was a disproportionate increase in spending during this
period.
Unfortunately I'm going to sound like a Liberal (oh
the SHAME!!) when I point out that $119 Billion of that increase is due to
increased military spending-taking that out, the rest of the budget grew by
40 % over the same period.
As an unnoted (so far) paleo-Conservative, I must say
that 40 % was still too much, and the increased defense spending was money
well spent, particularly in hindsight
Take Care, Rod Schaffter
==
Subject: Reagan and Laffer
" I have been persuaded, perhaps falsely, that
actual revenue of the US rose as a result of the tax cuts. "
First, you have to adjust for inflation, as I think
everyone would agree. Next,. you have to realize that reveneue just about
always goes up over a few years because of economic growth : the question is
whether revenue went up faster than usual during Reagan's term. Now if we
wanted to do a better job of analysis , we'd have to take into account the
fact that Reagan and Congress re-raised taxes several times after the
initial cut (not just formal raises in income tax, but bracket creep and
higher SS taxes) , that the initial state of the economy when his term began
was not under his control, that there are plenty of important factors
influencing economic growth that are not controlled by any President, or for
that matter even understood by humans...
From what I can find on the net, the real increase in
federal tax revenue during Reagan's administration was lower than the
preceding 8-year period, also lower than the following 8-year period.
Probably more important is economic growth: it was higher in the 1980s than
the 1970s, higher in the 1990s than in the 1980s.
Gregory Cochran
==
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