ADAMANT

If Nominated, You Will Be Served

Hat tip to The Cthulic League For Religious and Civil Rights Bill O'Donocthulhu prop.

  And Pharyngula -

Yellow Journalism's Scientific Compass

There is a certain novelty to trying to exorcise climate hype by denying the philosophical existence of climate science.

Citing a speech by a retired TV weatherman who could no more construct a climate model than a television camera , and the philosophical authority of one  "Thomas Eddington " ( the inventor of the supernova light bulb, perhaps --surely not the Sir Arthur who  astronomically confirmed  relativity) James Kerian, scion of the North Dakota potato, fruit and nut-sorting machine dynasty, and mechanical engineering graduate of Gonzaga University, has authored a Wall Street Journal online oped entitled "Yellow Science", equating global warming warnings with  the "Yellow Journalism " the Hearst papers used to spawn the Spanish American War. In it . Kerian baldly ,and bizarrely, asserts that no hard scientific evidence links human activity and climate change. None. Nada. Zip.

Sad as it is to see the venerable Journal  jaundiced by its editors failure to exercise the intellectual courage to expose this dweebery, the op-ed betrays a deeper malaise. The responsible member of the  WSJ editorial board, James Taranto, has made it a point of  anti-elitist honor to declare his disinclination "to delve deeply" into matters presented as scientific in his section, instead  censoring comments critical of the errors of fact it all too often features-- Taranto is  Opinion Journal's electronic gatekeeper  as well as its editor.

I last encountered him at a Harvard science journalism seminar, where he insisted the Opinion Journal section  was open to critical feedback , an assertion his subsequent actions and omissions has betrayed. Hoping to provide him a means of fact checking now that the WSJ has dispensed with its science editor, I went so far as to present him with a  hard copy of  Nature.

He'd never laid eyes on that journal before, and given the appearance of Kerian's piece,it appears he has not seen it since. As Nature's Science And Business section contains much of profound interest to readers of so otherwise astute a financial paper as The Wall Street Journal, it's odd the publishers should spare Taranto the inconvenience of contradiction by providing a link or two to such  scientific journals of record.

Though Taranto is free to ignore them, such links would provide readers with the option of refusing to think about science themselves, instead of having their unthinking done for them at Rupert Murdoch's expense. The WSJ  is after all a business , not a charitable foundation for Junk Science challenged purveyors of  prose from First Things--  the  journal  in which Keran's piecw debuted is long on dogma as it is short on scientific peer review. While Kerian seems never to have  published a science or  engineering paper,  his maiden publication bodes well for his career as a philosopher of science-- few Bob Jones or Maharishi University  graduates aspire to such metaphysical heights. Perhaps he should start a think tank with the other culture hero of the week, Doctor Tom Chalko

Elsewhere  in Never Never land, National Review is ballyhooing a submarine volcano  that erupted in the arctic in 1999,  inviting its readers to believe in  the event's connection to the retreat of polar ice in the years since. Never mind that the Mount Saint Helen's sized blowout failed  to punch a hole in the sea ice directly above it- the  two mile water column evidently providing ample quenching of the heat.

A cubic mile or more of incandescent lava may seem a lot , but there are millions of cubic miles of ice-water in the Arctic seas , and  one part per million of   incandescent rock  can only raise the temperature of the whole of it by -- do the arithmetic , it's not even math--  a  couple of milli-degrees C--  Bloody Freezing plus .002 C  still equals Bloody Freezing.

While the Dittohead blogs coo over the latest  factoid  delivered by  their scientific tooth fairy , the website of the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution features a lucid account of the  Gakkel Ridge eruptions' aftermath , as surveyed in 200, that underwater landscape:

"Appear to have been chemically transformed by hydrothermal venting. Sensors on their dredging lines also detected whispers of warmer water, chemicals, and particles that are present in plumes of vent fluids that billow out  ”

Since the murmurs of warmth are muffled by two thousand fathoms of ice water, Kerian and Taranto's  fairy tales might benefit from delving more deeply into The Princess and the Pea

Your Last Carbon Offset

Joseph Romm  complains in Climate Progress  that Roger Pielke 's recent Nature Commentary  on the limits of  climate intervention   is "pointless", "misleading" and "embarrassing"

"Since this paper doesn’t define the word “innovation,” it is very hard to tell what precisely the authors’ point is (other than to lead us into the technology trap). ..this is characteristic of Pielke’s work —he doesn’t define terms specifically enough to make policy-relevant conclusions.'  [emphasis in the original]

...all the regular readers of this blog know why the technology trap is dangerous (it leads to delay, which is fatal to the planet’s livability)...failing to stabilize well below, say, 700 parts per million of CO2 ppm is really, really, really suicidal ....So what is the point of the piece? To convince people the situation is hopeless? [Nature actually runs a side piece on the commentary titled, “Are the IPCC scenarios ‘unachievable’?  — and people call me an alarmist!]."

While Romm neglects to define  'fatal ' or ' suicidal' in his essay, it elicited a reader response some may find  alarming .

" it might take, not only media campaigns like Al Gore’s recently announced advertising platform, but also...some climate protesters ...might... set themselves on fire with gasoline in Washington or New York, in front of the UN building.... to say to the world community: “We must stop killing the Earth now !”

Such protest-suicides...have such visual power as to make people who are not convinced do a re-think...about... the USA still being in denial about climate change realities."
                                                              [ 'Dabby Bloom ' April 3rd, 2008 at 1:49 am]

The Shadow Of The Law

A Green hanging judge in  Santa Clara County California  has ordered the beheading of  two  redwood trees in  Richard Treanor and Carolyn Bissett's backyard.

Oblivious of their carbon footprint, the  scofflaw sequoias have been  casting shadows over neighbor Mark Vargas solar panels. Vargas complained to the district attorney, who charged the couple with violating the state's Solar Shade Control Act, passed by Governor Jerry Brown in 1978,  which  bans trees and shrubs that shade more than 10 percent of someone else's solar panels between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Lawyers skilled in chasing tree surgeon's ambulances  should note that Treanor and Bissett planto appeal the court decision.  Here's a link to a shot of the perps  in flagrente perumbro

There Goes The Walrus

DARPA has canned its plans for an aircraft carrier sized airship capable of carrying 500 tonnes halfway around the world in a week.

It seems the success of the Zeppelin that re-supplied German East Africa in 1917 was offset by the  historical average number of flights per zeppelin preceding their destruction  in military environments.

Estimates vary from three to seven.

Damn beancounters.

The Nobel Penmanship Prize

Awarding the Nobel is often a No Brainer

Science and politics collide  on PBS as often as in Stockholm. Liberals deplore DNA laureate James Watson's racial politics, while conservatives loathe Linus Pauling's second Nobel because of the Lenin peace prize that deservedly accompanied it.

You would scarcely guess from watching tonights American Experience episode  that a World War I Foreign Minister made a medical discovery that changed the world view of thousands  as profoundly as Al Gore's environmental consciousness raising. All PBS says is that in 1936, the episode's protagonist,  Dr. Walter "Freeman came across an obscure monograph by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz" More to the point, his work won  Portugal its first Nobel Prize

Like the Former Next President, António Egas Moniz  inherited a Senate seat, but his road to political fame led through medical rather than divinity school and journalis. Yet both realized their literary ambitions--Moniz' s History Of Playing Cards was as much a best seller in its time and place as An Inconvenient Truth . Both were accomplished statesmen too, but unlike Gore, Moniz was no scientific amateur. He stepped down as Foreign Minister to became Professor of Neurology in the University of Lisbon.

His use of x-rays to visualize arteries in the brain evolved into cerebral angiography, revolutionizing  the study of strokes, and  winning him the coveted Oslo Medical Prize, prefiguring  his medical Nobel just as Al's Oscar did his Peace Prize.

And just as Al embarked on a third  career as an investment banker, the  polymathic physician next  turned to the transmission of information within the brain.  At the Second World Congress of Neurology in London in 1935, listening to an account of a temperamental chimpanzee's tantrums subsiding with the flick of a scalpel within its simian skull, it occurred to  Ambassador Egas Moniz that he need not let his Nobel dreams ride on angiography.

Returning to the University Hospital he exercised his considerable prerogatives and had a human brain fetched from the morgue, to practiced thrusting his pen through its base until he figured out the best angle to detach bits of cortex from the whole. In so large a seaport as Lisbon, not a  year passed without some obstreperous whore making  her way from  bordello to bedlam. Moniz had the next such  brought to his operating theater, and plunged a leucotome into her brain at the same angle he had practiced with his trusty Montblanc. When she awoke placid, albeit unaware of her age or whereabouts, he pronounced the operation a clinical success.  signed her commitment papers, and never saw her again.

The operation's destruction of personality seemed monstrous to many, but there was no denying partial brain amputations emptied asylum cells around the world. Its popularity in calming political dissidents in Siberia  led some adventurous Third Reich practitioners to add to the surgical learning curve, and before long, clinics from Harley Street to Park Avenue had a new panacea to offer the fashionable parents of inconveniently mad children. So a decade and 100,000 operations later, the phone rang  in Lisbon, inviting the latest benefactor of mankind to dine with Sweden's King.

Drugs that calm psychosis have consigned Moniz operation to oblivion, but the suave diplomat's startling resemblance to Gomez Addams

assures the revival of his fame each Halloween, and the Nobel committee's subsequent  choices have tended to make his work seem less horrendous than it once did.  Many would sooner undergo his  procedure than endure some of the peaces that have won the  Peace Prize. Yet when it comes to accepting  the award, money talks. So far  only Viet  Nam's Le Duc Tho has declined to admit :
" I'd rather have a Nobel in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

 

 

Two More Reasons To Drink Rum

New, Post-Classic Caffeine Free Diet Crystal Dehydrated Coke may taste funny with polar bear jerky and penguin eggs , but  it's  guaranteed not to freeze before the rum does :

The Coca-Cola Company Pledges to Replace the Water It Uses In Its Beverages and Their Production", Video News Release, June 5, 2007.

meanwhile, polyphobe  and anti-cheroot acivist Mayor Bloomberg's comstockery of justice in the Big Apple has been upstaged by  his opposite number in Rangoon.

Reporting on mayor Brigadier General Aung Thein Linis crackdown on a vice too terrible to name   The Irrawaddy quotes the killjoy as saying:

“There will not be any improvement for the people as long as there are so many tea shops in the city, so we have stopped issuing licenses to open more.” 

To compensate for the loss of license revenue, Myanmar, as Burma calls itself, is raising TV satellite dish fees from $ 5 to $ 800 a year. The GDP  being 500 per capita,  Mandalay opium advertising men may have to take shorter tea breaks .

SynFuel To Thin Fuel

 Around The World On Eighty Whales

In the golden age of sail, overweight crew could be a treasure. "Sandbagging"  is an expression stemming from the yacht racing wheeze of illicitly shifting heavy ballast to make a handicapped boat go faster when the wind rose.  It was perfectly legal, however, to order all hands to sit on the windward rail, making 300 pound Bluto's handy in a pinch.  No longer.  Now one wannabe marine speedster is having liposuction-- but not to lighten ship.

Many a sailor has gotten tanked before, but Captain Pete Bethune is having his midriff squeezings refined into the human equivalent of whale oil to add to the fuel of his power trimaran. He aims  to kick its racing diet up a notch as he goes flat out for the biofuel Around The World marine speed record.

Alternative fuel delirium may rival America's Cup fever, but  when it comes to sportsmanship, turning marines into marine diesel just to win a blue ribbon is sailing pretty close to the wind-- especially since the race begins in Valencia.

Tis The Season

To indulge in random acts of intellectual  kindness

So let  me  offer  a  comforting  hypothesis to an orphan element left out in the cold by the atmospherically obsessed.  Could the  observation  that what goes around  comes around have a chemical sequel?

None dare equate the  lavish expansion of the Montreal Protocol with bureaucratic turf building, but the Canadian cowboys have been  corralling bromine atoms with comic zeal, slapping a ban on Halon aircraft fire extinguishers even as TSA was declaring  lobsters and toothpaste too flammable to fly on commercial flights. Yet few ask,as the regulatory web expands itself, what on Earth has become of all the bromine taken out of circulation?

It's an element  whose neurological effects are manifestly  paradoxical. Once valued for its sedative power in Tory circles -- Evelyn Waugh was a celebrated addict  of Bromo Seltzer and worse, the smelly halogen  became an object of high liberal anxiety once ozone became a cause. But lately, it has gone under  the cultural radar.

Where ever has it gone, in an age when  each sea worn shard of  blue Bromo Seltzer glass is treasured like an uncultured pearl of orient, and loaded halon fire extinguishers are passed down as heirlooms from one generation of yacht owner to the next?  Even ethyl bromide is gone, superannuated as its namesake  leaded gasoline, and no more a source of political controversy than the addition of fluorine to our vital bodily fluids, or the abstraction of boric acid and apricot pit elixirs from our medicine chests.

With so many elements gone, and Premo Levi out of print, what will restore the polemic balance of nature to its  vigorous Space Age  state, when you could  start a bar fight by chucking a dart at any square on the Periodic Chart?

The answer is in the air. As conservative radio subsides into the winter doldrums, and  editorial pages prepare to turn a new leaf leftward for the election year, the pouring forth of liberal bromides is on the rise like maple sap in February. Before long Hillary Clinton will sound as much like Elanor Roosevelt as Bill Moyers does already.

It is just as well. The first four years of any democratic administration are something best slept through, and with the bromide concentration of the airwaves ascending like a lullaby, the nation should  snooze soundly through the first few hundred fireside chats. People in Iowa and New Hampshire are already nodding.

We Aim For The Stars

But this time we hit 16,000 Pounds in London

Wernher von Braun's 1934 doctoral thesis,

Design, Theoretical and Experimental Contributions to the Problem of the Liquid-Fuel Rocket

classified Top Secret by the Nazi's, has been auctioned by Bonham's

No, the buyer was not from Iran.

Lastest With The Fastest

Janes   reports that the US Navy's fastest ship may be the last of its kind:

Cost hikes sink second LCS trimaran

The US Navy has admitted a share of the blame for the cost overruns that forced it to cancel General Dynamics' second Littoral Combat Ship prototype (LCS 4). Plans for the aluminium-hulled trimaran were torn up after the two sides failed to renegotiate contract terms to address rising design costs on the company's first ship, Independence (LCS 2)

 

This Is Your Brain On Knots

.The Neuromacramancy of   Karen Norberg
Explains the knitted brow of Nature attempting to follow art

 

For Your Popeyes Only

There was an audible thunk as four sentries secured the cell-phone proof Faraday doors of the DAPRA briefing bubble.

The first Top Secret slide to light the un-photographable overhead screen bore the agency's logo, itself highly classified, of The Agronauts' mighty ship running down the foundering  cockleshell of the hapless JASON's.

  Below it was the meeting's topic:
War On Terror Budget Earmarks FY 2007

As the Director Of the Defense  Agricultural Price Reflation Agency  took the podium , he directed his best smile at the knot  of  Army  shoulder board stars in the sea of  Navy  blue,  Space Command aubergine and white lab coats that otherwise filled the room.

"Gentlemen, Lady, we face a daunting task, and have but little time. Yet we do have some earmarked funds and the highest authorization to spend them. Even by  the standards of our colleagues at the  Defense Advanced Pork Recycling Agency , four hundred and eighty two million dollars ain't hay, and to earn our keep and keep the troops alive all we have to do is figure out how it can send terror packing by advancing the development of four strategic materials. The first, of course is milk solids.

As you know, casein is pretty tough stuff, and after just 31years, our HCI brethren at the Proving Ground have steadily moved the Strategic Hard Cheese Initiative towards its goal of an IED-proof MRE based on domestic Iraqi feta.  That's point one."

He beamed at the spectacularly uniformed   Deputy Veterinary Surgeon General, and waved an eye searing green laser pointer around the bullet on the screen for emphasis:
•   $283 million for Milk Income Loss program

"I'll bet few of you academics knew that when you combine the mandarin characters for 'Oral Examination' and ' Danger' they mean "Citrus Canker", but having testified on the subject on the Hill, I can tell you that the Senate Select Agricultural Subsidy Subcommittee is floored by our ballistic Bio Mimesis  work on toughening orange peels into biodegradable tank armor that doesn't smell like Tang."
•          $100 million for Citrus Assistance
Now you Sandia pukes have been outstanding, mutating soy beans means higher biofuel octane for the M1A3/4MBT Main Bradley Tow system, and compressing macadamia nuts to thermonuclear densities raises hopes of the DOE Green Fusion plan beating the Iranians to pistachio ignition. But now it's time to turn to defeating heavy artillery --and taking a bite out of:
•        $74 million for Peanut Storage costs

Just figure out how to compress the damn things to the density of chunky depleted uranium, and by God, we'll spread the stuff inside every Bremer Wall in Mesopotamia. That'll be the end of truckbombs and warehousing over-runs for once and for all. And don't forget the Navy. You  sailors now  have Compartmentalized Vegetable Intelligence clearance, so I can tell you those MSM cartoons of Hummers using  MRE's as applique body armor were just planted cover. The most strategic materials are human, and a real black side breakout  has come from the funding  that gave us  this--"

  A side-armed  MP passed a hard case to the Director, and a second later, the  shadow of a can trembled on the screen beneath :
•        $25 million for Spinach Growers

"While you've been taking the media flack, our DAPRA plantation hands have been working away at the recombinant  DNA of this nasty vegetable. They have it expressing enough steroids to scare the golf shoes off the  quartermaster corps., and today I'd like you to meet the first Future Seal to benefit from this joint armed services -USDA effort. You'll have to forgive him for being out of uniform, but frankly we couldn't find a Mil Spec digital camo blouse he could get on. Come on up here son--"

The newly breveted Master Chief smiled shyly and shifted the unlit corncob pipe from between his somewhat asymmetrical, but manly jaws into the fist at the end of his forty four inch right forearm.

“ Aw, Sir, yer recombinant spinnick had  nuttin to do wit  it. I just am what I yam.  And that's all what  I yam.  Now what's all this about Al Kaders, the swabs?  I'll gives em yer money’s worth ! "

Prohibition Lite

This Caffeine Free Dehydrated Diet Crystal Coke's For You!

Hard on the heels of studies indicating  tobacco use delays the onset of Alzheimer's Disease , comes a stunning demonstration in the New York Times that a deficiency of the miracle drug nicotine can manifest itself as Dementia  Praecox:

"A two-cigarette strategy would prohibit young smokers from buying addictive cigarettes. The tobacco industry is capable of producing cigarettes that are virtually free of nicotine, and regulators could develop clear standards for non-addictive cigarettes. (Disclosure: My law firm represents tobacco companies, but I have recused myself from that work.)

The age to purchase addictive cigarettes might be set at 21. Better yet, sales of addictive cigarettes could be restricted to individuals born 19 or more years before the two-cigarette strategy was put into effect. Under this approach, 18-year-olds who start smoking non-addictive cigarettes would be prohibited from switching to addictive cigarettes even after they turned 21.  a higher federal excise tax...would create a financial incentive for smokers of all ages, including scofflaw adolescents, to select non-addictive cigarettes."

...David G. Adams, a lawyer, was the director of the policy staff at the Food and Drug Administration from 1992 to 1994."

Mr.Adams prodigious legal talent is utterly wasted on the The New York Times Op-ed page

He should return to the Washington, where his proactive view of torture and bills of attainder can be put to current White House use . Since the wife of his previous chief executive purloined all the ash trays in the Oval Office,  his place on her transition team seems assured.

Wontons Of Mass Distraction

Fears of chemical attack by Islamic militants led  to evacuation of parts of  London yesterday.

Police closed off three roads and evacuated Soho homes as a mysterious cloud of acrid smoke hovered over the district for three hours and the Hazardous Area Response Team Unit swept the deserted streets seeking its source.

After test kits showed no sign of polonium. plutonium, VX  Sarin,or mustard gas , HART firefighters wearing specialist breathing apparatus broke down the door of a building suspected to contain the terrorist device and confronting staff and management of the Thai Cottage restaurant, identified the terrifying chemical agent as capaiscin. They emerged carrying a huge cooking pot containing about 9lb of smouldering dried  chillies.

Chef Chalemchai Tangjariyapoon said he was preparing Nam Prik Pao, a red-hot Thai dip for fried prawn crackers:

" With extra-hot chillies that are deliberately burnt... I can understand why people who weren't Thai would not know what it was. But it doesn't smell like chemicals.    I am a bit confused. "

Die By Wire

American forces can hold their own when Iraqi insurgents try to play countermeasures games with remote controlled IED's, a confrontation in which I've tried to help our troops get their hands on the right stuff.

But now  Wired Danger Room Editor and tech journalist Noah Schachtman  reports from Iraq that Shia bomb-smiths have upped the ante on warhead size and gone so far down the low tech scale as to defy electronic defense- they are cladding  cement mixers with  heavy copper plates to create  humongous ( up to a ton ) die-by-wire shaped charges  detonated by almost invisibly skinny copper wires or optical fibers leading to a semi-kamekaze operative in a spider hole up to a half mile from the road.

For Two Cents Plain

'With a deeply self-satisfied howl of execration' P.J.ORourke reports the  U.S. Mint  now spends

"--almost 2 cents' to strike each " little brown item of pocket clutter...

The problem is the cost of zinc, which is what a "copper" is actually made of. For the past 25 years a penny-weight of copper has been worth considerably more than a penny. And...That would violate all of the economic thinking that has been done since the days of John Maynard Keynes... the U.S. Mint began making pennies out of less expensive zinc with a thin plating of copper for the sake of tradition and to keep Lincoln from looking like he'd been stamped out of a galvanized hog trough.

What's The Weekly Standard 's problem with galvanized hog troughs ?  Even as patriotic hogs went off to Spam for Uncle Sam in World War II, the U.S. Mint spared hundreds of tons of copper to fire off at the Axis, by stamping  hog troughs and other ferrous scrapple into a hundred million galvanized effigies of Honest Abe.

It's The Stupidity , Stupid

In a rare, but not unprecedented, sign of intelligent life at The Weekly Standard , Dean Barnett asks why there is "no such thing as a Conservative Daily Kos?" Here, for wannabe members of Barnett's Nomenchatkura  is  his answer to the Leninoid question of what is to be done--, in the form of the organizational structure of the  Victory Caucus  , Board of Governors:

Dean Barnett
Austin Bay
Matthew Currier Burden
Frank Gaffney
Hugh Hewitt
Ed Morrissey

read the whole thing at the Reason website

FULL DISCLOSURE
The Weekly Standard Editor's first pick for a Presidential candidate  was Hubert Humphrey.

BEAR MARKETING

Almost anything can be popularized.   Provide enough versions of the same story and every sector of the public will find one that ignites the imagination or stirs its collective heart. All such a matrix of universal publicity needs  is elements enough to span all ages , and to appeal to all horizons of education and intelligence. As with any  pyramid , a broad base assures long standing success. Bear this in mind as Rachel Carson's centennial proceeds, and the odometer of the environmental publicity machine rolls up another decade.

Environmental advertising began to feed on itself a long time ago--  identifying good products with good causes is one of Madison Avenue's best ideas . But in the annals of intellectual dishonesty, few deeds are more reprehensible than substituting advertising icons for ideas. This is exactly what we are seeing on Green TV today . It goes beyond recruiting trusted voices , like Alda, Brokaw and Cronkite. No species is safe from co-option. Consider the bear. For over 100 years , it has been hard to argue with a bear. We all grew up trusting Teddy, and Smoky embodies  the nation's earliest collective memory of environmental responsibility. 

Things have never gone better for ursine advertising. Like a laser beam building strength between two perfect mirrors, the polar bear meme blazes white across the media landscape, selling  toilet paper , Coca-cola and carbon credits alike, escalating Berlin zoo attendance and selling books for Al Gore with equal ease.  Unbaitable and unbeatable, warm and furry , yet imposing , bears have been the  screen's commanding icon of paternal authority since the first Goldilocks cartoon. Advancing from hirstute strength to strength from Grizzly Adams to Davy Crockett, no wonder they have anthromorped into   World Wildlife Fund men in Panda suits.

The creatures appeal to all sensibilities. Even their hobbies are fashionable - men and bears concur that there is no finer pastime than salmon fishing. What more could one demand of an icon of wilderness and environmental preservation ?

Table manners and genetic stability for a start . Bears are magnificently omnivorous and utterly opportunistic, rivaling rats in their willingness to invade the suburbs to mooch a meal. Only dogs exceed their ease and speed in shifting form over relatively few generations to adopt to changing climes - polar bears are to grizzlies as Samoyeds are to Labs--other colors, flavors and models are available pretty much on demand.

Forget climate change. The only way to stamp out polar bears would be to extirpate the ursine gene pool whence they arise whenever an Ice Age ( six in more or less human memory )creates new ecological niches for northern bears to morph into.  One day, they may follow wolves into domestic captivity . The autonomy that still kills an occasional New Yorker is subject to extreme selection pressure in the Darwinian wilds of bear-infested New Jersey , where other phenotypes compete in seeking respect and dominance of the Large Fierce Animal gene pool.

Put Out More Moths

The directors of the Natural History Museum in London are under fire after tearing down a wing housing  28 million moths and other insect specimens, because the new Darwin Centre can only  accommodate half the collection. The old Entomology  Building  was demolished because the reek of its  moth ball saturated  timbers inspired cancer fears in some visitors.

The Darwin Awards : The Runners Up

NUMBER 3

The great metropolitan newspaper of the armpit of the Caribbean ,The Belize Reporter  brings belated word of the demise of Ben Franklin's alter ego , journeyman Electrician Ben Kennon.

Seeking to emulate his namesake's great achievement with kite and key, but finding string in short supply, Mr. Kennon showed great initiative in substituting copper wire from his master's stock in trade. He alas connected to one of Belize's overhead 140,000 volt high-tension lines before he could maneuver his apparatus into a thunderstorm.

He is survived by a loving family, and many relieved construction executives, who had actively considered using his services.

Get A Lode Of This

Not every Comstock Lode  has a silver lining.The original bonanza  led to the glory days of Silver City Nevada and a cascade of new dollars from the Carson City mint . But even as the outpouring of metallic wealth revivified America's post-Civil War economy, another Comstock was campaigning for a darker sort of Fame.  Anthony Comstock epitomized  the definition of a puritan as someone who fears that someone, somewhere . might be happy , and accordingly  moves to outlaw the cause

Comstock's campaign bore fruit in 1873 , as Congress passed laws bearing his name  outlawing  " every obscene, lewd, or lascivious, and every filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character, and every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion."

  In a regulatory frenzy, they authorized the U.S. Post Office to confiscate any writing  providing advice on contraception , condoms shipped through the mail and whatever else a postmaster might find suspect. It was till OK to post and publish matter arguing for racial purity ,or advocating the foced sterilization of the 'unfit' and  the first eugenics law was duly  passed in Indiana in 1907 . Others followed , dictating  forced sterilization  in 30 states, a fate that befell 66,000  between  the  U.S. Supreme Court upholding the practice  in  Buck v. Bell in 1927 and overthrowing it in the  1960s. we often forget that  the U.S. Supreme Court only stepped in to overrule state interference in the reproductive decisions of Americans a single generation ago.  So much for "The End of History." 

Now it transpires that  that famous  essay's  author, Francis Fukuyama , wants  the history of comstockery repeated on the high tech front. In the current issue of Reason, Ronald Bailey, whose journalistic metier is the life sciences reports  "Fukuyama would completely ban human reproductive cloning, the creation of human animal chimeras for the purpose of reproduction, germline genetic modifications, any procedure that would alter the genetic relationship of parents to children, and the patenting of human embryos.The new agency would regulate research cloning, PGD, sex selection of embryos, and the commercialization of certain elements of human reproduction such as the sale of eggs, sperm and embryos. It would consist of a set of commissioners, appointed by the president and advised by a board consisting of various stakeholder groups such as patients, ART practitioners, scientific community and the biotech industry. Fukuyama also introduced a novel set of mechanisms for consulting with the wider public including deliberative panels and a consultative college of consisting of randomly selected members of the public ."

Read more of what Bailey has to say about the  regulatory ( and metaphysical )  fantasies of Neo-Hegelians Gone Wild on the Reason website http://www.reason.com/news/show/119060.html

In Space, No One Can Hear Your Pepper Spray

Captain Lisa Nowak, USN , reports The Orlando Sentinel , has been arraigned for the attempted murder of  fellow astronaut and romantic rival  Captain Colleen Shipman USAF. The New York Times says the 1985 Annapolis graduate" drove 900 miles to Florida from Texas, wearing a diaper so she would not have to stop for rest breaks...wearing a wig. She had with her a compressed air pistol, a steel mallet, a knife, pepper spray, four feet of rubber tubing, latex gloves and garbage bags."

Captain Nowak, 43, " arrested at 4 a.m. Monday at Orlando International Airport...said the compressed air pistol she carried “ was going to be used to entice Ms. Shipman to talk with her.” Asked if she thought the pepper spray was going to help her speak with Captain Shipman, Captain Nowak replied, "That was stupid.”

The astronaut " was fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet so her movements could be monitored after her " suborbital return to the NASA Houston Space Center.

N.B.: The Company will automatically delete any comments involving green eyed monsters or the use of arsenic pentafluoride sprayguns in pest control in deep space.

The widening Gulf

 

Reason’s Ron Bailey rejoices that, surprise, more oil to be found drilling deeper  and venturing further out to sea  from the Gulf coast :

‘Peak Oil Delayed Again? Three oil companies announced a significant find of a large new oil field (between 3 and 15 billion barrels) in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday. This is exactly the kind of discovery and technological tour de force that the US Geological Survey's 2000 World Oil and Gas Assessement suggested will delay any global peak in oil production until at least after 2030. To wit:

-- As drilling and production within discovered fields progresses, new pools or reservoirs are found that were not previously known.
-- Advances in exploration technology make it possible to identify new targets within existing fields.
-- Advances in drilling technology make it possible to recover oil, and gas not previously considered recoverable in the initial reserve estimates.-- Enhanced oil recovery techniques increase the recovery factor for oil and thereby increase the reserves within existing fields. Of course, political factors (say, instability or orneriness in Iran and Venezuela) could cause a temporary oil crisis tomorrow.”

Left unsaid  by Ron is that in the USGS report, you will learn that 'recoverable resources' are economically defined--whenever prices rise, reserves of economically unrecoverable oil- which is what this deep field was at  $20 a barrel, automatically rise . And when prices fall- below about $ 50 a barrel in this case, reserves evaporate back into the mirage of unending competitive supply .

Recent months have seen crude prices per gallon higher that the per barrel price when Ron was born,but  posterity may not rejoice at the excellent prospect of perpetual reserve inflation, nor see much oil flowing downhill to consumers from the imaginary extension of Hubbert's peak into the economic stratosphere.   When the price of peanut oil looks like peanuts ,  peanut oil will be pursued. Alas, you cannot drill for new peanut acreage , but synthetic crude is another matter.

Oil is what you make of it.