| Tuesday, August
30, 2005
Would someone explain to me what "Creative Commons" is? I have read Dvorak
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1838251,00.asp and to the best I
can make out what we are talking about, I agree with him. But then there is
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/21/creativity/ and
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/29/creativity_computers_copyright_letters/
and after a while I begin going beedee, beedee, beedee... I don't know
what Creative Commons is, or what we need it. Perhaps I am just stupid? Or
uninformed?
See Mail for
discussion (which has grown fairly extensive) ========= WARNING: Hurricanes and Phishing.
See mail.
=========== Malaria For Brains Posted by Carl
Zimmer
http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2005/08/23/malaria_for_brains.php
IMG:
http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/malaria%20cross-section.jpg
The red blob in this picture is a human red
blood cell, and the green blob in the middle of it is a pack of the
malaria-causing parasites Plasmodium falciparum. Other species of the
single-celled Plasmodium can give you malaria, but if you’re looking for a
real knock-down punch, P. falciparum is the parasite for you. It alone is
responsible for almost all of the million-plus deaths due to malaria.
How did this scourge come to plague us? In a
paper to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, scientists have reconstructed a series of molecular events
three million years ago that allowed Plasmodium falciparum to make us its
host. They argue that a change in the receptors on the cells of hominids was
the key. Ironically, this same change of receptors may have also allowed our
ancestors to evolve big brains. Malaria may simply be the price we pay for
our gray matter.
To uncover this ancient history, the
researchers compared the malaria humans get to the malaria of our closeest
relatives, chimpanzees. In 1917, scientists discovered Plasmodium parasites
in chimpanzees that looked identical to human Plasmodium falciparum. But
when some ethically challenged doctors tried to infect people with the
chimpanzee parasites, the subjects didn’t get sick. Likewise, chimpanzees
have never been known to get sick with Plasmodium falciparum from humans. In
the end, scientists recognized that chimpanzees carry a separate species of
Plasmodium, known today as Plasmodium reichenowi. Studies on DNA show that
Plasmodium rechnowi is the closest living relative to Plasmodium falciparum—just
as chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans. <snip>
=============== Reuters: Swazi
princess whipped for loud music
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/08/28/swazi.princess.reut/index.html
EZULWINI VALLEY, Swaziland (Reuters) -- The
king of Swaziland's daughter was whipped by a palace official at a party of
teenage virgins ahead of a festival where more than 50,000 maidens are
available to become her father's 13th wife, media said on Sunday.
Princess Sikhanyiso, 17, told the Times of
Swaziland a palace official whipped girls, including beauty queen Miss
Swaziland, at the party as a punishment after they refused to turn down the
music. She was pictured showing her bruises.
Thousands of bare-breasted virgins will dance
for Africa's last absolute monarch in Monday's Reed Dance ceremony, which
King Mswati III has used to choose new brides.
Critics say the ancient ceremony, meant to
celebrate womanhood and virginity, has become little more than a shop window
for the 37-year-old king to choose young brides.
The official, who was charged with supervising
the princess and her friends ahead of the ceremony, denied he had whipped
the girls, the paper said.
No one at the palace was immediately available
for comment.
Thousands of girls, some swathed in drapes
bearing the king's image and some in beaded mini skirts, streamed into the
royal compound on Sunday singing songs and carrying towering reeds to
present to the Queen Mother -- also known as the Great She Elephant.<snip>
================= Nun reprimanded for dirty
dancing at Papal fete:
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050823100309990001
=================================
The above are, uh, interesting. The next one you ought to read:
Victor Davis Hanson on War
http://www.nationalreview.com/script/
printpage.p?ref=/hanson/hanson200508260909.asp
August 26, 2005, 9:09 a.m.
The Paranoid Style
Iraq: Where socialists and anarchists join in with
racialists and paleocons.
It is becoming nearly impossible to sort the extreme
rhetoric of the antiwar Left from that of the fringe paleo-Right. Both see
the Iraqi war through the same lenses: the American effort is bound to fail
and is a deep reflection of American pathology.<snip>
I will have my own comments on this later. Note I say you
should read his essay; not that I am in agreement with all of it.
My objections to the Iraq war are the same as they always
were: we should not go abroad seeking monsters to destroy for the sake of
killing monsters. I saw no national interest in invading Iraq. I see a great
deal of national interest in leaving Iraq better off -- from our view --
with a friendlier government than it had, now that we are there. Probably
the best thing that can happen now is that we set up a reasonably stable
government that does not hate us, and the cost was so high we are not
tempted to try that experiment again.
================================ Here is another to pay
attention to: Left Behind, Way Behind
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/opinion/29herbert.html
By [3]BOB HERBERT
First the bad news: Only about two-thirds of
American teenagers (and just half of all black, Latino and Native American
teens) graduate with a regular diploma four years after they enter high
school.
Now the worse news: Of those who graduate, only
about half read well enough to succeed in college.
Don't even bother to ask how many are
proficient enough in math and science to handle college-level work. It's not
pretty.
Of all the factors combining to shape the
future of the U.S., this is one of the most important. Millions of American
kids are not even making it through high school in an era in which a
four-year college degree is becoming a prerequisite for achieving (or
maintaining) a middle-class lifestyle.
The Program for International Assessment, which
compiles reports on the reading and math skills of 15-year-olds, found that
the U.S. ranked 24th out of 29 nations surveyed in math literacy. The same
result for the U.S. - 24th out of 29 - was found when the problem-solving
abilities of 15-year-olds were tested.<snip>
Of course if you want to be sure your kids can read, buy
Roberta Pournelle's reading program and USE IT
before the children get to school. If they can read then the public schools
have some good resources, and while not very good, are not as harmful as
they are when the only source of information is what the teacher says and
wants them to know. Teach them to
READ. It's easily done (well, it's an hour or so a day for several
months, but that's not all that onerous.) ============
ALL YOUR THOUGHTS ARE BELONG TO US: Has anyone
contemplated this:
http://news.com.com/Legal+argument+could+hamper
+high-tech+job-changers/2100-1022_3-5843773.html in all
its implications? I am not sure I understand what is said here, but I
am glad I do not work for a company I want to leave. The road to serfdom?
Law making business for itself? Or just a tempest in a teapot?
===================== In Bangalore, India, a
Cuddle With Your Baby Requires a Bribe
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/international/asia/30bangalore.html
By [3]CELIA W. DUGGER
BANGALORE, [4]India - Just as the painful
ordeal of childbirth finally ended and Nesam Velankanni waited for a nurse
to lay her squalling newborn on her chest, the maternity hospital's ritual
of extortion began.
Before she even glimpsed her baby, she said, a
nurse whisked the infant away and an attendant demanded a bribe. If you want
to see your child, families are told, the price is $12 for a boy and $7 for
a girl, a lot of money for slum dwellers scraping by on a dollar a day. The
practice is common here in the city, surveys confirm.
Mrs. Velankanni was penniless, and her
mother-in-law had to pawn gold earrings that had been a precious marriage
gift so she could give the money to the attendant, or ayah. Mrs. Velankanni,
a migrant to Bangalore who had been unprepared for the demand, wept in
frustration.
"The ayah told my mother-in-law to pay up fast
because the night duty doctor was leaving at 8 a.m. and wanted a share," she
recalled.
The grand thefts of rulers may be more
infamous, but the bitter experience of petty corruption, less apparent but
no less invidious, is an everyday trial for millions of poor people across
Asia, Africa and Latin America. Increasingly, it is being recognized as a
major obstacle to economic development, robbing the impoverished of already
measly incomes and corroding the public services they desperately
need.<snip>
It's the same the whole world over, it's the poor what gets the blame, it's
the rich what gets the gravy...
=============================================
RSS Feeds
I confess it: I have never seen an RSS Feed (and apparently I never will so
long as I continue to use Internet Explorer) so I do now know what all the
shouting is about. I gather that it's a means for sending bits of a web site
to a list of subscribers.
I would presume also that this is far better adapted to places like Drudge
where timely news items are important; which is certainly not true here. I
may respond to some timely event, but I usually regret doing it because much
of the time I don't have enough information to have an intelligent opinion
or judgment --
and that's what this place is about. Intelligent opinion. Informed
judgments. If it is not that it is not worth maintaining. And who would want
a big essay sent unasked for by RSS feed? Here you can decide just how much
of what issue you want to read about and go on to something else if you
don't care for it. We have a long discussion on CREATIVE
COMMONS that sort of erupted here and went on to mail. We have
discussions of marriage age. We have a story of extortion in India. We have
stories of looting. We have an exhortation to make sure your kids can read
before they go to school. And that's all since last night.
Who in the world would want all that fed to them? And how should I select
what to broadcast?
My friends and associates are working to make it possible for me to do this,
but am not not sure it's a necessary effort. I spend about at much time here
as I can afford. Indeed, if we don't get some more
subscriptions, I'll have to cut back a good bit. And I do not see that
RSS feeds would help in getting subscribers.
But not being familiar with it, I am not sure of that. You will understand,
I get more mail than I can conveniently read now: I certainly do NOT need
any forced links to other web sites. You readers all filter what you send to
me, for which I thank you, and I get pointers to the best stories in the
world, all sent by an intelligent reader who thought I might like to see it.
What more can I ask for?
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