Sir Edmund Hilary has died

Sir Edmund Hilary has died at age 88. He was the second man to scale Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World, known in English as Mount Everest. Chomolungma's resident goddess is Miyo Lungsangma, the mother goddess of earth.) The first man to scale the mountain was Tenzing Norgay, Sir Edmund's Sherpa guide.

Sir Edmund was 33 when he completed his famous climb. He devoted the rest of his life to helping the people of Nepal.

Tunguska crater found? Probably not

The Bad Astronomy Blogger has some commentary on the reported finding of what might be the crater of the Tunguska meteorite. For one thing, the crater is oval, which generally indicates an old and distorted crater. For another, coincidence of "crater-like shape" is not enough.

Cyclone Sidr heads for Bangladesh

Cyclone Sidr is a category 4 hurricane on its way to low-lying Bangladesh and gainin g strength on the way. Hundreds of thousands of people may die in it? So why haven't Iheard about it except through other science bloggers. Science blogs are the newspapers we would have if everyone were like me. Chris Mooney has the story: time to panic, and he makes a good point: we should be readying the succour and rescue teams, hospital ships, air relief, or whatever.

Finally, here is a note on Alertnet, with a link to an interactive map of Bangladesh. The CBC has finally picked it up:

Sidr, currently a Category 4 storm, is on a "really similar track" as Cyclone Bhola, a storm that devastated the region in 1970, CBC meteorologist Nick Czernkovich said.

Bhola, which made landfall as a Category 3 cyclone, was the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded, resulting in the deaths of more than 500,000 people.

Cyclone Sidr alert:

Three Gorges Dam

Harold at Ontario Geofish points out that unstable surroundings make the Three Gorges Dam project in China a disaster waiting to happen.

What computers can swirl, computers can unswirl

Pictures on the Internet led to the arrest of a Canadian gay pedophile in Thailand. He or someone else posted pictures of him raping young boys, with his head digitally "swirled" so that the face was unrecognizable. Germany's federal crimes office reversed the process (they won't say exactly how) and Interpol released a picture of the culprit. He was recognized and a recent picture was added to the clues. Now, he has been arrested and it's time to face the music. No more posting poems about how lonely street kids admire the reassuring "prowess" of the foreign visitor.

The suspect had been a seminary student. He was a teacher of English as a second language in Korea when the warrant was issued.

Men who are attracted to children of either sex tend to go where there are children. They might be youth group leaders, teachers, ministers. Men who are conflicted about their sexuality might turn to religion in their efforts to deal with the problem. They might become priests, especially the non-marrying kind. Please warn your children. If someone touches you, move away instantly. Say "No!" loudly. Say loud and clear that this is wrong and you'll tell their boss and your family. Keep backing off. Leave. Do not be intimidated by authority. They'll pick on someone else.

India is almost free of polio

One of the scourges of humankind, polio, may soon be gone from the world's largest democracy. Last year, cases were limited almost entirely to two states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Polio is transmitted only from person to person, so it can be wiped out by inoculating people against it. It is a viral disease that causes paralysis, muscle weakness, or death.

Mangroves, tsunamis, shrimp

From Living the Scientific Life: Mangroves and Tsunamis: The Shrimp Connection. This article by Grrlscientist was nominated for a Koufax award.

Abstain from shrimp lest your mangrove forests be destroyed and your people die in tsunamis.

Yangtzee River Dolphin goes extinct

The Yangtze River Dolphin, a unique species of freshwater dolphin, has been on the most endangered list for some time. China's industrial development, with pollution and habitat destruction, combined with illegal fishing, have driven it over the edge. An intensive survey found not one left. It's possible that one or two still lurk in the murky waters, but for practical purposes, they are gone. They have been declared extinct and by humans, the first large mammal to be lost that way in fifty years.

Top-secret Chinese sub on Google Earth

A satellite taking pictures for Google Earth's image bank snapped a photograph of a secret Chinese sub moored alongside a pier at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base south of the city of Dalian.

This is a sub that can drop ballistic missiles on North America.

Another tropical cyclone?

Weather conditions and sea surface temperatures are shaping up to produce another Cyclone Gonu.

Lysenko and Lysenkoism

I've been reading the reviews of Michael Behe's The Discovery Institute's new anti-evolution monograph, "Exploring Evolution." Apparently it cites discredited 150-year-old drawings as evidence of current theory and controversy. It offers nothing but warmed-over creationist canards and sometimes distorted versions of evolutionary theory. There's no mention of Designers. And not much to criticize except that it's wrong from stem to stern.

Speaking of "theories" that don't have much theory in them... My son was asking me about Lysenkoism yesterday. All I could remember was that it was similar to Lamarckism, in that acquired characters were supposed to be inherited. And I didn't know much about Lysenko. He was prominent in Soviet agriculture and science for many years, he was the head of a Genetics Institute, and scientists who dared to oppose him were fired, exiled, and even killed. I didn't even know his first name: Trofim. So I looked him up. Did you know that he reamained prominent from the 1930s to the early 1960s? Or that the physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against him in 1964?

(Lysenko speaking at the Kremlin in 1935. At the back (left to right) are Stanislav Kosior, Anastas Mikoyan, Andrei Andreev and the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin.)
Don't Mikoyan and Adreev look inserted?

Another not-wholly-scientific agriculturalist was Luther Burbank. His major fault seems to have been mucking about in mad scientist mode rather than keeping records of what he was doing. I remember finding an adulatory biography of him in an old horticultural library. In it, he was credited with creating a hybrid Japanese plum... which I knew at the time would be a sterile cross. Obviously his samples got contaminated. The book also lauded Lamarck and denigrated Darwin.

Japanese royalty honours Linnaeus

Coturnix's Blog Around the Clock article of yesterday, about the birthday of Linnaeus, has gathered a nice comment from MartinC:

Mrs MartinC, who works as a preschool teacher here in Stockholm, was out yesterday with her class for a nature walk to the local park - where the Stockholm Botanical Garden is located - when she noticed a crowd of Japanese journalists. She asked one of them what was happening and suddenly found herself and class whisked to the front and introduced to the Emperor of Japan, King of Sweden and their wives, the Empress and Queen! Apparently the Japanese regents are visiting this week to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Carl von Linne.

Isn't it nice of them to consider a seminal scientific discoverer worthy of recognition?

Here's a note about the celebrations:

The birthday party will continue for more than a week in Linnaeus��s home province of Sm��land and in Uppsala north of Stockholm.... Linnaeus will be celebrated with a festival of 18th-century music, the premiere of the film Mr Flower Power, a postage stamp, an anniversary coin, a tulip festival, music, thousands of flower children, dance performances, a memorial ceremony in Uppsala Cathedral and a conferment of doctoral degrees at Uppsala University. Thousands of guests have been invited from many different countries. The local authorities in ��lmhult and Uppsala have put their heart and soul into hosting a gigantic birthday party!

Linnaeus��s birthday on May 23 begins with a solemn commemoration in Uppsala Cathedral, which was consecrated in 1435. Guests of honour are His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf, Her Majesty Queen Silvia, Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria and Her Royal Highness Princess Madeleine, together with Emperor Akihito of Japan and Empress Michiko. A wreath will be laid on Linnaeus��s grave; specially composed music will be played...

The Japanese Emperor��s interest in science and in Linnaeus is well-known. In an article in the journal Science in 1992 he mentioned both Linnaeus and his pupil Carl Peter Thunberg. The Emperor��s interest in Linnaeus was demonstrated most recently during the Swedish state visit to Tokyo in March. In conjunction with that he visited the Linn�� 2007 exhibition at Japan��s National Science Museum, where he received the anniversary Linnaeus Medal. The fact that the Emperor is coming to Sweden so soon after this visit is considered to be unique.

Anders Bj��rck says,

���I am incredibly proud that the Emperor of Japan, himself a scientist, is coming to participate in this, the greatest jubilee ever organised in Sweden for a scientist."

Electrons are faster than paper

The people of Iran are communicating and reaching out to the world through blogs.

Here are some links:
- blogs (in English) by Iranians
- Blog-Iran
- Wikipedia article on Iranian blogs
- Web gives a voice to Iranian women

Tainted pet food gets into our food supply through chickens

CNN reports that millions of people in the U.S. have eaten chickens that were given tainted pet food to eat after it was recalled from sale to pet-owners. The pet food was made with melamine-laced corn meal (corn gluten? wheat gluten?--the story keeps changing) from China.

Last week, as part of its investigation into the nationwide pet food recall, the FDA ordered that all vegetable protein imports from China used in human and animal food be detained.



The products include wheat gluten, rice gluten, rice protein, rice protein concentrate, corn gluten, corn gluten meal, corn byproducts, soy protein, soy gluten proteins and mung bean protein.

FDA officials said Tuesday that they have found no evidence that tainted wheat gluten was added directly to any food products sold in the United States.

However, I'm sure that exporters in China did not warn food manufacturers against using their product for human consumption. Did they keep two production streams, one contaminated with melamine to falsify protein analysis and one not? Could they get mixed up? The plot thickens...

See also"Melamine-tainted food was fed to "wild" salmon," "Recalled contaminated food goes to pigs" or "Chemical interaction harmed pets".

Wallace's Line

Alfred Russell Wallace noticed the line of demarcation between biogeographical regions. It separates Asian from Australasian fauna and flora.


According to Wikipedia, "At times when sea levels were lower, what are now islands were exposed and joined as continuous land masses, but the deep water between these two large shelf areas was ��� for a period in excess of 50 million years ��� a barrier that kept the flora and fauna of Australia largely separate from that of Asia." I have also read that it represents land-masses on different tectonic plates. In either case, it shows the results of evolution occurring separately in the two regions for millions of years.

You'll note that the island of Flores, ancestral home of Homo floresiensis, in in Australasia.

Outpouring of support for independent judiciary

The people have spoken. In Pakistan, An attempt to intimidate the Chief Justice and force him to resign has backfired. In an unprecedented outpouring of support, the people, lawyers, civil service, and unions, rallied to support the judge. Aitzaz Ahsan, lead counsel for Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, says that

"The people have given their verdict against the military rule and in support of independence of judiciary, sovereignty of the Constitution and rule of law."

The article continues.... "[President] Musharraf’s decision of March 9 to remove Justice Iftikhar has backfired. It has put the country on an uncertain course and posed the first most serious threat to his rule.

"The chief justice defied intimidation and inducements during five excruciating hours in the Army House on March 9 when Musharraf handed him over the chargesheet and asked him to resign. Later for next four days, he was kept in confinement, severed from outside world in an abortive bid to break his will. On March 13, he came out of his home to face presidential reference in the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) and insisted to walk down the 3km distance instead of accepting police car [transport].

"The manner of the removal of the highest judicial official in the country and the treatment meted out to him outraged the entire nation. Lawyers, political parties and civil society activists were up in arms and decided to boycott court, stage rallies across the country and outside the Supreme Court in Islamabad at every hearing date."

Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls were revealed by science, after someone at NASA experimented with wavelengths and discovered that infrared light revealed the script on an age-darkened scroll. Here is a link to the Essene text, the Book of Secrets. Not too surprisingly, they have more old texts than were preserved in the Old Testament.

Chemical interaction harmed pets

Researchers at Ontario's University of Guelph have discovered that an interaction of two chemicals forms crystals that can damage the kidneys of animals that eat contaminated foods.
--Source: CTV news.

Dr. Perry Martos and colleagues from the Agriculture and Food Laboratory at Guelph's Laboratory Services announced Friday they have discovered a dangerous reaction when melamine and cyanuric acid -- the two contaminants found in the imported wheat gluten used in the pet food -- are combined. The two chemicals react to form crystals that could block kidney function.....

John Melichercik, Director of Analytical Services for Laboratory Services, was quick to point out that the university's findings were only a small part of the research needed to find out what caused pets to become sick from the recalled pet food....

Officials estimate nearly 39,000 pets were sickened in the U.S. after nearly 100 brands of now recalled pet food were sold, which equated to about one per cent of the overall U.S. pet food supply.

At this point, factory workers in China have admitted to adding melamine to pet-food ingredients. The melamine would falsify the protein analysis to give an artificially high reading and thus cheat their customers.

See also "Recalled contaminated pet food goes to pigs" or "Tainted pet food gets into our food supply" and, for ongoing news, "More about pet-food recall."

Recalled contaminated pet food goes to pigs

The pet food contaminated with melamine that was recalled after causing the death of pets has been sold to hog farms in the U.S.

See also "Chemical interaction harmed pets" or "More about pet-food recall."

Did Christ exist?

There's a question that it seems hard to get an objective answer to. I'm looking for sources that are neither believers nor atheists. Here's a review of the facts and who believes them, on religioustolerance.org.

From Impact Press, "Did Jesus Exist--and Does It Matter?"

Viewing the biblical Jesus as a pastiche woven from stories of various pagan gods, demigods, and heroes adapted to a first-century Jewish milieu, many scholars have noted striking similarities between Jesus and his pagan counterparts. For example, the Persian sun-god Mithra, widely worshipped in the Roman Empire before the inception of the Christian era, had 12 disciples, performed miracles, was buried in a tomb, rose on the third day, was called the Good Shepherd, identified with the lamb, considered "the Way, the Truth and the Light, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah;" his principal festival was held on what was to become Easter, and he instituted a Eucharist or Lord's Supper. When Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire in 313 C.E. (Common Era), he was influenced by the pell-mell conversion of Roman soldiers from Mithraism to Christianity. The biblical Jesus gave them a sort of home-grown Mithra

See also "Dates for early Christian writings" (previous).