Blinded By Non-Science

By Phineas Dash

Maybe it’s age, but I am becoming more detached from the daily news. What follows might even be pontificating, but as the oracular Dash brother, I guess that’s my job. So here are some thoughts prompted by a request for some words on a progressive view of science…

Evaluating science and using the findings of science are collective responsibilities in a progressive democracy. We need to be informed and skeptical, without surrendering to unexamined fears and projections of our own anxieties and desires.

We must be skeptical because many "scientific" findings, and the research (which may be valid or not) that leads to them are increasingly financed by special interests, with a financial stake in the outcome. We find particularly egregious examples in drug testing which is often inadequate and inaccurate, done by the very companies who profit by the sale of the drugs. These days they sometimes spend more money on advertising than research and testing. We find it as well in biotechnology, in which huge companies can suppress information and use science to destroy individual freedom as well as the environment (by forcing the use of genetically altered seeds, for example).

Science is used as an instrument of dominance when it is marshaled to harm those least able to defend themselves. It is no coincidence that most toxic waste sites and other harmful processes are located where the poor live, in particular on Indian reservations.

Even public financing of science, without scrutiny, is not a solution, for it has been corrupted as well. Americans became rightly suspicious of science and technology when nuclear weapons "experts" both lied about dangers and created closed systems they claimed were rational, but from outside the system appeared insane: therefore, Doctor Strangelove.

These days, besides weapons research, other science and technology-based enterprises are subsidized that are in themselves harmful, but also benefit large corporations rather than the public---corporations that often escape their tax responsibilities.

When science is used in these ways, a chain reaction of corruption begins that threatens the credibility of science everywhere. Huge commercial interests are now willing and able to bypass traditional safeguards such as peer review, or simply bribe their way to acceptance. The money they spend on advertising discourages scrutiny from the media depending on advertising income. Already the dumbing down of information media means sloppy science reporting, not only in terms of the science itself, but such crucial information as methodology and who paid for the research.

When science is used as an instrument of self-interest and profit---especially when it becomes a tool of public relations--- it is but a short step to the abuses we've seen by the Bush administration, in distorting and ignoring scientific findings, particularly on the climate crisis, that doesn't support their political agenda.

Like just about everything else, science has become part of this overheated inside-out public frenzy, where unexamined unconscious reactions get projected onto everyone and everything in sight, usually in the form of political bombast. Roger Pielke, director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at U. of Colorado, affirms that "science is becoming yet another playing field for power politics," which isn't so new, but what may be is, "complete with the trappings of media spin and win-at-all-costs attitude. Sadly, much of what science can offer policymakers, and hence society, is being lost."

That's simply so science can play a role, rather than become (as it once seemed it would become) the indisputable authority. That was never going to be a good thing.

Even in areas not so directly affected by corporate and political interests, science must be viewed and evaluated intelligently. Scientists are human beings, and for all of their rhetoric of objectivity, the reliance on scientific principles does not guarantee that accurate findings and especially new and better explanations will always be judged on their merits and accepted immediately. In his book, "The Big Bang," Simon Singh exposes the dirty little secret least familiar to nonscientists: the degree to which science is hostage to human failings of ego, status and reward. Singh cites the observation of renowned physicist Max Planck that new ideas seldom win over adherents of old ones -- usually a generation must pass while the new idea's "opponents gradually die out ..." He also quotes English geneticist J.B.S. Haldane's "four stages of acceptance" of a scientific idea: "i) this is worthless nonsense, ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view, iii) this is true, but quite unimportant, iv) I always said so."

Scientists also often are biased to the simplest (or "elegant") explanation, which they've found in the past is often the best one. But it is not always so, especially as science gets into deeper and more fundamental questions. It may turn out that fundamental answers are complex. This appears to be so, for example, in the evolution of living beings. A growing number of scientists (most recently, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb in their book, EVOLUTION IN FOUR DIMENSIONS (MIT Press, 2005) are questioning the exclusive reliance on genes as the engines of inheritance and evolution. From molecular biology and more unbiased animal study, new findings support the idea that other factors are at work, including behavioral and symbolic transmissions of traits.

But apart from ego and careerism, science that touches upon political and religious controversies can get caught in the crossfires. Part of the resistance to new theories of natural selection is from scientists who feel they must circle the wagons against reactionary views (from downright denial of evolution to so-called "intelligent design" schools) and maintain a unified front focus on simple ideas, that may have become dogmas.

Not all the trends are bad, however. There is increasing diversity among those engaged in science. Women, for example, have made usually unacknowledged contributions throughout the history of western science, but more are becoming prominent in their fields today. They may bring a more collaborative attitude and a greater openness to complexity, although deterministically ascribing traits on the basis of gender would be, as they say, unscientific.

More Shoes Dropping

Says USA Today:

The debate's over: Globe is warming - Yahoo! News

so you know it must be true. Actually this is a solid article for what's going on in the conventional wisdom, with nuggets like:

GE Chairman Jeffrey Immelt recently announced that his company, which reports $135 billion in annual revenue, will spend $1.5 billion a year to research conservation, pollution and the emission of greenhouse gases. Joining him for the announcement were executives from such mainline corporations as American Electric Power, Boeing and Cinergy.

Exxon isn't on the list, of course, but other global "energy" (i.e. "we don't want to be caught being only oil") companies have gone ahead, as if they knew this all the time, but still they are far more realistic than our faith-based and paid-for government.

The Return of King Butts

So you thought the age of King Butts was over? Especially after that $246 billion deal the states made with the tobacco companies in 1998, ostensibly to fund anti-smoking campaigns. But the states took the money and ran the other way. Few bothered spending significant sums on anti-smoking programs, except California, which (before the Terminator) devised and implemented innovative programs that had measurable effect in reducing teen smoking.

The last weapon the federal government had was a pending law suit filed during the Clinton administration charging the big Butts with promoting teen smoking, and seeking damages. But with their infinite capacity for craven cowardice, the Bushers reduced the damages they were seeking from $130 billion to $10 billion.

Why? The operative figure seems to be $54 million, which is what the Big Butt companies have spread around in campaign contributions since 1990. Even the judge in the case smells a rat, as do several members of Congress. But for now King Butts is back, big time! Any industry that can kill some 400,000 people a year can't possibly be more important to the Bushies as renewing the Patriot Act, which is supposed to protect us from terrorists, at least the unincorporated kind.

Last-minute retreat leaves anti-smoking plan in ashes - Yahoo! News

the birds have figured out what to do with them, but have we?

Bird Brains

Humans know they have all the brains. So they can't quite believe the evidence that very small birds with almost no brains learn from each other, or can remember exactly where they've stored thousands of seeds over vast landscapes, and can find these stores even when landmarks are obscured by snow. And of course humans have no real clue as to how or why migrating birds migrate the way they do.

So of course these humans, perhaps smart enough to work for oil companies, were terribly worried that a proposed new technology for energy production, huge "farms" of hundreds of wind turbines positioned at sea, would disrupt migration paths and even kill thousands of birds who fly unwittingly into the blades.

So they studied the situation. And it seems that when birds come upon these massive turbines, they, unh, fly around them. Sometimes they fly between them. Less than 1% of the birds get within a distance where they might be in danger.

Which leaves us wondering, where can our humans get some of those bird brains?


BBC NEWS Science/Nature Wind farms pose low risk to birds

sinking slowly with the west 

The Naked Emperor of Lethal Lies


"A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents. "

Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming - New York Times

UPDATE: Three days after the aide in question resigned from the White House, he began working for Exxon. I wish we were making this up.

Putting People Last: Deconstructing Two AP Stories

"General Motors plans to eliminate 25,000 jobs in the United States by 2008" begins the AP story by John Porretto, an attention-getting lead. But it is virtually the last time in the article that indicates this might be bad news.

Do we get quotes about the people who will be losing their jobs, and what this will do to their lives, or even to the economy? What this might portend for America's manufacturing base? Not hardly.

No, this is a report on the announcement by Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner speaking at GM's annual shareholder meeting, where he "said the capacity and employment cuts will generate annual savings of roughly $2.5 billion."

The story reports on the job eliminations as one of four strategies to revive the company. It reports Wagoner's claim that the company's expenses for employee health-care puts GM at a "significant disadvantage versus foreign-based competitors," without questioning that statement, or mentioning that other nation's reduce the burden on their industries by maintaining government health care support.

But it does say that "Investors welcomed the news, sending GM shares up modestly" while nevertheless quoting an "equity strategiest" saying that "U.S. automakers will continue to ship jobs overseas."

The rest of the story emphasizes GM's need to cut health care costs, and dark warnings about what might happen to the company if negotiations to do so with the United Auto Workers aren't successful.

The subject of this story is the health of GM and its stockholders. There is not a word about the health of its workers.

Of course this is just one story. Care to lay odds on another one appearing that takes the worker's point of view?

Here's another AP story from today:

"Global military spending in 2004 broke the $1 trillion barrier for the first time since the Cold War, boosted by the U.S. war against terror and the growing defense budgets of India and China, a European think tank said Tuesday. "

Led by the United States, which accounted for almost half of all military expenditure, the world spent $1.035 trillion on defense, equal to 2.6% of global gross domestic product, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said."

But the title of the institute holds just about the only instance of the word "peace" in the rest of the article, which stresses the economic facts and the geopolitical situation.

Nor does the story reflect on the human cost of all this armament, or the harm to the natural environment, or the moral and cultural costs of economies built on armaments.

Nor does it mention the U.S. reliance on military manufacturing and arms sales as opposed to other manufacturing. Not a word here about health care benefits draining profits.

What is the point of this quick deconstruction? Both consciously and unconsciously, news writers frame new information in ways they believe will highlight significance and interest readers. Judgments of significance and interest rely on assumptions outside the story, on what the society currently deems important. The Zeitgeist.

When editors place a story on a murder on page one, it is because they assumes readers will find the murder horrifying. Further, they will assume it will be of interest because the victim or killer or both, are celebrities. The story will not go into the economic benefits obtained by the killer, except as motive. We are assumed to be more horrified at the killing of a (prominent) human being than in the impact on a company's stocks.

In these two stories, we are not assumed to be horrified by thousands more umemployed, or a world that spends a trillion dollars on devices with the sole purpose of tearing human beings to shreds.

Thirty years ago, the GM story would probably have been about the impact on workers. But that was then, and this is Bushworld, a descendant of Reaganworld. We all know more about the stock market now than any but a handful of people did thirty years ago. We are presumed to identify with corporations more than unions, with stockholders more than workers.

This is the AP, not the Wall Street Journal. This is the wire service that goes to every news outlet in America.

This is where we are, and who we are, and what we have become.

Good Luck, Tony; Good Luck, World

"The science academies of the world's leading nations are urging their governments to take prompt action to combat possible climate change.

They have agreed that all countries could and should take cost-effective action to cut carbon dioxide emissions. "

"UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is to hold talks in the US with George W Bush on Tuesday to discuss the issues at the top of the G8 agenda - aid to Africa and measures to target global warming. "

BBC NEWS Science/Nature World scientists urge CO2 action

Darfur

"Mr. Bush values a frozen embryo. But he hasn't mustered much compassion for an entire population of terrorized widows and orphans. And he is cementing in place the very hopelessness he dreads, by continuing to avert his eyes from the first genocide of the 21st century. "

Uncover Your Eyes - New York Times

The Way the World Works

We were party to a conversation about whether Bush actually believes what he says when he insists charges that abuse is going on at Guantanamo are "absurd," or whether he is really disassembling.

We think he thinks he doesn't believe it, but he knows it's true, because that's how the world works. It's a belief that links upper class guys like him to working class guys like the saps who voted for him.

The upper class gets it as part of their birthright. It reminded us specifically of a story that Buckminster Fuller told Hugh Kenner. Fuller came from a prominent New England family with a long pedigree (which included the Emersonian inspirer and transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller). When young Bucky was thought ready to be told, a rich uncle took him aside and explained how the world works. "It is not you or the other fellow," his uncle explained. "It is you or a hundred others." If you are going to succeed, you will be required to slit the throats of those hundred (metaphorically speaking, perhaps.) This is what Bucky would have to do, what men have to do. There was no point in telling the women. They can live in their fantasy Golden Rule world, because men like his uncle had taken care of the 100 barrier/competitors to his aunt, so she was already protected.

This is what men learn, in all classes. The difference is that the upper classes are also told how to lie about it, because the rest of the world is like the women, and would be very upset if you told them that the Golden Rule is fantasy. It would make them unhappy. So you don't tell them.

You tell them everyone is given their rights, and more. Even the people who hate America. We know they hate America because why else would they be at Guantanamo? Who believes reasoning like that? Nobody except those who need to. What these men know is that it doesn't matter if you violate some rights, muss up a little hair and take away years of some innocent fellow's life; what matters is you get rid of the enemy, you hold on to power. If it comes down to that, you kill 99 innocents to make sure you get the one who might get you. The only thing that matters is who is standing when it's all over.

At a certain point you are so good at lying about this that you become sincere. In public. But when you are with the men, it's safe to speak the truth and it's important to learn the truth. Men understand this. Real men, of course. Not the girly men.

It is a factor, by the way, also in how you get away with "disassembling." That leaders should be well-spoken and smart, or even that the expensive education is important for any other reason than it was expensive, and you partied with the right people, is another pretty little fiction you have to pretend to believe.

If your handlers can make you look good, so teachers can hold you up as a model, that's good. But when it comes to the real world, how could it possibly matter? More than family connections, business connections, a web of deals and influence that spells power? Real men know this. It's the way the world works.

In Other New...

Director's Cut Version of an essay on the political meaning of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" via Spielberg's blockbuster, which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, is at Soul of Star Trek.

Also new there: the first installment of The Star Trek 60s

Pick Your Bad

Those whacky science folks got us all worried about a sudden new ice age, but the latest crew is saying not to worry. It's just going to get hotter than hell, like we thought before.

"Frostbite and snow-blindness are less likely to be in our future than heat stroke and malaria," one of them says. We might be repeating conditions that led to a greenhouse event 55 million years ago, which scientists can study through evidence left in soils. They see big changes in patterns of wet and dry, but mostly movement towards hot:

During the greenhouse spike of 55 million years ago, tropical mangroves and rain forests spread as far north as England and Belgium and as far south as Tasmania and New Zealand," Retallack says. "Turtles, alligators and palm trees graced Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, which is now the treeless abode of musk oxen and polar bears."

They offer additional comfort by pointing out that this last "greenhouse event" was temporary. It only lasted, oh, half a million years.

New Research Indicates A 'Troubled' Greenhouse Is Brewing

In Other New...

Great Mall of China at Shopopolis...

Brit Industry Ready to Deal with the Climate Crisis

Still not convinced the Climate Crisis is upon us? Check this out:

By Roger Harrabin
BBC Environment Correspondent

A group of Britain's leading industrialists has written to the prime minister urgently demanding long-term policies to combat climate change. The heads of the 12 leading firms say climate change is a huge challenge that needs serious investment by business. But they say they cannot invest because they are not sure what future government policies on climate will be.

The letter is signed off by the heads of BP, Shell, HSBC Bank, BAA, John Lewis, Scottish Power and more.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is that these industry leaders, including fossil fuel behemoths, are endorsing a view long held by alternative energy advocates. Here's what the BBC story says:

But in their letter the business leaders say they believe emissions cuts of 60% can be achieved in the UK without damaging competitiveness if firms use energy more wisely and harness new technology.'

They believe measures to hold CO2 emissions to a safe level would reduce economic growth by no more than 2% by 2050. They say bold policy action could actually boost Britain's profits by making the UK a world leader in low carbon technology.

The group say some of the technologies to achieve this goal already exist but need to be developed. Some are yet to be invented.

This is the kind of breakthrough that's needed---when people like this see a business opportunity. Will the dinosaurs of American based global industries follow? Or be left behind?

BBC NEWS Business Industry chiefs' environment plea

Good News for the Can't Wait for the Rapture Crowd

By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: May 27, 2005
WASHINGTON, May 27 - A monthlong conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty ended in complete failure today, many of its participants said, with the nuclear and non-nuclear states so far apart that they never engaged in a detailed discussion of how to fix the gaping loopholes that many experts say have allowed a resurgence in the spread of the most dangerous nuclear technologies.

Participants Say Talks Fail on Strengthening Nuclear Treaty - New York Times

That's Historical! It's Just Not Funny

Speaking of six months ago, here's how Paul Krugman ended his most recent column, another brilliant one to which this is a kind of ominous aside:

Everyone loves historical analogies. Here's my thought: maybe 2004 was 1928. During the 1920's, the national government followed doctrinaire conservative policies, but reformist policies that presaged the New Deal were already bubbling up in the states, especially in New York.

In 1928 Al Smith, the governor of New York, was defeated in an ugly presidential campaign in which Protestant preachers warned their flocks that a vote for the Catholic Smith was a vote for the devil. But four years later F.D.R. took office, and the New Deal began.

Of course, the coming of the New Deal was hastened by a severe national depression. Strange to say, we may be working on that, too.

America Wants Security - New York Times

Six Months Too Late

(CBS) Four months into his second term, President Bush is increasingly viewed as being out of touch with the American people, according to a CBS News poll.

Six in ten Americans say the president does not share their priorities, while just 34 percent say he does – the lowest numbers for Mr. Bush since the eve of his first inauguration.
CBS News CBS Poll: Bush Out Of Touch May 25, 2005?21:00:10

Something Positive For A Change

Some 15 states and 3 cities offer incentives to people who buy hybrid vehicles. While only 1% of the auto market now, hybrid sales are growing fast, while SUV sales are trending downward.


States hoping more will buy hybrid vehicles - Yahoo! News

American Gulag

Amnesty International finds human rights abuses so extreme and systematic at Guantanamo, the organization is calling for it to be shut down.

"Guantanamo has become the gulag of our time," Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan said as the London-based group issued a 308-page annual report that accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections.

Amnesty Takes Aim at 'Gulag' in Guantanamo - Yahoo! News

Space War Continued

"The Air Force is pressing hard to develop defensive and offensive space weapons without adequately considering the potential adverse consequences," the New York Times editorializes today.

"Congress and the administration need to assess whether a multilateral treaty to ban space weapons might not leave the nation far safer than a unilateral drive to put the first weapons in space. "

Weapons in Space - New York Times

In Other New...

Review of three new books on the past, present and future of the wired, wired world, in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review.

Review of DEATH SENTENCES: How Cliches, Weasel Words, and Management Speak Are Strangling Public Language by Don Watson at Books in Heat.

Birth of An Empire (Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith) at Soul of Star Trek.

The U.S. sithing on planet earth

U.S. Threatens Earth! The Real Star Wars

"Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny," proclaimed General Lord. "Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future."

No, it's not more stilted dialogue delivered by a dark figure with an unbelievable name in the new Star Wars movie. It's a straight-faced statement of purpose by the leader of the U.S. Air Force Space Command.

"We must establish and maintain space superiority," General Lance Lord told the U.S. Congress. "Simply put, it's the American way of fighting."

Moreover, as the New York Times reported, billions of dollars has already been spent on space warfare, with little public knowledge or debate. And without public outcry, it will soon become official U.S. policy.

According to the New York Times story and other sources, Air Force doctrine defines space superiority as "freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack" in space. Currently there are weapons planned for attacking earth targets from space (including the so-called Rods from Gods, which would hurl cylinders of metal, including uranium, from space to targets on the ground, with the force of nuclear weapons) and space planes which could strike ground targets from the other side of the planet.

"This is the type of prompt Global Strike I have identified as a top priority for our space and missile force," General Lord said.

General Cartwright of the Space Command told a Senate Arms Services subcommittee that the goal is to provide the U.S. with the capability of attacking "very quickly, with very short time lines on the planning and delivery, any place on the face of the earth."

U.S. planners are also looking at destroying other space targets, beginning with existing satellites of potential enemies but also commercial communications and weather satellites that could aid opponents.

All of this---plus the more publicized "star wars" missile defense--- has been quietly accelerated during the Bush administration, and is one reason the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The fact that no other nation is known to be designing space weapons is apparently no deterrent. Virtually every technologically advanced nation on the planet has objected to the U.S. plans. But if plans go forward, a new arms race may very well be the outcome, and it will costs horrendous amounts of money.

There are major concerns about the havoc that could be caused on earth's surface even by testing such weapons, especially if nuclear weapons or nuclear powered space vehicles are included.

Groups that oppose this strategy point to the needs on the planet itself, and all the scientists and money tied up in this essentially insane project.

Even some advocates of space travel and exploration point out that warfare around the earth will result in so much debris that vehicles may never get off the planet to explore space.

There are more details on these plans and groups that oppose them here at www.armscontrol.org and this summary of the space command threat.

The reason this is news now is that the White House is considering making this official U.S. policy by accepting an Air Force directive outlining all of this. Bush is expected to approve it within weeks.

What if a really crazy group of people got control of these weapons---you know, religious zealots who want to hasten the Rapture, or political assassins who see the world in black and white, and who bare their teeth even at allies when they dare to differ? Look out France! In 45 seconds you could be French toast, because whoever isn’t with us is against us.

Only a concerted public outcry can save the planet.

Sounds like science fiction, doesn't it?

ever notice how the presidency ages people? 

This Just In--Darth Rove Unmasked

The Sith are coming, or are they already here? Agreeing with that remarkably perceptive piece in the SF Chronicle,
various other voices quoted by the Washington Post:

The Empire Strikes Bush

UPDATE 5/19
from the New York Times:

¶Conservative Web logs were lacerating Mr. Lucas over the film's perceived jabs at President Bush - as when Anakin Skywalker, on his way to becoming the evil Darth Vader, warns, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy," in an echo of Mr. Bush's post-9/11 ultimatum, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
¶A little-trafficked conservative Web site about film, Pabaah.com - for "Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood" - added Mr. Lucas to its list of boycotted entertainers, along with more than 200 others, including Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks.

Lucas in Cannes: " he went on to say that he had first devised the "Star Wars" story during the Vietnam War. "The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable," he told an appreciative audience."

In Other New...

Econ for the Future 101 at Books in Heat. Capra's "Lost Horizon" Found at Blue Voice.

Springtime in Canada, without countdown. Photo by Lemmuel Dash. 

Friday 13: And Your Friend the Atom

An Associated Press report, appearing in the Toronto Globe and Mail:

Washington isn't taking “the common bargain” of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as seriously as it once did, hurting global support for the U.S. campaign to shut down the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix says.

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, by questioning the value of treaties and international law, has also damaged the U.S. position, Mr. Blix said.

“There is a feeling the common edifice of the international community is being dismantled,” the Swedish arms expert said.

Mr. Blix, now chairman of the Swedish government-sponsored Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, spoke with reporters Monday in the second week of a month-long conference to review the 1970 nonproliferation treaty.
The Globe and Mail: Blix chides U.S. over nuclear outlook

Joseph Kahn reports in the New York Times that Yang Xiyu, the top China official involved in North Korean nuclear negotiations said in an interview, "It is true that we do not yet have tangible achievements" in ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But a basic reason for the unsuccessful effort lies in the lack of cooperation from the U.S. side."

The statement, Kahn writes, is noteworthy "because the Chinese authorities very rarely speak to journalists about the issue. The comments reflect growing frustration in Beijing with the Bush administration." Similar sentiments were expressed by a leader in the Russian legislature.

North Korea announced another step in extracting weapons grade plutonium from its main nuclear reactor, as a move "necessary to bolster its nuclear arsenal," according to an unnamed North Korean official in a Los Angeles Times report.

But several overseas newspapers noted that the U.S. right-rigging media is concentrating on the "Iran nuclear crisis." Reports midweek indicated that Iran is ready to formally end its freeze on nuclear activities, dooming the stalled negotiations with European countries.

The chickenhawks are likely concentrating on Iran because it's not believed they as yet have nuclear weapons, so according to chickenhawk logic, because they aren't a threat---whereas North Korea may be capable of launching an atomic attack on San Francisco--they are the chosen target of the only action the Bushheads are capable of: bullying.

Nuclear Arms Talks Stalled

i-Newswire.com - Press Release And News Distribution - NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY REVIEW CONFERENCE CONTINUES GENERAL DEBATE AT UN HEADQUARTERS

Canadian Scientists Prove Italians Are Smarter

Hand Gestures Linked To Better Speaking

The Outrageous Skies

It's bad enough that United Airlines asked to be relieved of its pension obligations to its employees, especially after years of convincing many to take early retirement in order to preserve their pensions, and asking, or demanding, other concessions that translated into hardships for workers, while management maybe had to leave St. Bart's a day early.

But what's worse is that a Bankruptcy Court in Chicago granted their request. What this means in terms of money is still unclear---technically it's a transfer to a government agency, but it's likely the benefits will be cut, though so far no one is saying by how much.

Apart from the rank injustice to the rank and file, those of us who depend on United, not as a matter of choice but of monopoly or damn close to it, are not looking forward to the next flight on the "friendly skies." What motivation do these folks have now?

That may sound selfish from those of us who have the choice of flying United or flapping our arms and jumping off a roof, but it goes directly to the logic of being unjust and oppressive to the people everyone depends on to keep things working. Things stop working.

Now that United has gotten away with this so far (we hope it's appealed, all the way up, and let the Supremes tell America what to do with their pensions, before their GOPer brethren get their teeth into Social Security), other troubled airlines won't be far behind. And American workers will find themselves joining the millions of workers in the rest of the world who are hard at work building the pyramids for the Bushfolk of the planet, all for the honor of being bamboozled, lied to, exploited, cheated and scorned.

United workers feel betrayed / Bankruptcy judge relieves airline of pension obligation

In Other New...

Douglas Adams, Beyond the Fringe, Dr. Who, Monty Python and the Beatles at Soul of Star Trek.

Hypocracy in America, Vol. 42,0056: Social Security Scam

Not content with further enriching the filthy rich, many of their fortunes coming at the expense of the future of all life on the planet, the Bushoids feel compelled to drive the hard pressed into an old age of poverty and suffering, for generations to come.

That's pretty much the Social Security plan Bush is offering. Paul Krugman does the math. Quotes from his New York Times column are in itals.

He asserts, as do many who don't fudge the numbers, that if the economy grows as it has, there is no crisis in Social Security for the next half century. The point isn't that there might not be, because if you ask the Dash brothers, and nobody does, it's likely that Social Security will be a comparatively minor crisis at mid century compared with everything else that's falling apart, or else it will already be part of a sensible and comprehensive support package for all, cradle to grave.

Anyway, we've got at least twenty-five years to keep tabs on Social Security before we have anything but fantasy to judge its solvency on. Assuming that government goes on as it has, which is to regularly rob the Social Security trust fund with a boldness that makes Bonnie and Clyde look like a couple of Hollywood actors.

The Bushoids now want to cut benefits for "the wealthy." So they've woken up to the inequity of their tax cut, and are trying in their admittedly stupid way to make amends? Not exactly. Here Krugman finds the exact analogy (which we praise because this is the first thing we thought of, the debates...):

In last fall's debates, Mr. Bush asserted that "most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans." Since most of the cuts went to the top 10 percent of the population and more than a third went to people making more than $200,000 a year, Mr. Bush's definition of middle income apparently reaches pretty high.

But defenders of Mr. Bush's Social Security plan now portray benefit cuts for anyone making more than $20,000 a year, cuts that will have their biggest percentage impact on the retirement income of people making about $60,000 a year, as cuts for the wealthy.

In case you're hazy on the US dollar, making 20 thou a year won't rent you an apartment in most of America, unless perhaps you forgo eating, and $60 thou is about the minimum for the middle class "ownership society" or at least a small home somewhere.

But simple cynicism in selling this apparently loopy proposal is just the tip of the melting iceberg. The proposal doesn't just penalize people who are barely making it but it continues to enrich the very rich, through the combination of tax cuts for the wealthy and Social Security benefit cuts for the poor. Here's Krugman's numbers:

Suppose you're earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.

Suppose, finally, that you're making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!

So this is the Bush agenda. It's not enough to increase suffering for millions of people while he's in office, by ignoring the health care crisis, bleeding the states' ability to help their citizens, sending the young of lower income families to bleed and die for his vanity war in Iraq, etc., he is going to increase suffering for millions of people well into the future, not just with the effects of his record deficits, nor his refusal to deal with global heating and bungling of nuclear arms control, but by paying off the rich children and grandchildren of his obscene and obscenely rich friends, by stealing even more from the poor and middle class. Now that's vision. Praise the lords, and passeth all understanding.

The Final Insult - New York Times

In Other New...

The political message of Star Wars in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle.

They All Look Alike

The Bushies were crowing that they captured the #3 man in Al-Qaeda! Well, not them, the Pakistanis. And, as it turned out, not the #3 man, probably after all.

It turns out this is a guy nobody in European or U.S. intelligence heard of. He wasn't on the FBI Wanted list. My favorite part of the story below is the quote from the Bushie official who said he wasn't on the list because they didn't want him to know he was wanted.

But on the bright side he's now the 6th Al-Q. guy to be captured. That's like better than one a year since 9/11! Way to go Bushwarriors. No wonder things are going so well in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc.

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ?mistaken identity? - Sunday Times - Times Online

we're watching

In Other New...

The definitive essay on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is at
Soul of Star Trek...

Bush Fatigue and The Nuclear Madness Update

Yes, things continue to go to hell in Iraq, more death and chaos, and the American public no longer thinks it was such a good idea. And yes, the Brits have a memo that proves the U.S. was determined to invade Iraq and manufacture the reasons to do it.

So why no ranting and raving in your favorite ranting and raving rental on the net? Bush Fatigue has set in. It's brought on not only by endless bad news, but endless totally predicted bad news, bad news that isn't news to us. What would make it news is if anybody actually got held accountable for causing it. But that's what the last election was for, and we see how that turned out.

The U.S. has a corporate news media that is only astonishing in that it gets worse when you can't imagine how that could happen. It's all the same: the Brave New World Network.

Bush Fatigue.

So it is at the anti-proliferation treaty conference in New York. What you don't want to think about is that people can't even get upset about nuclear war anymore.

Here's the update anyway:

While the U.S. media ignores the non-proliferation conference in New York, many outside the U.S. and some in are castigating the Bush administration for threatening world peace and stability with their intransigence and bungling.

On Tuesday, the second day of the four week nuclear non- proliferation treaty conference in New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi spoke. U.S. media uniformly headlined the speech as Iran announcing it would resume nuclear related activities it suspended while in talks with European nations, asserting it had an "inalienable right" to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

Non-U.S. media, especially in the Third World, were more likely to report Kharrazi's strong condemnation of Washington for maintaining a huge nuclear arsenal, and demanding that the U.S. assure Iran it would not launch a nuclear strike on that country.

The New York Times did report this line from his speech, late in their story: "The continued existence of thousands of nuclear warheads in the nuclear weapon states' stockpile, which can destroy the entire globe many times over, are the major sources of threat to peace and security."

This is the stalemate that threatens to sink the conference before it starts. On the first day it was North Korea asserting itself, on the second it was Iran. Neither country was satisfied with what western countries offered in recent negotiations.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has pointedly criticized the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, while calling for a stronger non-proliferation treaty,that recognizes the rights of nations to pursue peaceful nuclear energy. The U.S. demands concessions---in fact, total abstinence-from non-nuclear countries, but is offering and giving up nothing.

What's behind the U.S. intransigence? In the Los Angeles Times in April, Robert Scheer suggested the relationship to America's ugly dependence on arms sales:

"Trying to follow the U.S. policy on the proliferation of nuclear weapons is like watching a three-card monte game on a city streetcorner. Except the stakes are higher.

The announcement last week that the United States is authorizing the sale to Pakistan of F-16 fighter jets capable of delivering nuclear warheads - and thereby escalating the region's nuclear arms race - is the latest example of how the most important issue on the planet is being bungled by the Bush administration."

Speaking of bungling, Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall went after none other than Dueling John Bolton, head of the rapidly dwindling Bolton gang, for his contribution to screwing things up with North Korea, and making the world a much less safer place.

"Many damaging accusations have been levelled at John Bolton, President George Bush's controversial nominee as US ambassador to the UN.

But perhaps the most serious is that Mr Bolton, as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security since 200, bungled efforts to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.

Mr Bolton helped to scrap the Clinton administration's 1994 "agreed framework" that froze North Korea's weapons-related plutonium reprocessing programme. The framework was imperfect - but nothing remotely adequate replaced it.

In 2002, President Bush denounced North Korea as part of the "axis of evil". In 2003, Pyongyang withdrew from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and traded insults with Mr Bolton. In February, it declared itself a nuclear weapons state.

And at the weekend, on the eve of the treaty review conference in New York, North Korea said stalled regional talks were effectively dead.

The Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency conceded last week that North Korea probably now has nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting US soil. "

As awful as all that is, it is the actual work of the conference that is most endangered right now. This dispatch courtesy of the Institute for Public Accuracy:

"JOHN BURROUGHS, johnburroughs@lcnp.org, http://www.lcnp.org Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy, is monitoring the Non-Proliferation Treaty conference in New York. Burroughs presented the paper "Building a Nuclear Weapons-Free Future" at the January meeting on the NPT at the Carter Center. He said today: "As the four-week NPT Review Conference opened this week, the U.S. is showing no flexibility about arms control steps like negotiation of a verifiable treaty banning production of fissile materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium) for nuclear weapons. That is a treaty under which international inspectors would monitor U.S. facilities, a prospect not attractive to the Bush administration. In turn, non-nuclear countries are resisting non-proliferation measures like IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei's proposal for multilateral controls on the spread of technology to produce fissile materials for use in nuclear reactors but also potentially in nuclear weapons."

Translated, nobody is actually negotiating.

And of course, no one is paying attention. Instead we are obsessed with whatever smaller matters of momentary attention get the adrenalin going. Politics-as-usual is becoming the meth of public consciousness.

In Other New...

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy at Soul of Star Trek...

Anti-Nuke Time in New York City

Nuclear Option Continued

In the 1986 feature, Star Trek: The Voyage Home, the 23rd century Enterprise crew comes back through time to the mid 1980s. For a scene that has them peering at a newspaper, director Leonard Nimoy had to select a headline that would be characteristic but not too dated by the time the movie came out. He decided on "Nuclear Talks Stalled."

"It's a miracle these people got out of the 20th century," observed Doctor McCoy.

True enough, but the real miracle may be yet to come---getting out of the 21st. For one thing, it's 2005, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty talks are just starting in New York, and guess what? Stalled.

After weeks of partisan wrangling in Congress over something called the nuclear option, many Americans who follow politics may be surprised to learn that the real nuclear option is about to be discussed by representatives of 180 nations in New York City, beginning today.

There has been scant mention in the U.S. press of these formal discussions on the 1970 international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Two events in the hours before it opens have provided some visibility: an earnest if unfocused demonstration in New York, but especially a short-range missile test by North Korea.

The U.S. would like to keep the attention on North Korea and Iran, but other nations are at least as interested in what the U.S. is and is not doing.

While insisting that other nations refrain from obtaining nuclear arms, the Bush administration has withdrawn pledges made by the U.S. at the last conference in 2000 to join the comprehensive test ban treaty, and sign a verifiable treaty banning production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. The Bush administration also has plans for new nuclear weapons systems, and is arguably already engaging in nuclear war in Iraq with depleted uranium weapons.

In addition, other nations believe the U.S. has not destroyed stockpiles of nuclear arms sufficiently nor aided the Soviet Union in destroying theirs. All of this first of all means that after months of preparation, the conference doesn't even have an agenda, because of the conflict between the U.S. and other nations.

"If one state begins to reject commitments it made at past review conferences, other states may start to reject prior commitments. The non-proliferation treaty will quickly erode," said Daryl Kimball, head of the independent Arms Control Association.

The Guardian has a full story here:

Nuclear weapons are not metaphors left over from the Cold War. They exist in quantity, and they are still dangerous. The threats of terrorists with dirty bombs or "rogue nations" with a few true nukes are vaguely recognized. But those huge thermonuclear arsenals have not disappeared. A RAND study says that accidental nuclear arms attack between the U.S. and Russia is not only still possible, it is more likely than it was during the Cold War.

There are numerous very serious problems involved in the existence of aging weapons, of so much fissile material and nuclear waste that will be lethal for thousands of years.

But the Bush administration has stopped addressing these problems, and is moving towards nuclear rearmament, breaking the actual and implied promises the U.S. made in order to get other nations to pledge not to become nuclear powers. Now with the U.S. bullying smaller nations, they have more incentive than ever to acquire nuclear arms.

The North Korea situation is increasingly volatile. According to U.S. defense intelligence, North Korea will soon have missiles capable of reaching the West Coast of the U.S. Others, like former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, claim they have missiles with that range already. It's also believed that North Korea is set to conduct nuclear weapons tests, and again, some believe they already have nuclear capability.

These facts, McNamara says, mean that the U.S. has no military options to deal with North Korea. Yet the Bush administration continues to engage in more recriminations and name calling than negotiation.

Two quotes from another Guardian story:

Last Thursday George Bush labelled the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, a "dangerous person" and a "tyrant".

A day later the official North Korean news agency quoted the North Korean foreign ministry as calling Mr Bush a "hooligan, bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country. He is a half-baked man in terms of morality, and a philistine whom we can never deal with."

The history of the Bomb in America (reported for example in a new book by Gerard DeGroot: THE BOMB, A LIFE) has been characterized by public silence and private dread. Government lies and secrecy, plus the active policy of considering questions about nuclear weapons to be unpatriotic, joined with the natural inability to deal with the enormity of nuclear weapons, to create a sense of political denial for much of time since 1945. Meanwhile, unconscious fears and distrust of government and science found expression in the arts and popular entertainment, from Dr. Strangelove and The Day After to the "bug-eyed monster movies," the alien invasion and post-apocalyptic future genres of science fiction.

President Kennedy's eloquent pursuit of a partial test-ban brought these emotions into public, and for a decade or so, the impetus was on the side of ending the threat of nuclear weapons.

But under the radar and outside the public eye, the momentum may have reversed. It is up to us to pay attention to this conference, as a sign that we still want a world without nuclear weapons.

It's not like we don't have problems enough without them.

Guardian Unlimited Special reports Deadlock looms over spread of nuclear arms

tell me about it

Fuel for Fossils

""""Climate scientists armed with new data from deep in the ocean and far into space have found that Earth is absorbing much more heat than it is giving off, a conclusion they say validates projections of global warming.

Lead scientist James Hansen, a prominent NASA climatologist, described the findings on the planet's out-of-balance energy exchange as a "smoking gun" that should dispel doubts about forecasts of climate change."""""

So who's going to explain this to the President? The same guy or gal who gets to explain to him that coal is a fossil fuel?

Experts: New Data Show Global Warming

When the First Amendment No Longer Applies-

One of the advantages of not making any money from this blog is the freedom to not have to comment on every damn thing that happens, like Bush's idiotic press conference---as if Bush giving an idiotic press conference could be NEWS--or even Tony Blair's current unpleasantness.

But freedom is as freedom does, and apparently, it ain't doing much in the big world.

Here's this innocuous story about Apple Computers in a snit over a book on its CEO Steve Jobs, the Aged Boy Genuis (Second Class), to the extent of not only pulling that book off the shelves of its retail stories (gee, they have retail stores?) but all the books by that publisher. ALL of them. Including those computers for dummies books.

So are the dummies revolting? It's hard to tell. Here's the story I read in the SF Chronicle:

Apple yanks book on Jobs / Company bans all of publisher's books because of the one

Apple of course is the company that relaunched itself with TV ads showing them smashing the dictatorship of (presumably) Aged Boy Genius (First Class,) and standing tall for FREEDOM!
That's got to be the lead for this story, right? But possibly no one at the paper was born yet when that commercial ran.

So there's the author quoted in the second graph. Is he OUTRAGED? Is he screaming about freedom and the chilling effect, corporations acting like Orwellian governments and Steve Jobs like a tin dictator? Sure, he's got to be tickled pink, he couldn't buy the publicity he'll get, but...isn't there something else at stake here? Let's hear this clarion call, this defense of the author's right to write...

"I have a lot of admiration for the guy." That's the quote. The author is puzzled because the biography, though unauthorized, is admiring. His feelings are hurt, I guess. Maybe because Steve's feelings are hurt. Can this obsequious-sounding, awfully toady looking relationship be saved?

Well, then the publisher must be up in arms, issuing withering press releases denouncing this abuse of corporate power, this attempt at intimidation and censorship. Dispatching fleets of lawyers, readying their Supreme Court briefs. Surely.

The publisher acknowledged getting "a call" from Apple objecting to the book. So did they tell them, tough harddrive buddy, this is America, nobody gets to tell us what to print? Not exactly. They offered to "consider changes."

But having deballed their author, they weren't silly enough to give in to Apple's sole demand, which was to not publish the book. They couldn't pay for this publicity, etc. Still, when it came to this act of ridding the Apple shelves of ALL their books, they stepped up with this bold pronouncement: "We think it's an unfortunate situation."

It takes another ten paragraphs of the story before the author allows that this might be "chilling." In between, Apple is criticized not for being a corporate bully but for a stupid public relations move (by a "branding expert"), and a professor of marketing, who allows that while corporations should defend themselves, they "have to be careful not to appear too heavy-handed."

Yes, that's sound advice. It's okay to be heavy-handed, as long as you don't appear to be, too much.

Perhaps it's time for the Dash brothers to send over a book proposal to the publisher (who doesn't deserve to be named). We'll call it FIRST AMENDMENT FREEDOMS FOR DUMMIES.

They won't even have to publish it. They just have to read it.

remember me? I remember you...

The Nuclear Option

While Democrats and Republicans argue over who first referred to the nullification of the Senate filibuster rule as "the nuclear option" (it was Republicans, of course, who now deny it, even though they're on videotape claiming credit for it, and of course the media buys their version), practically no one is paying attention to the actual nuclear options that will be discussed at the international conference on the non-proliferation treaty, which begins in New York on May 1.

The news report below says the conference doesn't even have an agenda yet, because, as usual, the Bushcorps are throwing the U.S. weight around to distort an international conference to serve its own political ends. John Bolton, who stepped out of an Eagles song to become the controversial nominee, likely dead in the water now, for UN ambassador, is a prime suspect in the U.S. attempt to subvert the conference.

The Bushies want to talk about Iran, the rest of the world wants to talk about the failure of the U.S. and other western nations to live up to their responsibilities in the treaty. While the U.S. expects all other nations to forgo nuclear weapons, it is doing nothing to reduce its own stockpile (which was the basis for the agreement), and is even planning on adding a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Even in selecting Iran as its target, the Bushies show how clueless and gutless they are. North Korea is a much greater threat, but bluster and bombing won't help there, because Korea has missiles that can hit San Francisco, with or without nukes in the nosecone.

As for news of the conference itself---what a joke! Search Google news for "nuclear proliferation" and see how many U.S. news sources come up. England, India, Canada, Australia, Russia, etc. are well represented. But the U.S. media has more important topics to cover, like the Michael Jackson trial.

Portsmouth Herald World/National News: 'Cascade of nuclear proliferation'

This Could Be A Day to Remember

and the pun is intended: researchers at UC San Diego announced that genetically altered cells injected into the human brain "appear to nourish ailing nuerons and may slow the cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer's disease." Here's the news story:
Quad-City Times Newspaper Online - the Quad-Cities Home Page

and the BBC has more details. The potential for this research is enormous, partly because of the similiarity of Alzheimer's to several other devastating diseases involving neuron function, such as ALS. And of course, it has social and political significance also because of the onrushing baby boomer population, getting into Alzheimer range.

This is apparently not a practical treatment yet except in special cases (at the moment, meaning very rich people who can afford the surgery) but if it does become practical, it's going to shake up the health care system once again, on issues of costs, availability and who gets the treatment. The words "stem cells" haven't been mentioned in these early stories, but if they do appear, yet another dimension will be added to the erupting debate. Keep an eye on this one. It could be big.

UPDATE: Monday's New York Times story takes a more skeptical view. They indicate the research was done for a private gene therapy company, so the results (they imply) are self-serving. And all other gene therapies have failed, even when initial results were promising, as this one. Their report was on the business page.

it seemed like a good idea

Quotes of the Week

"I wish I had a subscription to Time Magazine so I could cancel it."
---post on the Center for American Progress blog, concerning Time's fawning and dishonest cover story on Ann Coulter.

"Anything that is complex narrative storytelling---one-hour dramas, narrative miniseries, character-driven movies for television---advertisers don't believe there is an audience under fifty for these kinds of shows."
---Susan Lyne, former president of ABC Entertainment
quoted by Ken Auletta in the New Yorker 3/28/05
(okay, so that wasn't this week, but I read it this week.)

and I believe in global warming...research, that is.

In Other New...

Pope John at Blue Voice. "We've Had 35 Years of Earth Days and the World is Still a Mess" at Books In Heat.

White Smoke for the Red States

Congratulations, fundamentalist evangelical protestants and neocons, you've got yourself a pope! He's the guy who advised U.S. Bishops to deny sacraments to the likes of John Kerry, and warned U.S. voters that a vote for the likes of Kerry could send them to hell, and he did so during the 2004 campaign. Oddly enough, the margin for Bush in Catholic votes made the difference, if you have that kind of faith in the integrity of the voting process in 04.

That he's one of the few remaining veterans of the Nazi Youth has to be considered just a little bonus.

Yahoo! News - New pope intervened against Kerry in US 2004 election campaign

And in Other New...

Not for Boys Only at Soul of Star Trek.

Black Smoke for Bolton

Sorry, we do not have a UN Ambassador.

"But do I think John Bolton would make a good ambassador to the United Nations? Absolutely not.He is incapable of listening to people and taking into account their views. He would be an abysmal ambassador."
Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell


The New York Times > Washington > Delay Is Sought in Vote on U.N. Nominee

(Oh boy, what's Delay done this time...)

In Other New...

The Bomb at Books in Heat

Still a good idea

Kerry On

Despite receiving more votes for President than anyone in history except perhaps for G.W. Bush, John Kerry apparently was not significant enough to be named among Time Magazine's 100 most influential Americans.

Perhaps that's why a claim that he had made a single speech that may have violated campaign laws was immediately investigated, while a prior claim that Condi Rice (undoubtedly one of the 100) had made a whole string of political speeches late in the Bush campaign, unprecedented for a National Security Advisor, all paid for by taxpayers, was not investigated by the supposedly nonpartisan government panel, which incidentially is under fire for dumping professionals and promoting GOPer partisans. Whatever the reason, Senator John Conyers wants to find out.

Meanwhile, Kerry's outrageous charge that the Bushies had Osama bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora in 2001 but lost him when they "outsourced" the job to Afghan warlords, has been supported by a German intelligence official, who says that bin Laden escaped by bribing the Afhghans.

FRIDAY UPDATE: We might also mention that while a soldier in Iraq was killed recently because his post didn't have sufficient sand bags---yes, sand bag shortages--Senator Kerry got a couple of bills passed through the GOPer Congress increasing benefits for soliders and their families at home.

And while we're more or less channeling 11/04, allow us to announce that from election day to this day, here are the number of hours we have spent watching or reading the following:
Fox News 0
MSNBC 0
CNN 0
Time Magazine 0
network news 0
Wall St Journal 0
"reality shows" on network, cable or Mr. In Between: 0
[margin of error = + or- 0.1]

Bushcrash

Though largely unreported in American media, TV viewers witnessed the image of GW Bush on big monitors in St. Peters square evoking boos and whistles at the Pope's funeral. Bill Clinton, however, was cheered wherever he went, and had to cut short a walk because he was being mobbed by enthusiastic Italians.

But that's nothing to what's happening back in America. In their study of the major polls, the Democracy Corps ( Democratic consultants Stan Greenberg, James Carville and Robert Shrum) issued a dramatic report, showing Bush with 50% disapproval for the first time, and across the board numbers on his performance below 40% approval. Here's Karl Agne's opening paragraph:
"While media coverage has been saturated over the past few weeks with the tragic case of Terri Schiavo and the death and burial of Pope John Paul II, American politics has not stood still. Public polling released over the last two weeks show unmistakable movement on a number of fronts, and the news is almost uniformly bad for the White House and Republicans in Congress.

After a series of mixed results in mid-March, it is now clear that George W. Bush has reached
the lowest point of his presidency on fundamental measures including overall job approval,
personal favorability, and his handling of the two issues that have dominated his time in office – Iraq and the economy."

Perhaps most worrisome to the White House is the quick drop in the consumer comfort index, the sharpest plunge in a two week period ever recorded.

Meanwhile, the rabid right has been aggressively attacking the judiciary, with some issuing less than veiled threats of physical harm. And while Senator Rick Santorum, about to face a tough reeelection campaign in PA, was piously attending a prayer vigil for Terri Schaivo in Florida, he nevertheless managed to collect $250,000 there for his campaign.

In other new...

"Much Ado About Few" at Books in Heat. "The Mall is a Place" at Shopopolis. "Sharks and Whales" at Soul of Star Trek. "DVD Bonus" at Blue Voice.

revenge of the sun 

Science Lessons of 1940!

In just the first 20 pages of Gerard J. DeGroot's fascinating new history of The Bomb (Harvard U. Press), the twists and turns in the path leading to the U.S. creating the first atomic weapon, provide at least three lasting lessons.

The background is that in the mid-1930s, few physicists had even thought about an atomic bomb, or if they had, believed one was possible; or if they believed it was theoretically possible, that it could be made a practical reality. But between 1938 and the autumn of 1941, the bomb went from a little known or believed theoretical possibility to a massive research and development program in the U.S., and lesser but still significant programs in Germany and the USSR.

1. Suicide by Prejudice

The first is pretty well known: though Germany eventually mounted a credible program, Hitler subverted his own efforts in 1933 by directing that non-Aryans be fired from civil service jobs, which included universities and scientific institutes. Eleven physicists who had won or would win Nobel Prizes were dismissed. Around 100 German physicists, most of them Jews, wound up in the U.S. by 1941. They not only provided the scientific talent but a lot of the motivation for the U.S. bomb program.

Hitler and his minions attacked physics as "Jew science." The prejudice was racial but also religious. Today in America there is no need to put Jew in front of science. With few if any exceptions, science is seen as not supporting fundamentalist Christian beliefs and often runs counter to them. It's not racial, strictly speaking, but there is a component. We have Hitler's prejudices, supported by and energizing an ideology that was political and even in some sense religious, to partly thank for Germany's failure to build and use the atomic bomb in World War II. But such prejudices now, supporting other ideologies and plain old greed, endanger the world even more profoundly. Hitler could have dominated the western world, for awhile. But the climate crisis could destroy this planet's capacity to sustain human civilization, and perhaps human and other life as we know it.

2. Even science is hampered by prejudice.

Enrico Fermi (an Italian with a Jewish wife who would flee Italy for the U.S. because of anti-Semitism imported by Mussolini's German ally) got some puzzling results by bombarding elements with neutrons in 1933. Physics was a small global club, with information still freely shared across all borders. For awhile no one could explain Fermi's results, until Ida Noddack, a woman physicist in Germany, came up with an unorthodox interpretation in 1934 that turned out to be the key to nuclear power. She saw the possibility of nuclear fission.

Everyone ignored her. Hitler and his scientists ignored her, or else (DeGroot speculates) they might have embarked on a bomb program early enough to build some before war's end. But other physicists everywhere else also ignored her, because, DeGroot says, she was a woman, and did not have the reputation of some other physicists, whose ideas were immediately taken seriously.

Simon Singh's new book, The Big Bang, also reveals the contributions of women in physics and astronomy through the years, though they didn't get much credit. In this case, the prejudice against women moved them lower on the pecking order within physics. As much as scientists like to promote themselves as beyond such considerations, they aren't. Sometimes one generation has to die off, Singh says, before the insights of the next generation are accepted.

The lesson for us is not to project too much; the sins we see in others might be in ourselves as well. Humility is always in order, as is self-examination, even for the "reality-based."


3. Before it can be done, it must be imagined.

It wasn't until 1938 that somebody else-Fermi himself, still in Italy then---came to the same conclusion as Noddack. Fermi's work was immediately published, partly through the efforts of a man who was a British agent, who wanted to make sure the information got out before Germany clamped down on publication. At this point, free exchange of information was useful to the Allies. But nobody yet really grasped what all of these theories and experiments really might mean. Except Leo Szilard. And he figured it out, including what must be done, because years before he had read a science fiction novel by H.G. Wells.

In 1914, Wells published The World Set Free, which dramatized a war carried out with atomic bombs. He invented the term "atomic bomb" in that novel. He got a lot of other things right about the science as well, including the nature of what would be called Plutonium, which even in 1938 hadn't been discovered.

Szilard not only remembered the bomb, but also the war, and how it happened. He realized, from his reading of Wells, that if knowledge of fission and the bomb got out, it could mean the end of civilization.

Szilard won the Nobel Prize in 1938, and after picking up the award in Sweden, he and his wife emigrated to America. In addition to his own researches, Szilard was instrumental in first, getting U.S. and British physicists to stop publishing anything about fission, and then getting Albert Einstein to write that famous letter to FDR, and to enlist other influential people in convincing the U.S. government to develop the bomb before Hitler did.

Ironically, one of the problems the physicists had in convincing U.S. government and military officials was that the whole idea smacked of science fiction to them. It took a few key people to explain the possibilities and the need in plain English before FDR gave the word. Szilard, Fermi and others who worked on the bomb didn't believe it should ever be used, if Hitler didn't develop one. Because Szilard at least had already seen the consequences, in a novel written a generation earlier.

In the whole history of The Bomb, the public was told all sorts of contradictory things by officials, politicians and scientists. The public perception was most affected, first by photographs from Hiroshima, but later by fiction and movies, like Dr. Strangelove, and The Day After.

The science lesson for us now is that we need to imagine the era we're entering of global effects of the climate crisis. Early attempts, like the movie The Day After Tomorrow, had some effect, and will be looked at again. The powerful imagining of this future that really motivates people has yet to be seen or heard. Yet it may start with a few, like Szilard, who have read or seen or imagined the story of things to come.

While we're here, let's add a fourth lesson. While we're aware of the moral complexities involved, especially given the lack of real information about what each country was doing and what making a bomb would actually entail, there is a lesson in why each of these programs got started.

Politicans and military people had their frameworks for war, and nuclear pipedreams didn't fit into it, to the point where they couldn't understand it. In each case, as DeGroot demonstrated, it took an act of good communication to get things moving.

In particular he contrasts the muddled presentations and even the less than clear Einstein letter of those advocating the American program, with the clear, one paragraph presented to Hitler (so Germany started before the U.S.)

What convinced FDR was not Einstein's letter but a story, a metaphor. Alexander Sachs was an international financier and friend of Einstein. He got it. He was the one who got the letter to FDR. But it was his meeting with FDR the next day that convinced him. He simply told FDR a story about a young American inventor who went to Napoleon during wartime and offered his invention, which the emperor turned down. The inventor was James Watt, the invention the steam engine. This got Roosevelt's attention.

The lessons for our time are that clarity is essential, and metaphor is helpful, and communication is the key to turning good science into good policy. Not the only prerequisite, of course, but one we can do something about.

In Other New...

How I Solve Crimes at Blue Voice. Star Trek and the Culture Wars at Soul of Star Trek.

Hello California!

Californians within the sound of our blog take heed: hearings on the universal health care bill in the state Senate are coming up. Senator Kuehl, the author and sponsor, is soliciting letters of support, with the help of the ACLU. Go to the website below and add your voice:

Tell-A-Friend: Support Comprehensive Health Care Reform

Iraqnam: ready for its Tet?

While attempts to form an actual government in Iraqnam founder, insurgents acted like a real army in attacking Abu Ghraib prison from several directions and with coordinated tactics. Although taken by surprise, U.S. called in the Marines to secure the area, ending 40 minutes or so of fighting. The Washington Post reports 18 U.S. wounded, the Times reports 20.

While not as dramatic or effective as the Tet offensive in Vietnam, this does indicate that the so-called insurgency is still strong, and may be getting stronger.

More U.S. military are speaking out against the Rumsfeld led war plan. And as the world mourns the death of the Pope, we wonder how many Catholics---particularly American Catholics---remember that this Pope spoke out strongly against this war, early and often.

Insurgent Attack on Abu Ghraib Wounds 18 U.S. Soldiers (washingtonpost.com)

This just in! Proof that evolution is false!

Why you won't be so worried about gas prices

A UN report that inventories the earth and finds that two-thirds of the systems that keep the planet alive are failing, is getting all kinds of headlines, and we do mean all kinds. Take a look at the Google News list and see what we mean. Because it's all in the interpretation.

One of the more ominious interpretations feeds into our previous warning about how the Corporate Right could coopt the climate crisis: the forecasted shortage of water. While it's certainly true that the costs of natural resources haven't been taken into account adequately, and it's true that the water most of us get for free isn't really cost-free, the interpretation of this could very well lead to the world's water going to the highest bidder.

Of course most of us in the U.S. pay for our drinking water already, out of bottles or from filters. But even though $3 a gallon gasoline prices are coming soon to your American neighborhood, how would you feel about $10 a gallon water?

As for our Canadian friends, I'd think again about missile defense. You may need it to protect your water reserves. Just make sure the damn things are aimed at the U.S.

Here's a summary from the Guardian (thanks to cuz Lemuel) and another:
Sci-Tech Today - Science - Abuse of Ecosystem Threatens Earth

In other new...

Two books on the mystic chords of memory at Books in Heat.

Essay on the film, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock at Soul of Star Trek.

the emperor of the persistent vegetative states