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.

Major Andrew Olmsted killed in Iraq

A U.S. major who was also a blogger was killed by sniper fire in Iraq while he was trying to talk three insurgents into surrendering peacefully. His blog was From the Front Lines, for the Rocky Mountain News.

He left a final word on his personal blog, Andrew Olmsted, which he ran until February, 2007, when he was told it was in violation of his orders to express disagreement with orders no matter how willingly he carried them out.

He asked that his death not be used to further anyone's political purposes.

I do ask (not that I'm in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I'm not around to expound on them I'd prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn't support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I'd prefer that you did so.

Major Olmsted was 38 years old.

Regardless of the merits of this war, or of any war, I think that many of us in America have forgotten that war means death and suffering in wholesale lots. A decision that for most of us in America was academic, whether or not to go to war in Iraq, had very real consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. Yet I was as guilty as anyone of minimizing those very real consequences in lieu of a cold discussion of theoretical merits of war and peace. Now I'm facing some very real consequences of that decision; who says life doesn't have a sense of humor?

Stop torture by U.S.

Guess what? "Waterboarding" (half-drowning someone) really is torture.


(Hat tip to PZ Myers at Pharyngula for the link)
And now that we have that sorted out, what about the Geneva Convention? Or is that just a "scrap of paper" like the U.S. constitution?

Oh, goodie! Get ready for a meaner flu virus

Tara C. Smith at Aetiology has summarized a peer-reviewed research documenting that the virulent influenza strain H5N1 is spreading. It's easy to catch and gives a worse case of the flu. However, it's not the only strain out there. We are seeing the H2N3 strain in some American hogs. Tara points out that people born since 1968, when H3 replaced H2 in widespread circulation, have no resistance to the H2 type viruses. She points out that we need to discover whether the swine virus is making the jump to humans in the swine industry. Constant surveying and prediction are needed to keep our vaccinss current with virus evolution.

In the long term, get ready for more deaths from influenza. This is an "arms race" where viruses pick up new protein coats in swine and ducks, whence they can jump to unprepared human immune systems. And remember: diseases are Nature's answer to overcrowding.

Texas ponders shooting itself in the foot

While the U.S. state of Texas considers whether to let a Creation Science school turn our graduate students, the Arab countries prepare a leap forward in science and technology research.

Seed magazine: Arab world builds its own science infrastructure.

... [Instead of doing their own R&D] Arab nations spent a staggering trillion dollars importing scientific and technological knowhow over the past three decades.

(Much of it from the U.S.)

Earlier this year, the 22 nations of the Arab League approved a 10-year plan to boost scientific research. It calls for member states to raise their allocation to science twelvefold to 2.5 percent of GDP���more than the average 2.3 percent spent by developed nations.

Also:

Arab political leaders are laying down the foundation for a strong scientific community.... "If there is a political will to regionalize and internationalize initiatives, it would be of great benefit to the Arab world...." ...a new pan-Arab foundation with a monumental endowment of $10 billion.... Arab nations increasingly are investing in international science collaborations to catch up with the West....

Qatar is also undergoing a science revolution. With a $1.5 billion annual allocation to science in a country with a population of less than a million, Qatar is intent on reform.... Education City is Qatar's new university system���a 2,500-acre campus that is home to branches of five of the world's top universities, including Cornell and Carnegie Mellon.... The country is bringing in foreign expertise to achieve a long-term vision���to make Qatar a knowledge-based society. "QSTP is a 20-year program"....


Omani political leaders have also set in place a 15-year plan for science development....


Saudi Arabia has also secured plans for a multibillion-dollar science and technology university.... Arab nations are making moves to translate their oil-driven economies into knowledge-based ones."

What to do about global warming

Here's how to evaluate our possible courses of action:

Earliest sunset today

For many of us, this is the earliest sunset of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, caused by the uneven path traced by the sun, which is called the analemma. Doug Dodds says,

"Sunset Day is 8 December, or close enough, for 32N to 45N latitude. Empirically, it appears to be about 12 December at Cambridge, UK (52N) and perhaps 14 December at Edinburgh (57N)."

Japan cancels human rights

A blog of note, Vegetable Japan, is declaring a Day of Mourning for the death of human rights in Japan. Foreign residents in and visitors to Japan are being fingerprinted, harassed, intimidated, and made to feel unwelcome.

With the institution of the fingerprinting, photographing and questioning of non-Japanese visitors entering Japan, and even of residents and permanent residents every time they come back from a visit abroad, I declare that the last vestige of human rights here is dead.

In "Terrorism or Tyranny?" she continues the story. The government's excuse is that fingerprinting will catch dangerous criminals. But Japanese residents do not have to give their fingerprints. She points out that all the acts of terrorism committed in Japan so far have been committed by Japanese citizens. I guess no True Japanese would be a dangerous criminal. She adds,

It's lazy police work. The police won't actually have to do anything when there's a crime committed, except scan through their computer database and try to find someone to arrest. Whether that person may have been somewhere perfectly innocently or not probably won't be considered, because once they have the "evidence" they will go into typical mode here, arrest the suspect and then question them for up to 23 days with no recourse to a lawyer, using tactics of sleep deprivation and psychological intimidation until they confess.

Finally, she asks us to read and sign an online petition:

If you want to send the Japanese government a message that it is not all right to fingerprint only non-Japanese arriving and living in Japan, please sign the online petition against it.

Here's the link: Abolition of fingerprinting for non-Japanese.

Of course, human rights died in the U.S. some time earlier, when they threw out the law of habeas corpus (ya gotta have evidence to make a case) and began torturing political prisoners.

Queen Elizabeth opens Commonwealth summit

Queen Elizabeth presided over the opening of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda. The article points out,

When she first addressed a meeting of Heads of Government of the Commonwealth thirty years ago, Papua New Guinea and the Seychelles were welcomed as its 32nd and 33rd members.

The queen remarked,

She remarked that the theme chosen for the Kampala CHOGM, Transforming Societies, conveyed a clear commitment to change for the better.

"No single society has achieved perfection, and there is no single recipe for success. No-one could expect that. But we do know that giving people the greatest possible voice in the way they are governed, and the greatest possible access to education, are two of the most important ingredients."

The outgoing chairman, Malta Prime Minister Dr. Lawrence Gonzi, said

Commonwealth countries were faced with new challenges, such as climate change, globalisation, the digital divide, the price of oil and the rising price of cereals.

On climate change, he said the Commonwealth nations should send a strong message of support to the forthcoming UN conference on climate change in Bali.

Canada blocks Commonwealth climate agreement

Stephen Harper is refusing to join in a British Commonwealth agreement to limit production of greenhouse gasses.

Let's review the choices:

• Try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's not happening: low-level economic pain, preserved environment
• Try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's happening: low-level economic pain, preserved environment
• Don't try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's not happening: no economic pain, preserved environment
• Don't try to reduce or halt global warming, and it's happening: no initial economic pain, no preserved environment, ecological disaster, huge economic losses, loss of life, etc.

One of those four choices is unacceptable. It's the one where we do nothing and we're screwed by the time we're sure the climate is changing.

Alberto Gonzales secretly endorsed torture

Dear goodness, when are they going to learn?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 ��� When the Justice Department publicly declared torture ���abhorrent��� in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales���s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Nestle is still endangering babies

For years, Nestlé has promoted the use of formula in poor countries - where families can not afford to keep buying it, where bottles won't be sterilized, where it won't be made with clean water. In those conditions, babies are much safer drinking breast milk. But once a baby has been drinking formula for a while, breasts are running dry and mothers lose confidence. They feed diluted formula. Babies don't get enough food, or they do get gastroenteritis. Thousands of babies die of it.

Maybe Nestlé has stopped dressing its sales people as nurses in these countries. But it is still trying to make those sales.

Now Nestlé is saying that it doesn't believe this is promoting their products. Then why are they doing it?

A Guardian investigation in Bangladesh found widespread use of "prescription pads", where Nestlé reps give health workers tear-off pads, with pictures of their products, for them to pass on to mothers. Nestlé spokesman Robin Tickle said he did not believe the pads equated to promotion of the company's formula milks. The device was "a safety measure", to help mothers to be sue the milk they were buying was the right kind for their baby.

Change is coming

There's a video you should see: "Shift Happens" by Karl Fisch on Albino Black Sheep.

New WHO rules will help to prevent pandemics

The World Health Organization has some new rules to limit the spread of infectious diseases between countries. The rules require countries to report health threats.

Signs of La Nina

Brett Anderson, a weather expert (and the expert on Canadian weather) at AccuWeather.com, lists the signs and symptoms of a coming La Nina season. La Nina is caused by lower than normal temperature of the sea surface in the Pacific Ocean during summer. And it affects weather all over the world.

Douglas Adams on the anthropic principle

The anthropic principle is a rationalization of humanity's importance in our own eyes. It states that the universe, the sun, and the Earth are prefectly designed for us, so some Divine Being (Vishnu, perhaps) must have created them just for us. With stunning irony, believers in the anthropic principle ignore the fact that if conditions had been different, we would be different: blobs of superconductive Helium II, perhaps. And if they had been so different that life would not be here to contemplate itself, there would be no one to complain that Vishnu hadn't made the universe to our liking. The writer Douglas Adams put it rather neatly:

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’

Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot"

In this video clip, Carl Sagan describes the Earth's place in the universe.

Seed magazine on avian flu

Seed magazine offers a number of "cribsheets," in other words briefing notes, on current topics in science that affect us. Here's their cribsheet on avian influenza. It describes how the H5N1 virus infects a host cell and answers the question: How is the world preparing for avian flu? Follow the link to read more.

Here's a cartoon from Swarthmore College showing how the proportion of Americans who believe in evolution will increase after the avian flu carries off 52% of those who don't get vaccinated because they don't believe in evolution of viruses.

An inconvenient question: What is Earth's energy balance?

Robert Park points out that the answer to the question, "What is Earth's energy balance?" is crucial to predicting the speed of global warming. We don't actually know the answer. And the means to find out is gathering dust:

The Earth's albedo, or reflectivity, is fundamental to global climate. We don't know what it is. The only instrument capable of measuring and continuously monitoring the albedo is the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). Already built and paid for, it sits in a warehouse at Goddard SFC waiting to be delivered to the Lagrange-1 point, about a million miles in the direction of the sun. We understand why President Bush may not like DSCOVR. But not much has been heard from Congress or the public.

I love the disclaimer:

" Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University of Maryland, but they should be."

Malaria's Trojan horse

Maybe the Intelligent Designer is cheering for parasites:

Malaria has been outsmarting the human immune system for centuries. Now, using real-time imaging to track malaria infections in live mice, researchers have discovered one of the parasite's sneakiest tricks—using dead liver cells to cloak and transport itself back into the bloodstream after leaving the liver.

Robert Ménard, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar, and his postdoctoral fellow, Rogerio Amino, at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, filmed the malaria parasite as it transitioned from infecting liver cells to infecting red blood cells. During this stage of the parasite's life cycle, the classic symptoms of malaria—high fevers and chills—are triggered in people who are infected.