ADAMANT

Who's Afraid Of Virginia's Wolf?

Half a century after physicist C.P. Snow 's famous “Two Cultures” lecture  decried the “gulf of mutual incomprehension...hostility and dislike”   sundering  “natural scientists,” from  “literary intellectuals,”   Natalie Angier writes  for the benefit of those willing to log in to the NYTimes ,  that the gap continues to widen as

 " educators, policymakers and other observers bemoan the Balkanization of knowledge, the scientific illiteracy of the general public and the chronic academic turf wars that are all too easily lampooned.

Yet a few scholars of thick dermis and pep-rally vigor believe that the cultural chasm can be bridged and the sciences and the humanities united into a powerful new discipline that would apply the strengths of both mindsets, the quantitative and qualitative, to a wide array of problems."

Surely  the New Humanities Initiative at  Binghamton University in New York "conceived by David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology, and Leslie Heywood, a professor of English ... to build on some of the themes explored in Dr. Wilson’s evolutionary studies program," can find space for displaced palaeoconservative english majors --if Wilson is sincere in titling his new book  “Evolution for Everybody.”

Angier writes that in  Wilson’s view,

evolutionary biology is a discipline that, to be done right, demands a crossover approach, the capacity to think in narrative and abstract terms simultaneously, so why not use it as a template for emulsifying the two cultures generally? "

If  biotech savvy  Southern agararians can cotton to genetically reinforced corn and soybeans on them old weevil fields down home , the damn Yankees of Binghamton have a bounden duty to set aside some acreage for the new generation of Post-PoMo Generator  literati.

"One goal of the initiative " writes Angier "is to demystify science by applying its traditional routines and parlance in nontraditional settings — graphing Jane Austen, as the title of an upcoming book felicitously puts it. “If you do statistics in the context of something you’re interested in and are good at, then it becomes an incremental as opposed to a saltational jump,” Dr. Wilson said. “You see that the mechanics are not so hard after all, and once you understand why you’re doing the statistics in the first place, it ends up being simple"

Angier tells us that one of this new plantation's overseer's Rutger's Prof. Levine , the author of  Darwin Loves You.

” has criticized many recent attempts at so-called Literary Darwinism, the application of evolutionary psychology ideas to the analysis of great novels and plays. What it usually amounts to is reimagining Emma Bovary or Emma Woodhouse as a young, fecund female hunter-gatherer circa 200,000 B.C.

“When you maximize the importance of biological forces and minimize culture, you get something that doesn’t tell you a whole lot about the particularities of literature,” Dr. Levine said. “What you end up with, as far as I’m concerned, is banality.

Professor Heywood's work, notes  Angier ,  focuses on

 " the complex symbolism of the wolf, a topic inspired by a pet of hers that was seven-eighths wolf. “He was completely different from a dog,” she said...." Seeking a more full-bodied understanding, she delved into the scientific literature, studying wolf ecology, biology and evolution.

 She worked with Dr. Wilson and others to design a survey to gauge people’s responses ...in understanding how people read wolves, as opposed to seeing things through other filters and published texts,”

Angier does not , however note that competitive powerlifter Heywood is President of the Wman's Sport's Federation and authoress of  The Third Wave Agenda

And Second Prize Is ?

Current Matters

POSTSCRIPT - 1AM Friday

late last night, trying to hold a telephone in one hand and simultaneously condense  and check prose against equations with the other, I ended up watching a  much-rewritten, but un-fact checked, or science-editor vetted book  review slide out of human hands , and into the maw of a great national daily.
Reentering mass media  globalized since their last appearance, writers used to the self-correcting nature of peer-reviewed science journals should take nothing for granted . Unlike the fish they used to wrap, papers can decay from back page to front,  as well as from the head down. Despite Google,  fact checking is retreating  uptown as  fast as Wall Streeet journalists are morphing down market into Murdoch Mode. 

Despite a predawn final sending of corrections,  I awoke to a predictable result. The gap between the two cultures yawned and swallowed  the distinction  between voltage and current, distance and velocity , as the midnight oil burned. What emerged was  eminently readable, but technically inchaote- but  I had another essay in press last night.  Unbidden as I slept ,  the editorial staff at the  eight page tabloid weekly of a geophysical society blithely detected and corrected my mis-attribution  of a 19th century  geology quote  they'd never before read.

[thursday]It is 1AM EDT, and I just sent a final correction in to my editor at the WSJ, probably too late to keep an error out of print .I spent yesterday finishing a book review. -" The ten Most Beautiful Experiments" , by George Johnson.

Alas, in the rushed editorial conversation condensing my draft,   voltage and current , magnetic force and electrical power, got mixed up, the responsibility is mine and you can see the result in the print edition- i have yet to, but the the electronic edition will be corrected as below  before dawn rises over the Hoover Dam: Apologies to EE's who have already drafted angry Letters to the Editor on Al Gore's behalf :

Dear Editor ;

What i was trying to translate into prose and write down with one hand when  interrupted

was  F = (I²/2) dL/dx   , or in other words , [[RED BOLD ]] :

...Joule found 838 pounds falling one foot could raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree—as could dropping one pound of water 838 feet: Niagara Falls is warmer at the bottom than at the top.[[He was also shocked to find that the power of electromagnets increased as the current squared, much as a falling object's energy increased with the square of time.]] Yet the batteries he sweated to charge did not grow colder as his motors ran.

The Bras From Boyzil

No Chemistry Please, We're Islamish

Should victory be declared in the war against chemical warfare on the strength of Michael Rubin's  Iranian news round-up in National  Review Online today ?

Rubin, or rather his Farsi literate amanuensis, points out that  the search engine filters in the Islamic Republic are tuned to such an exquisitely puritanical pitch that they show no results for such salacious subjects as the University of Sus[sex]  or the nation of [Bra]zil.

Since Iran is the greatest Internet Power in the region, the impact of  Bowdlerizing the bandwidth of  happy chemical warriors in the Middle East may be profound.

No longer will  mayhem bent researchers of ether gender be able to surf in toxic search of the latest [Arse]nic compounds , or subject to the temptation to fool around with explosive per[man]ganates , pot[ass]ium cyanide, or heaven forbid, [sod]ium.

My Friend The Wing Nut

Burt Rutan built the fastest boat I ever crewed, Stars & Stripes H-1--I'm the red hat in this 1988 America's Cup trials photo with Michael Fay's megascow challenger, New Zealand in the background.

Now Burt has outdone himself with another  Scaled Composites hot rod - a six passenger spaceship due to be flown later this year. Stars &Stripes was well, a trifle skittish, and I don't think they'll let me drive this one either. What's worse, there are no crew slots for centerboard trimmers, and afterguard seats are very dear.

Paul@Google

Pretty tough audience 

But to its credit, Google does not censor presidential debates

Fox  does--it cut Paul's most trenchant reply

Absence Speaks

And draws a loud and clear answer from that hammer to hypocrisy, Berard-Henri Levy, who brings it down hard on those unseen at a funeral in Sindh:

The best, the most beautiful way of responding would have been for Angela Merkel, George Bush, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy to have gone immediately to Pakistan for her funeral.

We should have seen, standing behind Benazir's body, as they once did behind Anwar Al-Sadat's and Itzhak Rabin's, the largest possible number of government leaders and heads of state, to make the funeral a global demonstration on behalf of the values of democracy and peace.

We would have wanted the French president to interrupt his vacation to bid farewell to this great lady, now a martyr, on her last voyage. But no. The man who just rolled out the red carpet for Moammar Gadhafi contented himself with a short communiqué, not responding to those who had begged him to find a gesture or at least words which would honor this assassinated heroine. Beyond Mr. Sarkozy, the entire community of democratic heads of state has been astonishingly moderate, prudent, indeed pusillanimous.

And In The Opposite Corner

A few blogs , and not more than a dozen major science journal editors and the usual pathetic gaggle of investment banking heavies, Aspen regulars and  real, as opposed to Peace Prize,  Nobelists have united in calling on wannabe Presidential Candidates  to stage a Great American Science Debate as to what policies should prevail in the next Administration.

Since  many  A-list blogomerates said to be Conservative feature countdown clocks reminding us how long it has been since they challenged various worthies to debate climate change, the metaphysical status of blastocytes and toenail clippings, or the  finer points of Cambodian geography, it will be interesting to see how  CEI , AEI, Junk Science and various outposts of  Dittocephaly  field this one.

I do hope they rise to the occasion, or the bait, as the case may be, as there is a terrible dearth of politicized science in America. The problem is that for the Real Deal to exist, both sides have to have some inkling of what it is that they are trying to politicize.
Arranging a fair cat-fight on these subjects is an editorially parlous business, as  invitations to the Science Editors of National Review, The Weekly Standard, The American   Human Events , The Washington Times , The New York Post , The Wall Street Journal , The American Enterprise, or The American Spectator  are invariably returned postmarked:
                            NO SUCH PERSON AT THIS ADDRESS

A Whale Of A Pod

Though the origins of the Straussian mythos are shrouded in the mists of Lake Michigan, and perhaps best left there, The New Yorker affords  some insight into the education of John Podhoretz , the Editor newly tasked with making Commentary as unintentionally funny as The Weekly Standard --

The Dark Side Of 9-11

50 years ago the Space Age began.

12 years after Sputnik I's alarming debut, I photographed the roaring launch of Apollo 11 for this  Conde' Nast cover.  I've been in volcanic eruptions before and since, but the 1969 event was like nothing so much as 9-11 run backwards.

Only louder.

The political dark side of NASA's thundering  technological  triumph has parallels in the aftermath of 9-11 as well . The focused idealism seen in the months following each event  gave way to both millenarian dreams and dystopic fantasies, and a plenum of unjustified claims.

In the moon launch's case, the success of outspending our Cold War adversary led to NASA's evolution into an obstacle to economic sanity in space , as its vastly expensive bureaucracy turned to defending its turf instead of expanding man's presence in  the solar system.

In the 1950s many science fiction writers predicted  men would walk on the moon, and though few were so bold as to assert it would happen within a decade, many  of the greatest  gathered at Cape Kennedy  to witness the realization of their dream. They did a lot of predicting, but none  imagined that after a half dozen lunar voyages in as many years , no one would set foot on the moon for another generation. It was a suggestion as  inconceivable as Columbus returning from the New World only to counsel  Queen Isabella to stop wasting  her time and treasure on  Atlantic caravels , and focus on employing more galley slaves.

That is essentially what we got five centuries later, as NASA's dysfunctional bureaucracy concentrated on the ill fated Space Shuttle even as an explosion of entrepreneurial creativity  in Silicon Valley showed that the Right Stuff had quit Cape Canaveral and gone west.

Within five years of  9-11, TSA had likewise discovered that the main mission of any organization that does not have to justify its mandate is to spend  as much as possible, but while NASA merely wasted the taxpayer's money, mindless spending by Homeland Security translates into the waste of the nation's time as well.  Treating passengers like Spam In A Can astronauts  prepared to suffer unending delays to get off the ground manifests bureaucratic sadism  more than safety concern.

NASA 's downward trajectory can teach us a lot about what else TSA should not be doing, but if history is any precedent, the last thing Homeland Security  will do is study those lessons of its own accord.

THE GOLDEN CHAD

Ceci n'est pas un Prix, c'est un morceaux non decoupe' doree

Though struck from an equally hefty slug of solid gold, the Nobel Peace Prize has little in common with the science and literature awards. While handed out by Sweden's King, it is awarded by Norway's parliament, the Storting.  Whoever wins a seat can nominate whom they please for the award, but its disconnect from  the more soberly considered science and arts Nobels hardly tarnishes its luster.  As you watch Hollywood's savvy Greens transform the awards ceremony into  media event on a par with the Oscars or American Idol recall that past gongs have gone to designers of the Iron Curtain and the lobotomy. This is not the Florida election -- no court figures in the race for this golden chad

The method of electing the winner ensures a political outcome. Other Nobel prizes ar assigned by committees of experts in the orbit of the Swedish Academy of Science, but the peace Prize winner is determined by a committee reflecting the current strength of Norwegian political parties. The parliamentary committee of five  to whom Democrat Gore owes his prize includes three drawn from the Socialist Left, Labour, and Progressive parties forming Norway's ruling coalition, and one Conservative, a former Minister of Trade. Were the anti-immigrant Progressives in power, Gore might have found himself short listed with Pat Buchanan, for as Francis Sejersted, past chairman of the committee points out:  “Awarding a peace prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act.”

And all politics is local. None of the other worthy Peace Prize nominees one might list, from Burmese monks to the embattled opponents of tyranny in Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe, can increase the value of Norway's oil and gas reserves. Giving a prize that amplifies the credibility of the world's foremost advocate of carbon taxes most assuredly can.

Investing $750,000 in Al's power to pontificate on behalf of his ( and Lehman Bros.) carbon trading business should pay Norway  and OPEC handsomely. If  Al's crusade to double coal's cost by taxation hikes  lower carbon  North Sea oil and gas prices proportionately, Oslo stands to gain a cool trillion Kroner on its multi-billion barrel  state owned reserves. Not a bad return on a 206 gram disc of gold and some chump change from a Swedish foundation.

So my congratulations to Mr. Gore, and kudos to the Oslo committee, whom I hereby place in nomination for the Nobel Prize in Economics, for awarding the Peace Prize to Al.

It is a gift in the best Viking fiscal tradition .Expropriating a neighbor's purse often avoids the recrimination that attends rapine, pillage,looting and burning. Especially the last --nowadays, a Viking's loot might not cover his carbon offsets.

Not Ready For Primate Time

.

.

Now that Leipzig's Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology  has determined that "unlike humans, chimpanzees conform to traditional economic models,"  perhaps they'll fund a study of why otherwise rational primates think the climate of the future will ape the predictions of models that depend on traditional emissions forecasts as well?

THE GLITTERING PRIZES

The Nobel Committee announced today that the Prize in physiology goes to Mario R. Capecchi, Oliver Smithies and Sir Martin J. Evans--who developed a way to "knock-out" specific genes in mice, allowing researchers to figure out what each gene does in mammalian bodies.

As the Nobel citation notes:Such gene "knockout" experiments have elucidated the roles of numerous genes in embryonic development, adult physiology, aging and disease. To date, more than 10,000 mouse genes (approximately half of the genes in the mammalian genome) have been knocked out. Gene targeting has already produced more than 500 different mouse models of human disorders, including cardiovascular and neuro-degenerative diseases, diabetes and cancer 

Several IgNobels merit honorable mention as well:

Chemistry
Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Centre of Japan
For developing a way to extract vanilla essence from cow dung

Linguistics
Juant Manuel Toro, Josep Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Barcelona University,
Demonstrating that rats confuse Japanese spoken backwards with Dutch spoken  backwards

Medicine
Brian Witcombe of Gloucester and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee,
Discovering that sword swallowing hurts 

Peace
The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio,
Developing chemical weapons to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other

Aviation
Patricia V Agostino, Santiago A Plano and Diego A Golombek of Argentina,
Discovering that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters

Is The Patient Still Dead ?

"Towards the end of the 1970s, I was told by one of our most competent defence secretaries that he did not regard it as his responsibility to ensure that a weapons programme submitted by the Department of Defense for the president's budget was sound and worthwhile. He saw it as the job of the White House Office of Management and Budget to sort that out, with the help of the PSAC. To me this was evidence that increased scientific and technological expertise in government departments increased rather than reduced the need for scientific competence in the White House.

Since Nixon abolished the PSAC, no president has seen fit to create an advisory committee of a similar level of commitment or energy — despite the establishment of a President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology by George Bush Snr in 1990. In 1972, Congress had founded the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA),...The unique feature of the OTA was an advisory committee for each study that included passionate proponents and opponents of the programme in question, whose points of view were evaluated, if not endorsed.

The United States has drawn particular strength from granting independent technical consultants access to government at many levels. Such individuals add knowledge, if not always wisdom. Today, that access is increasingly subject to political and ideological tests...
In a further blow, the OTA was abolished in 1995...Some likened this act to Congress shooting themselves in the brain."  --Richard Garwin

Science & politics :How the mighty have fallen                    Nature 449, 543 (4 October 2007)  

Climate Of Here

Corporate sponsored opposition to the environmentalist  campaign to hype climate change seems to be modeling itself on an eminently forgettable  television show called  "That's Incredible"

It initially enjoyed great ratings, then sank out of sight as the audience noticed its offerings fell into two broad categories : That's Mildly Interesting" and 'That's Not True"

The same cannot  be said for most of  "An Inconvenient Truth"-- it represents a much higher standard of disinformation, but  that's not the focus of last week's  Newsweek's cover story. Reason's Ron Bailey notes that less than 1% of the American Enterprise Institute's  present budget stems from Exxon. But this is itself a red herring- the most egregious focus of the Science Be Damned approach to climate change remains The Conservative Enterprise Institute, which drew  drew more of its funding  from the energy business than AEI.

For years,  willingness to express disbelief in global warming  was a criterion of employment at CEI, whose publications  and position papers actively and actually denied the existence of the Climate Wars by  labeling anthropogenic climate change a myth or hoax.

Now Newsweek business columnist Robert  Samuelson is taking  issue with science writer Sharon Begley's recent cover story :

We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week's NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It's an object lesson of how viewing the world as "good guys vs. bad guys" can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story.

Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."... The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading

Begley  undeniably ignored  the monumentally greater business of generating big budget Eco-TV, politically loaded disaster flicks, and Green sermons on PBS. Green spending and support for this wide ranging  pseudodocumentary  spectrum exceeds  the "denial" lobby a hundred to one. But there is an unsubtle distinction between hype and hoax. Samuelson misses a basic point- there literally cannot be a  scientific climate war  unless and until there are two sides.

Neither AEI of CEI has shown the slightest interest in mastering the subject matter at issue.  If they had, their case would reflect a first-hand acquaintance with a broad spectrum of the primary  scientific literature- climate modelling is nothing if not interdisciplinary.  Instead, they more often deliver an exegesis on the views of such scientific luminaries as  Rush Limbaugh and the Senators to whom he has lent his brain trust. This does nothing to remedy the misrepresentation of science to the public- it merely compounds it.

Piggy Bank America

Fortune notes that  Bank America dividend return is currently close to 5% .

As this is an order of magnitude higher that the bank's basic savings account rates, one wonders how many such accounts will survive the depositors discovery that, instead of giving Bank America $5000 in order to reap the one-tenth to one-half percent interest currently offered, customers can realize rates eight to fifty times higher by buying 100 shares of the bank's highly liquid stock online?

To how many other Big Board banks do similar equity equations apply?  Major online brokerages offer turnaround costs for 100 share transactions from $20 to $50.

The Swiss Navy Knife

La Société Nautique de Genève, having successfully  conducted the 32nd Defense of the Americas Cup, has unveiled an interactive 3-D model of its winning boat  Alinghi.  Please examine this knife in the water with care, and think hard about how to build a faster better cheaper one.

Since the Swiss insist, as is their right, that the next generation of AC boats must be 90 feet long, that probably means about a million dollars a foot, FOB the finish line. The eyes of Rhode Island  are upon you, not to mention the NYYC.

Really Real Climate

Tom Lowe of Australia's Centre for Risk and Community Safety  has some very sensible things to say about the parlous state of the climate wars, based on his work at the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research on "the effects of extreme representations of climate change upon public perceptions and willingness to act. " His  conclusion ?

"Alarmist’ representations, either depicting catastrophic effects as a result of man’s influence upon the climate system or, conversely, deeply sceptical views of climate change, lead to public confusion and inaction.

* It is apparent that the vast uncertainties associated with climate modelling necessitate a wide range of possibilities, the extremities of which produce fertile ground for sensational reporting...

Alarms And Excursions

9-11 certainly got  America's attention.  For  decades before  , the volumes of technological threat assessments assembled by   Federal and foundation sponsored counter-terrorism commissions  had languished unread, because with one low tech exception, the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing, terror dwelt  more on screen than in the real world. Only when that world changed did those funding the academic study of terror begin to read the encyclopedic description of what it had to work with. They did not like what they read.

For one thing , many reports, reflecting their sources,  were alarmingly long. 'Sax  Handbook Of Dangerous Substances ', then in its tenth  or so edition , was already the size of the Bible. Reasonably complete descriptive  catalogs of  explosive chemicals and toxicology reference works were long past the point of fitting into a single volume.

Now that terror existed for real , there was a rush to expand the definition, for the anthrax scare added a compulsory shelf load of biology tomes to the counter-terror reading list. There was a lifetime's worth of catch-up reading to be done , and absorbing it all left few any time to think quantitatively about the human dimension of the threat- or its detection.  Putting a drive-through gamma spectrometer in unskilled hands is about as constructive as giving  Albert Einstein a Ouija Board , yet that's the way the counter-terror game is played today.

Another Hare Brained Intelligence Scheme ?

The Director of National intelligence thinks it  “entirely appropriate” for the CIA assess the “geopolitical and security implications of global climate change.” but Peter Hoekstra , the  ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee says “Let other federal agencies, as more than a dozen already do, cover the ‘bugs and bunnies.’ But let our spies be spies,”

With  Kim Jung-il popping off nukes , the intelligence community needs all the help it can get . Hoekstra should be relieved to learn  Bug's relations are already inside the North Korean regime.

We Aim For The Stars

But sometimes we hit the Green Zone

DUBAI (Reuters) ...In an audio recording posted  today , Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, whose faction styles itself ' The Islamic State of Iraq '  announced it has begun local production of a missile.         

"One of the [foreign] devils was right in saying that if Afghanistan was a school of terror, then Iraq is a university of terrorism," said the Sunni leader of the group." We would like to inform the mujahideen all over the world, and especially in Iraq, that the Quds (Jerusalem) 1 rocket has gone into the phase of military production," Baghdadi said, adding that its length, weight, range and precision "matches those of world powers."

In reality, the  pint-sized unguided missile is a home-brew  descendant of the WWII Katusha or the Congreve rockets of the War of 1812 , with scant range. Unfortunately , ample supplies of modern high explosives render the flying IED as deadly incoming as a howitzer round . The rocket fuel is apparently compounded from foodstuffs like sugar , and nitrate fertilizers.

APOCALYPSE REGAINED

The deepening shadow of future light

The photographic reconquest of the vanished past began modestly , about a decade ago. Someone scanning an age-darkened  photograph of a family gathered on the sunlit stoop of a vanished sod house on the Nebraska prairie wondered what lay in the shadows beyond its open door. They hit a Photoshop contrast icon , and out popped an interior scene no Victorian photographer could hope to capture- an invisible image brought back from a distant era when film had next to no latitude.

The discovery spread like wildfire on the net, and was soon applied to  everything from Civil War battlefield Deguerrotypes to press Graflex pictures of the Hindenburg in flames.  Imagination , like myth and obsession, can ramify faster than the wreckage of tragedy can decay.

Instant replays of 9-11 may numb the modern imagination of disaster but older icons, from the Hindenburg to the Holocaust remind us that it can take years to apprehend what our retinas seize in the split second it takes to turn our eyes away.

Memory is not a static. We are used to its decay, yet sometimes it grows as things once thought lost are  regained. All the elements of ground zero memories,  the flying  paper, the comingled reek of hot metal , wallboard dust and death that once briefly converged into reality may not stay lost forever.  Since 9-11 the arts of image enhancement have advanced ever faster ,reversing a long historical trend. The sum of visual information about the disaster is growing , not shrinking with the passage of time , and the capacity to experience it is fast converging upon the ability of the eye to see.

One day, it will overtake it.

There is more to this than Photoshopping the Apocalypse.

From The Incredible To The Inedible

From Nature , a Beltway Bestiary :  What color is your polar bear?

Chinese Fire Drill

Eternal vigilance has its price in boredom.

One  morning last year, New Yorker writer Steve Coll heard an alarm sound in " a sensor outpost at the Port of Newark...as trucks rumbled through a line of radiation portals, which are shaped like metallic archways... a Gamma alert, lane six.

This happens more than two hundred times per day at the Port of New York and New Jersey... officers checked the driver's papers, scanned the truck's sides with a handheld isotope identifier, consulted their computer screens , and within minutes announced their conclusion: denture cleaners , potassium-40. They spoke in the bored, slightly sardonic tone common among police officers , as if they were reviewing a burglar'€™s jimmying techniques. "

Two hundred false alarms a day mounts into a national security nightmare when multiplied  by the hundreds of points and ports of entry on America's land and maritime frontiers. The problem is compounded by there being about as many natural , and mostly harmless, radioisotopes  as there are ones of practical interest to dirty bomb makers , or of use in constructing a rogue atomic bomb.

The causes of  alarms sounded by detectors set up to screen venues of the sort customarily attacked in Techno-thrillers , like the Capitol , political conventions , or the Superbowl , have thus far included a Secretary of the Interior freshly radioactive from a diagnostic doctor's visit and the un-enriched uranium content of a century-old granite pedestal supporting a bust of Daniel Webster.

Ninety per cent of containers entering the US are already screened by an ever growing spectrum of radiation detectors, whose sensitivity rises as DHS invests in new technology. But unless and until their discrimination grows faster than the rate of false positives , we face a clear and present danger of paralysis. The problem arose when some in government responded to 9-11 by deciding that a 1% threat  demands the same draconian response as a 1% suspicion of a foreign nation's nuclear ambition.But nations are few and cargoes are many- they failed to reckon on sensitivity outrunning the ability to tell  the feeble glow of a bomb in a dull leaden casing  from the screaming signal of a truckload of potassium -40 rich bananas or the trans-uranic radioactivity of one of the nation's millions of americium-laced smoke detectors.

There are some pretty dim bulbs among  those who find terror attractive. Less intelligent still is the notion that practitioners of nuclear malevolence will turn out to be numbskulls incapable of  reading--and understanding--the ( limited ) performance specifications of radiation detectors new and old. Unless shrewdly directed , DHS's firehosing  of funds into all the detectors money can buy may give rise instead to a Chinese fire drill affording cover for real arsonists, as well as comfort for the producers of 24. In the current issue of the NAS journal Issues in Science And Technology William Johnstone observes :

'Reportedly, only 5% of all air cargo is currently screened, and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has indicated that aircraft carrying cargo continue to be highly vulnerable to terrorist sabotage. TSA has proposed a set of regulations for air cargo security, but as is typical for rulemaking, the process is moving very slowly. Even if finalized, the new rules would provide few details on how the freight industry, which is expected to implement the security program, is to fulfill this unfunded mandate.'

A Transparent Improvement

The American Meteorological Society  has joined the growing list of organizations trying to serve as honest brokers of information in the Climate Wars. It notes the nation " faces complex choices in dealing with climate change. The policies we adopt have the greatest chance to benefit society if they are grounded in the best available knowledge. Unfortunately, gaps in understanding among scientists, policy makers, journalists and the public permeate nearly all aspects of the issue and constitute a major barrier to the adoption of well-informed responses to the threats posed by climate change."

There is reason to hope ClimatePolicy  will serve a more fully informed debate because in addition to the usual suspects ( Yes, Virginia, most scientists inside the beltway atre Democrats.) one of the ClimatePolicy bloggers is an outspoken advocate of scientific transparency --.Michael MacCracken . I irst met him when  he was with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , directing  efforts to model  the effects of natural and human-induced climate change and air pollution.  He has since served  as Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute in Washington DC, and as  President of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS).

McCracken, who  was on the executive committees of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and the Scientific Committee for Oceanic Research,also advised  Reagan and Bush 41 administrations and then became  the senior  inter-agency climate change scientist with the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), serving as its first executive director, and  executive director of its National Assessment Coordination Office.

He was instrumental  in opening the IPCC process to online examination by all interested parties as it progressed by putting a link to the process into the Federal register.

GOING UP

.
Although at 108
stories it's already eye to eye with the Empire State building ,   the Burj Dubai spire is only half finished , and  the Emirate is still debating how high to go- witness the present spec sheet.

The Emirate's conservatives think twenty three hundred feet tall enough , but hot shot engineers want to shoot for  three  thousand and change . Either way, on a clear day , they should be able to see Nimrod's old
place up the Gulf.

National Talk Like a Literate Pirate Day

           

Ye Arts         Letters    0f Marque   Robert Trivers loves the logic o' evolution.That dead men tell no tales be bilge- Philosopher's Mate Darwin o'ye barque Beagle fair laid us a geometry o' time yar as the geometry o' space o' that lubber Newton or that Leghorno Galileo..Aaaarrh!       Should local folk rebuild N'Orleans as she was? By Cap’n Lafitte’s bones, No!   Probably it be not a bad idea, says Carlin Romano. (Aaarrhhh, me parrot!)   Quite possibly, it be a catastrophic one... (Bilge!)    Academic anthropology be in   crisis, says Dan Sperber, who be not alarmed. (Yarrr, into the futtock   shrouds ) “It deserves t' be in crisis. (Weigh anchor!) It deserves t'   explode, let it do so”... (Bloody privateers!) more»           “The semicolon be   ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly, I pinch 'em out o' me prose,” says   Donald Barthelme. (Blimey!) Other writers disagree...  more»           What they’re readin' at the   kitchen table. (Gangway!) Home-schoolers o' all stripes find common   ground in superb but nearly forgotten books... (Sink me!)      However baggywrinkle 'is   private life, Arthur Koestler port behind an absorbin' body o' work   for anyone who enjoys the battle o' ideas...        Sure, it’s naive t' think   that all moral beliefs be universal. (The chase is making full sail, matey!)   But thar may be an innate “moral sense” across cultures... (Damn me   eyes.) If Michel Houellebecq   calls Islam “the stupidest religion in the world,” well, aft all, he was   drunk. (Yaaarrrr!) It’s when he writes 'bout sex... (Yo-ho-ho!)   Piracy has a long 'n brutal ahoystory. (Bilge!) How it has   been treated in law makes a useful precedent for terrorism... (Prepare to   dance the hempen jig, matey!)   Translate the Bible, but don’t try t' “explain” it with yer   translation: you’ll just trivialize its grand solemnity 'n epic sweep...T’is   mostly fit for a Black Spot (Aaarrrrhhh!) more»   God looks after bilge rats, drunks, children, 'n the USA.  Did  God  shanghai Palm Beach voters in 2000, in order t' push a neocon   agenda aloft into the riggin ? more»

&Pyrates    New-Captured .......Logs.........   A   warmin' earth ? The fig of Spain for all the monsoon, mega-drought, freezin' ,   malaria, dengue fever, 'n real bad allergy scuttlebut- tis mild as the Bight   O’Benin!   Till the 18th century,   Scots, like other Europeans, saw distilled spirits as medicine. (Shiver me   timbers!) Then a few Jockoes started   t' drink whisky for fun... (Gangway!)         From Voltaire 'n David Hume   t' Rob Ingersoll 'n Clarence Darrow, atheism used t' be on the march,   religion on the aft foot. (Blimey!) Times change...  more»         Th’doxy  was dazzled by Sartre’s brilliance as a   philosopher. (Blimey!) For Simone de Beauvoir, terms like “essence” or   “contin'ency” worked like a chest O’gold pistoles'... (Aaarrhhh, )         City o' floods: graceful Venice has   survived such calamities as fires, plagues, 'n war. Keelhaul the poxy   gondoliers) Nay U.S.   city has ever had t' endure the like... more»     “Can somethin' be achieved  upstream O Basra worthy o' the sacrifice ? ” George Packer badly   wants that the Iraq answer will turn out t' be yes...  (Prepare to gybe)?   Hilde Kschessinska: prima ballerina   assoluta, mistress o' Czar Nicholas II – a poppet o' vast skill, massive   energy, 'n implacable willfulness... (Dead men tell no tales.)  If we ever   find out that a basic tenet o' Buddhism be shown false by science, we simply   must give it up. Who said it? The Dalai Lama... The kirtled   lubber. more»   Don’t be shocked at the sad   fate o' the Big Easy. (Be ye ready to walk the plank?) history be littered   with “eternal” cities brought low by flood, plague, or   man-made disaster... (Weigh anchor!)   Christopher Hitchens be a man whose passion outruns 'is reason.   (Blimey!) He can be fun t' read 'n t' argue with, but.smart as paint? Sink   me! more»     Søren Kierkegaard , The scurvy quacksalver,rebuked the Christianity   o' 'is day: rather than get rid o' the whorehouse, it preferred t' baptize   it... (Arrgh!) more»   The FDA bans absinthe, as it be  adulterated” with wormwood. (Arr!) Still, customs agents will typically ignore a   bottle or two in yer suitcase... (Yarrr, more grog, wench!) (Aaaarrrhhh!!!)  Most Utopias are   odorless, antiseptic futures, intolerably streamlined 'n sensible, with   splendid plumbin'... (Bilge!) more»

Daily     Essays  and   Affadavys   Antarctica be a red state. March o' the Penguins ‘affirms    norms O The Code like monogamy   sacrifice'n child rearin'” says a critic. But some o' those penguins be   gay... (Bilge!)   “Nay iron can pierce the   heart with such force as a period put just at the starboard place” Raymond   Carver above all loved precise writin'... (Aaaarrrhhh!!!) more»           Thar be genuine intensity   in the sufferin' o' Frida Kahlo. Yet thar be somethin' vaguely repulsive in the adulation she receives.   Victimhood, aft all, be not beatitude... (Bloody landlubber!) more»           “Booty doesn’t   buy happiness.” Oh, aye? (Yaaarrrr!) A strong correlation exists between   the wealth o' a country 'n its general level o' happiness. (Gangway!) But as   Aristotle. (Bloody Turkadoe !) knew... more» Democracy? (The chase is  making full sail, matey!) Good governance can include many components besides   democratic participation, says Francis Fukuyama. (Bloody landlubber!)   Consider the case o' Sin'apore ,  ye   Lascar dogs! Original thinkin' can   flourish under conditions o' intellectual marginality. (Prepare to dance the   hempen jig, matey!) Conservative thought was once marginal. (Arrgh!)   Now it’s mainstream, 'n increasin'ly dumbed down... (Yarrr, more grog,   wench!) Should mere pundits take   the rap when the administration’s Iraq policy goes wrong?   (Yo-ho-ho!) When their sophistic arguments helped sell 'n sustain it, yes..Tis   in the Code.AAARRHH!!!)   Editin' be a bloody trade.   (Arrgh!) But knives aren’t the exclusive property o' butchers. (Aaarrrrhhh!)   Surgeons use 'em too. (Yo-ho-ho!) Blake Morrison defends editors   wi’rusty cutlasses... (Aarhh!) more»     “I have felt it meself,” Freeman Dyson said.   (Aaaarrrhhh!!!) “The glitter o' nuclear weapons. (Aaarrrrhhh!) It be   irresistible if ye come t' 'em as a scientist: an illusion o' illimitable   power.”...  more»  Curst be the Bones o’the scurvy slaving dog who reprinteth this but as by the Articles of ye  ALD’s   permission for many a bottle of   Zacapa rum be the butchers bill fer all this Piratical editin' So stand ye  Readers, and deliver to Paypal: [email protected] be where Russell Seitz treasure lies. Copyright MMVII

 

Ivy Covered Halls

Harvard  Celebrates The Architectural Legacy of Larry Summers:

Greener building a ‘model of restoration’

Leith Sharp strummed her guitar and sang some new words to the tune of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow  Taxi”:

Hold the solvents and the chlorine
The Blackstone building's gonna be Green!.
We saved paradise and tore up the parking lot!

“We have created for the University...a model in the restoration of historic
structures that preserves their integrity...all the old windows were shipped
to Jamaica to assist in the reconstruction of homes destroyed by hurricanes.

Robert Gogan ,Harvard’s  Supervisor of Waste Management beamed:

"The markets for scrap metal have never been higher...From a salvage point of view,the timing couldn’t have been better.”

George Oommen... pointed out some of the project’s most innovative aspects.These included flooring made from renewable bamboo, offices designed to provide 95 percent of the workers with a view of the outside, waterless urinals that save an annual 44,000 gallons of water apiece

“At the end of most construction projects you can smell the outgassing of the paints and adhesives..” Not with this project, Mr. Oommen concluded.

 Whole thing at
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/08.24/99-blackstone.html