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Category Archives: Science
No Wonder Keith Richards is Still Alive
Researchers in Italy and Britain have found that the main active ingredient in marijuana — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — and related compounds show promise as antibacterial agents, particularly against microbial strains that are already resistant to several classes of drugs.
Global Warming & Hurricanes
Hurricane Wind Speeds
We had a pretty spirited discussion a few days ago about the relationship of warming oceans to the intensity of hurricane season. Yesterday the new issue of the journal Nature, published the most definitive research on the topic.
A new study finds that the strongest of hurricanes and typhoons have become even stronger over the last two and a half decades, adding grist to the contentious debate over whether global warming has already made storms more destructive.
It’s not conclusive, but pretty convincing that the big storms are getting stronger and more destructive.
Right Wing on Red Bull
I was at Princeton from 1965-1969. Despite the right’s narrative that the country went to hell in those years, for most of us at the school they were glorious years of celebration, solidarity and justice. But we had one classmate who was like the nerd who couldn’t get a date, but also was willing to assure us all we were going to hell for our sins of sex, drugs and Rock and Roll. His name was Richard Land and he has served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission since 1988.
For a guy who was a scold at 19, it’s a perfect job. But Richrd is up in St. Paul at the Republican Convention, on his version of Ecstasy over Sarah Palin.
In Minneapolis, “it was as if the whole Republican convention had started drinking Red Bull,” said Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, who added that when the McCain campaign had sought his input weeks before he had suggested picking Ms. Palin.
Yes the Bible Belt is truly thrilled at the promise of a John McCain Supreme Court that would kill Roe V. Wade.
McCain used a recent appearance with the Rev. Rick Warrenat Saddleback Church in California to embrace opposition to abortion more explicitly than President Bush ever did. Asked when a fetus gains human rights, Mr. McCain responded, “At the moment of conception.”
And he has abandoned previous calls to moderate the Republican platform’s support for a ban on abortion without exception. Instead, he allowed conservative organizers like Phyllis Schlafly to shape what many advocates say is the most conservative platform in the party’s history. At Ms. Schlafly’s behest, for example, the party approved an immigration plank calling for new laws to speed widespread deportations and other punitive measures at odds with Mr. McCain’s stance on one of his signature issues.
And, to satisfy the Rush Limbaugh Global Warming deniers, the Palin pick signals a drill anywhere and everywhere McCain administration in the pocket of Big Oil. As Tom Friedman pointed out this morning,
Palin’s nomination for vice president and her desire to allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness “reminded me of a lunch I had three and half years ago with one of the Russian trade attachés,” global trade consultant Edward Goldberg said to me. “After much wine, this gentleman told me that his country was very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of needs. However, it signified that the Bush administration was not planning to do anything to create alternative energy, which of course would threaten the economic growth of Russia.”
I assume the Obama campaign is producing a set of environmental themed ads to highlight the obvious disconnect between those phony “Green Ads” McCain ran during the Olympics and the reality of his policy.
Hurricane Limbaugh
Since Rush Limbaugh is the king of Global Warming deniers, I think it’s only fitting that there are three major potential hurricanes headed right for the Limbaugh Southern Command. As most all of the climate research proves, warmer ocean temperatures increase the ferocity of hurricanes. Two climatologists say this will be a very busy season.
Add to that the fact that water temperatures are slightly warmer than normal, Klotzbach and Feltgren said. Warm water serves as fuel for storms.
And finally, Klotzbach factored into his forecast how the season has already been so far this year: Extremely busy. That means the atmosphere is unstable, which is good for storm development. He said the atmospheric pressure in the hurricane formation area is among the lowest it has ever been and storms are giant low pressure systems.
Hey Rush, deny this.
Hurricane Limbaugh
Since Rush Limbaugh is the king of Global Warming deniers, I think it’s only fitting that there are three major potential hurricanes headed right for the Limbaugh Southern Command. As most all of the climate research proves, warmer ocean temperatures increase the ferocity of hurricanes. Two climatologists say this will be a very busy season.
Add to that the fact that water temperatures are slightly warmer than normal, Klotzbach and Feltgren said. Warm water serves as fuel for storms.
And finally, Klotzbach factored into his forecast how the season has already been so far this year: Extremely busy. That means the atmosphere is unstable, which is good for storm development. He said the atmospheric pressure in the hurricane formation area is among the lowest it has ever been and storms are giant low pressure systems.
Hey Rush, deny this.
Dan Quayle in Drag
McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin to be his VP is pretty risky. Considering how old he is and his health history, Palin’s qualifications to be Commander in Chief are pretty important. But as with most moves in the McCain campaign, the calculation was not picking someone who could step into the Presidency, but rather a polical calculation that they could strip a way the Hillary voters by picking a woman. But this is a woman with a hard right agenda on the issues of a woman’s right to choose and hews to a fundamentalist Christian agenda and believes in teaching creationism! OMG
Social conservatives were relieved and highly pleased. “They’re beyond ecstatic,” said Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition. “This is a home run. She is a reformer governor who is solidly pro-life and a person of deep Christian faith. And she is really one of the bright shining new stars in the Republican firmament.”
I don’t believe that most Democratic women would vote for a paleo-conservative, just because of her gender. And by the way, Alaskan’s who want to keep the Grizzly Bear from being hunted into extinction aren’t too happy with Palin, either.
David Brooks is Worried
David Brooks is one of the conservative pundits I read regularly. On Friday night as the Olympic opening ceremony was unfolding there was a lot of idle chatter on this blog about the ceremony–using code words like Leni Reifenstal, I suppose to signal a fascist message being conveyed. But Brooks has another view, and I think I agree with him.
We in the West have a narrative that involves the development of individual reason and conscience during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and then the subsequent flourishing of capitalism. According to this narrative, societies get more individualistic as they develop.
But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops.
The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in that conversation. It was part of China’s assertion that development doesn’t come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones.
The ceremony drew from China’s long history, but surely the most striking features were the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one — drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding. We’ve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present — a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth.
My sense is that the Chinese were trying to send a message to the world–we are strong, we are many, we cooperate well, we want our children to have a better life than their parents, we play well with people from all over the world. The Chinese see the future of a global trading society, where they can compete not just on cheap labor, but on home grown technology (the 300 foot long LCD!). Like the rest of the BRIC’s they have huge asset pools and not a lot of debt. A large well educated populace, natural resources and fairly low military expenditures/GDP.
Brooks is worried, because the whole basis of the economic philosophy he has worshiped since he first read Milton Friedman is being questioned by the success of these societies.
If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.
For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts…Relationships are the key to happiness. People who live in the densest social networks tend to flourish, while people who live with few social bonds are much more prone to depression and suicide.
Brooks ends by saying this is all good for autocrats, but I don’t think the matter is so black and white. I have been arguing for a while that in a New Federalism paradigm, notions of cooperation and freedom are not in opposition. The new Web 2.0 technologies are allowing us to coordinate at a distance and at very low transaction cost. Can freedom and cooperation live together?
David Brooks is Worried
David Brooks is one of the conservative pundits I read regularly. On Friday night as the Olympic opening ceremony was unfolding there was a lot of idle chatter on this blog about the ceremony–using code words like Leni Reifenstal, I suppose to signal a fascist message being conveyed. But Brooks has another view, and I think I agree with him.
We in the West have a narrative that involves the development of individual reason and conscience during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and then the subsequent flourishing of capitalism. According to this narrative, societies get more individualistic as they develop.
But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops.
The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in that conversation. It was part of China’s assertion that development doesn’t come only through Western, liberal means, but also through Eastern and collective ones.
The ceremony drew from China’s long history, but surely the most striking features were the images of thousands of Chinese moving as one — drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without ever stumbling or colliding. We’ve seen displays of mass conformity before, but this was collectivism of the present — a high-tech vision of the harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth.
My sense is that the Chinese were trying to send a message to the world–we are strong, we are many, we cooperate well, we want our children to have a better life than their parents, we play well with people from all over the world. The Chinese see the future of a global trading society, where they can compete not just on cheap labor, but on home grown technology (the 300 foot long LCD!). Like the rest of the BRIC’s they have huge asset pools and not a lot of debt. A large well educated populace, natural resources and fairly low military expenditures/GDP.
Brooks is worried, because the whole basis of the economic philosophy he has worshiped since he first read Milton Friedman is being questioned by the success of these societies.
If Asia’s success reopens the debate between individualism and collectivism (which seemed closed after the cold war), then it’s unlikely that the forces of individualism will sweep the field or even gain an edge.
For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts…Relationships are the key to happiness. People who live in the densest social networks tend to flourish, while people who live with few social bonds are much more prone to depression and suicide.
Brooks ends by saying this is all good for autocrats, but I don’t think the matter is so black and white. I have been arguing for a while that in a New Federalism paradigm, notions of cooperation and freedom are not in opposition. The new Web 2.0 technologies are allowing us to coordinate at a distance and at very low transaction cost. Can freedom and cooperation live together?
Anthrax & The Lure Of Big Military Money
In September of 2001, Bruce Ivins was just an unappreciated bio terror researcher in a lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland. He lived just off the base and many days walked to work. Though we now know he was probably suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, he had access to the most dangerous toxins in the U.S. Army’s unrivaled storehouse. Ebola, Anthrax, smallpox, you name it, Bruce could get his hands on it. And then Bruce probably realized he didn’t have to be the mousy nerd any more. And he carefully sent out some anthrax letters.
F.B.I. investigators have long speculated that the motive for the attacks, if carried out by a biodefense insider like Dr. Ivins, might have been to draw public attention to a dire threat, attracting money and prestige to a once-obscure field.
If that was the motive, it succeeded. In the years since anthrax-laced letters were sent to members of Congress and news organizations in late 2001, killing five people, almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent to build new laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs.
After the attacks, for example, an experimental vaccine Dr. Ivins had spent years working on moved from the laboratory to a proposed $877 million federal contract, though the deal collapsed two years later. Federal documents suggest that Dr. Ivins, along with several colleagues, might have earned royalties had the contract gone forward, but the deal ultimately collapsed.
According to some very reliable sources, Ivins was the main insider pushing the Steven Hatfill investigation , which ended with the government apologizing and paying Hatfill millions of dollars.
Two take-aways for me.
- How the fuck did this nut case get access to these labs? And what did we do in reaction? We added 10 times as many University and corporate labs that have access to this deadly stuff. This is insane.
- The lures to get in on the Homeland Security Gravy Train, a major topic of The Cost Of Empire, might move a truly mentally ill patient like Ivins, to kill people to get his patent taken seriously. It’s like a Batman villian. But for every truly crazy guy who made big money in the Military Industrial Complex(MIC) in the last 30 years, there are 100 Jack Abramoffs–just short of being institutionalized–we’d call them ambitious, who’ve made far more than Bruce Ivens.
Some were ambitious for money and some like Dick Cheney, who had already scored in the MIC Game, did it for power. The power to remake the American Constitution–to create a Defacto set of laws that concentrates power to the executive, backed by a conservative Supreme Court. Those laws allow the president to torture in contravention of the Geneva Convention of which we are a major signatory as Jane Mayer so brilliantly shows us in her new book The Dark Side
These de-facto laws allowed The President and Vice President to leak names of American undercover agents and classified documents to their propaganda wing in the establishment media. These laws allow the President and Vice President to read every one of your emails and listen ot all your calls through their IP vacuum pumps at the major switches. Anyone with any technical know how, knows that the decision as to whether your phone call is “of interest” is made after the IP splitter has sent you out of AT&T’s custody and into the government network.
While this frontal assault on the constitution was being carried out, Cheney, Halliburton, Blackwater and the rest of their MIC cronies helped themselves to the public treasury. And don’t you believe for a minute John McCain would change any of these “de-facto laws” or reduce the power of the Military Industrial Complex.
By contrast, my guess is that Obama would look again at each of these decisions and make major changes.
We can do much better. We can restore the Constitution.