From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Aug 1 12:05:12 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 05:05:12 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Creating a Sustainable Economy and Future on Our Planet Message-ID: <01C59656.99A09900.shovland@mindspring.com> New book by Jim Bell, who appeared on Coast to Coast last night. Free PDF download. http://www.jimbell.com/Book2/Book2.pdf Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pdf Size: 2164049 bytes Desc: not available URL: From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 1 16:58:38 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 12:58:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: Trends in Thoughts of Suicide in the US Message-ID: Public Health: Trends in Thoughts of Suicide in the US http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050805-4.htm The following points are made by R.C. Kessler et al (J. Am. Med. Assoc. 2005 293:2487): 1) Suicide is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. As a result, the World Health Organization[1] and the US surgeon general[2] have highlighted the need for more comprehensive data on the occurrence of suicidal thoughts and attempts, according to the assumption that such data would be useful for planning national health care policy, as well as for evaluating efforts to reduce suicide and suicide-related behaviors. The latter are among the official national health objectives in the United States.[3] The assumption that information on suicide-related behaviors, including thoughts, plans, gestures, and nonfatal attempts, is important for understanding completed suicides can be called into question because only a small fraction of suicide attempters eventually complete suicide.[4] However, suicide attempts are significant predictors of subsequent completed suicide, as well as important in their own right as indicators of extreme psychological distress. 2) Little is known about trends in suicidal ideation, plans, gestures, or attempts or about their treatment. Such data are needed to guide and evaluate policies to reduce suicide-related behaviors. The objective of this study was to analyze nationally representative trend data on suicidal ideation, plans, gestures, attempts, and their treatment. Data came from the 1990-1992 National Comorbidity Survey and the 2001-2003 National Comorbidity Survey Replication. These surveys asked identical questions to 9708 people aged 18 to 54 years about the past year's occurrence of suicidal ideation, plans, gestures, attempts, and treatment. Trends were evaluated by using pooled logistic regression analysis. Face-to-face interviews were administered in the homes of respondents, who were nationally representative samples of US English-speaking residents. 3) Results of the study: No significant changes occurred between 1990-1992 and 2001-2003 in suicidal ideation, plans, gestures, or attempts, whereas conditional prevalence of plans among ideators increased significantly, and conditional prevalence of gestures among planners decreased significantly. Treatment increased dramatically among ideators who made a suicidal gesture and among ideators who made an attempt. 4) The authors conclude: Despite a dramatic increase in treatment, no significant decrease occurred in suicidal thoughts, plans, gestures, or attempts in the United States during the 1990s. Continued efforts are needed to increase outreach to untreated individuals with suicidal ideation before the occurrence of attempts and to improve treatment effectiveness for such cases.[5] References (abridged): 1. World Health Organization. Prevention of Suicide: Guidelines for the Formulation and Implementation of National Strategies. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 1996 2. The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Prevent Suicide. Washington, DC: US Public Health Service; 1999 3. US Department of Health and Human Services. Healthy People 2010, 2nd ed: With Understanding and Improving Health and Objectives for Improving Health. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office; 2000 4. Kuo WH, Gallo JJ. Completed suicide after a suicide attempt. Am J Psychiatry. 2005;162:633 5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site]. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/default.htm. Accessed March 21, 2005 J. Am. Med. Assoc. http://www.jama.com -------------------------------- Related Material: PUBLIC HEALTH: ON SCHOOL-ASSOCIATED STUDENT SUICIDES The following points are made by J. Kaufman et al (Morb. Mort. Wkly. Rep. 2004;53:476): 1) During 1994-1999, at least 126 students carried out a homicide or suicide that was associated with a private or public school in the United States.(1) Although previous research has described students who commit school-associated homicides, little is known about student victims of suicide. To describe the psychosocial and behavioral characteristics of school-associated suicide victims, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed data from school and police officials. The results of that analysis indicated that among the 126 students who carried out school-associated homicides or suicides, 28 (22%) died by suicide, including eight who intentionally injured someone else immediately before killing themselves. Two (7%) of the suicide victims were reported for fighting and four (14%) for disobedient behavior in the year preceding their deaths; none were associated with a gang. However, potential indicators of suicide risk such as expressions of suicidal thoughts, recent social stressors, and substance abuse were common among the victims. The authors suggest these findings underscore the need for school staff to learn to recognize and respond to chronic and situational risk factors for suicide. 2) The need for safe schools has prompted considerable interest in understanding and preventing all types of lethal school-associated violence. The finding that 22% of students who carried out such violence took their own lives indicates that a sizeable proportion of lethal school-associated violence was self-directed. In addition, the finding that approximately one in four suicide victims injured or killed someone else immediately before their suicide suggests an overlap between risk for committing school-associated homicide and risk for suicide. Efforts to prevent incidents of lethal school-associated violence should address youth suicidal ideation and behavior. 3) Suicide-prevention efforts are needed not only to address the risk for school-associated violence, but also to reduce the much larger problem of self-directed violence among adolescents overall. In 2001, suicide was the third leading cause of death in the United States among youths aged 13-18 years, accounting for 11% of deaths in this age group.(2) In 2003, approximately one in 12 high school students in the US reported attempting suicide during the preceding 12 months.(3) Data from Oregon indicate that approximately 5% of adolescents treated in hospitals for injuries from a suicide attempt made that attempt at school.(4) 4) The finding that the majority of students who were school-associated suicide victims were involved in extracurricular activities suggests that these students could be familiar to school staff who might recognize warning signs. Although these students were unlikely to stand out (e.g., by fighting or involvement in gangs) in the manner of those who commit school-associated homicides,(1) other established risk factors for suicidal behavior were common (e.g., expression of suicidal thoughts, recent household move, and romantic breakup). These findings support the need for school-based efforts to identify and assist students who describe suicidal thoughts or have difficulty coping with social stressors. School-based prevention efforts are likely to benefit from school officials working closely with community mental health professionals to enhance the abilities of school counselors, teachers, nurses, and administrators to recognize and respond to risk factors for suicide. 5) The findings that one in four of the school-associated suicides were preceded by a recent romantic breakup and nearly one in five suicide victims were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of their deaths underscore the potential importance of situational risk factors. Youth suicidal behavior often is an impulsive response to circumstances rather than a wish to die. Efforts to help students cope with stressors and avoid substance abuse are important elements of suicide-prevention strategies.(5) References (abridged): 1. Anderson M, Kaufman J, Simon TR, et al. School-associated violent deaths in the United States, 1994-1999. JAMA. 2001;286:2695-702 2. CDC. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARSTM). Atlanta, Georgia: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2004. 3. CDC. Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance--United States, 2003. In: CDC Surveillance Summaries (May 21). MMWR. 2004;53(No. SS-2) 4. CDC. Fatal and nonfatal suicide attempts among adolescents--Oregon, 1988-1993. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1995;44:312-315, 321-323 5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. School health guidelines to prevent unintentional injury and violence. MMWR Recomm Rep. 2001;50(RR-22):1-73 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov -------------------------------- Related Material: PUBLIC HEALTH: METHODS OF SUICIDE AMONG ADOLESCENTS The following points are made by Centers for Disease Control (MMWR 2004 53:471): 1) In 2001, suicide was the third leading cause of death among persons aged 10-19 years.(1) The most common method of suicide in this age group was by firearm (49%), followed by suffocation (mostly hanging) (38%) and poisoning (7%).(1) During 1992-2001, although the overall suicide rate among persons aged 10-19 years declined from 6.2 to 4.6 per 100,000 population,(1) methods of suicide changed substantially. To characterize trends in suicide methods among persons in this age group, CDC analyzed data for persons living in the US during 1992-2001. 2) The results of that analysis indicated a substantial decline in suicides by firearm and an increase in suicides by suffocation in persons aged 10-14 and 15-19 years. Beginning in 1997, among persons aged 10-14 years, suffocation surpassed firearms as the most common suicide method. The decline in firearm suicides combined with the increase in suicides by suffocation suggests that changes have occurred in suicidal behavior among youths during the preceding decade. Public health officials should develop intervention strategies that address the challenges posed by these changes, including programs that integrate monitoring systems, etiologic research, and comprehensive prevention activities. 3) Among persons aged 10-14 years, the rate of firearm suicide decreased from 0.9 per 100,000 population in 1992 to 0.4 in 2001, whereas the rate of suffocation suicide increased from 0.5 in 1992 to 0.8 in 2001. Rate regression analyses indicated that, during the study period, firearm suicide rates decreased an average of approximately 8.8% annually, and suffocation suicide rates increased approximately 5.1% annually. Among persons aged 15-19 years, the firearm suicide rate declined from 7.3 in 1992 to 4.1 in 2001; the suffocation suicide rate increased from 1.9 to 2.7. Rate regression analyses indicated that, during the study period, the average annual decrease in firearm suicide rates for this age group was approximately 6.8%, and the average annual increase in suffocation suicide rates was approximately 3.7%. Poisoning suicide rates also decreased in both age groups, at an average annual rate of 13.4% among persons aged 10-14 years and 8.0% among persons aged 15-19 years. Because of the small number of suicides by poisoning, these decreases have had minimal impact on changes in the overall profile of suicide methods of youths. 4) Among persons aged 10-14 years, suffocation suicides began occurring with increasing frequency relative to firearm suicides in the early- to mid-1990s, eclipsing firearm suicides by the late 1990s. In 2001, a total of 1.8 suffocation suicides occurred for every firearm suicide among youths aged 10-14 years. Among youths aged 15-19 years, an increase in the frequency of suffocation suicides relative to firearm suicides began in the mid-1990s; however, in 2001, firearms remained the most common method of suicide in this age group, with a ratio of 0.7 suffocation suicides for every firearm suicide. 5) The findings in this report indicate that the overall suicide rate for persons aged 10-19 years in the US declined during 1992-2001 and that substantial changes occurred in the types of suicide methods used among those persons aged 10-14 and 15-19 years. Rates of suicide using firearms and poisoning decreased, whereas suicides by suffocation increased. By the end of the period, suffocation had surpassed firearms to become the most common method of suicide death among persons aged 10-14 years. 6) The reasons for the changes in suicide methods are not fully understood. Increases in suffocation suicides and concomitant decreases in firearm suicides suggest that persons aged 10-19 years are choosing different kinds of suicide methods than in the past. Data regarding how persons choose among various methods of suicide suggest that some persons without ready access to highly lethal methods might choose not to engage in a suicidal act or, if they do engage in suicidal behavior, are more likely to survive their injuries.(4) However, certain subsets of suicidal persons might substitute other methods.(5) Substitution of methods depends on both the availability of alternatives and their acceptability. Because the means for suffocation (e.g., hanging) are widely available, the escalating use of suffocation as a method of suicide among persons aged 10-19 years implies that the acceptability of suicide by suffocation has increased substantially in this age group. References (abridged): 1. CDC. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARSTM). Atlanta, Georgia: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2004. 2. National Center for Health Statistics. Multiple cause-of-death public-use data files, 1992 through 2001. Hyattsville, Maryland: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, 2003 3. Anderson RN, Minino AM, Fingerhut LA, Warner M, Heinen MA. Deaths: injuries, 2001. Natl Vital Stat Rep. 2004;52:1-5 4. Cook PJ. The technology of personal violence. In: Tonry M, ed. Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, vol. 14. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1991:1-71 5. Gunnell D, Nowers M. Suicide by jumping. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. 1997;96:1-6 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention http://www.cdc.gov From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 1 16:58:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 12:58:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: Physicians and Military Interrogators Message-ID: Science Policy: Physicians and Military Interrogators http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050805-5.htm The following points are made by M.G. Bloche and J.H. Marks (New Engl. J. Med. 2005 353:6): 1) Mounting evidence from many sources, including Pentagon documents, indicates that military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay have used aggressive counter-resistance measures in systematic fashion to pressure detainees to cooperate. These measures have reportedly included sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, painful body positions, feigned suffocation, and beatings. Other stress-inducing tactics have allegedly included sexual provocation and displays of contempt for Islamic symbols.[1] The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and others charge that such tactics constitute cruel and inhuman treatment, even torture. 2) To what extent did interrogators draw on detainees' health information in designing and pursuing such approaches? The Pentagon has persistently denied this practice. After the ICRC charged last year that interrogators tapped clinical data to craft interrogation strategies, Defense Department officials issued a statement denying "the allegation that detainee medical files were used to harm detainees."[2] This spring, an inquiry led by Vice Admiral Albert T. Church, the inspector general of the U.S. Navy, concluded: "While access to medical information was carefully controlled at GTMO [Guantanamo Bay], we found in Afghanistan and Iraq that interrogators sometimes had easy access to such information."[3] The implication is that interrogators had no such access at Guantanamo and that medical confidentiality was shielded, albeit with exceptions. Other Pentagon officials have reinforced this message. In a memo made public last month, announcing "Principles . . . for the Protection and Treatment of Detainees," William Winkenwerder, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, said that limits on detainees' medical privacy are "analogous to legal standards applicable to U.S. citizens." 3) However, the inquiry of the authors has determined that this claim is sharply at odds with orders given to military medical personnel -- and with actual practice at Guantanamo. Health information has been routinely available to behavioral science consultants and others who are responsible for crafting and carrying out interrogation strategies. Through early 2003 (and possibly later), interrogators themselves had access to medical records. And since late 2002, psychiatrists and psychologists have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress, combined with behavior-shaping rewards, to extract actionable intelligence from resistant captives. 4) A previously unreported U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom) policy statement, in effect since August 6, 2002, instructs health care providers that communications from "enemy persons under U.S. control" at Guantanamo "are not confidential and are not subject to the assertion of privileges" by detainees. The statement, from SouthCom's chief of staff, also instructs medical personnel to "convey any information concerning . . . the accomplishment of a military or national security mission . . . obtained from detainees in the course of treatment to non-medical military or other United States personnel who have an apparent need to know the information. Such information," it adds, "shall be communicated to other United States personnel with an apparent need to know, whether the exchange of information with the non-medical person is initiated by the provider or by the non-medical person." The only limit this policy imposes on caregivers' role in intelligence gathering is that they cannot act as interrogators.[4,5] References: 1. Break them down: systematic use of psychological torture by U.S. forces. Cambridge, Mass.: Physicians for Human Rights, 2005 2. Lewis NA. Red Cross finds detainees abuse at Guantanamo. New York Times. November 30, 2004:A1 3. Church report: unclassified executive summary. (Accessed June 16, 2005, at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2005/d20050310exe.pdf.) 4. Huck RA. U.S. Southern Command confidentiality policy for interactions between health care providers and enemy persons under U.S. control, detained in conjunction with Operation Enduring Freedom. August 6, 2002 (memorandum). (Accessed June 16, 2005, at http://www.southcom.mil/restrict/J1/new%20web%20page/New%20Web %20Pages/AG/Policy/Current%20SC%20Policies/SC%20Current_pols.htm.) 5. Department of the Army. Field manual 34-52: intelligence interrogation. 1992. (Accessed June 21, 2005, at https://atiam.train.army.mil/soldierPortal/atia/adlsc/view/public/6999 -1/FM/34-52/FM34_52.PDF.) New Engl. J. Med. http://www.nejm.org -------------------------------- Related Material: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: ON ORDINARY PEOPLE AS TORTURERS The following points are made by S.T. Fiske et al (Science 2004 306:1482): 1) Initial reactions to the events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were shock and disgust. How could Americans be doing this to anyone, even to Iraqi prisoners of war? Some observers immediately blamed "the few bad apples" presumably responsible for the abuse. However, many social psychologists knew that it was not that simple. Society holds individuals responsible for their actions, as the military court-martial recognizes, but social psychology suggests we should also hold responsible peers and superiors who control the social context. 2) Social psychological evidence emphasizes the power of social context; in other words, the power of the interpersonal situation. Social psychology has accumulated a century of knowledge about how people influence each other for good or ill [1]. Meta-analysis, the quantitative summary of findings across a variety of studies, reveals the size and consistency of such empirical results. Recent meta-analyses document reliable experimental evidence of social context effects across 25,000 studies of 8 million participants [2]. Abu Ghraib resulted in part from ordinary social processes, not just extraordinary individual evil. Meta-analyses suggests that the right (or wrong) social context can make almost anyone aggress, oppress, conform, and obey. 3) Virtually anyone can be aggressive if sufficiently provoked, stressed, disgruntled, or hot [3-5]. The situation of the 800th Military Police Brigade guarding Abu Ghraib prisoners fit all the social conditions known to cause aggression. The soldiers were certainly provoked and stressed: at war, in constant danger, taunted and harassed by some of the very citizens they were sent to save, and their comrades were dying daily and unpredictably. Their morale suffered, they were untrained for the job, their command climate was lax, their return home was a year overdue, their identity as disciplined soldiers was gone, and their own amenities were scant. Heat and discomfort also doubtless contributed. 4) The fact that the prisoners were part of a group encountered as enemies would only exaggerate the tendency to feel spontaneous prejudice against outgroups. In this context, oppression and discrimination are synonymous. One of the most basic principles of social psychology is that people prefer their own group and attribute bad behavior to outgroups. Prejudice especially festers if people see the outgroup as threatening cherished values. This would have certainly applied to the guards viewing their prisoners at Abu Ghraib, but it also applies in more "normal" situations. A recent sample of US citizens on average viewed Muslims and Arabs as not sharing their interests and stereotyped them as not especially sincere, honest, friendly, or warm. 5) Even more potent predictors of discrimination are the emotional prejudices ("hot" affective feelings such as disgust or contempt) that operate in parallel with cognitive processes. Such emotional reactions appear rapidly, even in neuroimaging of brain activations to outgroups. But even they can be affected by social context. Categorization of people as interchangeable members of an outgroup promotes an amygdala response characteristic of vigilance and alarm and an insula response characteristic of disgust or arousal, depending on social context; these effects dissipate when the same people are encountered as unique individuals. References (abridged): 1. S. T. Fiske, Social Beings (Wiley, New York, 2004) 2. F. D. Richard, C. F. Bond, J. J. Stokes-Zoota, Rev. Gen. Psychol. 7, 331 (2003) 3. B. A. Bettencourt, N. Miller, Psychol. Bull. 119, 422 (1996) 4. M. Carlson, N. Miller, Sociol. Soc. Res. 72, 155 (1988) 5. M. Carlson, A. Marcus-Newhall, N. Miller, Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 15, 377 (1989) Science http://www.sciencemag.org -------------------------------- Related Material: MEDICAL BIOLOGY: ON SURVIVING TORTURE The following points are made by Richard F. Mollica (New Engl. J. Med. 2004 351:5): 1) The shocking, unfiltered images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have focused the world's attention on the plight of torture survivors. Physicians in the US are confronted as never before with the need to identify and treat the physical and psychological sequelae of extreme violence and torture. Yet this is not a new role for medical practitioners. More than 45 countries are currently suffering from the destruction caused by mass violence.(1) The 20th century has been called the "refugee century", with tens of millions of people violently displaced from their homes. Millions of these people have resettled in the US, and refugees, asylum seekers, and illegal immigrants now commonly enter our health care institutions.(2) 2) Despite routine exposure to the suffering of victims of human brutality, health care professionals tend to shy away from confronting this reality. The author states that he and his colleagues have cared for more than 10,000 torture survivors, and in their experience, whether in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, East Timor, or the US, clinicians avoid addressing torture-related symptoms of illness because they are afraid of opening a Pandora's box: they believe they will not have the tools or the time to help torture survivors once they have elicited their history. 3) Unfortunately, survivors and clinicians may conspire to create a relationship founded on the avoidance of all discussion of trauma. In one instance, a middle-aged Cambodian woman had had an excellent relationship with her American doctor for nine years, but he had no idea that she had been tortured. He had had only partial success in controlling her type 2 diabetes. After attending a training session on treating the effects of terrorism after the events of September 11, 2001, the doctor asked the patient for the first time whether she had undergone extreme violence or torture. She revealed that two of her children had died of starvation in Cambodia, her husband had been taken away violently and disappeared, and she had been sexually violated under the Khmer Rouge. More recently, in the US, her remaining daughter had been nearly fatally stabbed by a gang that burglarized her home. Since September 11, the patient had taken to barricading herself in her house, leaving only to see her doctor. When the doctor became aware of the patient's traumatic history, he used a screening tool to explore the effects of her traumas, diagnosing major depression. Over time, he was able to treat the depression with medication and counseling, eventually bringing the diabetes under control as well. 4) The author concludes: Torture and its human and social effects are now in the global public eye. Medical professionals must relinquish their fears and take the lead in healing the wounds inflicted by the most extreme acts of human aggression. Commitment to a process that begins with a simple but courageous act -- asking the right question -- bespeaks the belief that medicine is a potent antidote to the practices of torturers.(3-5) References: 1. Krug EG, Dahlberg LL, Mercy JA, Zwi AB, Lozano R, eds. World report on violence and health. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2002. 2. Bramsen I, van der Ploeg HM. Use of medical and mental health care by World War II survivors in the Netherlands. J Trauma Stress 1999;12:243-261 3. Goldfeld AE, Mollica RF, Pesavento BH, Faraone SV. The physical and psychological sequelae of torture: symptomatology and diagnosis. JAMA 1988;259:2725-2729. [Erratum, JAMA 1988;260:478 4. Mollica RF. Waging a new kind of war: invisible wounds. Sci Am 2000;282:54-57 5. Cassano P, Fava M. Depression and public health: an overview. J Psychosom Res 2002;53:849-857 New Engl. J. Med. http://www.nejm.org From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 1 16:59:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 12:59:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Daniel Akst: Looks Do Matter Message-ID: Daniel Akst: Looks Do Matter Wilson Quarterly, 2005 Summer http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=135758 First, the summary from the "Magazine and Journal Reader" feature of the daily bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.7.29 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/07/2005072901j.htm A glance at the summer issue of The Wilson Quarterly: All about looks Going by the numbers, looks matter in America. Dieting has become a $40-billion industry, and last year Americans spent $8.4-billion on 9.2 million cosmetic surgeries. Forget shallowness, though, writes Daniel Akst, a novelist, because there's a good reason why Americans should care more about appearances. One reason, says Mr. Akst, is the increasing importance of looks to the opposite sex. In one 50-year study, researchers found that the value given to appearances has risen "dramatically" -- for both sexes. On a scale of 1 to 3, the importance of looks rose from 1.5 to 2.11 for men, and from 0.94 to 1.67 among women. Beauty also confers status, argues Mr. Akst. Evidence suggests, he says, that men are better regarded based on how attractive their partners are. And because a correlation exists between status and longevity, "status matters." According to a 2001 study, he says, Academy Award-winning actors outlive nonwinners by about four years. In a report on the study, researchers said such findings "suggest that success confers a survival advantage." Beauty may also lead to greater career success. One study, says Mr. Akst, showed that better-looking people earn 5 to 10 percent more money. Another found that attractive college instructors received higher student ratings, he says. "The more important appearances become," though, "the worse most of us seem to look," he writes. It's not just that two-thirds of Americans are overweight, he says. There is a "broader-based national flight from presentability" under way that has manifested itself in the casual way people dress. Last year, for instance, sales of apparel like warm-up suits netted $39-billion, almost double what was spent on dress suits. --Jason M. Breslow ------------- Everyone knows looks shouldn't matter. Beauty, after all, is only skin deep, and no right-thinking person would admit to taking much account of how someone looks outside the realm of courtship, that romantic free-trade zone traditionally exempted from the usual tariffs of rationality. Even in that tender kingdom, where love at first sight is still readily indulged, it would be impolitic, if not immature, to admit giving too much weight to a factor as shallow as looks. Yet perhaps it's time to say what we all secretly know, which is that looks do matter, maybe even more than most of us think. We infer a great deal from people's looks--not just when it comes to mating (where looks matter profoundly), but in almost every other aspect of life as well, including careers and social status. It may not be true that blondes have more fun, but it's highly likely that attractive people do, and they start early. Mothers pay more attention to good-looking babies, for example, but, by the same token, babies pay more attention to prettier adults who wander into their field of vision. Attractive people are paid more on the job, marry more desirable spouses, and are likelier to get help from others when in evident need. Nor is this all sheer, baseless prejudice. Human beings appear to be hard-wired to respond to how people and objects look, an adaptation without which the species might not have made it this far. The unpleasant truth is that, far from being only skin deep, our looks reflect all kinds of truths about difference and desire--truths we are, in all likelihood, biologically programmed to detect. Sensitivity to the signals of human appearances would naturally lead to successful reproductive decisions, and several factors suggest that this sensitivity may be bred in the bone. Beauty may even be addictive. Researchers at London's University College have found that human beauty stimulates a section of the brain called the ventral striatum, the same region activated in drug and gambling addicts when they're about to indulge their habit. Photos of faces rated unattractive had no effect on the volunteers to whom they were shown, but the ventral striatum did show activity if the picture was of an attractive person, especially one looking straight at the viewer. And the responses occurred even when the viewer and the subject of the photo were of the same sex. Good-looking people just do something to us, whether we like it or not. People's looks speak to us, sometimes in a whisper and sometimes in a shout, of health, reproductive fitness, agreeableness, social standing, and intelligence. Although looks in mating still matter much more to men than to women, the importance of appearance appears to be rising on both sides of the gender divide. In a fascinating cross-generational study of mating preferences, every 10 years different groups of men and women were asked to rank 18 characteristics they might want enhanced in a mate. The importance of good looks rose "dramatically" for both men and women from 1939 to 1989, the period of the study, according to David M. Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas. On a scale of 1 to 3, the importance men gave to good looks rose from 1.50 to 2.11. But for women, the importance of good looks in men rose from 0.94 to 1.67. In other words, women in 1989 considered a man's looks even more important than men considered women's looks 50 years earlier. Since the 1930s, Buss writes, "physical appearance has gone up in importance for men and women about equally, corresponding with the rise in television, fashion magazines, advertising, and other media depictions of attractive models." In all likelihood this trend will continue, driven by social and technological changes that are unlikely to be reversed anytime soon--changes such as the new ubiquity of media images, the growing financial independence of women, and the worldwide weakening of the institution of marriage. For better or worse, we live now in an age of appearances. It looks like looks are here to stay. o The paradox, in such an age, is that the more important appearances become, the worse most of us seem to look--and not just by comparison with the godlike images alternately taunting and bewitching us from every billboard and TV screen. While popular culture is obsessed with fashion and style, and our prevailing psychological infirmity is said to be narcissism, fully two-thirds of American adults have abandoned conventional ideas of attractiveness by becoming overweight. Nearly half of this group is downright obese. Given their obsession with dieting--a $40 billion-plus industry in the United States--it's not news to these people that they're sending an unhelpful message with their inflated bodies, but it's worth noting here nonetheless. Social scientists have established what most of us already know in this regard, which is that heavy people are perceived less favorably in a variety of ways. Across cultures--even in places such as Fiji, where fat is the norm--people express a preference for others who are neither too slim nor too heavy. In studies by University of Texas psychologist Devendra Singh, people guessed that the heaviest figures in photos were eight to 10 years older than the slimmer ones, even though the faces were identical. (As the nation's bill for hair dye and facelifts attests, looking older is rarely desirable, unless you happen to be an underage drinker.) America's weight problem is one dimension of what seems to be a broader-based national flight from presentability, a flight that manifests itself unmistakably in the relentless casualness of our attire. Contrary to the desperate contentions of some men's clothiers, for example, the suit really is dying. Walk around midtown Manhattan, and these garments are striking by their absence. Consumer spending reflects this. In 2004, according to NPD Group, a marketing information firm, sales of "active sportswear," a category that includes such apparel as warm-up suits, were $39 billion, nearly double what was spent on business suits and other tailored clothing. The irony is that the more athletic gear we wear, from plum-colored velour track suits to high-tech sneakers, the less athletic we become. The overall change in our attire did not happen overnight. America's clothes, like America itself, have been getting more casual for decades, in a trend that predates even Nehru jackets and the "full Cleveland" look of a pastel leisure suit with white shoes and belt, but the phenomenon reaches something like an apotheosis in the vogue for low-riding pajama bottoms and flip-flops outside the home. Visit any shopping mall in summer--or many deep-Sunbelt malls year round--and you'll find people of all sizes, ages, and weights clomping through the climate-controlled spaces in tank tops, T-shirts, and running shorts. Tops--and nowadays often bottoms--emblazoned with the names of companies, schools, and places make many of these shoppers into walking billboards. Bulbous athletic shoes, typically immaculate on adults who go everywhere by car, are the functional equivalent of SUVs for the feet. Anne Hollander, an observant student of clothing whose books include Sex and Suits (1994), has complained that we've settled on "a sandbox aesthetic" of sloppy comfort; the new classics--sweats, sneakers, and jeans--persist year after year, transcending fashion altogether. We've come to this pass despite our seeming obsession with how we look. Consider these 2004 numbers from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons: 9.2 million cosmetic surgeries (up 24 percent from 2000) at a cost of $8.4 billion, and that doesn't count 7.5 million "minimally invasive" procedures, such as skin peels and Botox injections (collectively up 36 percent). Cosmetic dentistry is also booming, as is weight-loss surgery. Although most of this spending is by women, men are focusing more and more on their appearance as well, which is obvious if you look at the evolution of men's magazines over the years. Further reflecting our concern with both looks and rapid self-transformation is a somewhat grisly new genre of reality TV: the extreme makeover show, which plays on the audience's presumed desire to somehow look a whole lot better fast. But appearances in this case are deceiving. The evidence suggests that a great many of us do not care nearly enough about how we look, and that even those who care very much indeed still end up looking terrible. In understanding why, it's worth remembering that people look the way they do for two basic reasons--on purpose and by accident--and both can be as revealing as a neon tube top. Let's start with the purposeful. Extremes in casual clothing have several important functions. A big one nowadays is camouflage. Tent-like T-shirts and sweatsuits cover a lot of sins, and the change in our bodies over time is borne out by the sizes stores find themselves selling. In 1985, for example, the top-selling women's size was eight. Today, when, as a result of size inflation, an eight (and every other size) is larger than it used to be, NPD Group reports that the top-selling women's size is 14. Camouflage may also account for the popularity of black, which is widely perceived as slimming as well as cool. That brings us to another motive for dressing down--way down--which is status. Dressing to manifest disregard for society--think of the loose, baggy hipsters in American high schools--broadcasts self-determination by flaunting the needlessness of having to impress anybody else. We all like to pretend we're immune to "what people think," but reaching for status on this basis is itself a particularly perverse--and egregious--form of status seeking. For grownups, it's also a way of pretending to be young, or at least youthful, since people know instinctively that looking young often means looking good. Among the truly young, dressing down is a way to avoid any embarrassing lapses in self-defining rebelliousness. And for the young and fit, sexy casual clothing can honestly signal a desire for short-term rather than long-term relationships. Indeed, researchers have shown that men respond more readily to sexy clothing when seeking a short-term relationship, perhaps because more modest attire is a more effective signal of sexual fidelity, a top priority for men in the marriage market, regardless of nation or tribe. Purposeful slovenliness can have its reasons, then, but what about carelessness? One possible justification is that, for many people, paying attention to their own looks is just too expensive. Clothes are cheap, thanks to imports, but looking good can be costly for humans, just as it is for other species. A signal such as beauty, after all, is valuable in reproductive terms only if it has credibility, and it's been suggested that such signals are credible indicators of fitness precisely because in evolutionary terms they're so expensive. The peacock's gaudy tail, for example, attracts mates in part because it signals that the strutting bird is robust enough not only to sustain his fancy plumage but to fend off the predators it also attracts. Modern humans who want to strut their evolutionary stuff have to worry about their tails too: They have to work them off. Since most of us are no longer paid to perform physical labor, getting exercise requires valuable time and energy, to say nothing of a costly gym membership. And then there is the opportunity cost--the pleasure lost by forgoing fried chicken and Devil Dogs. Eating junk food, especially fast food, is probably also cheaper, in terms of time, than preparing a low-calorie vegetarian feast at home. These costs apparently strike many Americans as too high, which may be why we as a culture have engaged in a kind of aesthetic outsourcing, transferring the job of looking good--of providing the desired supply of physical beauty--to the specialists known as "celebrities," who can afford to devote much more time and energy to the task. Offloading the chore of looking great onto a small, gifted corps of professionals saves the rest of us a lot of trouble and expense, even if it has opened a yawning aesthetic gulf between the average person (who is fat) and the average model or movie star (who is lean and toned within an inch of his or her life). Although the popularity of Botox and other such innovations suggests that many people do want to look better, it seems fair to conclude that they are not willing to pay any significant price to do so, since the great majority do not in fact have cosmetic surgery, exercise regularly, or maintain anything like their ideal body weight. Like so much in our society, physical attractiveness is produced by those with the greatest comparative advantage, and consumed vicariously by the rest of us--purchased, in a sense, ready made. Whether our appearance is purposeful or accidental, the outcome is the same, which is that a great many of us look awful most of the time, and as a consequence of actions or inactions that are at least substantially the result of free will. o Men dressed liked boys? Flip-flops at the office? Health care workers who never get near an operating room but nevertheless dress in shapeless green scrubs? These sartorial statements are not just casual. They're also of a piece with the general disrepute into which looking good seems to have fallen. On its face, so to speak, beauty presents some serious ideological problems in the modern world. If beauty were a brand, any focus group that we convened would describe it as shallow and fleeting or perhaps as a kind of eye candy that is at once delicious and bad for you. As a society, we consume an awful lot of it, and we feel darn guilty about it. Why should this be so? For one thing, beauty strikes most of us as a natural endowment, and as a people we dislike endowments. We tax inheritances, after all, on the premise that they are unearned by their recipients and might produce something like a hereditary aristocracy, not unlike the one produced by the competition to mate with beauty. Money plays a role in that competition; there's no denying that looks and income are traditionally awfully comfortable with each other, and today affluent Americans are the ones least likely to be overweight. By almost any standard, then, looks are a seemingly unfair way of distinguishing oneself, discriminating as they do on the basis of age and generally running afoul of what the late political scientist Aaron Wildavsky called "the rise of radical egalitarianism," which was at the very least suspicious of distinction and advantage, especially a distinction as capricious and as powerful as appearance. Appearance can be a source of inequality, and achieving some kind of egalitarianism in this arena is a long-standing and probably laudable American concern. The Puritans eschewed fancy garb, after all, and Thoreau warned us to beware of enterprises that require new clothes. Nowadays, at a time of increased income inequality, our clothes paradoxically confer less distinction than ever. Gender distinctions in clothing, for instance, have been blurred in favor of much greater sartorial androgyny, to the extent that nobody would any longer ask who wears the pants in any particular household (because the correct answer would be, "everybody"). The same goes for age distinctions (short pants long ago lost their role as uniform of the young), class distinctions (the rich wear jeans too), and even distinctions between occasions such as school and play, work and leisure, or public and private. Who among us hasn't noticed sneakers, for example, at a wedding, in a courtroom, or at a concert, where you spot them sometimes even on the stage? The problem is that, if anything, looks matter even more than we think, not just because we're all hopelessly superficial, but because looks have always told us a great deal of what we want to know. Looks matter for good reason, in other words, and delegating favorable appearances to an affluent elite for reasons of cost or convenience is a mistake, both for the individuals who make it and for the rest of us as well. The slovenliness of our attire is one of the things that impoverish the public sphere, and the stunning rise in our weight (in just 25 years) is one of the things that impoverish our health. Besides, it's not as if we're evolving anytime soon into a species that's immune to appearances. Looks seem to matter to all cultures, not just our image-besotted one, suggesting that efforts to stamp out looksism (which have yet to result in hiring quotas on behalf of the homely) are bucking millions of years of evolutionary development. The degree of cross-cultural consistency in this whole area is surprising. Contrary to the notion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or at the very least in the eye of the culture, studies across nations and tribal societies have found that people almost everywhere have similar ideas about what's attractive, especially as regards the face (tastes in bodies seem to vary a bit more, perhaps allowing for differing local evolutionary ecologies). Men everywhere, even those few still beyond the reach of Hollywood and Madison Avenue, are more concerned about women's looks than women are about men's, and their general preference for women who look young and healthy is probably the result of evolutionary adaptation. The evidence for this comes from the field of evolutionary psychology. Whatever one's view of this burgeoning branch of science, one thing it has produced (besides controversy) is an avalanche of disconcerting research about how we look. Psychologists Michael R. Cunningham, of the University of Louisville, and Stephen R. Shamblen cite evidence that babies as young as two or three months old look longer at more attractive faces. New mothers of less attractive offspring, meanwhile, have been found to pay more attention to other people (say, hospital room visitors) than do new mothers of better-looking babies. This may have some basis in biological necessity, if you bear in mind that the evolutionary environment, free as it was of antibiotics and pediatricians, might have made it worthwhile indeed for mothers to invest themselves most in the offspring likeliest to survive and thrive. The environment today, of course, is very different, but it may only amplify the seeming ruthlessness of the feelings and judgments we make. "In one study," reports David M. Buss, the evolutionary psychologist who reported on the multi-generational study of mating preferences, "after groups of men looked at photographs of either highly attractive women or women of average attractiveness, they were asked to evaluate their commitment to their current romantic partner. Disturbingly, the men who had viewed pictures of attractive women thereafter judged their actual partners to be less attractive than did the men who had viewed analogous pictures of women who were average in attractiveness. Perhaps more important, the men who had viewed attractive women thereafter rated themselves as less committed, less satisfied, less serious, and less close to their actual partners." In another study, men who viewed attractive nude centerfolds promptly rated themselves as less attracted to their own partners. Even if a man doesn't personally care much what a woman looks like, he knows that others do. Research suggests that being with an attractive woman raises a man's status significantly, while dating a physically unattractive woman moderately lowers a man's status. (The effect for women is quite different; dating an attractive man raises a woman's status only somewhat, while dating an unattractive man lowers her status only nominally.) And status matters. In the well-known "White- hall studies" of British civil servants after World War II, for example, occupational grade was strongly correlated with longevity: The higher the bureaucrat's ranking, the longer the life. And it turns out that Academy Award-winning actors and actresses outlive other movie performers by about four years, at least according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2001. "The results," write authors Donald A. Redelmeier and Sheldon M. Singh, "suggest that success confers a survival advantage." So if an attractive mate raises a man's status, is it really such a wonder that men covet trophy wives? In fact, people's idea of what's attractive is influenced by the body types that are associated with status in a given time and place (which suggests that culture plays at least some role in ideas of attractiveness). As any museumgoer can tell you, the big variation in male preferences across time and place is in plumpness, and Buss contends that this is a status issue: In places where food is plentiful, such as the United States, high-status people distinguish themselves by being thin. There are reasons besides sex and status to worry about how we look. For example, economists Daniel S. Hamermesh, of the University of Texas, and Jeff E. Biddle, of Michigan State University, have produced a study suggesting that better-looking people make more money. "Holding constant demographic and labor-market characteristics," they wrote in a well-known 1993 paper, "plain people earn less than people of average looks, who earn less than the good-looking. The penalty for plainness is five to 10 percent, slightly larger than the premium for beauty." A 1998 study of attorneys (by the same duo) found that some lawyers also benefit by looking better. Yet another study found that better-looking college instructors--especially men--receive higher ratings from their students. Hamermesh and some Chinese researchers also looked into whether primping pays, based on a survey of Shanghai residents. They found that beauty raises women's earnings (and, to a lesser extent, men's), but that spending on clothing and cosmetics helps only a little. Several studies have even found associations between appearance preferences and economic cycles. Psychologists Terry F. Pettijohn II, of Ohio State University, and Abraham Tesser, of the University of Georgia, for example, obtained a list of the Hollywood actresses with top box-office appeal in each year from 1932 to 1995. The researchers scanned the actresses' photos into a computer, did various measurements, and determined that, lo and behold, the ones who were the most popular during social and economic good times had more "neoteny"--more childlike features, including bigger eyes, smaller chins, and rounder cheeks. During economic downturns, stronger and more rectangular female faces--in other words, faces that were more mature--were preferred. It's not clear whether this is the case for political candidates as well, but looks matter in this arena too. In a study that appeared recently in Science, psychologist Alexander Todorov and colleagues at Princeton University showed photographs of political candidates to more than 800 students, who were asked to say who had won and why based solely on looks. The students chose correctly an amazing 69 percent of the time, consistently picking candidates they judged to look the most competent, meaning those who looked more mature. The losers were more likely to have babyfaces, meaning some combination of a round face, big eyes, small nose, high forehead and small chin. Those candidates apparently have a hard time winning elections. o To scientists, a convenient marker for physical attractiveness in people is symmetry, as measured by taking calipers to body parts as wrists, elbows, and feet to see how closely the pairs match. The findings of this research can be startling. As summarized by biologist Randy Thornhill and psychologist Steven W. Gangestad, both of the University of New Mexico, "In both sexes, relatively low asymmetry seems to be associated with increased genetic, physical, and mental health, including cognitive skill and IQ. Also, symmetric men appear to be more muscular and vigorous, have a lower basal metabolic rate, and may be larger in body size than asymmetric men. . . . Symmetry is a major component of developmental health and overall condition and appears to be heritable." The researchers add that more symmetrical men have handsomer faces, more sex partners, and their first sexual experience at an earlier age, and they get to sex more quickly with a new romantic partner. "Moreover," they tell us, "men's symmetry predicts a relatively high frequency of their sexual partners' copulatory orgasms." Those orgasms are sperm retaining, suggesting that symmetric men may have a greater chance of getting a woman pregnant. It doesn't hurt that the handsomest men may have the best sperm, at least according to a study at Spain's University of Valencia, which found that men with the healthiest, fastest sperm were those whose faces were rated most attractive by women. There's evidence that women care more about men's looks for short-term relationships than for marriage, and that as women get closer to the most fertile point of the menstrual cycle, their preference for "symmetrical" men grows stronger, according to Thornhill and Gangestad. Ovulating women prefer more rugged, masculinized faces, whereas the rest of the time they prefer less masculinized or even slightly feminized male faces. Perhaps predictably, more-symmetrical men are likelier to be unfaithful and tend to invest less in a relationship. Asymmetric people may have some idea that they're behind the eight ball here. William Brown and his then-colleagues at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, looked at 50 people in heterosexual relationships, measuring such features as hands, ears, and feet, and then asked about jealousy. The researchers found a strong correlation between asymmetry and romantic jealousy, suggesting that asymmetrical lovers may suspect they're somehow less desirable. Brown's explanation: "If jealousy is a strategy to retain your mate, then the individual more likely to be philandered on is more likely to be jealous." In general, how we look communicates something about how healthy we are, how fertile, and probably how useful in the evolutionary environment. This may be why, across a range of cultures, women prefer tall, broad-shouldered men who seem like good reproductive specimens, in addition to offering the possibility of physical protection. Men, meanwhile, like pretty women who appear young. Women's looks seem to vary depending on where they happen to be in the monthly fertility cycle. The University of Liverpool biologist John Manning measured women's ears and fingers and had the timing of their ovulation confirmed by pelvic exams. He found a 30 percent decline in asymmetries in the 24 hours before ovulation--perhaps more perceptible to our sexual antennae than to the conscious mind. In general, symmetrical women have more sex partners, suggesting that greater symmetry makes women more attractive to men. To evolutionary biologists, it makes sense that men should care more about the way women look than vice versa, because youth and fitness matter so much more in female fertility. And while male preferences do vary with time and place there's also some remarkable underlying consistency. Devendra Singh, for instance, found that the waist-to-hip ratio was the most important factor in women's attractiveness to men in 18 cultures he studied. Regardless of whether lean or voluptuous women happen to be in fashion, the favored shape involves a waist/hip ratio of about 0.7. "Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe represented two very different images of beauty to filmgoers in the 1950s," writes Nancy Etcoff, who is a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. "Yet the 36-24-34 Marilyn and the 31.5-22-31 Audrey both had versions of the hourglass shape and waist-to-hip ratios of 0.7." Even Twiggy, in her 92-pound heyday, had a waist/hip ratio of 0.73. o Is it cause for despair that looks are so important? The bloom of youth is fleeting, after all, and the bad news that our appearance will inevitably broadcast about us cannot be kept under wraps forever. Besides, who could live up to the impossible standards propagated by our powerful aesthetic-industrial complex? It's possible that the images of models and actresses and even TV newscasters, most of them preternaturally youthful and all selected for physical fitness, have driven most Americans to quit the game, insisting that they still care about how they look even as they retire from the playing field to console themselves with knife and fork. If the pressure of all these images has caused us to opt out of caring about how we look, that's a shame, because we're slaves of neither genes nor fashion in this matter. By losing weight and exercising, simply by making ourselves healthier, we can change the underlying data our looks report. The advantages are almost too obvious to mention, including lower medical costs, greater confidence, and a better quality of life in virtually every way. There's no need to look like Brad Pitt or Jennifer Lopez, and no reason for women to pursue Olive Oyl thinness (a body type men do not especially prefer). Researchers, in fact, have found that people of both sexes tend to prefer averageness in members of the opposite sex: The greater the number of faces poured (by computer) into a composite, the higher it's scored in attractiveness by viewers. That's in part because "bad" features tend to be averaged out. But the implication is clear: You don't need to look like a movie star to benefit from a favorable appearance, unless, of course, you're planning a career in movies. To a bizarre extent, looking good in America has become the province of an appearance aristocracy--an elect we revere for their seemingly unattainable endowment of good looks. Physical attractiveness has become too much associated with affluence and privilege for a country as democratically inclined as ours. We can be proud at least that these lucky lookers no longer have to be white or even young. Etcoff notes that, in tracking cosmetic surgery since the 1950s, the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reports a change in styles toward wider, fuller-tipped noses and narrower eyelids, while makeup styles have tended toward fuller lips and less pale skin shades. She attributes these changes to the recalibration of beauty norms as the result of the presence of more Asian, African, and Hispanic features in society. But what's needed is a much more radical democratization of physical beauty, a democratization we can achieve not by changing the definition of beauty but by changing ourselves. Looking nice is something we need to take back from the elites and make once again a broadly shared, everyday attribute, as it once was when people were much less likely to be fat and much more likely to dress decently in public. Good looks are not just an endowment, and the un-American attitude that looks are immune to self-improvement only breeds the kind of fatalism that is blessedly out of character in America. As a first step, maybe we can stop pretending that our appearance doesn't--or shouldn't--matter. A little more looksism, if it gets people to shape up, would probably save some lives, to say nothing of some marriages. Let's face it. To a greater extent than most of us are comfortable with, looks tell us something, and right now what they say about our health, our discipline, and our mutual regard isn't pretty. Daniel Akst is a writer in New York's Hudson Valley. He writes a monthly business column for The New York Times and is the author of several novels, including The Webster Chronicle (2001) and St. Burl's Obituary (1996). Discussions Older men no good in bed I agree with Daniel Akst that the new American wardrobe of jeans, sneakers, and big t-shirts is unbeautiful. (I wouldn't be caught dead in any of these garments.) This wardrobe has certainly played a large role in the decline of general attractiveness. Many women friends of mine, when they gain weight, reach for big sweatshirts and T shirts which make them look fatter than tailored clothing would. That being said, I take issue with the following statement Akst makes: "To evolutionary biologists, it makes sense that men should care more about the way women look than vice versa, because youth and fitness matter so much more in female fertility." After centuries of silence on the issue, we are beginning to discover that youth and fitness do matter a great deal for male fertility. Erectile dysfunction is a common problem for middle-aged men, something that has always been kept secret in our previously male-authored world. Just look at the profits of the company that produces Cialis or Viagra to confirm this. Age takes its toll on a man's ability to have a child just as it does on a woman's. My friend who is 38 would like to get pregnant, but her husband who is 50 is incapable of performing the deed properly. Artificial insemination may be their only recourse. I think evolutionary biologists should collect oral interviews with women and look anew at what seems to me--from an attractive woman's point of view--a glaring misconception. Youth and fitness do matter for male fertility! Posted by: Manmo 07/29/2005 From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 1 16:59:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 12:59:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: It's Not the End Of the Oil Age Message-ID: It's Not the End Of the Oil Age http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/29/AR2005072901672_pf.html Technology and Higher Prices Drive a Supply Buildup By Daniel Yergin Sunday, July 31, 2005; B07 We're not running out of oil. Not yet. "Shortage" is certainly in the air -- and in the price. Right now the oil market is tight, even tighter than it was on the eve of the 1973 oil crisis. In this high-risk market, "surprises" ranging from political instability to hurricanes could send oil prices spiking higher. Moreover, the specter of an energy shortage is not limited to oil. Natural gas supplies are not keeping pace with growing demand. Even supplies of coal, which generates about half of the country's electricity, are constrained at a time when our electric power system has been tested by an extraordinary heat wave. But it is oil that gets most of the attention. Prices around $60 a barrel, driven by high demand growth, are fueling the fear of imminent shortage -- that the world is going to begin running out of oil in five or 10 years. This shortage, it is argued, will be amplified by the substantial and growing demand from two giants: China and India. Yet this fear is not borne out by the fundamentals of supply. Our new, field-by-field analysis of production capacity, led by my colleagues Peter Jackson and Robert Esser, is quite at odds with the current view and leads to a strikingly different conclusion: There will be a large, unprecedented buildup of oil supply in the next few years. Between 2004 and 2010, capacity to produce oil (not actual production) could grow by 16 million barrels a day -- from 85 million barrels per day to 101 million barrels a day -- a 20 percent increase. Such growth over the next few years would relieve the current pressure on supply and demand. Where will this growth come from? It is pretty evenly divided between non-OPEC and OPEC. The largest non-OPEC growth is projected for Canada, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Angola and Russia. In the OPEC countries, significant growth is expected to occur in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Algeria and Libya, among others. Our estimate for growth in Iraq is quite modest -- only 1 million barrels a day -- reflecting the high degree of uncertainty there. In the forecast, the United States remains almost level, with development in the deep-water areas of the Gulf of Mexico compensating for declines elsewhere. While questions can be raised about specific countries, this forecast is not speculative. It is based on what is already unfolding. The oil industry is governed by a "law of long lead times." Much of the new capacity that will become available between now and 2010 is under development. Many of the projects that embody this new capacity were approved in the 2001-03 period, based on price expectations much lower than current prices. There are risks to any forecast. In this case, the risks are not the "below ground" ones of geology or lack of resources. Rather, they are "above ground" -- political instability, outright conflict, terrorism or slowdowns in decision making on the part of governments in oil-producing countries. Yet, even with the scaling back of the forecast, it would still constitute a big increase in output. This is not the first time that the world has "run out of oil." It's more like the fifth. Cycles of shortage and surplus characterize the entire history of the oil industry. A similar fear of shortage after World War I was one of the main drivers for cobbling together the three easternmost provinces of the defunct Ottoman Turkish Empire to create Iraq. In more recent times, the "permanent oil shortage" of the 1970s gave way to the glut and price collapse of the 1980s. But this time, it is said, is "different." A common pattern in the shortage periods is to underestimate the impact of technology. And, once again, technology is key. "Proven reserves" are not necessarily a good guide to the future. The current Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules, which define "reserves" for investors, are based on 30-year-old technology and offer an incomplete picture of future potential. As skills improve, output from many producing regions will be much greater than anticipated. The share of "unconventional oil" -- Canadian oil sands, ultra-deep-water developments, "natural gas liquids" -- will rise from 10 percent of total capacity in 1990 to 30 percent by 2010. The "unconventional" will cease being frontier and will instead become "conventional." Over the next few years, new facilities will be transforming what are inaccessible natural gas reserves in different parts of the world into a quality, diesel-like fuel. The growing supply of energy should not lead us to underestimate the longer-term challenge of providing energy for a growing world economy. At this point, even with greater efficiency, it looks as though the world could be using 50 percent more oil 25 years from now. That is a very big challenge. But at least for the next several years, the growing production capacity will take the air out of the fear of imminent shortage. And that in turn will provide us the breathing space to address the investment needs and the full panoply of technologies and approaches -- from development to conservation -- that will be required to fuel a growing world economy, ensure energy security and meet the needs of what is becoming the global middle class. The writer is chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. His book "The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power" received the Pulitzer Prize. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 1 19:23:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 15:23:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] =?iso-8859-1?q?Foreign_Policy=3A_Carl_Pope=2C_Bj=F8?= =?iso-8859-1?q?rn_Lomborg=3A_The_State_of_Nature?= Message-ID: Carl Pope, Bj?rn Lomborg: The State of Nature Foreign Policy, 5.7-8 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3084&print=1 Is the world getting greener? Or are we selling it short for a fistful of greenbacks? Apparently, even committed environmentalists can disagree. When Carl Pope looks out his door, he sees the polar ice caps melting, ecosystems on life support, and clean water disappearing. But Bj?rn Lomborg believes humanity?s backyard has never looked better. Who?s got it right? For young and old, rich and poor, the answer might just mean the world. Our Roof Is Caving in By Carl Pope The global environmental dilemma teems with both risks and opportunities. The world is at considerable peril, yet solutions to the problems we face are at our fingertips. We have been loading the Earth?s atmosphere with mercury from burning coal, chemical plants, and mining for centuries. As a result, the fish caught in our oceans are now a health risk for young women. Yet we have, and can afford, the necessary technology to stop pumping mercury into the environment. The trick is finding the will and prudence to pursue such solutions. Currently, the world?and the United States in particular?lacks the leadership to link the two. Let me show you what I mean. Thirteen?hundred scientists from 95 countries just issued a report called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which notes that 15 of the 24 ecosystems vital for life on Earth are in a degraded or overdrawn state. That?s like a doctor telling you that 60 percent of your organs are failing. Yet we cannot summon the courage to tackle simple solutions. Keeping tires on American automobiles properly inflated, for instance, would save as much oil as will be found by drilling (and destroying) the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If you don?t believe a report from 1,300 scientists, consider that the CIA believes that more than 3 billion people will be living in water?stressed regions?from North Africa to China?by 2015. The water tables of major grain?producing areas in northern China are dropping at a rate of 5 feet per year, and per capita water availability in India is expected to drop by 50 to 75 percent over the next decade. The number of chronically malnourished people in sub?Saharan Africa will increase by 20 percent over the next 15 years. That is scary stuff. It?s also unnecessary. Do these alarming trends mean that the sky is falling? No. If the sky were falling, we couldn?t do much except hide. But these trends do mean that the roof over our house will cave in?unless it gets some much?needed repairs. Consider the United States? energy policy. Americans consume 25 percent of the world?s oil. Why? Because consumers lack choices. Even though engineering has made car engines 25 percent more efficient, increased bulk has made fuel economy worse. In some U.S. cities, the waiting list for a hybrid car is longer than the waiting list for a kidney transplant. Instead of pursuing new solutions such as hybrid cars, the United States invades Iraq, bullies Venezuela, and rattles its sabers at Iran. Similarly, China is eagerly building dams that will destroy villages and impoverish thousands while low?technology solutions to increase energy efficiency lie fallow. This global leadership vacuum is dangerous. Anger at the chasm between better energy solutions and our scarcity of leadership is not confined to tree?hugging environmentalists. Listen to former President Ronald Reagan?s secretary of state, George Schultz: ?How many more times must we be hit on the head by a two?by?four before we do something about this acute problem. New ultralight?but?safe materials can nearly redouble fuel economy at little or no extra cost.? The world has a choice. We can let go of the archaic technologies and reckless practices of the past, recognize that solutions are better than anxieties, and watch science pleasantly surprise us. Or we can remain in denial, insist that modest change now is more painful than eventual catastrophe, and reap the whirlwind. Let?s Try Priorities, not Propaganda By Bj?rn Lomborg Yes, we have problems. But we have solved many more. Yes, we can solve those that remain, but not all at once. We need priorities. You say 60 percent of Earth?s ecosystems are in decline, without talking much about people and forgetting the crucial linkage between poverty and pollution. The bottom line is?as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment stresses?that humanity?s lot has improved dramatically in both the rich world and in the developing world. In the poorest countries, life expectancy has more than doubled over the past 100 years. The global malnutrition rate dropped from 50 percent in 1950 to 17 percent today, while the number of people living below the poverty line dropped from 50 percent to less than 25 percent. Access to clean drinking water has risen from 30 percent in 1970 to 80 percent today. We have never had it this good, and it?s likely to get better. The rich world has simultaneously improved the environment. In the United States, the most important environmental indicator, particulate air pollution, has more than halved since 1955, rivers and coastal waters are dramatically cleaner, and forest land is increasing. These trends are generally shared by all developed countries. Why? Because the rich can afford to care for the environment. In the developing world, environmental indicators are getting worse, as you note. In Bombay and Bangkok, air pollution is only getting thicker. But countries in the developing world are simply prioritizing in the same way the West did 100 years ago. They care first about feeding their kids, not cleaning up the air. And if you look at the West, that strategy works. Today, London?s air is the cleanest it has been since medieval times. Some of the richest developing countries are already following suit. In Mexico and Chile, air pollution is going down. We need to keep environmental problems in context and prioritize the ones to solve first. Despite a dramatic drop in U.S. air pollution, it still constitutes the United States? most serious environmental hazard?and kills roughly 135,000 people each year. But you talk about mercury, which is far less detrimental and far less beneficial if cleaned up. That is what I mean by prioritization. The same is true for the developing world. Yes, water is important. But you focus on scarcity, which is a management issue. Why not talk about access to clean drinking water? Despite dramatic improvements, 1 billion people today live without it, resulting in more than 2 million (otherwise preventable) deaths each year. You mention that 37 million more people will be malnourished in sub?Saharan Africa by 2015, but you neglect to point out that the number of well?fed people will increase 10?fold, by more than 374 million. Context and priorities are important. Perhaps the most pressing environmental problem in the world is indoor air pollution, which kills 2.8 million people each year, just behind HIV/AIDS. The pollution is caused by poor people cooking and heating their homes with dung and cardboard. The solution is not environmental (to certify dung) but rather economic, helping these people build enough wealth to afford kerosene. You say the world has a choice. True. But it is rarely your stay?stupid or be?smart choice. We can do almost anything, but we can?t do it all at once. The challenge is to prioritize better. I?ve indicated some top priorities. What do you think we should do first and, even harder, what should wait? Stop Cooking the Books Carl Pope responds True, we need priorities. And safe drinking water ought to be at the very top of the list. I agree. We also share distress that air pollution is killing so many Americans each year?but that doesn?t mean mercury might not be a bigger problem. After all, neurological damage to kids is a very big deal. Having priorities doesn?t always mean Sophie?s choice. If we clean up coal?fired power plants, we solve both air pollution and mercury with one investment. We don?t have to make an all?or?nothing choice between environmental responsibility and economic progress. If we can afford F?16 fighter jets for Pakistan, we can afford clean water and better schools in Karachi. Britain spent a century industrializing in ways that devastated the environment and workers? lives. Yet Taiwan and Singapore forged a more progressive and less destructive path. Economic growth is powered by innovation, and new technology doesn?t have to be environmentally destructive. Developing village?level power technologies using fuel cells, solar power, and agricultural wastes makes more economic and environmental sense in India than massive investments in copper wires and coal turbines. The problem is that bad accounting produces bubbles and busts. Human welfare can increase in two ways, by harvesting ecosystem services and human innovation or by mining ecosystems in ways that deprive the future. We have already done the latter with oceanic fisheries, three quarters of which are no longer sustainable. That?s the scary thing about the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Bj?rn. Honest ecological bookkeeping shows that today?s economic progress may be the result of a bunch of ?off the books? transactions that will leave our children with a bankrupt planet. My first priority is to stop cooking the books. Sophie?s Choice Is Real Bj?rn Lomborg responds I?m glad you agree that we need priorities. But I worry that your commitment is rhetorical. If drinking water is priority No. 1, water scarcity is not. You accept that the 135,000 annual American deaths from air pollution are terrible, but you then suggest that mercury might be even more dangerous. That flies in the face of estimates by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the environmental watchdog Resources for the Future. One study from the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution estimates that eliminating mercury emissions from U.S. power plants would ?reduce the numbers of U.S. children experiencing subtle neurological deficiencies by on the order of 10,000 per year.? Isn?t 135,000 annual deaths from air pollution much worse? I?m asking because that is what happens when people agree in principle to prioritize, then refuse to face Sophie?s choice. Prioritizing really means some things must come last. Of course, we can make some investments in the environment without sacrificing economic progress, but we cannot make them all. Because the United States can afford F?16s does not mean it can also afford all environmental initiatives. We have to carefully spend our resources where they will do the most good. The solar installations you champion easily cost $450 apiece. Better?constructed $10 stoves can significantly reduce indoor air pollution. Do we want to help one family a little or 45 families a lot? You return to the 1,300 scientists and their report on the world?s ecosystems. What their results show is that when people are starving, lacking clean drinking water, getting poisoned from indoor air pollution, and dying from easily curable communicable diseases, they let the environment get ravaged, too. Your solution is to deal with the environment first. But shouldn?t we, morally and practically, help them gain wealth first, so they can take care of the environment too? Fighter Jets and Other False Choices Carl Pope responds No, Bj?rn, Sophie?s choice is avoidable. Bad human decisions, not inescapable reality, make the environment appear to be a ?trade?off? with prosperity. Your mercury analysis is sloppy. You use 2001 figures, dating back to when the Bush administration was suppressing data. These suppressed data show that 630,000 U.S. infants annually, not 10,000, are born with dangerous levels of mercury. Eventually, we need to clean up mercury globally. We can afford to modernize U.S. power plants. The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, founded by Bush regulatory czar John Graham, estimates that cleaning up the mercury emitted from U.S. power plants would save nearly $5 billion in healthcare expenditures annually and cost just $750 million a year. Investments that produce 600 percent returns are not hard choices. Good environmental stewardship saves money in poor countries. To enhance tourism, the Maldives purposefully preserved its barrier reefs. When the tsunami hit that tiny South Asian country in December 2004, the reefs absorbed the brunt of the wave, so what hit the islands was a gentle swell, not a deadly wall of water. China today is experiencing riots because of its poor environmental stewardship. Its ?backyard? coal?fired power plants, a monument to Maoism, make neither economic nor environmental sense. Why not help China to retire them and replace them with wind turbines? Tilting at Windmills Bj?rn Lomborg responds Now you suggest funding windmills in China? I suggest first distributing efficient cookers to combat indoor air pollution, which would save more lives and money. You suggest preserving reefs and mangroves, saving lives in case there is another tsunami. I suggest we first save thousands of times more by tackling curable, infectious diseases. You insist that there are no real trade?offs between the environment and prosperity. But money spent on windmills can?t also be spent on something else. It is not that environmental projects are not worthwhile. It?s just that they are not the only things we need to do. Often, there are other, better projects that must come first. You persist in prioritizing mercury over particulates, which is plain wrong. The data you talk about were not ?suppressed? by the Bush administration, but essentially known since 1999. And they said the 630,000 infants are at ?increased risk.? But not all of those will be affected. U.S. utilities account for less than 25 percent of mercury emissions and most of the fish we eat come from waters where reductions in mercury won?t matter. So, at best, completely eliminating mercury will help 10,000 children. Moreover, your $750 million only addresses a one?third reduction in mercury. And your Harvard study is more careful than you are: The benefits could range anywhere from about $5 billion to just $100 million, quite possibly a loss. I understand why scary numbers are easy to publicize, but pointing out the correct numbers and priorities is not sloppy?it?s just reality. Don?t Treat the Earth Like Enron Carl Pope responds If you look back to the beginning of this exchange, I did not say that mercury was a higher priority than particulates. I did not focus on U.S. power plant emissions alone. You did. I cited the oceanic mercury problem as a symbol of our failure of leadership and the resulting problems that failure creates. You keep posing artificial choices such as the one between cookers and wind turbines. Both are more desirable and more economical than backyard coal furnaces. It is simply not the case that the world?or the United States?does only one thing at a time. Leadership doesn?t mean picking the lowest?hanging fruit, one at a time. It means acting on our wiser, not our greedier, instincts. Where do we get the money? Let those who take from the global commons foot the bill. If the companies that emit mercury were to pay damages, they would be forced to clean up, and the world would be healthier and more prosperous. Current U.S. carbon emissions now top 1.5 billion tons per year?about 25 percent of total global carbon emissions. Scientists? mid?range estimates are that planetary sinks?plants, trees, and other elements that absorb carbon?can handle about 5.5 billion tons without an unacceptable increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. With 5 percent of the world?s population, a fair U.S. share of global carbon emissions is 275 million tons a year. At a modest value of $50 per ton, U.S. carbon emitters owe the world?s poor nations at least $66 billion for this year alone. So, Bj?rn, if U.S. carbon emitters and those in Saudi Arabia, Europe, and Japan pay for what they pollute, we could fund clean drinking water, clean village stoves, wind turbines, and solar cells in India. Of course, if we started making carbon wasters in the United States pay, Economics 101 suggests they will emit much less. Instead of a massive transfer of wealth, charging fairly for carbon emissions would reduce pollution in the United States, generate cash for development in China, Africa, and other developing regions, and reduce climactic instability. This system won?t increase poverty. It may hurt the oil companies. So what? Henry Ford was bad for buggy makers. You ask for my priorities. We should stop cooking the books, make those who take from the global commons pay, and invest that revenue as wisely as we can. The result of these steps will not be Dr. Pangloss?s ?best of all possible worlds.? But I am shocked that anyone believes we will get better results by continuing to treat the Earth as if it were Enron. Less Charming, but Honest Bj?rn Lomborg responds We agree that wise investments will make the world better. But what proposals does that actually include? The question was answered last year by the Copenhagen Consensus project. Thirty specialists from a broad range of fields joined forces with eight top economists, including three Nobel laureates, to make a global priority list. Their top goals were to prevent HIV/AIDS, end agricultural subsidies, and fight malnutrition and malaria. That is where we can do the most good per dollar. The Copenhagen Consensus concluded that substantial responses to climate change (your favorite) would do little good at high cost. You say we should make polluters pay. That?s an excellent idea. But you get a bit too excited. Most analyses show that the carbon damage cost is less than $10 per ton, suggesting a much lower tax and revenue stream. Moreover, just as money is a scarce resource, so too is political will. Given the world?s immense reluctance to enforce carbon taxes and trade liberalization, we should focus on getting the best one?trade?done first. Your Economics 101 suggests that carbon taxes would have a big impact on emissions and climate change, but real economic models show the exact opposite. Carbon taxes would have little impact on emissions or climate change. No matter how much money we raise, we should still spend it wisely. If investing in cookers is more cost effective than windmills, we should do the cookers first. It really isn?t more complicated. Advocacy groups understandably want to focus on headline?grabbing issues, such as mercury, mangroves, and global warming. But when we emphasize some problems, we get less focus on others. It has been hard to get you to say what the world should not do first. Such a strategy is, naturally, less charming. But if we really want to do good in the long run, it is more honest to put those terms on paper. You end by repeating your claim that we are cooking the environmental books. No. We know there are environmental problems. But we face other challenges, too. Let?s tackle the ones where we can do the most good first. The rich world is dealing with many of its environmental problems because it can afford to. If the poor world became wealthier, they would follow suit. Tackling pressing issues such as disease, hunger, and polluted water will do obvious good and give the poor the chance to improve the state of their world. Carl Pope is executive director of the Sierra Club. Bj?rn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 1 19:23:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 15:23:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Book World: Honor Among Dealers Message-ID: Honor Among Dealers http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/28/AR2005072801565_pf.html Reviewed by Steve Bogira Sunday, July 31, 2005; BW15 A SHADOW IN THE CITY Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior By Charles Bowden Harcourt. 309 pp. $24 Charles Bowden's A Shadow in the City is a journey into the mind of one veteran soldier in the war on drugs as he increasingly doubts his mission. For more than 20 years, Joey O'Shay has deceived people for a living. And he's been a master at his work. O'Shay isn't his real name, and Bowden won't tell us the city where he works. He seems to be a local narcotics cop detailed to the feds. He started in his mid-twenties, kicking in doors on raids with his crew. On one bust, a man emerged from a bedroom with a .357, fired at O'Shay, and missed. O'Shay shot the man twice in the chest, killing him. The close call and the slaying of a man didn't deter O'Shay. He found himself riding the adrenaline rush, "this sense of being totally alert because in an instant you may be totally dead." But shootouts aren't common in the drug war; most of the battles are psychological. That part of the job thrills O'Shay even more. His work initially consists mainly of getting addicts to reveal their sources: "He finds people who will do anything to get high and finds he gets high by finding them and using them." Moving up from addicts to petty dealers to suppliers of kilos from Mexico and Colombia, O'Shay eventually poses as a dealer himself. He doesn't participate in the actual busts, and often suppliers go to prison unaware that it was O'Shay who did them in. Most undercover drug cops spend a year or two on the job before they've had enough, Bowden says. O'Shay stays at it, wearing out partners "like sets of tires." He can't quit. Obsession "is the ultimate addiction, the strongest drug because it gives the one thing other drugs never deliver. It gives meaning." He's sustained by the certainty that he is good and his prey are evil. But as the years march on, O'Shay starts questioning that conviction. He comes to believe that the drug kingpins work much harder than his fellow narcs, that they're honest "in their own filthy way." And he can't help but realize that the drugs keep flowing in spite of his efforts. Most of A Shadow in the City revolves around a deal involving millions of dollars worth of pure Colombian heroin. O'Shay develops an affection for the supplier, a Caribbean woman identified only as Gloria. His skillful efforts result in the seizure of a large cache of heroin -- and Gloria's arrest. One night, he begins to write down how he feels about the "intricate, filthy, disgusting maze" he concocted to snare her. "I have more respect for the drug dealers I took down than the majority of the bureaucracy I work around," he writes. "Tonight I will drink enough to numb the fact I have destroyed some other humans and most likely their innocent families." The book's power is diminished by its total dependence on unnamed sources and pseudonyms for all the cops and all the dealers. In the drug-enforcement sphere, confidential informants are a necessary evil, but the secrecy allows for scamming, and the results must be viewed skeptically. Likewise in the world of journalism. Bowden is a gifted writer, but his book can be hard going, with its disjointed, hallucinatory glimpses of O'Shay's parallel personae as cop, dealer, father and seeker of truth. And he strains at times in painting O'Shay as a maestro of narcs: "He can read a face in a glance, know a move before it happens. Sense what someone else will do before the thought crosses their mind." And leap tall buildings in a single bound? A Shadow in the City is a condemnation of the drug war, with a top officer saying the point of the war eludes him. But it's also a fascinating personal story about a man whose search for meaning in his life makes him reject his life's work. ? Steve Bogira is the author of "Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse." From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 1 19:23:21 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 15:23:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: On Seeing the World as Quantum-Mechanical Message-ID: Physics and Society: On Seeing the World as Quantum-Mechanical http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050805-6.htm The following points are made by Richard Conn Henry (Nature 2005 436:29): 1) Historically, we have looked to our religious leaders to understand the meaning of our lives; the nature of our world. With Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), this changed. In establishing that the Earth goes around the Sun, Galileo not only succeeded in believing the unbelievable himself, but also convinced almost everyone else to do the same. This was a stunning accomplishment in "physics outreach" and, with the subsequent work of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), physics joined religion in seeking to explain our place in the Universe. 2) The more recent physics revolution of the past 80 years has yet to transform general public understanding in a similar way. And yet a correct understanding of physics was accessible even to Pythagoras. According to Pythagoras, "number is all things", and numbers are mental, not mechanical. Likewise, Newton called light "particles", knowing the concept to be an "effective theory" --useful, not true. As noted by Newton's biographer Richard Westfall: "The ultimate cause of atheism, Newton asserted, is 'this notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves.'" Newton knew of Newton's rings and was untroubled by what is shallowly called "wave/particle duality". 3) The 1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the Universe's nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable -- this time, that the Universe is mental. According to Sir James Jeans: "the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter." But physicists have not yet followed Galileo's example and convinced everyone of the wonders of quantum mechanics. As Sir Arthur Eddington explained: "It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character." 4) In the tenth century, Ibn al-Haytham initiated the view that light proceeds from a source, enters the eye, and is perceived. This picture is incorrect but is still what most people think occurs, including, unless pressed, most physicists. To come to terms with the Universe, we must abandon such views. The world is quantum mechanical: we must learn to perceive it as such. One benefit of switching humanity to a correct perception of the world is the resulting joy of discovering the mental nature of the Universe. We have no idea what this mental nature implies, but -- the great thing is -- it is true. Beyond the acquisition of this perception, physics can no longer help. You may descend into solipsism, expand to deism, or something else if you can justify it -- just don't ask physics for help.[1-3] References: 1. Marburger, J. On the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics http://www.ostp.gov/html/Copenhagentalk.pdf (2002) 2. Henry, R. C. Am. J. Phys. 58, 1087-1100 (1990) 3. Steiner, M. The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998) Nature http://www.nature.com/nature -------------------------------- Related Material: THEORETICAL PHYSICS: ON QUANTUM MEASUREMENT LIMITS The following points are made by V. Giovannetti et al (Science 2004 306:1330): 1) Measurement is a physical process, and the accuracy to which measurements can be performed is governed by the laws of physics. In particular, the behavior of systems at small scales is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, which place limits on the accuracy to which measurements can be performed. These limits to accuracy take two forms. First, the Heisenberg uncertainty relation [1] imposes an intrinsic uncertainty on the values of measurement results of complementary observables such as position and momentum, or the different components of the angular momentum of a rotating object. Second, every measurement apparatus is itself a quantum system: As a result, the uncertainty relations together with other quantum constraints on the speed of evolution [such as the Margolus-Levitin theorem [2]] impose limits on how accurately we can measure quantities, given the amount of physical resources, such as energy, at hand to perform the measurement. 2) One important consequence of the physical nature of measurement is the so-called "quantum back action": The extraction of information from a system can give rise to a feedback effect in which the system configuration after the measurement is determined by the measurement outcome. For example, the most extreme case (the so-called von Neumann or projective measurement) produces a complete determination of the post-measurement state. When performing successive measurements, quantum back action can be detrimental, because earlier measurements can negatively influence successive ones. 3) A common strategy to get around the negative effect of back action and of Heisenberg uncertainty is to design an experimental apparatus that monitors only one out of a set of incompatible observables: "less is more" [3]. This strategy, called "quantum nondemolition measurement" [3-6], is not as simple as it sounds. One has to account for the system's interaction with the external environment, which tends to extract and disperse information, and for the system dynamics, which can combine the measured observable with incompatible ones. Another strategy to get around the Heisenberg uncertainty is to employ a quantum state in which the uncertainty in the observable to be monitored is very small (at the cost of a very large uncertainty in the complementary observable). The research on quantum-enhanced measurements was spawned by the invention of such techniques [3] and by the birth of more rigorous treatments of quantum measurements. 4) Most standard measurement techniques do not account for these quantum subtleties, so that their precision is limited by otherwise avoidable sources of errors. Typical examples are the environment-induced noise from vacuum fluctuations (the so-called "shot noise") that affects the measurement of the electromagnetic field amplitude, and the dynamically induced noise in the position measurement of a free mass (the so-called "standard quantum limit"). These sources of imprecision are not as fundamental as the unavoidable Heisenberg uncertainty relations, because they originate only from a non-optimal choice of measurement strategy. However, the shot noise and standard quantum limits set important benchmarks for the quality of a measurement, and they provide an interesting challenge to devise quantum strategies that can defeat them. 5) In summary: Quantum mechanics, through the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, imposes limits on the precision of measurement. Conventional measurement techniques typically fail to reach these limits. Conventional bounds to the precision of measurements such as the shot noise limit or the standard quantum limit are not as fundamental as the Heisenberg limits and can be overcome using quantum strategies that employ "quantum tricks" such as squeezing and entanglement. References (abridged): 1. H. P. Robertson, Phys. Rev. 34, 163 (1929) 2. N. Margolus, L. B. Levitin, Physica D 120, 188 (1998) 3. C. M. Caves, K. S. Thorne, R. W. P. Drever, V. D. Sandberg, M. Zimmermann, Rev. Mod. Phys. 52, 341 (1980) 4. K. Bencheikh, J. A. Levenson, P. Grangier, O. Lopez, Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 3422 (1995) 5. G. J. Milburn, D. F. Walls, Phys. Rev. A. 28, 2065 (1983) Science http://www.sciencemag.org -------------------------------- Related Material: QUANTUM PHYSICS: ZERO-POINT FLUCTUATIONS The following points are made by Miles Blencowe (Nature 2003 424:262): 1) In 1927, Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) introduced his famous quantum principle, which states that the uncertainties in the position and the velocity of a particle are inversely proportional to each other: a particle's position or its velocity can be known precisely, but not both at once. This principle is one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics, and is traditionally relevant to the domain of subatomic particles. But what about more familiar macroscopic objects, comprising many atoms, that we think of as possessing simultaneously well-defined positions and velocities of their center-of-mass? If we could be sufficiently precise in our measurements on such objects, would we encounter the quantum uncertainty principle at work? 2) If you clamp one end of a wooden ruler to the edge of a table and then pluck the other, free end, it vibrates with decaying amplitude and eventually returns to apparent rest. But if you were to look at the free end of the ruler under a sufficiently powerful microscope, it would not be at rest at all, but jiggling up and down in a random fashion. This motion is a consequence of the air molecules striking the ruler, as well as of its countless, fluctuating internal defects, and is an example of thermal brownian motion. 3) There are other, quantum fluctuations in the ruler, though, that are completely masked by this classical thermal motion. These quantum "zero-point" fluctuations have much smaller amplitude and arise from the necessary uncertainty in position and velocity stated in Heisenberg's principle. The situation is analogous to the hydrogen atom, which is stable because the attractive electrostatic force that would like to pull the electron into a tighter volume around the proton is balanced by the repulsive effect of the electron's fluctuating velocity. Similarly, for a macroscopic object such as a crystal beam or a ruler, the elastic restoring force on the bent beam balances the repulsive effect of its fluctuating center-of-mass velocity. 4) Because the magnitudes of the zero-point fluctuations in position and velocity are so small, they can only be detected if the structure is cooled down to very low temperatures. As the temperature is lowered, the amplitude of thermal motion decreases. Eventually, there will be no thermal motion, only pure, temperature-independent zero-point fluctuations. At a temperature of about a hundredth of a kelvin, zero-point fluctuations should dominate in a structure with a mechanical vibration frequency of about one billion cycles per second (1 gigahertz, or GHz). Nature http://www.nature.com/nature From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Aug 1 20:57:15 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 13:57:15 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The Progressive Rapture Message-ID: <01C596A0.ED0BE280.shovland@mindspring.com> We know that there are millions of Jihadist Christrians out there driving around in SUV's joyfully awaiting The Rapture. There may only be 144,000 seats on the Fiery Chariot, but that doesn't bother those who have undergone The Faith Lobotomy. Meanwhile us poor Faithless Progressives are stuck here on planet Earth, trying to figure out how to make it a better place for ourselves as well as for the future Left Behinds. Fortunately for us, and contrary to the blatherings of the Reptilian Noise Machine, we have lots of ideas for doing that. And we are doing it, even though the Fascist Corporate Media are ignoring us, and will continue to ignore us while the Old World crumbles around them. In our two's and three's we are gathering, and the True Spirit of Christ's Love is radiating from us with ever-increasing strength. Those who think we are Wimps will learn their own folly as we take up our whips of cord and drive their evil souls from the Temple. In the end, we Humans will win. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Tue Aug 2 18:21:26 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 11:21:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] driving the money lenders from the temple In-Reply-To: <200508021800.j72I0MR31521@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050802182127.83155.qmail@web30804.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Steve says: >>Those who think we are Wimps will learn their own folly as we take up our whips of cord and drive their evil souls from the Temple.<< --Let's do that with the love the Pharisees failed to show us. That will make their humiliation even more purifying. Michael ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From HowlBloom at aol.com Wed Aug 3 05:27:11 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 01:27:11 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: on islam Message-ID: <1b8.1870419e.3021afaf@aol.com> In a message dated 7/31/2005 12:58:23 AM Eastern Standard Time, shovland at mindspring.com writes: Don't forget that there were vast reserves of gold in Africa that fueled their growth for a long time. They traded a lot of it to India via Madagascar. good point, Steve. Gold and ivory were treasures the empire of Islam sucked from Africa in abundance. These export items were carried the hundreds of miles from central africa to the ports of Zanzibar or Mombasa on the shoulders of newly-enslaved women, children, and, in much smaller numbers, men. Those men and women were tied in long chain gangs by ropes around their necks. They were underfed. If one fell because of weakness, she or he was hacked to death on the spot. She who fell failed as a transport mechanism and failed as a potential export. Here?s a North African eyewitness account quoted in a South African Christian Magazine. In North Africa, the freight was not ivory and gold. It was mere firewood. ?In 1818, Captain Lyon of the Royal Navy reported that the Al-Mukani in Tripoli ?waged war on all its defenceless neighbours and annually carried off 4000 to 5000 slaves.a piteous spectacle! These poor oppressed beings were, many of them, so exhausted as to be scarcely able to walk, their legs and feet were much swelled, and by their enormous size formed a striking contrast with their emaciated bodies. They were all borne down with loads of firewood, and even poor little children, worn to skeletons by fatigue and hardships, were obliged to bear their burden, while many of their inhuman masters with dreadful whip suspended from their waist.all the traders speak of slaves as farmers do of cattle.the defenceless state of the Negro kingdoms to the southward are temptations too strong to be resisted, a force is therefore annually sent.to pillage these defenceless people, to carry them off as slaves, burn their towns, kill the aged and infants, destroy their crops and inflict on them every possible misery.all slavery is for an unlimited time.none of their owners ever moved without their whips - which were in constant use.drinking too much water, bringing too little wood or falling asleep before the cooking was finished, were considered nearly capital crimes, and it was in vain for these poor creatures to plead the excuse of being tired. Nothing could withhold the application of the whip. No slaves dared to be ill or unable to walk, but when the poor sufferer dies, the master suspects that there must have been something 'wrong inside' and regrets not having liberally applied their usual remedy of burning the belly with a red-hot iron.?? (Retrieved July 14, 2005, from the World Wide Web http://www.christianaction.org.za/articles_ca/2004-4-TheScourgeofSlavery.htm Christian Action Magazine) ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Recent Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Institute for Accelerating Change ; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Wed Aug 3 22:58:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 18:58:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: On Human Impacts on Ecosystems Message-ID: Anthropology: On Human Impacts on Ecosystems http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050805-3.htm [I left out several addresses in recent e-mails. Let me know what dates you missed if you want to get these articles.] The following points are made by Christopher N. Johnson (Science 2005 309:255): 1) What was the impact of early human populations on pristine ecosystems? Studies of this question have focused on the possibility that humans caused extinctions of large mammals. For example, the arrival of modern humans in the Americas ~11,000 years ago coincided with the disappearance of mammoths, ground sloths, and many other large mammals [1]. However, the role of humans is difficult to determine in this case because the climate was also changing rapidly as the last ice age came to an end; climate change, not human impact, may have caused the extinctions. 2) Modern humans reached Australia much earlier. Just when they did is still debated, but occupation was widespread by 45,000 years ago and may have begun several thousand years earlier [2] -- well before the climatic upheavals at the end of the last glacial cycle. Australia should therefore provide a clear view of the ecological impacts of human arrival. But environmental changes following human arrival in Australia have been difficult to resolve, because very few precisely dated environmental records extend through the middle of the last glacial cycle. Recent work. (3) provides such a record based on diet reconstructions of the continent's two largest bird species. The results indicate that human arrival resulted in a profound environmental shift. 3) Miller et al [3] studied past diets of the emu (Dromaius novaehollandiae) and an even larger flightless herbivorous bird, the extinct Genyornis newtoni, in the arid and semi-arid regions of the south Australian interior. By analyzing carbon isotopes in individually dated eggshells, they were able to compare the contributions of plants that use the C4 photosynthetic pathway (mainly tropical and arid-adapted grasses) and those that use the C3 pathway (most shrubs, trees, and nongrass herbs) to the diet of the birds that laid the eggs. Their collection of eggshells covers the past 140,000 years, encompassing the whole of the last glacial cycle. 4) Miller et al [3] found a sudden change in emu diet between 50,000 and 45,000 years ago. Before 50,000 years ago, emus had variable diets, with a strong contribution from C4 plants; after 45,000 years ago, they ate mostly C3 plants. Genyornis eggshells were common before 50,000 years ago, but they abruptly disappeared at the same time as the diet of the emu changed. Before then, Genyornis also ate a mixture of C3 and C4 plants, but its diet was much less variable than that of the emu through the same period, which suggests that it was a more specialized feeder. 5) These results point to a major change in vegetation. Perhaps woodland mosaics, with plenty of grass, were converted into monotonous shrubland, or nutritious grasses were replaced by poor-quality species, forcing emus to increase their feeding on nongrass species. Miller et al [3] also measured carbon isotopes in wombat teeth, showing that they changed in the same way at the same time. Nowadays, wombats are mainly grazers; the switch in their diet from C4 grass to C3 shrubs in the middle of the last glacial period can only be explained by a huge change in vegetation. References (abridged): 1. A. D. Barnosky, P. L. Koch, R. S. Feranec, S. L. Wing, A. B. Shabel, Science 306, [70] (2004) 2. J. F. O'Connell, J. Allen, J. Archaeol. Sci. 31, 835 (2004) 3. G. H. Miller et al., Science 309, 287 (2005) 4. R. G. Roberts et al., Science 292, [1888] (2001) 5. F. D. Pate, M. C. McDowell, R. T. Wells, A. M. Smith, Austral. Archaeol. 54, 53 (2002) Science http://www.sciencemag.org -------------------------------- Related Material: EARTH SCIENCE: AN APPARENT ECOSYSTEM EFFECT OF GLOBAL WARMING The following points are made by C.M. O'Reilly et al (Nature 2003 424:766): 1) Although the effects of climate warming on the chemical and physical properties of lakes have been documented, biotic and ecosystem-scale responses to climate change have been only estimated or predicted by manipulations and models. 2) Lake Tanganyika in Africa is a large (mean width, 50 km; mean length 650 km), deep (mean depth, 570 m; maximum depth, 1470 m) north south trending rift valley lake that is an important source of both nutrition and revenue to the bordering countries of Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The lake has historically supported one of the world's most productive pelagic fisheries, and the annual harvest in recent years has been estimated to be between 165,000 and 200,000 metric tons, with an equivalent value of tens of millions of US dollars. 3) The lake is oligotrophic and permanently thermally stratified with an anoxic hypolimnion. During the cool windy season (May to September), strong southerly winds tilt the thermocline, causing upwelling of deeper nutrient-rich waters at the south end of the lake and initiating seiche activity. Cooling during this season also contributes to a weaker thermocline, and entrainment of deep nutrient-rich waters from the hypolimnion occurs in this time period. Overall, these mixing events provide the dominant source of some limiting nutrients (P, Si) to the surface waters and are important in maintaining the pelagic food web. 4) The authors present evidence that climate warming is diminishing productivity in Lake Tanganyika. In parallel with regional warming patterns since the beginning of the twentieth century, a rise in surface-water temperature has increased the stability of the water column. A regional decrease in wind velocity has contributed to reduced mixing, decreasing deep-water nutrient upwelling and entrainment into surface waters. Carbon isotope records in sediment cores suggest that primary productivity may have decreased by about 20%, implying a roughly 30% decrease in fish yields. The authors suggest their study provides evidence that the impact of regional effects of global climate change on aquatic ecosystem functions and services can be larger than that of local anthropogenic activity or overfishing. Nature http://www.nature.com/nature -------------------------------- Related Material: ECOLOGY: EXTINCTION PATTERNS AND ECOSYSTEMS The following points are made by David Raffaelli (Science 2004 306:1141): 1) The accelerated extinctions of species and changes in biodiversity are no longer disputed issues. Much effort has gone into quantifying biodiversity loss rates for particular animal and plant groups (1). Less clear, however, is the impact of such losses on ecosystems, especially when many different kinds of species of plants and animals are lost simultaneously (2). Yet policy-makers urgently need guidance on the effects of multispecies losses if they are to plan for and advise on the societal consequences of biodiversity changes. The ecological research community has been highly active in attempting to provide such guidance (3,4), but many challenges remain. Foremost among these is that most real extinction events are nonrandom with respect to species identity -- some species are more likely to go extinct than others -- whereas research studies often assume that extinctions are random. 2) Solan et al (5) and Zavaleta and Hulvey (6), reporting on work in two very different types of ecosystem, reveal that the impact of nonrandom species extinctions on ecosystems is markedly different from that predicted by scenarios where extinctions are random. These studies bring us a step nearer to understanding the impact of nonrandom species losses on ecosystems and should help to provide policy-makers with a firmer basis for decision-making. 3) The two studies examine very different habitats (marine versus terrestrial), each with different kinds of organisms (sea-bed invertebrates versus grassland plants), different ecosystem processes (sediment biogeochemistry versus resistance to invasion by exotic species), and different types of experimental approaches (data analysis and modeling versus controlled experimentation). So it is all the more interesting, for scientists and policy-makers alike, that both papers arrive at the same conclusion: Nonrandom extinction events have impacts on ecosystems that are quite different from those predicted by scenarios that assume species extinctions occur at random. 4) Solan et al (5) combine into a model a well-documented data set of invertebrate communities in marine sediments off the coast of Galway, Ireland. This fusion, facilitated by the BIOMERGE initiative, enables the authors to predict what will happen to the cumulative effects of the small-scale sediment disturbances (bioturbation) caused by the movement, feeding, and respiration activities of all 139 species of clams, worms, sea urchins, brittle stars, and shrimps present in this system if species are lost through impacts such as overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. The authors scored each species for its body size, mobility, and mode of sediment mixing to calculate an index of bioturbation potential for different species combinations and for different degrees of species richness. In their model, either extinction scenarios could be random or losses could be ordered with respect to the sensitivity of species to environmental stress, body size, and abundance, traits that in turn reflect different kinds of impact. References (abridged): 1. See www.royalsoc.ac.uk/events 2. See www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx 3. M. Loreau et al., Science 294, 804 (2001) 4. M. Loreau, S. Naeem, P. Inchausti, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2002) 5. M. Solan et al., Science 306, 1177 (2004) 6. E. S. Zavaleta, K. B. Hulvey, Science 306, 1175 (2004) Science http://www.sciencemag.org From checker at panix.com Wed Aug 3 22:58:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 18:58:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: On the Optical Structure of Animal Eyes Message-ID: Evolution: On the Optical Structure of Animal Eyes http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050805-2.htm The following points are made by Michael F. Land (Current Biology 2005 15:R319): 1) The ability to respond to light is common to many forms of life, but eyes themselves -- structures that break up environmental light according to its direction of origin -- are only found in animals. At its simplest, an eye might consist of a small number of light-responsive receptors in a pigmented pit, which shadows some receptors from light in one direction, and others from a different direction. This definition distinguishes an eye from an organ with a single photoreceptor cell, which may indeed be directional because of screening pigment, but which does not allow for spatial vision -- the simultaneous comparison of light intensities in different directions [1]. An alternative starting point for an eye would be for each receptor to have its own pigmented tube, the assemblage forming a convex cushion. In these two proto-eye structures we have the beginnings of the two mutually exclusive ways of building an eye: the single-chambered range of eyes, often misleadingly called "simple", and the compound eyes. 2) Although no eyes survive in fossils from the Precambrian (more than 550 million years ago) it seems certain that eyes like these were present from early in the evolution of the Bilateria [2], long before the Cambrian explosion. Simple pit eyes are still present in flatworms, annelid worms, and molluscs, and in many larval eyes. Proto-compound eyes occur in ark clams and some tube-dwelling polychaetes, where they act as detectors of moving predators. Genetic, developmental, and morphological evidence indicates that from the earliest times eyes had access to two different photoreceptor types: ciliary receptors, in which the photosensitive pigment is displayed on outgrowths of cilia, and rhabdomeric receptors, in which the expanded pigment-containing membrane consists of microvilli. The two receptor types use different transducer cascades, and their opsins -- the protein component of the photopigments -- are also different. Ciliary receptors are typical of deuterostomes (echinoderms and chordates) and rhabdomeric receptors of the protostomes (annelids, molluscs and arthropods), but both types can be found in both lineages. The development of cerebral eyes in both of these lineages has been associated with the Pax-6 control gene, evidently from early in bilaterian evolution. 3) In the Cambrian period, carnivory became important as a way of life and both predators and prey needed better vision. During the hundred million years from about 550 millions years ago, compound and then single-chambered eyes increased greatly in size, in their ability to resolve, and in optical sophistication. One way to improve the performance of a single-chambered proto-eye is to make the eye bigger and the aperture smaller, so that it becomes a genuine pinhole eye. This is a far from ideal solution, because the small aperture lets in little light, and so makes for a very insensitive eye, and increasing the aperture diameter drastically reduces the ability of the eye to resolve. For reasons that remain obscure, this design has been retained in the quite large (1 cm) eyes of the cephalopod Nautilus, even though its relatives (octopus and squid) have eyes with excellent lenses. Giant clams also have small pinhole eyes around their mantles, which do allow them to detect the presence of browsing fish. 4) A much better solution is to provide the eye with a lens, usually spherical in marine animals as a sphere provides the shortest focal length for a structure of a given diameter, and hence the most compact design. Such a structure might be made of protein, or some other substance with a refractive index higher than that of water. Refraction at each surface would bend rays and produce an image behind the lens. There is, however, a serious problem with a lens of this kind. Rays striking the outer regions of the lens are bent too much, so that they are focussed much closer to the lens than rays nearer to the lens center. This defect is known as spherical aberration, and in a spherical lens this is so severe that the image would be effectively unusable. The solution (attributed to James Clerk Maxwell) is for the lens to have a gradient of refractive index, highest in the center and falling to close to that of water in the periphery [3]. Peripheral rays are then bent much less, and overall the focal length of the eye becomes much shorter -- about 2.5 lens radii as opposed to 4 radii for a homogeneous lens. This makes for a lens that resolves well, and has a very high light-gathering power --an F-number of 1.25.[4,5] References (abridged): 1. Land, M.F. and Nilsson, D.-E. (2002). Animal Eyes. Oxford University Press 2. Arendt, D. and Wittbrodt, J. (2001). Reconstructing the eyes of Urbilateria. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 356, 1545-1563 3. Jagger, W.S. (1992). The optics of the spherical fish lens. Vision Res. 32, 1271-1284 4. Land, M.F. (1984). Crustacea. In: Ali, M.A. (Ed.), Photoreception and Vision in Invertebrates.. (1984). Plenum, New York 5. Kr?ger, R.H.H., Campbell, M.C.W., Fernald, R.D., and Wagner, H.-J. (1999). Multifocal lenses compensate for chromatic defocus in vertebrate eyes. J. Comp. Physiol. [A] 184, 361-369 Current Biology http://www.current-biology.com -------------------------------- Related Material: ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE EYE The following points are made by E.J.W. Barrington (citation below): 1) Two main types of highly differentiated photoreceptor system have appeared in the invertebrates: the compound eyes of arthropods and the camera-type eyes of cephalopods. Enough is known of the mode of functioning of these, and of their probable past history, to show that they represent the evolution, along two very different lines, of organs that have some striking points of similarity with the vertebrate eye, not only in their pigments but also in certain details of their structural organization. Indeed, this is an aspect of animal organization which is of considerable significance -- a convergence resulting from the widespread distribution of a common biochemical ground plan. In this instance the common feature is, of course, the nature of the photosensitive pigments. 2) Simple types of eyes are seen in the free-living Platyhelminthes and in the Annelida, where they are often composed of sensory cells associated with screening pigment cells. In their simplest form they may be no more than pigment spots, forming part of the general epithelium, but more usually they sink inwards to form cups. In the Turbellaria the pigment cells are often arranged to form the wall of an open bowl, the bipolar receptor cells projecting into this through its aperture. In such an eye there can be no possibility of forming an image, for there is no refractive structure. These organs are doubtless restricted to the differentiation of light and darkness, and in this way they make it possible for the animal to orientate itself with respect both to the intensity and to the source of the illumination. The distal ends of the receptor cells are differentiated to form a rod border, in which longitudinal striations can be seen with the light microscope... 3) Cup-like arrangements of pigment cells are common in the eyes of polychaetes, but a higher level of differentiation is reached in this group. Not only do the receptor cells themselves have a rod like tip, but the epithelium of the cup may produce secretions that fuse to form one or more lenses. Moreover, groups of sensory cells may be closely collected together to form ommatidia, recalling the unit structures of the compound eye of arthropods. Indeed, in sabellids (Branchiomma, for example) the ommatidia themselves may be grouped together to form a rudimentary type of compound eye. No doubt a similar tendency played an important part in the ancestors of arthropods, contributing to the establishment of their characteristic compound eyes. Convergence was probably involved in the process of arthropodization, so much so that it is necessary to envisage the possibility of an independent evolution of compound eyes in more than one line. The situation in annelids goes some way to make the possibility of the independent evolution of compound eyes acceptable, although it does not reveal the actual ancestry of these organs. Adapted from: E.J.W. Barrington: Invertebrate Structure and Function. Nelson 1967, p.282. -------------------------------- Related Material: ON THE MAMMALIAN CLOCK-EYE T. Roenneberg and M. Merrow (University of Munich, DE) discuss mammalian clocks, the authors making the following points: 1) Even without time cues from the environment, physiological events, from gene expression to behavior, recur with a high regularity but not necessarily in a precise 24 hour rhythm --hence the term "circadian" ("about one day"). Circadian rhythms are controlled by endogenous "clocks" which are synchronized, or "entrained", to the 24-hour day predominantly by light [1]. The central circadian pacemaker in mammals resides above the optic chiasm in the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN). It has long been known that light entrainment in mammals requires the eyes, but it was unclear through which photoreceptor the signal was processed. It came as a surprise that the circadian clock remains perfectly entrainable by light in mutant mice devoid of rods and cones [2]. 2) Researchers are racing to identify the novel receptor in the mammalian retina. Its spectral characteristics have been defined in mice and, more recently, in humans [3,4]. In addition to its role in entrainment, the novel photoreceptor is responsible for several other non-visual light responses, such as melatonin suppression, pupillary constriction and direct effects of light on motor-activity ("masking"), or for many other "vegetative" light effects, for example on cortisol levels or heart rate. Hankins and Lucas (5) have taken our understanding of this novel light input pathway a step further, showing that its influence is already apparent in the primary steps of intra-retinal signal processing. 3) The authors discuss vision vs. irradiation detection. Vision capitalizes on photons, using rods or cones as "pixels" to create a retinal image that is processed in the thalamus and the cortex. While a memory of these "pictures" may be stored in the brain, the retinal picture itself has to be renewable within milliseconds for instant detection of any changes. Visual processing thus requires both fast kinetics and high spatial resolution. In contrast, a detector for the assessment of day and night should not care about a flash of lightning or the shadow of a flying object. Its task is to integrate photons over a long time. This integration mechanism is partially responsible for the difficulties that shift workers have in adjusting their biological clocks to socially enforced schedules -- the competition between indoor and outdoor light cannot be won. A worker who is exposed to 500 lux over an eight-hour night shift collects a similar quantity of photons waiting 15 minutes for the bus, even on a cloudy day. As a result, the circadian system remains entrained to the "real" day -- it cannot adjust to the implemented night shift, so workers try to be active and alert when their physiology is tuned to sleep. In fact, workers on night shifts, with most of the rest of the day free to spend outdoors, may collect more day light than their non-shifting colleagues. The invention of artificial light has ironically created a biological shadow world because we spend more time indoors. 4) In summary: Light is the most reliable environmental signal for adjusting biological clocks to the 24-hour day. Mammals receive this signal exclusively through the eyes, but not just via rods and cones. New evidence has been uncovered for a novel photoreceptor that may be responsible for more than just adjusting the clock. References (abridged): 1. Roenneberg T. and Foster R.G. (1997) Twilight Times-light and the circadian system. Photochem. Photobiol., 66:549-561 2. Freedman M.S., Lucas R.J., Soni B., von Schantz M., Munoz M., David-Gray Z.K. and Foster R. (1999) Non-rod, non-cone ocular photoreceptors regulate the mammalian circadian behavior. Science, 284:502-504 3. Brainard G.C., Hanifin J.P., Greeson J.M., Byrne B., Glickman G., Gerner E. and Rolag M.D. (2001) Action spectrum for melatonin regulation in humans: evidence for a novel circadian photoreceptor. J. Neurosci., 21:6405-6412 4. Thapan K., Arendt J. and Skene D.J. (2001) An action spectrum for melatonin suppression: evidence for a novel non-rod, non-cone photoreceptor system in humans. J. Physiol., 535:261-267 5. Hankins, M.W. and Lucas, R.J. (2002). A novel photopigment in the human retina regulates the activity of primary visual pathways according to long-term light exposure. (in press) Current Biology 2002 12:R163 From checker at panix.com Wed Aug 3 22:59:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 18:59:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: On Optimization Message-ID: Evolution: On Optimization http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050805-1.htm The following points are made by William J. Sutherland (Nature 2005 435:569): 1) The essence of optimization is to calculate the most efficient solution to a given problem, and then to test the prediction. The concept has already revolutionized some aspects of biology, but it has the potential for much wider application. Of course, optimization has long been employed effectively in subjects other than biology. Economists have traditionally calculated the options that result in the greatest profit, and engineers routinely calculate the best design solution, such as the strongest bridge of a given weight. 2) Darwin's theory of natural selection provided an obvious mechanism for explaining optimization in biology: more efficiently designed individuals will leave more offspring. But it was another century before biologists calculated optimal solutions. David Lack pioneered its use in biology with his concept of the optimal clutch size the number of eggs that would produce the greatest number of offspring. The use of optimization has allowed biologists to move from merely describing patterns or mechanisms to being able to predict, from first principles, how organisms should be designed. Optimality models are based on three elements: the choices available; what is being optimized; and the constraints. 3) Physiologists have used optimization to answer a wide range of questions about animal morphology. For example, optimization has been invoked to predict the design of a bone of given weight that minimizes the risk of breaking or buckling; the speed at which it is most efficient to switch from running to walking; and the gut design that provides the highest energy gain from a given diet. The prediction of the triplet code as the most parsimonious means of coding 20 amino acids using the four bases of DNA is another successful example of this methodology. 4) But optimization has its critics. The most common objection centers on the mistaken belief that the aim of this method is to test whether organisms are optimal. Actually, it is the assumptions of optimality that are tested. The failure to find support for a prediction can be used to determine whether an assumption is wrong. For example, if animals do not select the diet that maximizes energy intake, it may be because they are choosing a diet that optimizes a balance of different components, or that avoids the costs associated with obtaining larger prey. Once such possibilities have been identified, a new theory can be devised and its predictions tested. It has been argued that this process is circular but in practice it is no different from the successive predicting and testing that underlies most science.[1-3] References (abridged): 1. Alexander, R. M. Optima for Animals (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, 1996) 2. Lucas, P. W. Dental Functional Morphology (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2004) 3. Sutherland, W. J. From Individual Behavior to Population Ecology (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1996) Nature http://www.nature.com/nature -------------------------------- Related Material: ECOLOGY: ON OPTIMIZATION OF MAMMALIAN SPACE REQUIREMENTS The following points are made by Steven Buskirk (Science 2004 306:238): 1) For decades ecologists have sought to understand the principles underlying how mammals optimize their space requirements. It is intuitive that mammals need home ranges, areas they routinely traverse that are large enough to meet their energy needs, but small enough to be protected from intrusions by same-species neighbors that occupy adjacent home ranges. Early attempts to understand the relation between body mass and home-range area suggested that home-range area increases at the same rate as metabolism (1). As metabolic rate is proportional to body mass raised to the 3/4 power, then home-range size should also have the same proportion to body mass (2). 2) However, abundant data on the home ranges of mammals, primarily derived from wildlife telemetry studies, suggest that this is not the case. Indeed, the home-range area increases at a higher rate than metabolic rate and, in fact, scales almost linearly with body mass (3,4). Yet parallel evidence from mammalian population density studies is consistent with a metabolic explanation of individual spatial requirements in that the reciprocal of population density (area per animal) appears to scale to the 3/4 power of body mass (5). As large mammals have home ranges bigger than would be predicted from their energetic needs, this implies a maintenance cost that goes beyond the acquisition of essential resources. 3) Jetz et al (2004) have coalesced all of these findings by deriving a general model of mammalian spatial requirements that incorporates body mass, energy requirements, home-range size and, crucially, interactions with same-species neighbors. The authors use an equation from physics for collisions among gas particles to predict the frequency of interactions between home-range owners and intrusive neighbors. They demonstrate that large mammals require a home range that is larger than predicted by resource needs because they share resources with their neighbors to a greater extent than do small mammals. This forced sharing is the result of body size-dependent processes, such as whether the mammal is able to traverse its home range often enough to exclude its neighbors. 4) The general approach of Jetz et al (2004) falls within the realm of allometric macroecology, which attempts to explain biological differences among species by examining patterns over a wide range of body sizes. For terrestrial mammals, this range is represented by the six orders of magnitude that separate the body masses of shrews and elephants. Metabolic rate, the most fundamental of physiological attributes, was shown by Kleiber (1) to be proportional to the 3/4 power of body mass in mammals across an entire range of body sizes, rather than the 2/3 power predicted by a simple surface area to volume relation. Recently the 3/4 exponent was derived from first principles by West et al (1997). References (abridged): 1. M. Kleiber, The Fire of Life (Wiley, New York, 1961) 2. B. K. McNab, Am. Nat. 97, 133 (1963) 3. A. S. Harestad, F. L. Bunnell, Ecology 60, 389 (1979) 4. S. L. Lindstedt et al., Ecology 67, 413 (1986) 5. J. Damuth, Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 31, 193 (1987) Science http://www.sciencemag.org -------------------------------- Related Material: DINOSAURS, DRAGONS, AND DWARFS: THE EVOLUTION OF MAXIMAL BODY SIZE The following points are made by G.P. Burness et al (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 2001 98:14518): 1) The size and taxonomic affiliation of the largest locally present species ("top species") of terrestrial vertebrate vary greatly among faunas, raising many unsolved questions. Why are the top species on continents bigger than those on even the largest islands, bigger in turn than those on small islands? Why are the top mammals marsupials on Australia but placentals on the other continents? Why is the world's largest extant lizard (the Komodo dragon) native to a modest-sized Indonesian island, of all unlikely places? Why is the top herbivore larger than the top carnivore at most sites? Why were the largest dinosaurs bigger than any modern terrestrial species? 2) A useful starting point is the observation of Marquet and Taper (1998), based on three data sets (Great Basin mountaintops, Sea of Cortez islands, and the continents), that the size of a landmass's top mammal increases with the landmass's area. To explain this pattern, they noted that populations numbering less than some minimum number of individuals are at high risk of extinction, but larger individuals require more food and hence larger home ranges, thus only large landmasses can support at least the necessary minimum number of individuals of larger-bodied species. If this reasoning were correct, one might expect body size of the top species also to depend on other correlates of food requirements and population densities, such as trophic level and metabolic rate. Hence the authors assembled a data set consisting of the top terrestrial herbivores and carnivores on 25 oceanic islands and the 5 continents to test 3 quantitative predictions: a) Within a trophic level, body mass of the top species will increase with land area, with a slope predictable from the slope of the relation between body mass and home range area. b) For a given land area, the top herbivore will be larger than the top carnivore by a factor predictable from the greater amounts of food available to herbivores than to carnivores. c) Within a trophic level and for a given area of landmass, top species that are ectotherms will be larger than ones that are endotherms, by a factor predictable from ectotherms' lower food requirements. 3) The authors point out that on reflection, one can think of other factors likely to perturb these predictions, such as environmental productivity, over-water dispersal, evolutionary times required for body size changes, and changing landmass area with geological time. Indeed, the database of the authors does suggest effects of these other factors. The authors point out they propose their three predictions not because they expect them always to be correct, but because they expect them to describe broad patterns that must be understood in order to be able to detect and interpret deviations from those patterns. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. http://www.pnas.org From checker at panix.com Wed Aug 3 22:59:06 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 18:59:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Advantage, China Message-ID: Advantage, China http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/29/AR2005072902172_pf.html Advantage, China In This Match, They Play Us Better Than We Play Them By James McGregor Sunday, July 31, 2005; B01 BEIJING -- We're losing the intelligence war against China. No, not the one with spy satellites, human operatives and electronic eavesdropping. I'm talking about intelligence : having an intelligent understanding of and intelligent discussions about China -- where it's heading, why it's bidding to buy major U.S. companies and whether we should worry. Above all, I'm talking about formulating and pursuing intelligent policies for dealing with China. The Chinese government today understands America much better than our government understands China. Consequently, the Chinese government is much better at pulling our strings than we are at pulling theirs. China's top leaders, diplomats and bureaucrats have a clear framework from which they view the United States, and they are focused and unified in formulating and implementing their policies toward us. In contrast, our government's viewpoint on China is unfocused, fractured and often uninformed. Is China still the Red Menace of the Cold War or a hot new competitor out to eat our economic lunch? Both views as well as a hodgepodge of other interpretations can be found in the halls of the White House, Congress and the Pentagon. Add to that confusion a vicious domestic political culture that brooks no compromise, and the chances of formulating a coherent China policy approach nil. Playing the barbarians off against each other has been a core tenet of Chinese foreign policy since the imperial dynasty days when China's maps depicted a huge landmass labeled the "Middle Kingdom" surrounded by tiny islands labeled England, Germany, France, America, Russia and Africa. China was the center of the world and everyone else was a barbarian. That's why the Chinese are delighted by spectacles such as when rival members of a U.S. congressional delegation screamed at one another in front of their Chinese hosts in the Great Hall of the People. And what should they think of the time top Chinese officials laid out clear policy objectives to an American business audience and a U.S. cabinet member responded by saying "Jesus loves the Chinese people"? Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, China policy has been a political football that American politicians kick back and forth to score points against one another. In the 1990s, it was a penalty-free game because the United States had the upper hand. China needed our capital, technology, know-how and insatiable consumer market to build its economy, as well as our blessing to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). But those days are over. China's raging consumer market, its massive export machine, voracious appetite for global resources and more than $700 billion in foreign exchange reserves puts the ball in its court. It is difficult to overstate the transformation that has swept China in the past 15 years. To frame it in terms of comparable historical changes in the United States, China has been simultaneously experiencing the raw capitalism of the robber baron era of the late 1800s; the speculative financial mania of the 1920s; the rural-to-urban migration of the 1930s; the emergence of the first-car, first-home, first-fashionable-clothes, first-college-education, first-family-vacation middle-class consumer boom of the 1950s; and even aspects of social upheaval similar to the 1960s. Today Chinese government officials and business executives admire, fear and pity the United States. They admire our entrepreneurial culture, free markets, legal system and ability to unemotionally discard what doesn't work while our best-in-the-world universities and enormous R&D capabilities create new products and services. China's economic reforms over the past 25 years have been aimed at creating a Chinese variation of the U.S. economic system and its ability to unleash entrepreneurial instincts and harness markets to build a world-beating economy. China's fear stems from seeing our high-tech military machine in action. I will never forget standing in front of the Beijing train station during the first Gulf War, amid a sea of Chinese workers, thousands of whom had stopped their bicycles in the street to watch slack-jawed as huge outdoor TV screens displayed footage of American missiles screaming down Baghdad smokestacks. Just a few blocks away in the leadership compound of Zhongnanhai, Chinese officials imagined such destruction raining down on Beijing and realized that their strategy of defending China with swarms of peasant soldiers was as outdated as Maoist philosophy. They immediately embarked on a multi-decade plan to build a military as advanced as ours. Chinese pity comes from their belief that we are a country in decline. More than a few Chinese friends have quoted to me the proverb fu bu guo san dai (wealth doesn't make it past three generations) as they wonder how we became so ill-disciplined, distracted and dissolute. The fury surrounding Monica-gate seemed an incomprehensible waste of time to a nation whose emperors were supplied with thousands of concubines. Chinese are equally astonished that Americans are allowing themselves to drown in debt and under-fund public schools while the media focus on fights over feeding tubes, displays of the Ten Commandments and how to eat as much as we can without getting fat. China is all about unity, focus and leverage. Chinese officials and business executives are obsessed with a single question: What advantage do I have over you? No surprise then that Chinese officials are delighted to be funding ever larger portions of America's budget deficit. They know that if they sat out one U.S. Treasury auction, the U.S. stock markets would tumble. They yawn when Congress threatens to impose huge tariffs on Chinese imports, knowing that the resulting huge price increases at Wal-Mart, Best Buy and the Gap would cost some members of Congress their jobs. And while the Chinese do not relish sharing a border with the nutso North Koreans, they are happy to turn this bad situation to their advantage. The Bush administration desperately needs China's help in quelling the hermit kingdom's nuclear ambitions while we are bogged down in Iraq. Still, China isn't even a fraction as powerful as it pretends to be. Beneath the bluster, it is a nation beset with internal problems. Pollution chokes its air and water. The growing gap between the haves and have-nots and rampant government corruption are triggering almost daily demonstrations. And China has no ideology other than enriching itself. The relentless commercial drive that has shaken China out of its imperial and socialist stupor has now become an end unto itself, leaving a population that is spiritually adrift. So far rapid economic growth, looser lifestyle strictures and straightforward political repression have held things together, but the Communist Party leadership knows that it needs a different formula for long-term success. From a U.S. perspective, China's untempered commercialism suggests a nation out to milk us of everything it can. What is being lost in our vicious battles over China policy is that China and America have manageable differences and many complementary interests. With an intelligent and consistent China policy, the United States could help China and itself at the same time. I offer these humble suggestions as a patriotic American who has lived in Beijing for 15 years -- and as a person who respects the Chinese people and what they are accomplishing. Domestic politics should stop at the U.S. border. Trench warfare on China policy between the political parties and executive branch factions only plays into China's hands. Stop preaching instant democracy. After the Tiananmen massacre, China's state media engendered a "nationalism of resentment." Aimed at cooling the ardor that young Chinese felt for America, the media portrayed the United States as having a secret agenda to keep China poor so that America can stay rich. A key part of this message is that America wants China to democratize because it will plunge the country into chaos. Those who survived the insanity of the Cultural Revolution see the point. Even Chinese people I know who are unhappy with their government believe that a nation with two millennia of top-down rule can only pluralize gradually. America can best help China inch toward political pluralism by trying to strengthen China's court system and rule of law and by making visas plentiful again for Chinese to attend our universities and public policy forums. Let Chinese companies purchase or merge with U.S. companies unless the American company has genuine advanced military technology. We should also require reciprocity. Take the recent China National Offshore Oil Corporation Ltd. (CNOOC) bid to purchase Unocal Corp. Hysteria led to passage of a ridiculous House resolution by 398 to 15 expressing national security concerns about the deal, which involved a scant 0.8 percent of U.S. oil production. Instead, the United States should have responded as China would: Use the deal as leverage. America's politicians should have welcomed the CNOOC deal as long as China changed its own oil policies, which prevent foreign companies from operating gas stations in China, compel them to use Chinese companies when exploring for oil and almost always offer exploration leases for foreigners at the edges of promising fields to help China pinpoint the location of the biggest reservoirs for its own drillers. Develop smart, workable rules on technology exports. Since the mid-1990s, China has been able to purchase almost any commercial technology it desires from Japan, Israel, Russia or the European Union. Bogged down in a bureaucratic quagmire of ever-changing rules and approval processes, U.S. machine tool makers and silicon chip equipment manufacturers have fallen behind. If this continues, we will endanger our own national security base by weakening our technology companies and their R&D capabilities. Nevertheless, many in Washington favor "catch-all control" regulations that could, for example, block a U.S. truck engine manufacturer from doing business with a Chinese firm that supplies some engines for Chinese army trucks. European and Japanese truck engine makers doubtless will be deeply grateful. Vigorously push trade issues that provide a long-term win-win for China and its trading partners. Our focus should be intellectual property rights (IPR) protection. China's original modernization model was to invite foreign firms to manufacture for export in joint-ventures with Chinese companies. China was then supposed to learn to build its own companies and products. But many huge companies have been built through the wholesale theft of intellectual property and rampant copying of products. Within a three-block radius of my Beijing apartment, there are several dozen shops selling any Hollywood movie or American television series of note for $1 per DVD, copies of Prada and Louis Vuitton handbags for $10, nearly perfect copies of Callaway or Taylor Made golf clubs for $150, and fake North Face parkas for $35. Copied pharmaceuticals, car parts and the whole gamut of industrial products are plentiful across China. Worse, more and more such products are being exported. Chinese piracy is rapidly undermining political support for China in Congress and hampering the growth of its most innovative companies. China knows the problem needs fixing but fears job losses and potential unrest in the towns and villages that host copycat factories. New U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman could take a lesson from a predecessor, Charlene Barshefsky, who drafted a road map to guide China to WTO accession. As with WTO, China lacks the political will or consensus to come up with a plan on its own. The U.S. government should also back a new effort by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Chamber of Commerce in China to rate Chinese provinces and cities by their level of IPR enforcement. Public embarrassment and internal competition for foreign investment may prove to be stronger motivators than foreign complaints. I understand America's genuine security concerns regarding China. But they should not be overblown to the point where they undermine our economic security. I also understand that reaching a political consensus isn't easy. But I am worried about the erosion of the sensible center. Chinese and U.S. politicians share the blame. As a global economic power, China can no longer employ IPR policies appropriate for a banana republic. And responsible members of Congress can no longer gin up China hysteria to get votes. The stakes are getting too high. Author's e-mail: [2]jlmcgregor at jlmcgregor.com James McGregor is a journalist-turned-businessman and former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. His book "One Billion Customers: Lessons From the Front Lines of Doing Business in China" (Simon & Schuster/ The Wall Street Journal Books) will be published in October. From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 01:34:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 21:34:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Grin and Bear It Message-ID: Grin and Bear It http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/29/AR2005072902177_pf.html In an age of technology and terror, the British have come to accept surveillance cameras. Now they . . . By Frances Stead Sellers Sunday, July 31, 2005; B01 Last summer, while my mother was visiting me in the United States, burglars broke into her house in rural England and emptied it of much of what she held most precious. The thieves knew just what they were after, the local bobbies told us as they searched the house for clues. They had carefully removed the most valuable pictures, ornaments and small pieces of furniture. And they were likely to be back with bigger ambitions and a bigger truck. One of the police recommendations? Install a closed circuit television camera (CCTV) in the house in the hope of getting mug shots of the intruders next time they came to help themselves to my mother's possessions. Smile, you're on Culprit Camera. Britain has become the world's premier surveillance society. There are more than 4 million unblinking electronic eyes gazing down on shoppers and travelers across the country (though far, far fewer human brains are dedicated to deciphering the data those eyes record). London's railway stations are overseen by some 1,800 cameras, and another 6,000 are trained on the capital's underground train network and double-decker buses, catching the average commuter on videotape about 300 times a day. It's the very ubiquity of the technology that brought the world that chilling snapshot of the July 7 bombers sauntering through a station en route to mass murder, as well as the four close-ups of the July 21 terrorists fleeing their botched attempts to redouble the havoc. Yesterday, those close-ups were front-page news again, this time superimposed with the suspects' names and arrest dates. Some people have agonized about the Orwellian implications of such surreptitious surveillance, indulging in eye-in-the-sky speculation about the invasion of individuals' privacy. Developments such as face-recognition technology and computerized tracking of out-of-the-ordinary behavior have reawakened anxieties about Big Brother. But for the most part, the British have learned to live with -- and sometimes even appreciate -- the ever watchful eye. And, really, it takes a certain hubris, a strain of self-importance, for Mr. and Ms. Ordinary Citizen to imagine that anyone is watching them, anyway. Who, for heaven's sake, is going to take the time to monitor the monitors? London police initially estimated that they would need a couple of weeks to go through the mind-numbing hours of tape provided to them after the first bombing -- and that would be with the help of special officers drafted for such a high-profile investigation. Think about it: Two weeks worth of nonstop comings and goings -- watching people sit on station platforms, read newspapers, eat sandwiches, scratch their noses, consult their watches, in a kind of life-or-death game of Where's Waldo? Now consider, if you can bear it for one brief moment, watching "A Day in the Life of Frances Sellers." I wish I could pretend it was more exciting. But even the highlights (allow me a little hubris -- there are some) might seem a bit humdrum if you had to endure them day after day, night after night. It must be much the same with other forms of surveillance. As a journalist friend, who once lived with his young family in an apartment in China that was undoubtedly bugged, put it: Who's going to separate the hours of potty-training talk from the few potentially valuable snippets of conversation? Just imagine the lot of the poor Chinese spying flunky, dedicating every minute of his working life to tuning in to the messy minutiae of my colleague's life. Practicality aside, the philosophical argument over privacy essentially bit the dust in Britain more than a decade ago when some unforgettable footage made people I know put aside any reservations they'd had . Recorded at 15:39 on Feb. 12, 1993, and later broadcast nationwide, a grainy CCTV picture showed a trusting toddler taking a stranger by the hand and being led out of a Liverpool shopping center. Just days later, 2-year-old Jamie Bulger was found bludgeoned to death on a railway track, bringing horror to the nightly news programs. The camera hadn't prevented the crime, but its imperfect images allowed the police to measure the comparative heights of the child and his abductors. Without them, the police might have been looking for a very different kind of culprit from the two 11-year-old boys who were later convicted in the toddler's murder. "The Jamie Bulger case was a sea change over here," Peter Fry told me. Fry, who is director of Britain's CCTV User Group, a 600-member association of organizations including local councils and universities that use closed-circuit cameras, says that many people in Britain no longer see the technology as Big Brother but "as a benevolent father." You might expect Fry, in his position, to say that. But in my recent visits to Britain, I've rarely heard people raise objections to CCTV (except-- vociferously -- to the cameras set up to catch speeding motorists; the equipment often ends up being vandalized). And Fry points out that although the technology creates miles of useless footage, it can actually economize on police time. He described to me a pub brawl that ended in a knifing. Thirty people were involved, he said, and the police would have had to take and sift through 30 witness statements, filtering out the effects of inebriation as they divined the truth from 30 differing perspectives. Instead, a half-hour videotape showed just who slit whose throat. The philosophical underpinnings for CCTV observation lie in the ideas of Britain's 18th-century legal theorist Jeremy Bentham. He had a sort of God's-eye view of moral reform, believing that if people thought they were being watched, they'd probably shape up. Inspired by his brother's effort to design a factory where large numbers of unskilled workers could be supervised by a skilled few, Bentham came up with the concept of a "panopticon" -- a prison where criminals could be watched without knowing exactly when, thus conveying the discomfiting "sentiment of an invisible omniscience." "The more constantly the persons to be inspected are under the eyes of the persons who should inspect them," wrote Bentham, "the more perfectly will the purpose of these establishments have been attained." Bentham's theories are reflected in the design of Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary, where prisoners were left to reflect upon their sins in cells radiating out from a central observation point. Over the past decade, London has become a kind of urban panopticon, though it's not clear that the constant possibility of being observed has led to better behavior (Britons hardly being the very model of modern moral rectitude). But Fry argues that CCTV indeed deters certain kinds of planned crime (like car theft), even if it doesn't do much to deter spontaneous eruptions (like the pub brawl). And it probably displaces some other kinds of crime (which presents its own moral conundrums, but I hope you won't think me un-neighborly in my wish that the burglars who broke into my mother's house might be displaced -- and choose the big house up the lane next time around). Americans are, comparatively speaking, camera shy. Of course, video surveillance is widely used in supermarkets and hotel lobbies, but when Washington installed cameras on the Mall in 2002, the questions sparked by civil liberties groups led to their use being strictly regulated. Following the London bombings, though, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams called for more cameras in parks and commercial districts. Other cities, like Baltimore, have taken advantage of federal antiterrorism funds to increase their surveillance systems in the hope of combating street crime, too. But it's all done against a backdrop of distrust of any kind of official observation, and dispute about how effective the cameras really are. Still, British authorities have bought into the concept in a big way: CCTV was first used primarily in retail stores but in the '70s and '80s gradually moved into public spaces. In an effort to reduce robberies and assaults, London Underground has been using cameras for about three decades now. Between 1994 and 1997, 78 percent of the government's crime prevention budget was spent on CCTV, according to scholars at the University of Hull in Britain. And cameras have been used to monitor protests and trouble spots such as soccer games, where the police have used a mobile surveillance unit known as the Hoolivan (equipped, one can only suppose, with hoolicams), to keep an eye on rowdy fans and zoom in on known troublemakers. Even before the July attacks, CCTV had proven its use in solving high-profile acts of terrorism. In 1999, there was a brief reign of terror in London when a series of nail bombs exploded, apparently aimed at the city's black, south Asian and gay communities. By plowing through some 26,000 hours of videotape, the police were able to find pictures of a man carrying a bag as he approached the site of one bombing and leaving without it. They quickly released an image of him. A 22-year-old fascist sympathizer named David Copeland was soon identified by a co-worker and later convicted for the murder of three of his victims. Some crooks have wised up to the possibility of being caught red-handed, as one detective explained to me when we discussed putting a camera in my mother's house. He once had a lovely video view, he told me, of a truck pulling into a farm yard and turning round to make its getaway -- but the thief had covered the license plate and pulled a hat down over his face. And CCTV certainly won't deter the committed terrorist, least of all a suicide bomber, who's not a bit worried about being caught after the fact, let alone about the possibility of facing earthly justice. Take a closer look at the pictures the British police released of the London bombers. It was at 21 minutes and 54 seconds past 7 a.m. on July 7 that camera 14 in Luton station captured murder in the making; before their successful suicide attacks, the four young bombers appear chillingly relaxed, nonchalant in the face of imminent death. In the July 21 shots, on the other hand, there are signs of confusion, perhaps even panic, in the expressions of the men whose plot so unexpectedly fizzled. Those images have put faces -- and now names -- to men who attempted the unthinkable. But they can't solve the ultimate mystery. What on earth was going on inside those men's heads? Had they been brainwashed, as one of their families has suggested? We won't know the answer to those questions unless we come up with technology that can read people's minds. Now that's really something to worry about. Author's e-mail : [2]sellersf at washpost.com Frances Stead Sellers is an assistant editor of Outlook. She grew up in Britain and holds dual citizenship there and in the United States. From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 01:34:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 21:34:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: In a Teenage Waistland, Fitting In Message-ID: In a Teenage Waistland, Fitting In http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/29/AR2005072902176_pf.html Disrespectful? Some legislators say yes. Kids say that's not their goal. By Natasha K. Warikoo Sunday, July 31, 2005; B01 Last year, as part of my doctoral research, I spent a semester observing teenagers at a multicultural high school in Queens, N.Y. One day as I walked down the hall, I noticed a security guard telling a student that the do-rag on his head was "a violation." The guard proceeded to fill out what looked like a parking ticket. I asked another student what was going on, and he told me that the school was cracking down on dress code infractions; three breaches could earn a suspension. His Jamaican-born mother, he later said, didn't like him wearing do-rags because police might interpret them as signs of delinquency, "especially on a black male like me." He'd already been stopped several times to be checked for drugs and, once, on suspicion of stealing the bike he was riding. His own explanation for the do-rag, however, was simple: On days he didn't comb his hair, he used a do-rag to cover it up. It was his solution to a bad hair day. As July slips into August and "back-to-school sale" signs start popping up in mall windows, clothing-based disagreements between adults and teens -- over what's appropriate and what's not -- will be heard in households across the nation. Some of these discussions will be no weightier than the "flip-flop flap" that occurred when a few members of the women's lacrosse team from Northwestern University wore stylish variations of casual footwear to the White House a couple of weeks ago. Others will be decidedly more so: Many schools, shopping malls and other public spaces have developed rules regulating teen dress. Earlier this year, even some state lawmakers tried jumping into the fray, as legislators in Virginia and Florida proposed so-called "droopy drawers" bills, which would have levied a $50 fine on anyone caught exposing underwear -- an act that's almost a given for girls' low-rise pants and boys' baggy hip-hop-style jeans. Both bills failed, but that doesn't mean another won't reappear: A state representative in Louisiana proposed a similar bill in 2004. Adults, it seems, are seeing rebellion, disrespect for authority or even criminality in those thongs and overlarge pants. Algie T. Howell Jr., the state legislator who introduced Virginia's bill, said he decided to propose it after seeing a parade of baggy jeans at a visit to juvenile court. A vote for the bill, he said was "a vote for character." Closer to home, one student told me that his mother "thinks that if you wear these kinds of clothes you are going to turn bad." But how true is that interpretation? As part of my research on teen life, I spoke to hundreds of high schoolers in both the United States and Britain, asking, among other questions, about their clothing styles and what they mean. The surprising answer: While there'll always be the odd, message-sending troublemaker -- like the young woman in Tifton, Ga., who wore a T-shirt referencing her principal's DUI arrest ("Don't Drink and Drive") -- for most teens, adherence to "dangerous" dress often signals an eagerness to conform, both within their peer group, and in the future, as adults. Unsurprisingly, most teens bristle at the idea that they're being judged by their clothing. And for urban teenagers, especially boys like those at the Queens school, this sort of misunderstanding can have serious consequences in their interaction with law enforcement authorities and educators. At best, it fosters a feeling of being excluded. One ninth-grade student, a devoted hip-hop fan, recounted an incident at a pharmacy a few days earlier, when a boy wearing what he called "tight-tight clothes" was allowed to wander freely through the store, while he and his friends, in much looser attire, were watched carefully. Girls also told me they felt misunderstood. One ninth-grader who described her style as "rock and punk," a rarity in her school, told me that "some people" think her black nail polish and dog collar "shows that I am a rebel . . . [But] sometimes I rebel and sometimes I follow the rules." We met in her honors English class; her 89 grade average put her in the top third of her class. So while she was setting herself apart in her hip-hop-dominated school, the rebellion was only a few polish-coats deep. Another girl, a well-manicured 11th-grader with straightened, highlighted hair, abundant gold jewelry and a cell phone permanently attached to her tight jeans, told me, "Some people think I look stupid, because of the way I dress. They think . . . 'She wanna look good all the time and she don't have any time to concentrate on school . . . .' But that's not me." She's a B student, and told me that her current goal was to be less social in order to raise her average even higher. When I asked teens in the schools I visited -- large, urban, featuring a multicultural student body -- to describe their style, "hip-hop" was the most common response. Along with peers, R&B singers and rappers ranked among their most common fashion influences. In their CD collections, artists such as Usher, 50 Cent, P. Diddy and Ludacris took top spots. This connection between rap music and hip-hop fashions may be part of what makes the mainstream nervous about obviously urban fashions. Rap music is seen as the harder side of hip-hop, and a study published in the American Sociological Review found it to be one of the few genres widely disliked by well-educated Americans -- even those who claim diverse music tastes. Another piece of evidence often cited against the over-large pants look is a commonly cited theory of its origin: The look may have been started by men in jail who didn't have belts to hold up their ill-fitting clothes. Yet this association, often at the forefront for adults, tended to escape the kids I spoke to. Like the boy above, whose mother was afraid he'd turn "bad," many said they wore the pants just "because they're more comfortable." Most rap-favoring students had similar aspirations to others students I met. Across the board, 90 percent said they believed they'll attend college. And, like their peers, rap fans aspired to be scientists, stockbrokers and lawyers, among other things. Moreover, though schools sometimes impose dress codes in order to ban gang identification, many boys I spoke to told me they actually use their clothing to signal a disassociation from gangs -- choosing a do-rag instead of a red or blue bandanna, for example. Given the risks of being misunderstood by adults, why do teens dress the way they do? In a nutshell, for status. Most of us would like to be seen as hip and cool by our peers, but for certain teens, this may be the only aspect of life they can control. Uncool middle-class adults can draw upon their wealth, education and contacts to improve status -- they can find a better job, buy a bigger house, work longer hours for more pay. But for teens -- especially those from poorer households-- these means are for the most part unavailable. Hence, peer status really matters. It doesn't, however, preclude other aspirations. Contrary to what adults may believe, these kids don't think it's uncool to do well in school. As one 16-year-old, whose parents emigrated from Guyana in 1982, said: "The people that do good and come out of here [high school] in four years, they are highly respected. But the people that come with big book bags . . . those are considered geeks." Success, then, was defined as being "able to juggle everything." In other words, kids who are failing academically aren't choosing to reject school and what it has to offer; they're having a hard time "juggling everything." Those who do well academically but not with their peers are labeled geeks; others fail in the world of adults, never learning to hoist their pants or off-the-shoulder shirt when the principal walks by, or to wear more appropriate attire at a job interview. Kids need guidance, then, not on how high to wear their pants or what styles supposedly aren't conducive to learning, but rather on how to balance their need for peer respect with their desire for adult success. For this, they may want to look back on a previous generation, the members of which were labeled teenage delinquents when they first took up a uniform originally created for miners and cowboys. These were the baby boomers, of course, in their ubiquitous jeans -- designer versions of which now sell for upwards of $200 a pop. Remember that the next time a teen's underwear peeks at you above his or her waistband. Author's e-mail : [2]natashawarikoo at hotmail.com Natasha K. Warikoo is PhD candidate in sociology at Harvard University and a lecturer in U.S. studies at the University of London. From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 01:35:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 21:35:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Ill Will Rising Between China and Japan Message-ID: Ill Will Rising Between China and Japan New York Times, 5.8.3 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/international/asia/03nationalism.html By [3]NORIMITSU ONISHI and [4]HOWARD W. FRENCH TOKYO, Aug. 2 - Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution that plays down this country's militarist policies in World War II, less than two weeks before ceremonies take place across Asia marking the 60th anniversary of the war's end on Aug. 15. Though expressing "regret" for the wartime past, the resolution omitted the references to "invasion" and "colonial rule" that were in the version passed on the 50th anniversary. The action will most likely be seen by China and Japan's other Asian neighbors as further proof of growing nationalism here. A right-wing vandal seemed to capture a growing sentiment last week when he tried to scrape off the word "mistake" from a peace memorial in Hiroshima that said of Japan's war efforts: "Let all the souls here rest in peace, as we will never repeat this mistake." But in the weeks leading to Aug. 15, the leaders of China have been making sure that their view of the war, simply called the Anti-Japanese War there, gets across. China is spending $50 million to renovate a memorial hall for the victims of the Rape of Nanjing in 1937, when Japanese soldiers killed 100,000 to 300,000 civilians, at a time when details of it are disappearing from Japanese school textbooks. Chinese state television is broadcasting hundreds of programs on China's resistance against Imperial Japan. The two countries find themselves playing out old grievances in a new era of direct rivalry for power and influence. Never before in modern times has East Asia had to contend with a strong China and a strong Japan at the same time, and the prospect feeds suspicion and hostility in both countries. China has experienced 25 years of extraordinary economic growth, deeply extending its influence throughout Asia. But just when China's moment in the sun seems to be dawning, Japan is asserting itself: seeking a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, transforming its Self-Defense Forces into a real military and revising its war-renouncing Constitution. Both governments are encouraging nationalism for their own political purposes: China to shore up loyalty as Marxist ideology fades, Japan to overcome long-held taboos against expanding its military. With the impending 60th anniversary, both are trying to forge a future on their version of the past. In Japan, major newspapers have published articles defending the Class A war criminals convicted by the postwar Tokyo Trials, and a growing number of textbooks whitewash Japan's wartime conduct. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where war dead including Class A war criminals are enshrined. In China, a new television series called "Hero City" tells of how cities across China "fought bravely against Japan under the leadership of the Communist Party." In Beijing on Aug. 13, six former Chinese airmen from the Flying Tigers squadron are to recreate an air duel with Japanese fighters. "On the one hand we have a victim's mentality, and on the other we don't see this much smaller country as being worthy of comparison with us," said Pang Zhongying, a professor of international relations at Nankai University in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin. "The reality is that they must accept the idea of China as a rising military power, and we must accept the idea of Japan becoming a normal nation, whether we like it or not." To Japanese conservatives, becoming a normal nation amounts to a revision of the American-imposed peace Constitution that they feel castrated - a term they use deliberately and frequently - their country. Arguing that Japan must draw closer to the United States, Mr. Koizumi's government has reinterpreted the Constitution to allow Japanese troops in Iraq and has reversed a longtime ban on the export of arms to join the American missile defense shield. Recent polls show an increasing percentage of Japanese favoring a revision of the Constitution. The conservative news media have helped demonize China, as well as North Korea, to soften popular resistance to remilitarization. Sankei Shimbun, the country's most conservative daily, recently ran a series about China called "The Threatening Superpower." One of the most emotional issues has been the dozen or so Japanese who were abducted by North Korea, mostly in the 1970's. The whereabouts of one woman, Megumi Yokota, remains a particularly sore point. North Korea said she had died, and late last year gave Japan what it said were her remains. After DNA tests were done, the Japanese government accused North Korea of deliberately handing over someone else's remains, though most independent experts called the tests inconclusive. Shinzo Abe, 50, the acting secretary general of the governing Liberal Democratic Party and the leading member of a young generation of hawks, immediately called for economic sanctions. Hiromu Nonaka, 79, who retired as secretary general about a year ago, said the present situation reminded him of prewar Japan, when politicians manipulated public opinion to rouse nationalism through slogans like "Destroy the brute Americans and British." "Mr. Abe, who has been in the forefront of the abductee issue, turned toward making all of North Korea into the enemy," Mr. Nonaka said. Mr. Abe is also one of several conservative politicians who defend textbooks that have outraged Chinese and South Korean demonstrators by sanitizing Japan's wartime atrocities. References to the women forced into sexual servitude by Japan's wartime authorities, called comfort women, all but disappeared this year from governmentendorsed junior high school textbooks. At a recent news conference, Mr. Abe was asked whether politicians had exaggerated the threat from North Korea and China to influence public opinion and ease Japan toward revising its peace Constitution. "Well, there may be such opinions, but I think it's rubbish," he said. In China and Japan alike, hatred and suspicion of the other are being deliberately fostered, in many cases by the governments themselves. In Tokyo, 291 teachers have been reprimanded in the last year and many may face dismissal for refusing to stand before the rising-sun flag at school enrollment and graduation ceremonies and sing Japan's national anthem, "Kimigayo," or "His Majesty's Reign," considered symbols of Japanese imperialism by most Asians and some Japanese. Those signals of respect used to be optional, or shunned because of their associations with Japan's past militarism. Efforts to control how the Japanese, especially the young, view Japan and China have even reached the comics. Late last year, 47 local Japanese politicians from all over the country protested that a comic series called "The Country Is Burning," published in "Young Jump Weekly," had distorted the Rape of Nanjing. The drawings did not actually depict Japanese soldiers committing atrocities, but showed ditches filled with Chinese cadavers. The magazine's publisher quickly backed down and announced that it would delete or modify the offending passages when the series was reprinted in book form. Hidekazu Inubushi, a politician and leader of the protest, added that forcing respect of the Japanese national anthem and flag was necessary because postwar Japanese education had focused too much on wartime misdeeds and produced graduates who were not proud of their country. "To correct the big mistake in our education in the postwar 60 years, we've got to introduce forceful methods," he said. Today's Chinese have been shaped by an anti-Japanese patriotic education, overseen by a government that is aware that its own domestic credentials depend, in part, on a hard line toward Japan. Having a hated neighbor shores up national solidarity and helps distract people from the failings of the Chinese Communist Party. Besides the party's monopoly on power, few orthodoxies are as untouchable today as hostility toward Japan. Yu Jie, a Chinese author who spent time in Japan researching a book on the two countries' relations, "Iron and Plough," and went on to write another book about his experiences in Japan, discovered that at his own expense. The books are nuanced works, built around lengthy conversations with pacifists, right-wing activists, scholars of every stripe and ordinary Japanese. One chapter, "Looking for Japan's Conscience," warned against speaking of Japanese in blanket terms. "In the 60 years since the war, numerous Chinese and Japanese people have worked for the difficult Sino-Japanese friendship, selflessly emitting a dim yet precious light," he wrote. The books appeared briefly in stores and then disappeared. In a country where censorship is routine, that is a sure sign, the author said, that officials had put pressure on the publisher or the stores to withdraw them. Mr. Yu said China's policy toward Japan was unlikely to become more balanced as long as an authoritarian government remained in place, because Japan offered an unrivaled distraction from China's own problems. "We criticize Yasukuni Shrine, but we have Mao Zedong's shrine in the middle of Beijing, which is our own Yasukuni," he said. "This is a shame to me, because Mao Zedong killed more Chinese than the Japanese did. Until we are able to recognize our own problems, the Japanese won't take us seriously." Norimitsu Onishi reported from Tokyo for this article, and Howard W. French from Shanghai. From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 22:39:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 18:39:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: (Darwin's Nightmare) Feeding Europe, Starving at Home Message-ID: Feeding Europe, Starving at Home http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/movies/03darw.html By [3]A. O. SCOTT [4]"Darwin's Nightmare," [5]Hubert Sauper's harrowing, indispensable documentary, is framed by the arrival and departure of an enormous Soviet-made cargo plane at an airstrip outside Mwanza, Tanzania. The plane, with its crew of burly Russians and Ukrainians, will leave Mwanza for Europe carrying 55 tons of processed fish caught by Lake Victoria fisherman and filleted at a local factory. Though Mr. Sauper's investigation of the economy and ecology around the lake ranges far and wide - he talks to preachers and prostitutes, to street children and former soldiers - he keeps coming back to a simple question. What do the planes bring to Africa? The answers vary. The factory managers say the planes' cavernous holds are empty when they land. One of the Russians, made uncomfortable by the question, mutters something vague about "equipment." Some of his colleagues, and several ordinary Mwanzans, are more forthright: the planes, while they occasionally bring humanitarian food and medical aid, more often bring the weapons that fuel the continent's endless and destructive wars. In any case, they leave behind a scene of misery and devastation that "Darwin's Nightmare" presents as the agonized human face of globalization. While the flesh of millions of Nile perch is stripped, cleaned and flash-frozen for export to wealthy countries, millions of people in the Tanzanian interior live on the brink of famine. Some of them will eat fried fish heads, which are processed in vast open-air pits infested with maggots and scavenging birds. Along the shores of the lake, homeless children fight over scraps of food and get high from the fumes of melting plastic-foam containers used to pack the fish. In the encampments where the fishermen live, AIDS is rampant and the afflicted walk back to their villages to die. The Nile perch itself haunts the film's infernal landscape like a monstrous metaphor. An alien species introduced into Lake Victoria sometime in the 1960's, it has devoured every other kind of fish in the lake, even feeding on its own young as it grows to almost grotesque dimensions, and destroying an ancient and diverse ecosystem. To some, its prevalence is a boon, since the perch provides an exportable resource that has brought development money from the World Bank and the European Union. The survival of nearly everyone in the film is connected to the fish: the prostitutes who keep company with the pilots in the hotel bars; the displaced farmers who handle the rotting carcasses; the night watchman, armed with a bow and a few poison-tipped arrows, who guards a fish-related research institute. He is paid $1 a day and found the job after his predecessor was murdered. Filming with a skeleton crew - basically himself and another camera operator - Mr. Sauper has produced an extraordinary work of visual journalism, a richly illustrated report on a distant catastrophe that is also one of the central stories of our time. Rather than use voice-over or talking-head expert interviews, he allows the dimensions of the story to emerge through one-on-one conversation and acutely observed visual detail. But "Darwin's Nightmare" is also a work of art. Given the gravity of Mr. Sauper's subject, and the rigorous pessimism of his inquiry, it may seem a bit silly to compliment him for his eye. There are images here that have the terrifying sublimity of a painting by El Greco or Hieronymus Bosch: rows of huge, rotting fish heads sticking out of the ground; children turning garbage into makeshift toys. At other moments, you are struck by the natural loveliness of the lake and its surrounding hills, or by the handsome, high-cheekboned faces of many of the Tanzanians. The beauty, though, is not really beside the point; it is an integral part of the movie's ethical vision, which in its tenderness and its angry sense of apocalypse seems to owe less to modern ideologies than to the prophetic rage of William Blake, who glimpsed heaven and hell at an earlier phase of capitalist development. Mr. Sauper's movie is clearly aimed at the political conscience of Western audiences, and its implicit critique of some of our assumptions about the shape and direction of the global economy deserves to be taken seriously. But its reach extends far beyond questions of policy and political economy, and it turns the fugitive, mundane facts that are any documentary's raw materials into the stuff of tragedy and prophecy. Darwin's Nightmare Opens today in Manhattan. Written (in English, Russian and Swahili, with English subtitles) and directed by [6]Hubert Sauper; director of photography, Mr. Sauper; edited by Denise Vindevogel; produced by Edouard Mauriat, Antonin Svoboda, Martin Gschlacht, Hubert Toint and Mr. Sauper; released by Celluloid Dreams/International Film Circuit. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 107 minutes. This film is not rated. References 3. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=A.%20O.%20SCOTT&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=A.%20O.%20SCOTT&inline=nyt-per 4. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=315454&inline=nyt_ttl 5. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=414708&inline=nyt-per 6. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=414708&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 22:39:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 18:39:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Professor Develops Software to Help Grade Essays Message-ID: Professor Develops Software to Help Grade Essays The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.8.5 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i48/48a02902.htm By DAN CARNEVALE Computers routinely grade multiple-choice tests, but can machines be trusted to grade subjective exams, like a multipage essay? Ed Brent, a professor of sociology at the University of Missouri at Columbia, says yes, but that computers should not do it alone. He has developed a computer program that not only grades his students' essays but also gives feedback on how they can improve their work. Mr. Brent assigns a paper on a specific topic -- say, a chapter on group culture in the sociology textbook. Students then submit drafts via a Web site. Within seconds the software corrects each paper, assigning a score and telling the students which points they nailed and which points need work. The computer's grade is not final. Students are encouraged to revise and resubmit their papers to the computer as many times as they wish. Mr. Brent then grades the final copy the old-fashioned way. "The idea is for them to have immediate feedback and helpful suggestions," he says. His computer program, called Qualrus, does not attempt to evaluate a clever anecdote or to criticize an overuse of alliteration. In fact, the software doesn't even bother with spelling, grammar, or punctuation; for those, students can use the spelling and grammar checkers built into their word-processing programs. Mr. Brent's software looks for key words and terms to determine if the assigned topic was covered adequately. It can evaluate the relationship between the terms to look for logical flow and reasoned arguments, he says. The professor supplies a checklist of terms and concepts to the computer program for each subject. The program simply runs through the students' papers to see if those elements are thoroughly presented, analyzing the semantics and assessing the writer's understanding of the topic. If a student leaves something out or gets something wrong, the program will flag those mistakes, to help the student improve the next draft. The program improves student learning while reducing the most tedious aspects of grading papers, Mr. Brent says. Professors can focus on evaluating the overall quality of each paper, he says, without having to count concepts and terms. Development of the Qualrus software was financed in part by a $100,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. Mr. Brent also used money from his private company, Idea Works Inc. A new version of the software, called SAGrader, will be ready in the fall, he says. It will be more versatile, in that professors will be able to plug in assignment guidelines on a wide range of subjects. Qualrus is limited to sociology. Mr. Brent says he hopes to sell SAGrader to other educators. He is in talks with several institutions, book publishers, and individual professors who have taken an interest in the program ([3]http://sagrader.com). Hunting for Plagiarism In addition to grading the content of a paper, the program can compare similarities among papers to see whether one appears to be copied from another. Mr. Brent says he could plug in the texts from assigned readings as well, to make sure students do not copy word for word from those texts. The computer program has its limitations, however. It looks only for specific terms that the professor has programmed into it. If a student uses different words to describe the same concepts, then the computer could misgrade the assignment. When that happens, Mr. Brent says, the students are usually pretty vocal about it. "Sometimes we miss a particular synonym, and we put that in," he says. "Most of the time, though, I agree with the program and not with them." Students may try to get the computer program to do their work for them -- say, by submitting a lousy paper at first just to see what they need to do to get a passing grade. But even then, Mr. Brent says, the students are learning the concepts. "Sure, you can play the system to some extent," he says. "But you have to know enough to do that." Mr. Brent had been using the computer program to grade essays in his class for a year when he approached the university about using the program in one of Missouri's writing-intensive courses. They have at least two major writing assignments, with students revising their papers along the way. But first he needed the blessing of the university's Campus Writing Program. When Martha A. Townsend, director of the program, first heard about Mr. Brent's ideas, she did not even return his phone calls. "My first thoughts were skeptical -- I thought, Is this an educational charlatan?" says Ms. Townsend, an associate professor of English. But "Ed was very persistent," she says. Eventually Mr. Brent persuaded her to allow him to demonstrate the software to the program's faculty board. The board members, who come from various departments of the university, were impressed enough to give him the go-ahead. He has been using the computer program for a writing-intensive course for a year now and is likely to get approval for another year. "It was in that demonstration process, when I finally let him in the door, that I became convinced that he was not trying to avoid the hard work," Ms. Townsend says. "Ed was using this computer program not as a replacement for human feedback, but as a supplement to human feedback." Ms. Townsend sees the tool as a way to improve instructor-student interaction in essay grading. "Students are getting very specific, point-by-point responses to what they wrote," she says. Most telling, Mr. Brent says, has been student reaction. When he polled them, twice as many students said they preferred writing essays for the computer as preferred taking multiple-choice tests. From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 22:39:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 18:39:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Pain perception: Sex and drugs Message-ID: Pain perception: Sex and drugs http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=4197761 Jul 21st 2005 Men and women seem to perceive pain in different ways. That may mean they sometimes need different pain-relief drugs MALES and females respond to pain differently, even as children. In most places, boys are expected to show a stiff upper lip when they get hurt, while in girls wailing is, well, girlie. In part, this difference is learnt--or, at least, reinforced by learning. But partly, it is innate. It is hard, for instance, to blame upbringing for the finding that boy and girl babies show different responses to pain six hours after birth, or that male rats are more long-suffering than females. It is also life-long. Ed Keogh of the University of Bath, in England, and his colleagues have found that women report feeling pain in more bodily areas than men, and also feel it more often over the course of their lives. Many researchers are therefore concluding that genetics underpins at least some of the difference, and that females really do feel pain more than males. Indeed, some go further. They think that the way men and women experience pain is not only quantitatively different, but qualitatively different, too. In other words, men's and women's brains process pain using different circuits. Some pain scientists therefore think it is only a matter of time before painkillers are formulated differently for men and women in order to account for this difference. Jeffrey Mogil, director of the pain genetics laboratory at McGill University in Montreal, is one of the leading advocates of such "pink and blue" painkillers. Pick a disease at random, he says, and the chances are that females and males will handle the pain associated with it differently. That seems to be true in mice, at least. When new mouse "models" of human disease are created by genetic engineers, Dr Mogil and his colleagues are often asked to test the engineered mice for their responses to pain. They consistently find differences in the way the mutant, diseased mice and their non-mutation-carrying brethren respond to painful stimuli. But, generally, those differences are seen more strongly in one sex than the other. A prescribing headache The latest example of such a difference is in migraine, a condition that is three times more common in women than in men. In 2004, a group of researchers led by Michel Ferrari of Leiden University in the Netherlands reported that they had created what they believed to be the first mouse model of migraine. Since some researchers argue that migraine is associated with heightened sensitivity to pain, they sent their creation to Dr Mogil for testing. He stresses that his data are preliminary. However, he does find a lowered pain threshold in the mouse migraine model compared with healthy mice--but only in females. Dr Mogil is now convinced that the pain response in men and women is mediated by different brain circuits--and not only because of his own observations. Obstetricians and gynaecologists have long known that certain drugs are particularly effective in women. Mothers in childbirth prefer nalbuphine to morphine, for instance. Men, however, report the opposite preference when they are in pain. Both nalbuphine and morphine work by stimulating the brain's endogenous-opioid receptors (endogenous opioids are the molecules that opium-derived drugs mimic). But opioid receptors come in several varieties, two of the most important of which are known as mu and kappa. Morphine binds to the mu receptors, while nalbuphine stimulates the less well-studied kappa receptors. Kappa-receptor agonists, as molecules such as nalbuphine are known, appear to have little or no pain-relieving effect in men. Two years ago, Dr Mogil identified the first gene known to be involved in modulating pain thresholds in women. Variations in this gene have no effect on men's responses to a kappa-receptor agonist called pentazocine, but they do affect the response in women. The protein produced by this gene, melanocortin-1 receptor, also affects hair and skin colour. Working in collaboration with Roger Fillingim of the University of Florida, Gainesville, Dr Mogil found that redheaded women with fair skin--who have a particular version of the receptor--have a heightened response to pentazocine. Jon Levine and Robert Gear, of the National Institutes of Health Pain Centre at the University of California, San Francisco, also think that there are fundamental differences between the sexes when it comes to pain. They have explored the effects of nalbuphine on post-operative pain in men and women who have had their wisdom teeth removed. The results suggest that kappa-opioid agonists not only fail to alleviate pain in men, they can actually make it worse. Dr Gear and Dr Levine believe that as well as an analgesia (ie, pain-suppression) circuit, the brain contains what they call an anti-analgesia circuit--one which, when activated, pumps pain up. They have shown that which circuit is activated depends not only on the type of receptor a drug acts on, but also the dose given. Among their dental patients, low doses of nalbuphine had a short-lasting analgesic effect in the women, but profoundly enhanced pain in the men. However, when they added a low dose of naloxone--a drug that blocks all types of opioid receptor--to the nalbuphine, the sex difference disappeared and pain relief was significantly enhanced in everyone. After refining the relative proportions of the two drugs in the mixture, they have succeeded in finding (and patenting) a combination that is effective in both sexes. Nor is it only the mechanism of pain perception that differs between the sexes. Dr Keogh and his colleagues argue that there are significant differences in the ways men and women cope with pain, as well. This conclusion is based on studies involving hospital patients, as well as others on volunteers who were exposed to a painful stimulus, such as an ice-water arm-bath. Using this, the researchers were able to measure the point at which people first notice pain, as well as their tolerance--the point at which they can no longer stand it. Men were able to minimise their experience of pain by concentrating on the sensory aspects--their actual physical sensations. But this strategy did not help women, who focused more on the emotional aspects. Since the emotions associated with pain, such as fear and anxiety, tend to be negative, the researchers suggest that the female approach may actually exacerbate pain rather than alleviating it. Dr Keogh, a psychologist, sees this difference as an effect of social conditioning--and uses it to point up the dangers of under-estimating social influences in favour of those of the genes. But it is not obvious why such male and female "coping strategies" should not be underpinned by genetics, in the same way that perceptions are. The evolutionary reason why men resist pain better than women is, however, a mystery. After all, pain is there to stop you doing bad things to yourself. Perhaps it is because males and females are exposed to different sorts of pain. Males, for instance, get into fights much more often than females do, and thus get wounded more often. On the other hand, they do not have to undergo the visceral pain of childbirth. And perhaps a willingness to tolerate less pain than men do helps to explain why women live longer than their menfolk. From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 22:39:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 18:39:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BBC: Sex education 'is a legal right' Message-ID: Sex education 'is a legal right' http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/education/4723783.stm Published: 2005/07/28 08:59:22 GMT Parents should be forced by law to teach their children about sex, teachers are expected to argue. Too many teenage girls are becoming pregnant because of lack of knowledge, the Professional Association of Teachers' annual conference will hear. Tony Reynolds, a teacher from Cambridge, said many parents did not deal seriously enough with children's sex education. The UK has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in western Europe. 'Taking the blame' Mr Reynolds, from Over Community Primary School, said a family in Derby, where three sisters aged 12, 14 and 16 were mothers, showed the seriousness of the situation. Their own mother, Julie Atkins, blamed their pregnancies on schools for not teaching children enough about sex, he added. Mr Reynolds said: "We don't need to go into the rights and wrongs of this case as to me it is clear that schools cannot and should not be left in a position where they may take the blame for the current situation. "The delivery of sex education has to be the joint responsibility of both the home and the school. "Of course, there will be too many parents unwilling or unable to do this at present. "Therefore the government must ensure via legislation that parents have their responsibilities clearly set out." Peer pressure meant many pupils were afraid to ask questions about sex when it is covered in class. Meanwhile, many parents were too embarrassed to tackle the subject at home, he said. The conference is debating Mr Reynolds's motion demanding new laws requiring parents "to take more responsibility for teaching their children about sex and morality". From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 22:43:56 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 18:43:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Austria Museum Lets Naked People in Free Message-ID: Austria Museum Lets Naked People in Free http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050729/ap_on_fe_st/naked_museum_5;_ylt=Arxdbt3RVeKSr5nvDtOYYoTlWMcF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5bGVna3NhBHNlYwNzc3JlbA By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer/Fri Jul 29, 6:19 PM ET/ Vienna's prestigious Leopold Museum is usually a pretty buttoned-down place, but on Friday, some of the nudes in its marble galleries were for real. Scores of naked or scantily clad people wandered the museum, lured by an offer of free entry to "The Naked Truth," a new exhibition of early 1900s erotic art, if they showed up wearing just a swimsuit -- or nothing at all. With a midsummer heat wave sweeping much of Europe, pushing temperatures into the mid-90s Fahrenheit in Vienna, the normally staid museum decided that making the most of its cool, climate-controlled space would be just the ticket to spur interest in the show. "We find a naked body every bit as beautiful as a clothed one," said Elisabeth Leopold, who founded the museum with her husband, Rudolf. "If they came only out of lust, we have to accept that. We stand for the truth." Peter Weinhaeupl, the Leopold's commercial director, said the goal was twofold -- help people beat the heat while creating a mini-scandal reminiscent of the way the artworks by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and others shocked the public when they first were unveiled a century ago. "We wanted to give people a chance to cool off, and bring nakedness into the open," he said. "It's a bit of an experiment. Egon Schiele was a young and wild person in his day. He'd want to be here." Most of those who showed up in little or no attire Friday opted for swimsuits, but a few hardy souls dared to bare more. Among them was Bettina Huth of Stuttgart, Germany, who roamed the exhibition wearing only sandals and a black bikini bottom. Although she used a program at one point to shield herself from a phalanx of TV cameras, Huth, 52, said she didn't understand what all the fuss was about. "I go into the steam bath every week, so I'm used to being naked," she said. "I think there's a double morality, especially in America. We lived in California for two years, and I found it strange that my children had to cover themselves up at the beach when they were only 3 or 4 years old. That's ridiculous." For years, the Austrian capital has been known for a small but lively nudist colony on the Donauinsel, an island in the middle of the Danube River where people disrobe, often startling the unsuspecting joggers, cyclists and rollerbladers who happen upon them. Overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Austria has always been somewhat more conservative than many other European countries. The Viennese were scandalized when native art nouveau masters like Klimt -- best known for his sensuous "The Kiss" and the subject of an upcoming film starring John Malkovich -- began producing works that some critics panned as "indecency," "artistic self-pollution" and borderline pornography. The 180 works on display at the Leopold through Aug. 22 include Klimt's "Nude Veritas," an 1899 painting of a naked young woman with wildflowers in her hair, and Schiele's "Two Female Friends," a 1915 rendition of two nude women entangled in each other's arms. Max Hollein, director of Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle art museum, likened the public uproar at the time to "the visible outcry at the live transmission from last year's Super Bowl when, for a few seconds, CBS broadcast shots of the singer Janet Jackson's exposed nipple." Mario Vorhemes, a 20-year-old Vienna resident who strode into the Leopold on Friday wearing nothing but a green and black Speedo, was nonchalant. "What's the big deal?" he asked. "We're born naked into this world. Why can't we walk around in it without clothes from time to time?" Elina Ranta, a fully clothed tourist from Finland who checked out the art -- and the audience -- left amused. "I thought, 'This is strange. How is this possible in a museum?'" Ranta said. "We've been in many galleries and I've never seen people walking around like this." "In English, my name means 'beach,'" she added. "That's pretty funny under these circumstances, isn't it?" From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 22:44:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 18:44:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CBC: Nigel M. de S. Cameron: How we Lost "Bioethics" and How We Can Win it Back Message-ID: Nigel M. de S. Cameron: How we Lost "Bioethics" and How We Can Win it Back The Weekly Newsletter of the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network http://www.cbc-network.org/enewsletter/index_8_3_05.htm#article1 [9](from tothesource.com) continued from last week. America is blessed with more than one hundred serious-minded, accredited, four-year Christian (basically evangelical) colleges - as well as many Catholic institutions. Back in the early 90s, I shared a luncheon presentation to the presidents of these evangelical schools with my friend, former Surgeon-General, C. Everett Koop. At that time not one evangelical school offered even a minor in bioethics - though almost all of them have pre-med students; and not one evangelical school had developed a grad program in the field. We pleaded with the presidents to prepare their students for the extraordinary opportunities of leadership in this emerging discussion of human life - especially those who were planning to go to med school. Now, more than a decade later, things have changed - but not much. One school has a minor. One school has a grad program. It just happens to be the school ( Trinity International University) where I taught back in the 90s and was able to press for these programs. In the world of evangelical higher education, no-one else has taken up the challenge. Of course, this was really the challenge of the 70s. That's when "bioethics" got off the ground, and the secularists were wide awake to their opportunities. Yet, three decades later, the evangelical community is still so focused on the symptom (abortion) that it can hardly spare a thought for the disease process (a secular bioethics, pushing secular assumptions about what it means to be human) that has led our culture to think in terms of human life in post-Christian terms. That may not sound so bad - but only if you are unconcerned about euthanasia, have never heard of stem cell research that destroys embryos, and have not been following the new technologies - which some people plan to use to remake human nature itself! [A] second example is equally telling. In Washington, DC, where so much is decided, there are many think-tanks that devise policy and prepare people to shape the future of government in our land. There are liberal groups and conservative groups, and they and their staffs have far more influence on the future of this nation than most Americans know. Guess what! Among them all, there is not one whose chief concern is to focus Christian thinking on bioethics and the future of human nature. Not one. We have groups that share these concerns (like Wilberforce Forum and Family Research Council), and we have pro-life advocacy groups (chiefly the National Right to Life Committee). But a think tank? A center looking at the huge range of biopolicy issues? Not a sign. There are plenty of other discouraging examples. Back in 1983 I started the first serious Christian bioethics journal (Ethics and Medicine), and more than two decades later it is still the only bioethics journal that takes a clear Christian view. A few years later, in my book The New Medicine: Life and Death after Hippocrates, I offered a model to Christians - to use the originally pagan Hippocratic Oath, which is still held in high esteem in medicine, as the basis for a public translation of Christian bioethics distinctives. Despite high praise from C. Everett Koop, Chuck Colson, Harold O.J. Brown, and Richard John Neuhaus, and a review in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, it has hardly been a best seller! In truth, we have abandoned the battlefield. Way back in the early 70s, Paul Ramsey, Princeton professor and profound Christian thinker, sought to set the tone for the emerging bioethics agenda. Very few Christians have followed. The field of serious intellectual inquiry and policy making has been abandoned to the likes of Art Caplan. So we should hardly be surprised when we hear television "bioethicists" prating their contempt for the sanctity of life, when every effort the President makes to raise serious moral concerns on stem cells and cloning is dismissed as the work of the "religious right," and when we are comprehensively out-maneuvered by the secular elite in every biopolicy issue. These issues will define our future, and that of the race. They will dominate the moral agenda of the 21st century. Who lost bioethics? Well, we did. Time to go get it back! And the way to begin is with the churches. This is where we have vast reservoirs of untapped resources; MDs, nurses, researchers, teachers - and pastors whose leadership will be the key to turning around a generation of neglect. Just a few days ago I was invited to spend the day at Rick Warren's "purpose-driven" Saddleback Community Church, in southern California. In the morning, the Center for Bioethics and Culture had arranged their latest "pastors' briefing" to update church leaders on this vast agenda. In the evening, Saddleback pulled in hundreds of their people for one of the most stimulating meetings I can remember. Once I finished speaking, the questions had to be cut off after an hour and a half - incisive, engaged, on everything from embryos to living wills and nanotechnology. My message had been clear: God has called us to be 21st century Christians. We don't need to politicize the church, just to teach people that as patients or relatives or citizens we will all engage these issues - and that this follows from our discipleship as night follows day. [10]read the complete article _________________________________________________________________ The Human Future: Receive a free "The Human Future" wristband! Send us your name and address and the name, address, and email of someone new to the CBC and we will send you both a "The Human Future" wristband! Only the first 10 email entries will receive wristbands so send us an email right away. To purchase wristbands see below. [11][emailicon.gif] [12]Send email for free wristbands What is "the human future?" What does it mean? When there are enough issues crowding into our daily lives as it is, why should we think about such a seemingly irrelevant philosophical discussion as our "human future?" Well, because as Dr. Cameron so poignantly pointed out above, the issues related to the taking, making, and faking of human life are the issues that will dominate the 21st Century. These are not philosophical in nature. These issues are at the forefront of the scientific communities' agenda and have the potential for doing much good and much harm. Much good, by relieving human suffering, and much harm by devaluing the inherent dignity of all human beings. Unfortunately, if you have been following the news lately you will see how a [13]utilitarian based science has dominated the discussion. These articles on [14]Eugenics, [15]Euthanasia, [16]Stem Cell Research, and [17]Egg Donation are only a few to show you that much is at stake for "The Human Future." "The Human Future," then, is about raising the red flag when human dignity is at stake, and it is about grounding science in moral responsibility. Even more importantly, it is about celebrating the beauty and complexity of human life in all of its various stages from the zygote to the death bed and in that way securing a human future for us and the generations beyond us. CBC is about equipping people to face the challenges of the 21st Century and we use all the tools necessary to raise awareness about these issues. We host events, debates, we offers resources and much more. We offer you as many opportunities as we can to engage yourself and those you know in these discussions. Purchase 1 for $5 and support CBC's mission to defend the dignity of humankind. We will send you two wristbands for free if you purchase 10 or more. Free shipping and handling References 4. http://www.cbc-network.org/pdfs/hurlbutinterview.pdf 5. http://www.cbc-network.org/pdfs/hurlbutinterview.pdf 6. http://www.cbc-network.org/enewsletter/index_8_3_05.htm 7. http://www.cbc-network.org/ 8. http://www.cbc-network.org/ 9. http://www.tothesource.org/6_21_2005/6_21_2005.htm 10. http://www.cbc-network.org/redesigned/research_display.php?id=243 From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 4 22:44:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 18:44:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Cultural Differences Complicate a Georgia Drug Sting Operation Message-ID: Cultural Differences Complicate a Georgia Drug Sting Operation New York Times, 5.8.4 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/04/national/04meth.html By [3]KATE ZERNIKE ROME, Ga., July 29 - When they charged 49 convenience store clerks and owners in rural northwest Georgia with selling materials used to make methamphetamine, federal prosecutors declared that they had conclusive evidence. Hidden microphones and cameras, they said, had caught the workers acknowledging that the products would be used to make the drug. But weeks of court motions have produced many questions. Forty-four of the defendants are Indian immigrants - 32, mostly unrelated, are named Patel - and many spoke little more than the kind of transactional English mocked in sitcoms. So when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to "finish up a cook," some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue. The case of Operation Meth Merchant illustrates another difficulty for law enforcement officials fighting methamphetamine, a highly addictive drug that can be made with ordinary grocery store items. Many states, including Georgia, have recently enacted laws restricting the sale of common cold medicines like Sudafed, and nationwide, the police are telling merchants to be suspicious of sales of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and Kitty Litter. Walgreens agreed this week to pay $1.3 million for failing to monitor the sale of over-the-counter cold medicine that was bought by a methamphetamine dealer in Texas. But the case here is also complicated by culture. Prosecutors have had to drop charges against one defendant they misidentified, presuming that the Indian woman inside the store must be the same Indian woman whose name appeared on the registration for a van parked outside, and lawyers have gathered evidence arguing that another defendant is the wrong Patel. The biggest problem, defense lawyers say, is the language barrier between an immigrant store clerk and the undercover informants who used drug slang or quick asides to convey that they were planning to make methamphetamine. "They're not really paying attention to what they're being told," said Steve Sadow, one of the lawyers. "Their business is: I ring it up, you leave, I've done my job. Call it language or idiom or culture, I'm not sure you're able to show they know there's anything wrong with what they're doing." For the Indians, their lives largely limited to store and home, it is as if they have fallen through a looking glass into a world they were content to keep on the other side of the cash register. "This is the first time I heard this - I don't know how to pronounce - this meta-meta something," said Hajira Ahmed, whose husband is in jail pending charges that he sold cold medicine and antifreeze at their convenience store on a winding road near the Tennessee border. But David Nahmias, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said the evidence showed that the clerks knew that the informants posing as customers planned to make drugs. Federal law makes it illegal to sell products knowing, or with reason to believe, that they will be used to produce drugs. In these cases, lawyers say, defendants face up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. In one instance, Mr. Nahmias said, a store owner in Whitfield County pulled out a business card from a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent and told the informant that he was supposed to contact the agent if someone requested large amounts of the materials. When the informant asked if he would call, Mr. Nahmias said, the owner replied, "No, you are my customer." "It's not that they should have known," Mr. Nahmias said. "In virtually or maybe all of the cases, they did know." Like many prosecutors, Mr. Nahmias describes methamphetamine, a highly potent drug that can be injected, ingested or inhaled, as the biggest drug problem in his district. While only about a third of the meth here is made in small labs - the majority of the drug used in this country comes from so-called superlabs in Mexico - those small labs can be highly explosive, posing a danger to children, the environment and the police departments that are forced to clean them up. Their sources, he said, are local convenience stores. "While those people may not think they're causing any harm, the harm they cause is tremendous," Mr. Nahmias said. "We really wanted to send the message that if you get into that line of business, selling products that you know are going to be used to make meth, you're going to go to prison." Operation Meth Merchant started, Mr. Nahmias said, with complaints from local sheriffs that certain stores were catering to the labs. Prosecutors paid confidential informants - some former convicts, others offered the promise of lighter punishment for pending charges - to buy products in stores in six counties beginning in early 2004, and drop hints that they were making drugs. Defense lawyers said some of the defendants probably did know what they were doing when they sold the materials. But on several tapes, provided by the government to the lawyers, who played them for a reporter, it was not always clear that the people behind the counter understood. One recording captures an informant who walked into the Tobacco and Beverage Mart in Trenton, Ga., and asked for Pseudo 60, a particularly potent brand of cold medicine, which contains pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient of methamphetamine. The clerk, Mangesh Patel, 55, said the store no longer carried it. "Police guy came here said don't sell," Mr. Patel said. "Misuse. Public misuse." The informant replied: "I know what they're doing with it, because that's what I'm going to do with it." "Yah," Mr. Patel replied, "public misuse." When the informant found another bottle of pills that he said might work, Mr. Patel told him he could sell only two, under orders from "the police guy." The informant asked if his friend could come in and buy two more. "Yeah," Mr. Patel replied, "But I cannot sell two to one guy." Defense lawyers say the Indians were simply being good merchants and obeying what they believed was the letter of the law. Several refused to sell more than two bottles of cold medicine, citing store policy. They were charged, prosecutors say, because they allowed the "customers" to come back the next day for more. Prosecutors say that should have made it clear to the clerks that the buyers were up to no good. In some cases, the language barriers seem obvious - one videotape shows cold medicine stacked next to a sign saying, "Cheek your change befor you leave a counter." Investigators footnoted court papers to explain that the clue the informants dropped most often - that they were doing "a cook" - is a "common term" meth makers use. Lawyers argue that if the courts could not be expected to understand what this meant, neither could immigrants with a limited grasp of English. "This is not even slang language like 'gonna,' 'wanna,' " said Malvika Patel, who spent three days in jail before being cleared this month. " 'Cook' is very clear; it means food." And in this context, she said, some of the items the government wants stores to monitor would not set off any alarms. "When I do barbecue, I have four families. I never have enough aluminum foil." According to court records, prosecutors first identified Ms. Patel as the woman who sold two bottles of cold medicine to an informant in Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., because her name appeared on the registration of a van parked outside. But the driver of the van worked for a company, owned by her and her husband, that installs security cameras, and Ms. Patel produced records showing that she was picking her son up at a day care center in Tennessee at the moment she was said to be in Georgia. Her misidentification has fueled the belief among the Indians that investigators were operating on cultural bias. This corner of the state is still largely white; Indians began moving here about 10 years ago, buying hotels and then convenience stores, and some whites still say, mistakenly, that "Patel" means "hotel" in Hindi. "They want to destroy all Indian businesses," said Ms. Ahmed, whose husband is in jail. "Because they hate us, or I don't know." Mr. Nahmias said he was willing to consider evidence of language barriers when the cases went to trial later this year. But he denied singling out any group. "We follow the evidence where it goes," he said. Still, the case has set off ripples from the green ridges here to the Indian state of Gujarat, the traditional homeland of Patels, where newspapers have carried articles about the arrests. "We go into temple and they look at you - it's a bad image right now," said Dilip Patel, who owns one of the stores involved. "If I have to go to the City Hall to do some paper, they see me 'Patel,' they look at me I'm a hard man, I'm a bad guy." Malvika Patel's husband, who has Americanized his name from Chirag to Chris, says his wife's arrest made him think about selling his three stores and leaving the country. "We are from so much cleaner society where we are from in India," he said. "We didn't even know what drugs were." Ms. Patel says she has tried to shield herself from the ugly aspects of life here - she does not read newspapers because she wearies of all the crime. Maybe, she said, that was a mistake. "I think you need all this bad knowledge now if you want to live here." From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 6 01:27:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 21:27:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Theories of humour: Poking fun Message-ID: Theories of humour: Poking fun http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=4246393 5.8.4 TUEBINGEN, GERMANY THE true story of how your wife's stalker rang her to discuss killing you isn't supposed to provoke mirth. But when John Morreall, of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, related the events last week to a group of scholars in Tuebingen in Germany, they were in stitches as he divulged the details of how his wife tried to dissuade the confused young man by pleading that her mortgage was too large to pay without her husband's help. So why did they laugh? Dr Morreall's thesis is that laughter, incapacitating as it can be, is a convincing signal that the danger has passed. The reaction of the psychologists, linguists, philosophers and professional clowns attending the Fifth International Summer School on Humour and Laughter illustrates his point. Dr Morreall survived to tell the tale and so had an easy time making it sound funny. One description of how laughter is provoked is the incongruity theory developed by Victor Raskin of Purdue University and Salvatore Attardo of Youngstown State University, both in America. This theory says that all written jokes and many other humorous situations are based on an incongruity--something that is not quite right. In many jokes, the teller sets up the story with this incongruity present and the punch line then resolves it, in a way people do not expect. Alternatively, the very last words of the story may introduce the absurdity and leave the listeners with the task of reconciling it. For instance, many people find it funny that a conference on humour could take place in Germany. Why do people laugh at all? What is the point of it? Laughter is very contagious and this suggests that it may have become a part of human behaviour because it promotes social bonding. When a group of people laughs, the message seems to be "relax, you are among friends". Indeed, humour is one way of dealing with the fact that humans are "excrement-producing poets and imperfect lovers", says Appletree Rodden of the University of Tuebingen. He sees religion and humour as different, and perhaps competing, ways for people to accept death and the general unsatisfactoriness of the world. Perhaps that is why, as Dr Morreall calculates in a forthcoming article in the journal Humor, 95% of the writings that he sampled from important Christian scholars through the centuries disapproved of humour, linking it to insincerity and idleness. Fear of idleness is why many managers discourage laughter during office hours, Dr Morreall notes. This is foolish, he claims. Laughter or its absence may be the best clue a manager has about the work environment and the mood of employees. Indeed, another theory of why people laugh--the superiority theory--says that people laugh to assert that they are on a level equal to or higher than those around them. Research has shown that bosses tend to crack more jokes than do their employees. Women laugh much more in the presence of men, and men generally tell more jokes in the presence of women. Men have even been shown to laugh much more quietly around women, while laughing louder when in a group of men. But laughter does not unite us all. There are those who have a pathological fear that others will laugh at them. Sufferers avoid situations where there will be laughter, which means most places where people meet. Willibald Ruch of Zurich University surveyed 1,000 Germans and asked them whether they thought they were the butts of jokes and found that almost 10% felt this way. These people also tended to classify taped laughter as jeering. Future research will focus on the hypothesis that there is something seriously wrong with their sense of humour. From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 6 01:27:51 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 21:27:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Wired: Brain Workouts May Tone Memory Message-ID: Brain Workouts May Tone Memory http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,68409,00.html 5.8.4 By [21]Joanna Glasner It's common knowledge that a proper exercise regimen can do wonders for the body. Only recently, however, have psychologists and gerontologists aggressively applied the same principle to the mind. Among people who work with older adults, the concept of "cognitive fitness" has become a buzzword to describe activities that stimulate underutilized areas of the brain and improve memory. Proponents of brain-fitness exercises say such mental conditioning can help prevent or delay memory loss and the onset of other age-related cognitive disorders. "Most people's idea of fitness stops at the neck," said Patti Celori, executive director of the [25]New England Cognitive Center. "But the brain is the CPU of our body, and most people don't do much to keep it as fit as possible." The NECC runs one of a growing number of programs that work with older adults to improve cognitive abilities. Activities include computer programs designed to stimulate specific areas of the brain, replication of geometric designs using boards with pegs and rubber bands, and visual and auditory memory exercises. Some of the other programs are [26]Maintain Your Brain, initiated a year ago by the Alzheimer's Association; Mind Alert, run by the [27]American Society on Aging; and other regional programs such as the [28]Center for Healthy Aging in Kent, Ohio. For do-it-yourself types, a plethora of books have been published on getting the brain in shape. Paula Hartman-Stein, a geropsychologist at the Center for Healthy Aging, recommends The Better Brain Book, by David Perlmutter and Carol Colman, and The Memory Bible by Gary Small. One purpose of mental exercises is to reinforce the idea that "in aging, not everything is downhill," said Elkhonon Goldberg, a Manhattan neuropsychologist and author of The Wisdom Paradox, which examines how some people grow wiser with age. "There are gains that are subsequent and consequent to a lifelong history of mental activity and mental striving," Goldberg said. He also believes brain exercises can benefit adults suffering from mild cognitive impairment, and he has developed computer puzzles designed to help them stimulate different areas of their brain. It's not clear how much targeted brain exercises can prevent the onset of cognitive disorders in older adults. But some findings indicate that high cognitive ability is tied to a lower risk of Alzheimer's. One of the most extensive and widely cited investigations on the subject, the landmark [29]Nun Study, tracked 100 Milwaukee nuns who had written autobiographies in the 1930s. More than 50 years later, scientists gave them cognitive tests and examined the brain tissue of nuns who died. Those who demonstrated lower linguistic ability in the autobiographies were at greater risk for Alzheimer's disease. A similar [30]study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association surveyed 801 older Catholic nuns, priests and [31]brothers. The results linked reading newspapers and participating in other brain-stimulating activities with a reduced risk of Alzheimer's. A 2000 National Research Council [32]report commissioned by the National Institute on Aging found some brain exercises were worthy of government funding. But skeptics question whether beginning an active regimen of brain teasers late in life will do much to prevent brain disorders. Research to date provides scant evidence that mental exercise can stave off dementia, wrote Margaret Gatz, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, in an [33]article published by the Public Library of Science. Gatz wrote in an e-mail that she would be more convinced if researchers randomly assigned cognitive training, then followed study subjects over several decades. She also said she was concerned that too much emphasis on the benefits of mental fitness could stigmatize Alzheimer's patients. "If mental exercise is widely believed to prevent (Alzheimer's disease), then individuals who do become demented may be blamed for their disease on the grounds of not having exercised their brains enough," she said. Still, supporters of cognitive-fitness programs are pushing for greater recognition from the federal government. During December information-gathering sessions leading up to the [34]White House Conference on Aging, conference representatives said several speakers have made a case that brain health ought to be promoted in much the same way that physical fitness is today. Few people see much downside in pursuing brain-stimulating activities, said Nancy Ceridwyn, special-projects director at the American Society on Aging. Puzzles, spelling practice, memory exercises or book discussions don't pose much harm. That said, Ceridwyn isn't convinced that all the brain exercises being offered today are practical. She wonders whether workbooks that ask adults to do pages of math problems to get their brains in gear might be unnecessarily torturing people in their twilight years. "How many people are going to get up and say, 'I'm excited about doing my multiplication tables today'?" she said. "Not many." References 21. http://www.wired.com/news/feedback/mail/1,2330,0-28-68409,00.html 22. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,68409,00.html 25. http://www.cognitivecenter.org/default.asp 26. http://www.alz.org/maintainyourbrain/overview.asp 27. http://www.asaging.org/index.cfm 28. http://www.centerforhealthyaging.com/CHA/ContactUs.htm 29. http://www.alzheimers.org/nianews/nianews6.html 30. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/6/742?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=participation+in+cognitively+stimulating+activities+and+the+risk+of+alzheimers%27s+disease&searchid=1122502876647_490&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&journalcode=jama 31. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay_brother 32. http://www.nap.edu/books/0309069408/html/1.html 33. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020007 34. http://www.whcoa.gov/ From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 6 01:27:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 21:27:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Video gaming: Chasing the dream Message-ID: Video gaming: Chasing the dream http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=4246109 5,8,4 As video gaming spreads, the debate about its social impact is intensifying IS IT a new medium on a par with film and music, a valuable educational tool, a form of harmless fun or a digital menace that turns children into violent zombies? Video gaming is all these things, depending on whom you ask. Gaming has gone from a minority activity a few years ago to mass entertainment. Video games increasingly resemble films, with photorealistic images, complex plotlines and even famous actors. The next generation of games consoles--which will be launched over the next few months by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo--will intensify the debate over gaming and its impact on society, as the industry tries to reach out to new customers and its opponents become ever more vocal. Games consoles are the most powerful mass-produced computers in the world and the new machines will offer unprecedented levels of performance. This will, for example, make possible characters with convincing facial expressions, opening the way to games with the emotional charge of films, which could have broader appeal and convince sceptics that gaming has finally come of age as a mainstream form of entertainment. But it will also make depictions of violence even more lifelike, to the dismay of critics. This summer there has been a huge fuss about the inclusion of hidden sex scenes in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas", a highly popular, but controversial, game in which the player assumes the role of a street gangster. The sex scenes are not a normal part of the game (see above for a typical image). But the offending scenes can be activated using a patch downloaded from the internet. Senator Hillary Clinton and a chorus of other American politicians have called for federal prosecutors to investigate the game and examine whether the industry's system of self-regulation, which applies age ratings to games, is working properly. Mrs Clinton accused video games of "stealing the innocence of our children" and "making the difficult job of being a parent even harder". As a result of the furore, "Grand Theft Auto" had its rating in America changed--from "M" for mature (over-17s only) to "AO" for adults only (over-18s)--by the industry's rating board. But since most big retailers refuse to stock "AO" titles, of which very few exist, Rockstar Games, the maker of "Grand Theft Auto", is producing a new "M"-rated version without the hidden sexual material. This is merely the latest round in a long-running fight. Before the current fuss over "Grand Theft Auto", politicians and lobby groups were getting worked up over "Narc", a game that depicts drug-taking, and "25 to Life", another urban cops-and-robbers game. Ironically, the "Grand Theft Auto" episode has re-ignited the debate over the impact of video games, just as the industry is preparing to launch its biggest-ever marketing blitz to accompany the introduction of its new consoles. Amid all the arguments about the minutiae of rating systems, the unlocking of hidden content, and the stealing of children's innocence, however, three important factors are generally overlooked: that attitudes to gaming are marked by a generational divide; that there is no convincing evidence that games make people violent; and that games have great potential in education. Start with the demographics. Attitudes towards gaming depend to a great extent on age. In America, for example, half of the population plays computer or video games. However most players are under 40--according to Nielsen, a market-research firm, 76% of them--while most critics of gaming are over 40. An entire generation that began gaming as children has kept playing. The average age of American gamers is 30. Most are "digital natives" who grew up surrounded by technology, argues Marc Prensky of games2train, a firm that promotes the educational use of games. He describes older people as "digital immigrants" who, like newcomers anywhere, have had to adapt in various ways to their new digital surroundings. Just getting by in a foreign land without some grasp of the local language is difficult, says Mr Prensky. Digital immigrants have had to learn to use technologies such as the internet and mobile phones. But relatively few of them have embraced video games. The word "game" itself also confuses matters, since it evokes childish playthings. "What they don't understand, because they've never played them, is that these are complex games, which take 30, 40 or 100 hours to complete," says Mr Prensky. Games are, in fact, played mainly by young adults. Only a third of gamers are under 18. "It's just a generational divide," says Gerhard Florin, the European boss of Electronic Arts, the world's biggest games publisher. "It's people not knowing what they are talking about, because they have never played a game, accusing millions of gamers of being zombies or violent." Digital natives who have played video games since childhood already regard them as a form of entertainment on a par with films and music. Older digital natives now have children of their own and enjoy playing video games with them. The gaming industry is trying to address the generational divide. It is producing games designed to appeal to non-gamers and encouraging casual gamers (who may occasionally play simple web-based games, or games on mobile phones) to play more. This has led to the development of games with a wider appeal. Some of them replace the usual control pad with novel input devices: microphones for singing games, cameras for dancing and action games, and even drums. In addition, the industry has started to cater more to women, who seem to prefer social simulation games such as "The Sims", and to older people, who (if they play games at all) often prefer computerised versions of card games and board games. Other promising avenues include portable gaming, mobile gaming and online downloads of simple games. Many people enjoy gaming, but do not necessarily want to commit themselves to an epic quest that will take dozens of hours to complete. The industry, in short, is doing its best to broaden gaming's appeal, which is of course in its own best interests. For the time being, however, the demographic divide persists, and it does much to explain the polarisation of opinion over gaming and, in particular, worries about violence. It also provides the answer to a question that is often asked about gaming: when will it become a truly mainstream form of entertainment? It already is among the under-40s, but will probably never achieve mainstream status among older people. But aren't critics right to worry that gaming might make people violent? Hardly a week goes by in which a game is not blamed for inspiring someone to commit a violent crime. After all, say critics, acting out violent behaviour in a game is very different from passively watching it in a film. Yet surveys of studies into games and violence have produced inconclusive results, notes Dmitri Williams, who specialises in studying the social impact of media at the University of Illinois. And, in a paper on the subject published in June in Communication Monographs, he notes that such research typically has serious shortcomings. For example, studies have examined only the short-term effects of gaming. There have been no studies that track the long-term effects on the players themselves. Another problem, says Mr Williams, is that it is meaningless to generalise about "game play" when there are thousands of games in dozens of genres. It is, he notes, equivalent to suggesting that all television programmes, radio shows and movies are the same. Better-designed studies that measure the long-term effects of specific types of games are needed. They're beginning to happen. In his paper, Mr Williams describes the first such study, which he carried out with Marko Skoric of the University of Michigan. The study concentrated on a "massively multiplayer online role-playing game" (MMORPG) called "Asheron's Call 2". This type of game requires the player to roam around a fantasy world and kill monsters to build up attribute points. It is "substantially more violent than the average video game and should have more effect, given the highly repetitive nature of the violence", the researchers noted. Two groups of subjects were recruited, none of whom had played MMORPGs before and many of whom had never played video games at all. One group then played the game for a month, for an average of nearly two hours per day. The other group acted as a control. All participants were asked questions about the frequency of aggressive social interactions (such as arguments with their spouses) during the course of the month to test the idea that gaming makes people more aggressive. Moral choices Game players, it turned out, were no more aggressive than the control group. Whether the participants had played games before, the number of hours spent gaming, and whether they liked violent movies or not, made no difference. The researchers noted, however, that more research is still needed to assess the impact of other genres, such as shoot-'em-ups or the urban violence of "Grand Theft Auto". All games are different, and only when more detailed studies have been carried out will it be possible to generalise about the impact of gaming. But as Steven Johnson, a cultural critic, points out in a recent book, "Everything Bad Is Good for You", gaming is now so widespread that if it did make people more violent, it ought to be obvious. Instead, he notes, in America violent crime actually fell sharply in the 1990s, just as the use of video and computer games was taking off (see chart 2). Of course, it's possible that crime would have fallen by even more over the period had America not taken up video games; still, video gaming has clearly not turned America into a more violent place than it was. What's more, plenty of games, far from encouraging degeneracy, are morally complex, subtle and, very possibly, improving. Many now explicitly require players to choose whether to be good or evil, and their choices determine how the game they are playing develops. In "Black & White", for example, the player must groom a creature whose behaviour and form reflects his moral choices (get it wrong and the results can be ugly--see the illustration). Several games based on the "Star Wars" movies require players to choose between the light and dark sides of the Force, equivalent to good and evil. Perhaps most striking is the sequence in "Halo 2", a bestselling shoot-'em-up, in which the player must take the role of an alien. Having previously seen aliens as faceless enemies, notes Paul Jackson of Forrester, a consultancy, "suddenly you are asked to empathise with the enemy's position. It's very interesting. Games are much more complex than the critics realise." The move away from linear narratives to more complex games that allow players to make moral choices, argues Mr Prensky, means that games provide an opportunity to discuss moral questions. "These are wonderful examples for us to be discussing with our kids," he says. Indeed, perhaps the best way to address concerns over the effects of video games is to emphasise their vast potential to educate. Even games with no educational intent require players to learn a great deal. Games are complex, adaptive and force players to make a huge number of decisions. Gamers must construct hypotheses about the in-game world, learn its rules through trial and error, solve problems and puzzles, develop strategies and get help from other players via the internet when they get stuck. The problem-solving mechanic that underlies most games is like the 90% of an iceberg below the waterline--invisible to non-gamers. But look beneath the violent veneer of "Grand Theft Auto", and it is really no different from a swords-and-sorcery game. Instead of stealing a crystal and delivering it to a wizard so that he can cure the princess, say, you may have to intercept a consignment of drugs and deliver it to a gang boss so he can ransom a hostage. It is the pleasure of this problem-solving, not the superficial violence which sometimes accompanies it, that can make gaming such a satisfying experience. Nobody is using "Grand Theft Auto" in schools, of course, since it is intended for adults. But other off-the-shelf games such as "Sim City" or "Rollercoaster Tycoon", which contain model economies, are used in education. By playing them it is possible to understand how such models work, and to deduce what their biases are. (In "Sim City", for example, in which the player assumes the role of a city mayor, no amount of spending on health care is ever enough to satisfy patients, and the fastest route to prosperity is to cut taxes.) Games can be used in many other ways. Tim Rylands, a British teacher in a primary school near Bristol, recently won an award from Becta, a government education agency, for using computer games in the classroom. By projecting the fantasy world of "Myst", a role-playing game, on to a large screen and prompting his 11-year-old pupils to write descriptions and reactions as he navigates through it, he has achieved striking improvements in their English test scores. Another area where games are becoming more popular is in corporate training. In "Got Game", a book published last year by Harvard Business School Press, John Beck and Mitchell Wade, two management consultants, argue that gaming provides excellent training for a career in business. Gamers, they write, are skilled at multi-tasking, good at making decisions and evaluating risks, flexible in the face of change and inclined to treat setbacks as chances to try again. Firms that understand and exploit this, they argue, can gain a competitive advantage. Pilots have been trained using flight simulators for years, and simulators are now used by soldiers and surgeons too. But gaming can be used to train desk workers as well. Mr Prensky's firm has provided simple quiz games for such firms as IBM and Nokia, to test workers' knowledge of rules and regulations, for example. For Pfizer, a drug company, his firm built a simulation of its drug-development process that was then used to train new recruits. Other examples abound: PricewaterhouseCoopers built an elaborate simulation to teach novice auditors about financial derivatives. Some lawyers are using simulators to warm up for court appearances. Convincing older executives of the merits of using games in training can be tricky, Mr Prensky admits. "But when they have a serious strategic training problem, and realise that their own people are 20-year-olds, more and more are willing to take the leap," he says. So games are inherently good, not bad? Actually they are neither, like books, films, the internet, or any other medium. All can be used to depict sex and violence, or to educate and inform. Indeed, the inclusion of violent and sexual content in games is arguably a sign of the maturity of the medium, as games become more like films. Movies provide one analogy for the future of gaming, which seems destined to become a mainstream medium. Games already come in a variety of genres, and are rated for different age groups, just like movies. But just how far gaming still has to go is illustrated by the persistence of the double standard that applies different rules to games and films. Critics of gaming object to violence in games, even though it is common in movies. They worry about the industry's rating model, even though it is borrowed from the movie industry. They call upon big retailers (such as Wal-Mart) not to sell AO-rated games, but seem not to mind that they sell unrated movies that include far more explicit content. In June, Senator Charles Schumer held a press conference to draw attention to the M-rated game "25 to Life", in which players take the role of a policeman or a gangster. "Little Johnny should be learning how to read, not how to kill cops," he declared. True, but little Johnny should not be smoking, drinking alcohol or watching Quentin Tarantino movies either. Just as there are rules to try to keep these things out of little Johnny's hands, there are rules for video games too. Political opportunism is part of the explanation for this double standard: many of gaming's critics in America are Democrats playing to the centre. Another analogy can be made between games and music--specifically, with the emergence of rock and roll in the 1950s. Like games today, it was a new art form that was condemned for encouraging bad behaviour among young people. Some records were banned from the radio, and others had their lyrics changed. Politicians called for laws banning the sending of offending records by post. But now the post-war generation has grown up, rock and roll is considered to be harmless. Rap music, or gaming, is under attack instead. "There's always this pattern," says Mr Williams of the University of Illinois. "Old stuff is respected, and new stuff is junk." Novels, he points out, were once considered too lowbrow to be studied at university. Eventually the professors who believed this retired. Novels are now regarded as literature. "Once a generation has its perception, it is pretty much set," says Mr Williams. "What happens is that they die." Like rock and roll in the 1950s, games have been accepted by the young and largely rejected by the old. Once the young are old, and the old are dead, games will be regarded as just another medium and the debate will have moved on. Critics of gaming do not just have the facts against them; they have history against them, too. "Thirty years from now, we'll be arguing about holograms, or something," says Mr Williams. From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 6 01:28:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 21:28:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Star Tribune (Minneapolis): Your own corner of the world has its own magazine Message-ID: Your own corner of the world has its own magazine http://www.startribune.com/dynamic/story.php?template=print_a&story=5541591 5.8.4 Bill Dawson Star Tribune If you're a Subaru-driving face painter with a jones for Jane Austen, there's a magazine -- actually, three -- for you. Subiesport ("Your guide to tuning and driving Subarus"), Face Painting International and Jane Austen's Regency World are geared to readers with highly specialized interests. You also can subscribe to Bonsai Today, Atomic Ranch, Face Painting International and Gene Simmons Tongue. "Even the Ford Focus has a magazine," says professor Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi professor and president of Magazine Consulting & Research. Husni calls these "specialized specialty" publications, and they account for a large portion of the 450 or so magazine startups in the first six months of this year. Magazines are being launched faster than at any time since 1998, which means even the narrowest of niches is being filled, Husni says. The catch is that you have to move fast. Only 38 percent of these specialized titles survive a year, and even those have a limited life. Modern Ferret, for instance, recently went belly-up after a 10-year run and one-of-a-kind features including a two-page photo spread of an albino ferret. Fortunately, there's still Ferrets, publishing since 1998, for connoisseurs of these domesticated polecats. Here are sample titles launched in recent years: o Gene Simmons Tongue This quarterly, founded in 2002, includes "coverage of music, movies, style, entertainment, celebrity news, fashion and sex all covered from the perspective of [former KISS guitarist]) Gene Simmons." o Ferrets With the death of Modern Ferret, this bimonthly is striving to be your one-stop source for ferret information. Sample article: "That's not a ferret: Cases of mistaken identity." o New York Dog This bimonthly debuted in September, 2004, and has an obituary section titled "Rex in Peace." Sample article: "Update your dog's summer wardrobe." o Elevated Living This bimonthly describes itself as "the lifestyle magazine for people loving life at elevation." That means living in a location well above sea level, not in a downtown high-rise. o Jane Austen's Regency World Bimonthly for those who enjoy debating the relative merits of Elizabeth Bennett, Emma Woodhouse and Elinor Dashwood. Sample article: "Dilemma! -- Sue Le Blond has a problem with Mr. Darcy." o Subiesport Your guide to tuning and driving Subarus. One article begins, "Marc and Kyra Lein have been into Subarus for years now, dating back to a classic SVX they owned. Through fate, time, and a mutual desire to work on and modify Subarus, both ended up with extremely fast Impreza 2.5RS's of their own." o Atomic Ranch A quarterly for those who live in modest, mid-century ranch houses -- or wish to read about them. Sample article: "The house that Jack built: Sergeant Friday's Palm Springs party pad." o Russian Bride of New York This bilingual magazine was founded in 2004 and has been described in the New York Times as "a kind of Martha Stewart Weddings for young women of Soviet heritage." o Face Painting International Quarterly that seeks to elevate "face and body painting to a new dimension." Sample article: "Belly painting on expectant moms." o Tall magazine Bimonthly is for people of elongation, specifically men at least 6 feet 2 and women at least 5 feet 9. Tagline: "Because life may be short, but we're not." Everard Strong, the publisher, is 6 feet 9. o Cthulhu Sex For connoissuers of erotic horror. Tagline: "Blood, sex and tentacles." Title is from H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu." A Cthulhu is described as "humanity's most basic nightmare" on [3]www.cthulhu.org. o Eco-structure A bimonthly "dedicated to improving the environmental performance of buildings and their surroundings." Sample article: "Highland center educates visitors about sustainability." o Inside Cheerleading Bimonthly is designed to help readers "enjoy, train, perform, compete and live cheerleading to the max!" Sample article: "Camp Survival Guide: Find the best camp for your squad, what to bring to camp and the coolest camp styles." o Mushroom The journal of wild mushrooming. Sample article: "The First Time We Saw Mushrooms: A pair of experienced mushroom-hunters reminisces about the start of it all." o Reality Check Claims to be "your backstage pass to the world of reality TV." Sample article: "Survivor's Rupert: I was the true winner." o ROT (Riders of Tubes) This quarterly is aimed at wave riding's more mature bodyboarders, "while remaining true to the sport's core 13-19-year-old audience," according to [4]www.rcsmagazines.com. o Family Tree Magazine Purpose is to help readers "discover, preserve and celebrate your family history." Sample article: "After a harrowing ride through Canada's House of Commons, the bill that will open access to Canadians' 1911 census records has become law." Bill Dawson is at [5]wdawson at startribune.com. References 3. http://www.cthulhu.org/ 4. http://www.rcsmagazines.com/ 5. mailto:wdawson at startribune.com From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 6 01:28:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 21:28:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Fortune: First Cloned Dog Has Its Day Message-ID: First Cloned Dog Has Its Day http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1089546,00.html?promoid=yahoo 5.8.3 The arrival of Snuppy, a cloned Afghan hound, heralds both scientific import and deep symbolic significance. By [17]David Stipp A lot of U.S. researchers are muttering "doggone it" today: South Korean scientists have won the international race to clone a dog. A team led by Seoul National Universitys Woo Suk Hwang, renowned for world-leading stem-cell research, reported in the journal Nature today that it has produced two genetic duplicates of a male Afghan hound. The scientific import of this development is to some extent overshadowed by its political and symbolic importance. To be sure, dog cloning does promise to help scientists study human disease and speed the quest for better therapies in ways that cloning other animals has not. But the announcement is also likely to intensify concern that the U.S. has lost the lead in basic research on stem cells and cloning, two closely linked areas of study in which Hwangs group has recently made stunning advances. Last year his team was the first to clone early-stage human embryos and extract potent embryonic stem cells from one of them, which is a key step on the way to growing replacement tissues for patients with failing organs. The Koreans achievement also brings home, as few advances have, biologys power to touch our lives. Animal cloning has become fairly routine. (See slideshow: [18]A Noah's Ark of Cloned Animals) Genetic knock-offs of mice, rats, cats, rabbits, goats, pigs, cows, and horses have been produced since 1996, when Dolly the sheep proved mammals could be cloned. But the dog is the first cloned creature that has served in the military, orbited the earth, starred in movies, and played competitive Frisbee. U.S. scientists failure to win the dog-cloning race wasnt for lack of trying. In 1997, a crack team at Texas A&M University launched a high-profile, $4 million dog-cloning project backed by billionaire John Sperling, founder of Apollo Group (nasdaq: APOL) and its subsidiary, the online University of Phoenix. The "Missyplicity project" was aimed at cloning Sperlings favorite canine, a mutt named Missy. A company that offers pet-cloning services, Genetic Savings & Clone, was born of the project. But so far, no dog. (The closely-held, Sausalito, Calif.-based firm has led the way in cat-cloning, though, generating more buzz per manufactured unit than any company on earth. So far it has cloned two beloved tabbies for customers at $50,000 a piece.) Genetic Savings issued a terse press release on the Korean first, congratulating its rivals but attributing their win partly to the "greater availability" of dogs for research in South Korea, where animal-protection groups have little sway. "We expect to produce our own canine clones in the near future," it added. Dogs have proved one of the hardest species to clone. The basic method, used to clone Dolly and other animals including the Afghan hounds, involves placing an adult animals DNA, extracted from, say, a skin cell, into an egg cell from the same species that has had its DNA removed. The reengineered ovum is then implanted in a surrogate mother to begin gestation as the genetic twin of the adult DNA donor. The process hasnt worked well with dogs largely because the species fragile egg cells, typically obtained in an immature state from spay clinics, are extremely difficult to mature in the lab, said Texas A&M cloning expert Duane Kraemer, who in 2001 helped create the first cloned cat, CC. (CC now lives with Kraemer.) His group nearly succeeded three years ago, though--one of its Missy clones seemed okay in utero but was stillborn, he said. The Korean team reported that their two cloned dogs resulted from swapping out the DNA in 1,095 egg cells and implanting them in 123 surrogate mothers. Three pregnancies resulted, two of which reached full term. One of the two cloned pups died at three weeks from pneumonia. The lone survivor, dubbed Snuppy, is now 100 days old, said Gerald Schatten, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who advises the Korean team. The Afghan hound was chosen for the experiment, Schatten added, because of the breeds distinctive look and docility--important qualities for Snuppy, who is likely to become as big a celebrity as Lassie. But the Korean work will yield more than photo ops. Dog-cloning should pave the way for the ability to clone dog embryos and then to extract embryonic stem cells from them. This procedure has been demonstrated so far only in mice and humans, Schatten noted. Dogs have long been used to test new drugs by pharmaceutical outfits like [19]Merck, [20]Amgen and [21]Pfizer. The industry's familiarity with dogs as research animals make them especially valuable for studies on embryonic stem cells. In particular, it may be possible to extract the potent stem cells from cloned dog embryos and transform them into the multiple cell types needed to create replacement tissues. After such techniques are perfected in dogs, it might be possible to apply them with little change to developing new tissues for human patients. The ability to clone dogs also opens the door for new kinds of studies on their genes; dogs' metabolic resemblance to humans should make such knowledge highly valuable to medical researchers. For instance, scientists might disable a particular gene in a cloned dog embryo and then observe the effects of the change on fetal development and on postnatal functioning in order to determine what the gene does. Similar DNA tweaking might produce cloned dogs that are genetically predisposed to illnesses such as diabetes, cancer or Alzheimers disease. That would give researchers insight into how such scourges unfold, as well as new avenues to test experimental therapies for them. Cloning dogs with altered genes will also help researchers elucidate the genetic underpinnings of the species incredible diversity, answering questions such as why poodles are smarter than bulldogs, and why Chihuahuas live much longer on average than Irish Wolfhounds. Such knowledge would doubtless yield profound insights on our own species, given that dogs, like us, are semi-educable, highly social animals that live a long time compared with most animals. But the Koreans work isnt likely to enable the commercial cloning of adored Fidos and Fifis anytime soon. Dog-cloning still requires world-class craftsmanship that isnt yet available to pet owners. Genetic Savings, however, is developing a technology called chromatin transfer that promises to make it easier. The firms success remains to be seen. But its feline feats give hope--as that great naturalist Hamlet said, "The cat will mew, and dog will have his day." Next: [22]Slideshow: A Noahs Ark of Cloned Animals RELATED ARTICLES ?[24]The Dogged Scientist, the Old Lab Vial, and the Quest to Stop Cancer ?[25]Why We're Losing the War on Cancer--and How to Win It ?[26]The Quest for Custom Cures ?[27]Stem Cells to Fix the Heart ?[28]Can China Overtake the U.S. in Science? [29]MORE TECHNOLOGY ? [30]First Cloned Dog Has Its Day ? [31]A Noahs Ark of Cloned Animals ? [32]Novartis, Schering Suffer Cancer Drug Setback ? [34]The Dogged Scientist, the Old Lab Vial, and the Quest to Stop Cancer ? [35]Why We're Losing the War on Cancer--and How to Win It ? [36]The Quest for Custom Cures ? [37]Stem Cells to Fix the Heart ? [38]Can China Overtake the U.S. in Science? References 17. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/author_archive?authorname=David%20Stipp&column_id=7&year=2005 18. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/slideshow/0,,1089559,00.html 19. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune500/snapshot/0,14923,C858,00.html 20. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune500/snapshot/0,14923,C100,00.html 21. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune500/snapshot/0,14923,C1042,00.html 22. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/photoessay/0,18467,1089559,00.html 23. http://subs.timeinc.net/CampaignHandler/foab?source_id=26 24. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1071596,00.html 25. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,598425,00.html 26. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1050124,00.html 27. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,782027,00.html 28. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,698529,00.html 29. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology 30. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1089546,00.html 31. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1089559,00.html 32. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1087907,00.html 33. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/photoessay/0,18467,1089559,00.html 34. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1071596,00.html 35. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,598425,00.html 36. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1050124,00.html 37. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,782027,00.html 38. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,698529,00.html From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 6 01:29:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 21:29:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Science Blog: Yoga may help prevent middle-age spread Message-ID: Yoga may help prevent middle-age spread Source: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/8477 A new study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center? has found that regular yoga practice may help prevent middle-age spread in? normal-weight people and may promote weight loss in those who are? overweight. The study the first of its kind to measure the effects of yoga on weight? appears in the July/August issue of Alternative Therapies in Health and? Medicine. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the study involved 15,500? healthy, middle-aged men and women who were asked to complete a written? survey recalling their physical activity (including yoga) and weight? history between the ages 45 and 55. The study measured the impact of yoga? with weight change, independent of other factors such as diet or other? types of physical activity. The researchers found that between the ages of 45 and 55, most people? gained about a pound a year, which is a common pattern as people age and? do not adjust their caloric intake to their declining energy needs.? "However, men and women who were of normal weight at age 45 and regularly? practiced yoga gained about 3 fewer pounds during that 10-year period than? those who didn't practice yoga," said Alan R. Kristal, Dr.P.H., the? study's lead author. For the study, regular yoga practice was defined as? practicing at least 30 minutes once a week for four or more years. But the researchers noted the greatest effect of regular yoga practice was? among people who were overweight. "Men and women who were overweight and? practiced yoga lost about 5 pounds, while those who did not practice yoga? gained about 14 pounds in that 10-year period," said Kristal, a member of? the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division and a professor of? epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health and? Community Medicine. What accounts for yoga's apparent fat-fighting potential? Kristal, himself? a longtime yoga student, suspects it has more to do with increased body? awareness than the physical activity itself. "During a very vigorous yoga practice you can burn enough calories to lose? weight, but most people don't practice that kind of yoga," he said. "From? my experience, I think it has to do with the way that yoga makes you more? aware of your body. So when you've eaten enough food, you're sensitive to? the feeling of being full, and this makes it much easier to stop eating? before you've eaten too much." Study co-author Denise Benitez, owner of Seattle Yoga Arts, agrees. "Most? people practice yoga in a way that's not aerobic enough to burn a lot of? calories, so it has to be some other reason." One reason, she speculates, could be that yoga cultivates a form of gentle? inner strength. "When we practice yoga, although it may look easy, there? is some mild discomfort. You bring your body to a physical edge that's? just a little bit challenging. And people who regularly practice yoga? develop the inner resources to stay with a little bit of discomfort. They? develop a softness inside and an ability to stay mindful. So that when you? go home after yoga class and open up the fridge and see a chocolate cake,? you have the resources to stay with the discomfort of not eating that? chocolate cake." Whatever the reason behind the apparent impact of yoga on weight? maintenance and loss, Kristal stresses that these findings need to be? replicated. "I think it's time now to do a carefully controlled, randomized clinical? trial to see if adding yoga to a standard weight-loss program can help? people lose more weight or keep it off longer. The other message,? particularly to people who might be overweight, is that yoga is a? noncompetitive activity. It's something that everybody can do. It brings? so many benefits, and if one of the clinical benefits is that it can help? you control your weight, then that's a great thing." The participants in the yoga study were part of a larger ongoing? Hutchinson Center study involving more than 75,000 residents of western? Washington called the Vitamins and Lifestyle, or VITAL, study. This $4.2? million project, which began in 2000, aims to determine whether vitamin,? mineral or herbal supplements reduce the risk of cancer. ### SIDEBAR YOGA TIPS THAT MAY ENCOURAGE WEIGHT MAINTENANCE OR LOSS Study co-author and yoga teacher Denise Benitez, owner of Seattle Yoga? Arts, offers the following suggestions for enhancing one's yoga practice.? These tips may be particularly helpful for those who wish to maintain or? lose weight: 1. Practice in a room without mirrors, and pay more attention to your? internal experience than to your outer performance. 2. Learn to feel sensations more and more subtly, so that you become? deeply involved in and curious about small movements, sometimes called? micro-movements. 3. In your poses, find an edge for yourself where you are challenged but? not overwhelmed. At this edge, practice maintaining a clear, open and? accepting mental state. 4. Give yourself permission to rest when you feel overworked. 5. Pay close attention to what you are saying to yourself as you practice,? and make an intentional effort to appreciate your own efforts and innate? goodness. 6. Go to class faithfully, arrive early, and talk to a few people in your? class before class begins. 7. Buy your own yoga mat and bring it to class. 8. Realize that the development of qualities like patience, discipline,? wisdom, right effort, kindness, gratitude and many others will arise from? your yoga practice. These qualities create a steady and soft mind. 9. Find a teacher who offers a balance of gentleness and firmness and? whose teaching inspires you to practice from your highest self. 10. Recognize that simply attending class is a major statement of courage,? self-care, and positive momentum. Realize that you are inspiring others as? you become more true to your deepest desires. At Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, our interdisciplinary teams of? world-renowned scientists and humanitarians work together to prevent,? diagnose and treat cancer, HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Our researchers,? including three Nobel laureates, bring a relentless pursuit and passion? for health, knowledge and hope to their work and to the world. For more? information, please visit fhcrc.org. From Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 6 01:29:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 21:29:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Statesman (India): Mind over matter: Principles and Techniques Message-ID: Mind over matter: Principles and Techniques http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=18&theme=&usrsess=1&id=84700 [How dubious would Mr. Mencken be about all this?] Jul 28, 2005??? Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury The field of memory is ever evolving in so far as principles and techniques are concerned. And due to this evolution there is no stopping of refreshment and adaptability for there are as many principles and techniques as one asks. These being easy to learn and to work upon, the principles and techniques work as wonders and remain refreshed forever, if learnt once. This can be understood, perfectly, by the ensuing content. Take the instance of those who drive a car. It proves that 95% of those who drive cars require improving their memory because all of them forget the place where they have parked their vehicle or put its keys. They have driven their car to a shopping centre/ airport/ movie theatre/ friend's place, and having completed their tasks, have returned only to find that they have completely lost it (i.e. forgotten the location of their car). Don't you agree that it's impossible? The car weighing more than 2 tons which they drove, opened and closed the door and locked it as well, has been lost. Surely the brain could not possibly forget such a thing? But the whole process of forgetting can be understood as it is the most easily understandable thing. At the same time one can overcome this problem of forgetting by applying simple principles and techniques. Why it happens is due to absentmindedness. As a person is so occupied with the aim of visit, he /she forgets or finds it relatively unimportant to remember the location of his car. How can one overcome this problem? This again is very simple. One has to apply 3 memory principles and 12 memory techniques. The three memory principles are as under. 1. Our memory is based on Association, i.e. it works by linking things together. For example as soon as your brain registers the word "apple" it will remember link - the colour, the tastes, texture and smells of that fruit, as well as experiences, friends and occasion connected with it. 2. What has to be memorised should have an " image" that should be a multi-sensory image. By this the objects get reinforced into our brains and thus become unforgettable. 3. Last but not the least is the principle of location. In other words, for your brain to remember something that it has imagined and associated, it must also have that memory image in a special location. Here you can take the example of a library. If you walked into a library that had a million books and wished to find a specific one, would it be easier if all the books were piled up in the middle of the floor and you had to randomly search, or if all the books were beautifully and elegantly catalogued and ordered? Obviously the latter. The 12 memory techniques are as under. Association, image and location principles can be well assisted by the following 12 techniques. 1. Synaesthesia/ sensuality- it is called blending of senses, as this blending produces enhanced recall. Therefore, it becomes essential to sensitize increasingly and train regularly your - Vision, Hearing, Sense of Smell, Taste, and Touch. 2. Movement - for any image, movement adds another giant range of possibilities for your brain to "link in" and thus remembers, as your images move, make them three-dimensional. 3. Association - you should link any new information with something stable in your mental environment. 4. Sexuality - we all have a good memory in this area. Use it! 5. Humour - images, which are ridiculous, absurd, funny and surreal are more outstandingly memorable. 6. Imagination - the more you apply your imagination to memory, the better your memory will be. 7. Number - numbering adds specificity and efficiency to the principle of order and sequence. 8. Symbolism - substituting a more meaningful image for a more ordering or boring image increases the probability of recall. 9. Colour - you should use the full range of the rainbow to make your image and ideas more colourful and therefore more memorable. 10. Order and sequence - in combination with the other principles, order and/ or sequence allows for much more immediate and increases the brain's possibilities for "random access". 11. Positivity - positive images are more recallable than negative ones, as latter are blocked by brain and to former, our brain wants to return. So, add as many positivity to your image as possible. 12. Exaggeration - in all your images exaggerate the size, shape, colour and sound. This is the way, as memory principles and techniques are designed to be used, and if you do that you will do wonders. From checker at panix.com Sun Aug 7 02:07:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 22:07:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Great Sites Message-ID: These are my favorite sites. I'm narrowing my interests to major cultural and genetic changes and differences. So please visit them or subscribe to the lists. I'll continue to cover certain publications that require a password. The New York Times http://nytimes.com This is 99% Establishment, but the depth and breadth of its coverage of the news is incomparable, and I've looked at the major foreign newspapers in all languages to get a feel, at least, for their scope. Arts & Letters Daily http://aldaily.com This covers all aspects of culture. I have mined it every Monday. Arts Journal http://artsjournal.com This covers only the arts and is strong on music. I get an e-message Monday through Friday. World Transhumanism Organization http://transhumanism.org This is the best group promoting the ethical use of technology to upgrade mankind. There are several discussion lists. The Last Ditch http://thornwalker.com/ditch This is the best of the paleo-libertarian sites. The editor makes pithy comments on the news, publishes articles, and carefully selects the best URLs. Too much criticism of U.S. foreign policy for my tastes, in which I have lost interest. There is no hope for a restoration of the Old Republic, which is why it's called The Last Ditch. I do continue to watch for news affecting federal-state-local relations. The following Yahoo! groups: Transhuman Technology http://yahoogroups.com/group/transhumantech subscribe at yahoogroups.com/transhumantech Too many articles are overly technical for my tastes, but it's a great source of news about developments and implications of technology. Evolutionary Psychology http://yahoogroups.com/group/evolutionary-psychology subscribe at yahoogroups.com/evolutionary-psychology I scarcely follow this anymore, since my interests are more in the realm of human differences than in evolutionary commonalities. Rael Science http://yahoogroups.com/group/rael-science-select subscribe at yahoogroups.com/rael-science-select Yes, Rael is the French journalist who purports to have received a message in 1973 from outer space explaining the extraterrestrial origin of life on earth. I have not investigated the evidence offered for the authenticity of the dictated message, any more than I have looked at the evidence of the Golden Places Joseph Smith received. Still, the e-mail list is awfully good on science and its cultural implications. Many of the messages, though, criticize U.S. foreign policy. World Education Club http://yahoogroups.com/group/worldeducationclub subscribe at yahoogroups.com/worldeducationclub This is where you can find most of my e-mails archived. Or you can join my list by sending me an e-message. If your mailbox gets full and messages come back, I'll drop you after a day or over the weekend. You'll have to tell me you've cleaned it out. If you go on vacation and ask that my messages be suspended, I may forget to restore you. In any case, you can always catch up at the World Education Club. Magazines that need passwords: e-mail me for specific articles if the are not available to the general public. The Chronicle of Higher Education http://chronicle.com You've seen many articles from this site, so there's no need to describe it. The Times Literary Supplement http://the-tls.co.uk This is certainly the top book review publication in the world. Part of my problem is that I have months and months of unread copies. New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com (The www is mandatory.) The best lay science publication. Again, too many unread copies. The Economist http://economist.com Twenty or so years ago, I used to read this avidly. Foreign Policy http://foreignpolicy.com To the extent I do read about foreign policy, this publication has more lively debates than any other one. These debates are well within Establishment limits. No call for the restoration of the Old Republic here. From checker at panix.com Sun Aug 7 02:07:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 22:07:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: The neurology of consciousness: Crick's last stand Message-ID: The neurology of consciousness: Crick's last stand http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4221513 Jul 28th 2005 Francis Crick suggests where to find the seat of consciousness IT IS traditional to begin an article about Francis Crick by quoting his collaborator, James Watson, who wrote, ?I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood.? The immodesty that carried Crick to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 clearly never left him. His latest paper (and his last, for he died in 2004) proposes to explain, of all things, the neurological basis of human consciousness. Mechanistic explanations of consciousness are hard to come by because consciousness is so poorly understood. Indeed, it is one of the few unexplained phenomena that are genuinely mysterious rather than merely problematical. But Crick, together with his long-time collaborator Christof Koch, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, focused on a part of the mystery that seems tractable. This is the integrated nature of conscious sensation. As the two researchers put it in their paper, which was published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, ?When holding a rose, you smell its fragrance and see its red petals while feeling its textured stem with your fingers.? The part of the brain that caught the two researchers' interest is the claustrum, a thin sheet of grey matter that lies concealed beneath part of the cortex (the outer covering of the brain that carries out the computations involved in seeing, hearing and language). The key to the researchers' claim is that most, if not all, regions of the cortex have two-way connections to the claustrum, as do the structures involved in emotion. It is plausible that the smell, the colour and the texture of the rose, all processed in different parts of the cortex, could be bound together into one cohesive, conscious experience by the claustrum. The authors liken it to a conductor who synchronises and co-ordinates various parts into a united whole. Thus far, this is mere anatomical speculation fuelled by the fact that very little is known about what the claustrum actually does. Crick hoped that his final paper would inspire researchers to begin to develop molecular techniques to disable the claustrum in animals to observe the aftermath. Time will tell whether Crick's spectacular contribution to understanding genetics will be replicated in the sphere of consciousness. From checker at panix.com Sun Aug 7 02:07:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 22:07:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Business Week: Wikimania and Free Culture Movement Message-ID: Wikimania and Free Culture Movement 10 Challenges for thee Free Culture Movement Source: Businessweek http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/08/wikimania_and_f.html 5.8.2 by Olga Kharif Aug. 4 will mark the first day of the world's first international Wiki conference, Wikimania, located, sadly (for the U.S. Wiki fans, anyway), in Frankfurt, Germany. Wikis, which allow thousands of people to collaboratively work on the same documents online, are transforming the way information is produced. Several years ago, Wikipedia.org, the most high-profile Wiki site, has begun to get people involved into collaboratively creating news stories. Now, the site is putting out books, such as "How to Build a Computer" and "Wikijunior Solar System." It's also pulling together a so-called Wikiversity, in which Web users are invited to create online courses on everything from economics to philosophy. What I find particularly interesting is that this powerful technology is actually part of a cultural movement. Many call it the Free Culture movement, to correspond with a book of the same title written by popular blogger and Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. The idea is that knowledge should be shared freely through technologies such as Wikis. I think that businesses need to take a note of this movement, as it could bring about major changes to the way they protect their intellectual property, create products and services and function. According to FreeCulture.org, the movement has already resulted in eight college chapters around the country. And it has spread far beyond written works. Public Patent Foundation is advocating that all software should be free. Clearly, open-source operating system Linux is rapidly gaining popularity. And, recently, a group of Danish students created the world's first open-source beer. In the next few days, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales will actually compile a list of things he believes should be free in a write-up on the Lessig blog here. He has particularly specified that he won't be talking about beer. So this will be a serious list and one, hopefully, that will show the direction our society will be going in in the coming years. Wales believes that some other types of knowledge/content that are pay-for today will become free 20 to 50 years down the road. It's going to be interesting to see the ideas that come out of the blog and Wikimania. ----------------------- Source: Corante Tech News Many2Many group weblog on social software http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/08/05/jimbos_problems_a_free_culture_m anifesto.php 5.8.5 Jimbo's Problems: A Free Culture Manifesto I'm in Frankfurt this week for the first Wikipedia conference. Jimmy Wales has been warming up for his Wikimania Keynote on Larry Lessig's blog, talking about 10 things that should be free. The idea for this list comes from Hilbert's problems. In 1900s Mathematician David Hilbert posed 23 problems, 10 were announced at a conference, the full list published later, very influential. He notes that all of these things were obvious, suggested or proposed by others. 10 Challenges for thee Free Culture Movement 1. Free the Encyclopedia! Mission is to create a free encyclopedia for every person on the planet in their own language. For English and German, this work is done (of course there could be be quality control, etc.). French and Japanese in a year or so, ton of work to be done globally. Will be done in 10 years time, an amazing thing when you consider minority languages that have never had an encyclopedia. 2. Free the Dictionary! Not as far along, but picking up speed. A dictionary is only useful when it's full of words you don't know, unlike an encyclopedia. Needs software development, such as WikiData. It is structured information, for cross reference and search. 3. Free the Curriculum! There should be a complete curriculum in every language. A much bigger task than the encyclopedia. Need not just one article about the Moon, but one for every grade level. WikiBooks isn't the only one working on this project. The price of university textbooks is a real burden for students. The book market doesn't take advantage of potential supply of expertise. Not hard to imagine 500 economics professors writing instead of one or two to create a better offering than the traditional model. 4. Free the Music! The most amazing works in history are public domain but not many public domain recordings exist (even in classical music). Proper scores are often proprietary derivative works (such as arrangements for a modern orchestra). Volunteer orchestras, student orchestras could provide the music for free. 5. Free the Art! Show two 400 year old paintings. Routinely get complaints from museums saying there is copyright infringements. National Portrait Gallery of England threatens to sue, a chilling effect, but they have no grounds. Controlling physical access keeps people from getting high quality images "I wouldn't encourage you to break the law, but if you accidentally take a photo of these works it would be great to put it on Wikipedia for the public domain. 6. Free the File Formats! Proprietary file formats are worse than proprietary software because they leave you with no ability to switch at a later time. Your data is controlled. If all of your personal documents are in an open file format, then free software could serve you in the future. Need to educate the public on lock-in. There is considerable progress here and continued European rejection of software patents is critical. 7. Free the Maps! "What could be more public domain than basic information about location on the planet?" -- Stefan Magdalinksi. FreeGIS software, Free GeoData. This will become increasingly important for open competition in mobile data services. 8. Free the Product Identifiers! Hobby Princess blog Huge subculture of people making crafts, selling them on eBay, but need competition from distributors. Increasingly, small producers can have a global market. Such producers need a clobal identifiers. Similar to ISBN, not ASIN (proprietary to Amazon). Suggests the "LTIN: Long Tail Identification Numbers" would be cheap or inexpensive to obtain (has to have some cost to fend off spam). Extensive database freely licensed and easly downloadable to empower multiple rating systems, e-commerc, etc. The alternative is proprietary eBay and Amazon. Small craft producers should be able to get a number and immediately gain distribution across them. 9. Free the TV Listings! A smaller issue, it may seem. But development of free software digital PVRs is going on. Free-as-in-beer listings exist, but this is tenuous. Free listings could be used to power many different innovations in this area. Otherwise we will be in a world where everything you watch will be DRM'ed -- so this is important. 10. Free the Communities! Wikipedia demonstrates the power of a free community. Consumers of web forum and wiki services should demand a free license. Otherwise, the company controls the community. Similar to a feudal serf, company maintained communities have a hold on communities. Are you a serf living on your master's estate, or free to move? Social compact: need to have Open Data and Openly Licensed software for communities to truly be free. Wikicities - for profit, free communities - founded by Jimmy and Angela. Free licensing attracts contributors. He will be adding more on Larry Lessig's blog over the coming weeks. Notes from the extended Q&A are here http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/jimbos_problems_1.html . Posted by Ross at 10:21 AM From checker at panix.com Sun Aug 7 02:08:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 22:08:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Independent: Evolution dispute now set to split Catholic hierarchy Message-ID: Evolution dispute now set to split Catholic hierarchy http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article303775.ece By Michael McCarthy The conflict at the highest level of the Catholic Church about the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution breaks out publicly today. Recent comments by a cardinal close to the Pope that random evolution was incompatible with belief in "God the creator" are fiercely assailed in today's edition of The Tablet, Britain's Catholic weekly, by the Vatican astronomer. In an article with explosive implications for the Church, Father George Coyne, an American Jesuit priest who is a distinguished astronomy professor, attacks head-on the views of Cardinal Christoph Sh?nborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a long-standing associate of Joseph Ratzinger, the German cardinal who was elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April. In an article entitled "Finding Design in Nature" in The New York Times last month, Cardinal Sh?nborn reignited the row between the Church and science by frankly denying that "neo-Darwinian dogma" was compatible with Christian faith. He wrote: "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo- Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not." His views have provoked alarm among many scientists and liberal Catholics around the world, who thought that Catholicism had come to terms with evolution, and who now see the spectre of creationism rising in the Catholic Church as it has risen among fundamentalist Protestants in the US. Only this week President George Bush said that the theory of "intelligent design" - a version of creationism, which disputes the idea that natural selection alone can explain the complexity of life - should be taught in America schools alongside the theory of evolution. Cardinal Sh?nborn is understood to have been urged to write the article, and to have been helped to place it in The New York Times, by Mark Ryland, a leading figure in the Discovery Institute, a conservative American Christian think-tank that promotes intelligent design. The cardinal's views are publicly and robustly rejected by Fr Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, which is a scientific institution sponsored by the Holy See. Fr Coyne, who is 72, has been in charge of the observatory since 1978; he spends half the year in Tucson, Arizona, as a professor in the University of Arizona astronomy department, where he is still actively involved in research. In The Tablet he says that Cardinal Sh?nborn's article has "darkened the waters" of the rapport between Church and science, and says - flatly contradicting the cardinal - that even a world in which "life... has evolved through a process of random genetic mutations and natural selection" is compatible with "God's dominion". For a Vatican official of such seniority openly to attack the views of a cardinal on such a potentially explosive subject as evolution is unprecedented. It also reveals a deep rift at the heart of the Catholic Church's thinking. It is known that Fr Coyne wrote privately to both Cardinal Sh?nborn and the Pope himself protesting against The New York Times article soon after it was published last month. But it is understood that so many scientists, especially Catholic scientists, have since contacted him to express their disquiet, that he felt he had to go public. He is believed to have cleared the article with his Jesuit superiors. The previous pope, John Paul II in 1996 declared to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that evolution was "no longer a mere hypothesis". In his July article Cardinal Sh?nborn played down this statement as "vague and unimportant". He points instead to comments Pope John Paul gave during an audience in 1985, when he spoke at length of the role of God the creator. Fr Coyne attacks the cardinal's analysis and says that the Pope's later statement was "epoch-making". He goes on: "Why does there seem to be a persistent retreat in the Church from attempts to establish a dialogue with the community of scientists?" The key question behind the debate is the opinion of new Pope. Some fear that the cardinal would never have published such a controversial article in such a prominent medium without his personal approval. But nothing will be known for certain until the Pope speaks for himself. The conflict at the highest level of the Catholic Church about the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution breaks out publicly today. Recent comments by a cardinal close to the Pope that random evolution was incompatible with belief in "God the creator" are fiercely assailed in today's edition of The Tablet, Britain's Catholic weekly, by the Vatican astronomer. In an article with explosive implications for the Church, Father George Coyne, an American Jesuit priest who is a distinguished astronomy professor, attacks head-on the views of Cardinal Christoph Sh?nborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a long-standing associate of Joseph Ratzinger, the German cardinal who was elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April. In an article entitled "Finding Design in Nature" in The New York Times last month, Cardinal Sh?nborn reignited the row between the Church and science by frankly denying that "neo-Darwinian dogma" was compatible with Christian faith. He wrote: "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo- Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not." His views have provoked alarm among many scientists and liberal Catholics around the world, who thought that Catholicism had come to terms with evolution, and who now see the spectre of creationism rising in the Catholic Church as it has risen among fundamentalist Protestants in the US. Only this week President George Bush said that the theory of "intelligent design" - a version of creationism, which disputes the idea that natural selection alone can explain the complexity of life - should be taught in America schools alongside the theory of evolution. Cardinal Sh?nborn is understood to have been urged to write the article, and to have been helped to place it in The New York Times, by Mark Ryland, a leading figure in the Discovery Institute, a conservative American Christian think-tank that promotes intelligent design. The cardinal's views are publicly and robustly rejected by Fr Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory, which is a scientific institution sponsored by the Holy See. Fr Coyne, who is 72, has been in charge of the observatory since 1978; he spends half the year in Tucson, Arizona, as a professor in the University of Arizona astronomy department, where he is still actively involved in research. In The Tablet he says that Cardinal Sh?nborn's article has "darkened the waters" of the rapport between Church and science, and says - flatly contradicting the cardinal - that even a world in which "life... has evolved through a process of random genetic mutations and natural selection" is compatible with "God's dominion". For a Vatican official of such seniority openly to attack the views of a cardinal on such a potentially explosive subject as evolution is unprecedented. It also reveals a deep rift at the heart of the Catholic Church's thinking. It is known that Fr Coyne wrote privately to both Cardinal Sh?nborn and the Pope himself protesting against The New York Times article soon after it was published last month. But it is understood that so many scientists, especially Catholic scientists, have since contacted him to express their disquiet, that he felt he had to go public. He is believed to have cleared the article with his Jesuit superiors. The previous pope, John Paul II in 1996 declared to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that evolution was "no longer a mere hypothesis". In his July article Cardinal Sh?nborn played down this statement as "vague and unimportant". He points instead to comments Pope John Paul gave during an audience in 1985, when he spoke at length of the role of God the creator. Fr Coyne attacks the cardinal's analysis and says that the Pope's later statement was "epoch-making". He goes on: "Why does there seem to be a persistent retreat in the Church from attempts to establish a dialogue with the community of scientists?" The key question behind the debate is the opinion of new Pope. Some fear that the cardinal would never have published such a controversial article in such a prominent medium without his personal approval. But nothing will be known for certain until the Pope speaks for himself. From checker at panix.com Sun Aug 7 02:08:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 22:08:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'The Starter Wife' and 'The Starter Marriage': Rescue Me Message-ID: 'The Starter Wife' and 'The Starter Marriage': Rescue Me New York Times Book Review, 5.8.7 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/books/review/07SCHILLI.html [First chapter of The Starter Marriage appended.] THE STARTER WIFE By Gigi Levangie Grazer. 359 pp. Simon & Schuster. $24. THE STARTER MARRIAGE By Kate Harrison. 345 pp. New American Library. Paper. $13.95. By LIESL SCHILLINGER OVER 30, single and having a hard time meeting a man? Have you considered drowning? Not to end it all, but to summon a dream date to save you. Don't knock it till you've tried it: it works for the freshly dumped heroines of two new novels spun around the phenomenon of ''starter marriages.'' Meet Gracie, the buffed, silicone-enhanced and Botoxed 41-year-old star of the Malibu fairy tale ''The Starter Wife,'' whose ''forehead was as unlined as the hood of a new Porsche'' but whose studio-executive husband has left her anyway . . . for Britney Spears. And then there's Tip-top Tess, a tight-lipped 35-year-old schoolmarm who belatedly realizes she had ''been careless enough to neglect my marriage, but had never neglected my dental hygiene,'' and whose slow post-breakup learning curve provides the structure for ''The Starter Marriage,'' a glum British fable set in Birmingham (which is to Malibu as the work boot is to Cinderella's glass slipper). The starter marriage is a fashionable concept of late, much batted about in breezy magazine articles alongside topics like French cuffs, spray-on tans and computer-cataloged wardrobe libraries. Typically, the term is defined as a first marriage of short duration, entered into by people too young to have given the ''till death us do part'' clause much thought. It produces no children and no messy legal battles. For the purpose of these novels, however, its boundaries have been stretched to include any marriage -- even one with issue -- that ends after one spouse has turned louse and before either spouse has actually flatlined. ''The Starter Wife'' is the third and funniest in a succession of novels about the cutthroat social mores of the entertainment industry by a woman who has witnessed them up close, Gigi Levangie Grazer (the keeper-wife of the producer Brian Grazer). Her heroine, Gracie Pollock, n?e Peters, wife of the studio bigwig Kenny Pollock, has started to feel ''like a pencil drawing that was being slowly, methodically erased.'' Before marriage bumped her into a life of surgically enhanced grooming and enforced socializing, she was a successful children's book writer. Lately, though, her thoughts are consumed by concerns like ''Why are the tennis court lights on at 8 a.m.?'' and ''The orchids in the foyer are dying.'' A brutal wake-up call rouses her from the enchantment: her husband demands a divorce, via cellphone. Gracie flees with her 3-year-old daughter, Jaden, to a friend's beach house in the celebrity-infested Malibu Colony, where she soon upends herself in a kayak and -- hey presto! -- along comes a leading man with salt-and-pepper hair and swimtrunks as orange as a lifeguard's buoy, who clasps her to his brawny chest. Gazing at her rescuer, Gracie sees her future flash before her eyes: ''He was tall; he was built; he was tan; he had a strong jawline and wide-set dark eyes, my God, he had great hair; and he was in her demographic. And there was no wedding ring. Gracie felt like one of them should speak, since obviously they were going to be married.'' Alas, Poseidon turns out to be a beach bum, former addict and Vietnam vet named Sam Knight, who has slept behind a shrubbery for two decades. But, as Gracie knows, it doesn't do to be picky if you're a rejected ''wife of'' in Hollywood. After little Jaden returns from a weekend with Daddy and his pop tart wearing a ''tight pink T-shirt with the words PORN STAR on it, tied and knotted up under her rib cage, and tiny pink shorts that looked like they had come from Barbie's closet,'' Gracie finds herself in the mood to rationalize. She even writes a pros-and-cons list to help assess Sam's viability as a husband and father. Some pros: ''not underfoot'' and ''could make own meals out of neighbor's trash.'' A con: ''Would he insist on showering from the hose?'' Could there be the remotest hope that Mr. Homeless's fortunes are more blue-chip than initially appears? Could he -- ''My Man Godfrey''-style -- even turn out to be a strayed society scion? Meanwhile, across the continent and across the Atlantic, another newly hatched starter wife is submerged in the British journalist Kate Harrison's second novel. Tip-top Tess has spent 17 years with Barney Leonard when he leaves her for his secretary. Not only has Tess's marriage turned out to be a starter marriage; her life has turned out to be a starter life. Her zeal for housecleaning has vanished; the divorce recovery course she signed up for has yielded only a sad tryst with a traffic cop; and a longtime friend tells her that her ex isn't the problem: ''You asked for it. I think you took him for granted. You were very lucky to land him, Tess. He's a great bloke. Or was.'' This is what we read for escape? The reality is too crushing even for Tess, who accompanies her pupils on a river trip for diversion, though she has harbored an unholy terror of water -- ''even the inviting, harmless depths of turquoise hotel pools'' -- ever since a boating trip with her ex and his office mates landed her chest-deep in the drink. This time the excursion is led by a cheerful widower named Robin, who is manly and appealing even if he has a ''borderline bald forehead'' and ''a mouth so full of teeth that his front ones are protruding.'' Tess, unlike Gracie, has no expectation that a glitter-encrusted rainbow might pop up in the leaden skies of the West Midlands. Besides, Robin has the ''air of authority'' of a commando and a warm handshake. Might he do? Coaxing the bristly Tess into a kayak, Robin helps overcome her fear of drowning by submerging the boat, making her count to three and promising to stand by and save her should the need arise. She submits -- ''Knowing Robin is counting with me makes me certain that everything will be all right'' -- and pops back up to the surface, ''blinking at the light like a newborn foal.'' If Tess can overcome her instinct to fight off all comers, her real life might just begin -- a clean slate that presumably can be rewiped at will should Robin fail to suit. Given the risks, his better option may be to give the kayak another twirl and run for it. Ah, first marriages. The miracle isn't that they happen; it's that second ones do. When Gracie, still blissfully wed, spots a de-spoused Hollywood wife at the outset of Grazer's novel, she notices that the woman looks different: ''She looked . . . older. She looked . . . not so blond. She looked . . . rounder, softer. . . . And something else, Gracie thought. She didn't look mean. She looked, Gracie thought, could it be? Normal.'' That badge of normalcy -- a mark of shame for the sniping ''wife of'' socialites Grazer caricatures in her ruthless, burbling satire -- is Tess's humble goal, and it's a reasonable one for lonely hearts on the lookout for a mate, whether starter or subsequent. But dreamers like Gracie, who are seeking not a real new mate but one they can script to please themselves, will relish the less realistic sheen of Grazer's vivacious and vengeful fantasy, which puts a delectable candy coating on the poison apple of disprized love as they steel their courage to dare another bite. Liesl Schillinger is an arts editor at The New Yorker and a regular contributor to the Book Review. ------------ First chapter of 'The Starter Marriage' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/books/chapters/0807-1st-harr.html By KATE HARRISON When Barney came into the kitchen on Boxing Day and told me he was leaving me for his secretary, I didn't cry. I didn't cling on to his ankles, begging him to stay. I didn't attack him with the Le Creuset pan I was drying at the time (the thought did occur to me but it was part of a set of five my parents bought us as a wedding present and a gap in the display rack would have added insult to injury). All I said was, 'Let's try to make sure things don't get messy.' He laughed, a dry, coughing sound that made me wince. 'No, of course not. There'd be nothing worse for Tip Top Tess than to make a mess, would there?' And he left the room and the house and our marriage. I finished drying the pan and hung it up before I burst into tears. Tip Top Tess. It's not a sexy nickname, but it is accurate and if wanting things to be neat and tidy is my only fault, I don't think I'm doing too badly. I give to charity, I'm kind to animals and small children and I remember all my friends' birthdays. Since when has tidiness been a crime? So when I spent the first New Year's Eve of my life alone, my resolution was to avoid nastiness, to stay as civilised and proper as I would in any other situation, to keep things shipshape. Ready for when Barney came back. And, as far as my nearests and dearests are concerned, I've been pulling it off. Somehow I've managed to maintain the status quo, or at least the illusion of the status quo, for five months. Only I know how far I've slipped. Until tonight. Then the doorbell rings and it all falls apart. I tiptoe into the hall and peer through the spyhole. Mel's face looms up at me, distorted by the fisheye lens so she looks all eyes and nose ... exactly the features I don't want scrutinising my current living arrangements. I wonder if she's seen me through the glass panel? I'm trapped now, unable to escape upstairs in case she catches a glimpse of movement and realises I'm here. Maybe if I crouch down behind the door and wait, there's a chance she might leave. No harm done. The reproduction Edwardian bell rings again and I feel the reverberation through the wooden frame. Of all my friends, Mel is the least likely to give up easily. After fifteen years as a reporter, she's used to hanging about on doorsteps, playing cat-and-mouse with the criminals or adulterers inside. They always break before she does. She sticks her hand through the letterbox, so I try to manoeuvre my body out of range. This means crouching down even further so that my head is on my knees and I get a close-up view of the carpet. It's worse than I thought. There are grey clusters of dust gathered like storm clouds at the edges of the skirting board and a pair of worn tights under the console table. She definitely can't come in. But my faint hope that she might still get bored and settle for leaving a note is dashed when she screams 'HONEY! I know you're in there! You forgot to turn the telly off.' Oh God. The duh-duh-duh of the EastEnders theme tune booms from the living room, reinforcing my basic error. I feel like a character in a French farce, playing hide-and-seek with my best friend, only I don't feel any urge to laugh. Crying seems the more appropriate response, but my biggest fear is that if I start, I will never stop. 'Come ON, Tess!' she shouts. 'I'm not going anywhere so you might as well open the door.' My legs are aching now: I might have had a chance of sitting, or rather crouching it out before Christmas, when I was going to step classes three times a week and had thighs of steel. But then again, before Christmas I had no need to avoid Mel or anyone else. On my hands and knees I reverse away from the door as far back as the stairs, stand up and then pound loudly on the bottom step as if I'm walking down. I put the security chain in place, take a deep breath and finally open the door a few inches. 'About bloody time! What the hell have you been up to in there?' 'Um ... Sorry, I was in the bath.' She stares at me through the gap in the door. I'm still wearing my work clothes, there are biro marks all over my hands and my hair hasn't been washed in a week. 'Really?' She says. 'Well, now you're out of the bath, don't keep me standing here like a door-to-door salesman. I've brought a bottle of wine.' She waves an Oddbins bag at me. 'It's not a good time.' 'Don't be daft, honey. I'm fed up with you not returning my calls so I thought it was time to take affirmative action.' 'Honestly, Mel, I'm not in the mood ... I appreciate the gesture, but why don't we arrange to go out next week instead?' 'What, so you can cancel on me again?' Her face takes on the same determined expression she used to adopt on anti-apartheid demonstrations when we were students. She was always getting arrested, though I never was: a bolshie busty black woman is bound to attract more attention from the cops than a tidy, skinny white one. 'No way. I am going to stay here until you let me in.' 'Give me a second,' I say, pushing the door to, while I consider my options. They're not exactly promising. If I let her in, she'll see the shocking state of my house and, by implication, the even more shocking state of my mind. But if I leave her outside, it'll give the neighbours something extra to gossip about. I'm sure it's only a matter of days before they present me with a petition about the height of the weeds in my tiny front garden. Victoria Terrace is that kind of street. I can't afford to give the Residents' Association any more reasons to complain ... 'OK, you win.' I fiddle around with the chain, before opening the door. The sunlight illuminates a million dust particles in the hall: I dread to think what it's doing to my poor, tired face. As Mel steps into the hall, I brace myself. 'Don't say I didn't warn you.' 'About what?' She says, then stops short, looking around in confusion, as though she's walked into someone else's house. 'What the hell's happened to Tip Top Tess?' I've been wondering the same myself. My latest theory is that my alter ego slipped away with Barney - since he walked out with his suitcases, simply existing has taken all my energy. There hasn't been any left for the housework. But there's a difference between a dim awareness that I might have let things go, and seeing the reality through someone else's eyes. Which is why I've let nobody across the threshold for five months. 'Mel, it's not as bad as it looks, it's just I haven't had much time lately to do the housework, but -' 'I had no idea things were as bad as this ...' 'Yeah, it's a bit depressing, I grant you. But, look, as you've come over, why don't we go out, grab a pizza?' 'Not till I've had a proper look,' she says, stepping cautiously over the piles of project work and free newspapers I've allowed to build up in the hall. To my worn-out mind, it's a logical place - handy for me to grab what I need before heading to school, and close to the recycling box I keep by the porch. Except I haven't got round to recycling since ... well, since Christmas. 'At least now I can see why you haven't invited me round to supper for a while.' I dash ahead of her to close the door to the kitchen. The mess in there makes the hallway look like Buckingham Palace. 'Well, I haven't really been up to a six-course dinner party.' The living room presents the next logistical problem. Every surface is covered in stuff. These days I tend to slump onto a floor cushion as soon as I get home, but it wouldn't be polite to expect a guest to do the same. I calculate instantly that the armchair will take the least time to clear. It's only holding a few dozen Sunday supplements and an empty pizza box. At least, I hope it's empty. The sofa is a different story, the tan leather barely visible under crisp packets and clothes and exercise books and unopened post. And as for the coffee table ... Mel pulls the tissue-wrapped bottle of wine out of the bag. 'I think it's time we had a little chat.' My heart beats faster. Will I be able to track down two clean glasses anywhere in the house? Perhaps the tooth mug will do for me, the one Barney and I brought back from Corfu in 1994 because its cobalt blue sheen reminded us of the painted houses. It might look a bit less decrepit than the chipped black enamel camping beaker I've been using for all forms of liquid refreshment, from morning coffee to evening whisky nightcap. Who am I kidding? I scrunch the blue tissue paper into a loose ball, and bounce it towards the gap under the sofa. Now I've given in to slob-dom, I must confess there is the occasional frisson of pleasure to be had from adding to the chaos. 'Nice wine,' I say, reading the label. I retrieve the corkscrew from under an upturned foil box that once held chop suey. In the midst of the chaos, I've developed a kind of radar which means I can always locate my Waiter's Friend. The same applies to my other lifeline, the TV remote. I use it now to mute the ever-whinging cast of EastEnders and pass Mel the corkscrew. 'Back in a sec.' It does pong a bit in the kitchen. I never quite got round to taking the rubbish out last week and this is the hottest room of the house. It's still only May but the slight whiff of sweet decay propels me back to the summers of my childhood, when the days were long, the tar melted beneath our feet, and the binmen went on strike.... From checker at panix.com Sun Aug 7 02:08:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 22:08:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: It Was a Dark and Stormy Galaxy Message-ID: It Was a Dark and Stormy Galaxy New York Times Book Review, 5.8.7 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/books/review/07JONASL.html By GERALD JONAS THE future, as a literary device, was invented in the 19th century. Works of fiction purporting to describe the shape of things to come proliferated in the late 1800's, more or less keeping pace with the advance of evolutionary science. Many of these works took the form of utopias or dystopias -- anti-utopias, often depicted ironically. Earlier, such stories would have been set in obscure corners of the world, like the imaginary land where Lemuel Gulliver encountered the Lilliputians. But with most of the real world already mapped by European explorers, the future inevitably became the location of choice for writers who wanted to illustrate alternative ways of organizing society. Wesleyan University Press has been reissuing some of these early works in scholarly editions complete with context-setting introductions and extensive notes. The latest in the series is THE COMING RACE ($34.95), by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a British aristocrat who pursued a successful political and diplomatic career (he was once offered the throne of Greece but declined, returning to his Hertfordshire estate) while becoming one of the most popular writers of his day. First published in 1871, ''The Coming Race'' represents a curious hybrid. Its premise is unflinchingly futuristic: the inevitable displacement of today's humanity by a more highly evolved ''race.'' But the story unfolds in perhaps the last unexplored place on earth -- the ''hollow'' interior of the planet, a conceit that Bulwer-Lytton borrowed from earlier fantasists. The inhabitants of the interior, who call themselves the Vril-ya, have developed a civilization that far surpasses 19th-century Europe and America in its enlightened use of power. Drawing on an inexhaustible energy source called ''Vril,'' which is controlled by sheer willpower, they have created what the narrator, a naive American who literally stumbles into their realm, sees as a utopia -- a society without crime, war, poverty or gender inequality. In time, he comes to realize that this perfect society is inhospitable to ordinary humans like himself. Bulwer-Lytton was also a playwright who wrote, ''The pen is mightier than the sword.'' Yet he was not noted as a stylist; the opening words of an early novel -- ''It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents'' -- have become iconic as bad writing. In ''The Coming Race,'' his narrative strengths are most apparent in the opening and closing chapters, where his hero must reconcile the evidence of his senses with his own cultural prejudices. But as with most utopias and dystopias, the bulk of the book consists of elaborate recipes for the good life. No Vril-ya community exceeds 30,000 in population, on the grounds that ''no state shall be too large for a government resembling that of a single well-ordered family.'' Democracy is scorned as ''the government of the ignorant.'' Female Vril-ya, ''bigger and stronger'' than the males, are the aggressors in courtship. Once married, however, they are ''amiable, complacent, docile mates'' -- so much so that they freely abandon the Vril-powered wings that allow the young of the race to enjoy the effortless flight of angels. Critics disagree on how many of Bulwer-Lytton's prescriptions are meant ironically. But there is no doubt that he saw Vril itself as a scientific realization of the life force that mystics have tapped into from time immemorial. Readers of his own time were fascinated with it, as were early-20th-century occultists. In his introduction, David Seed, who teaches American literature at the University of Liverpool, notes that Bulwer-Lytton's writings may have influenced Hitler's ideology of a superrace destined to control the world by harnessing ''cosmic forces and ancient wisdom.'' THE TRAVELER (Doubleday, $24.95), by John Twelve Hawks, is a movie-ready thriller that conflates science and mysticism in the modern paranoid manner. Psychically gifted individuals known as Travelers have the ability to visit other dimensions. Because the Travelers often bring back insights that undermine the powers that be, a secret group called the Brethren devotes its considerable resources to wiping them out. Another secret group, the Harlequins -- trained warriors who have no psychic powers -- zealously defend the Travelers. With the advent of computers, surveillance cameras and other tools of the modern security state, the Brethren have almost succeeded in bringing all humanity under the control of what the Harlequins call ''the Vast Machine.'' Will they succeed? Or will a disaffected Harlequin named Maya, teamed with a potential Traveler named Gabriel and assorted pure-hearted folks who live, in Gabriel's phrase, ''off the Grid,'' save the world from the hidden puppet masters? The pseudonymous Twelve Hawks knows how to hide the holes in a fast-moving narrative by piling up believable details about everything from Japanese sword making to the latest eavesdropping technology. And as a metaphor for modern paranoia, the Vast Machine seems a lot closer to the mark than the fantastic apparatus in the ''Matrix'' movies. What is known as near-future science fiction offers visions of contemporary society as it may evolve over the next hundred years or so. Far-future science fiction cuts the imagination loose from current trends to consider transcendent matters, like the meaning of life and the origin and fate of the universe. Robert Reed's novel THE WELL OF STARS (Tor/Tom Doherty, $25.95) is a sequel to his estimable ''Marrow'' (2000), which posited a mysterious interstellar ship, apparently constructed by long-dead aliens, that was so big it could accommodate a population of 100 billion humans and other life-forms without crowding. In ''Marrow,'' individuals and entire species battled for control of the ship in ways that suggested the struggles of all self-aware beings to control their destiny. ''The Well of Stars'' continues the story but forfeits the larger dimension. This time, the threat comes not from within but from outside. A life-form the size of a nebula stands in the ship's path. When the alien's gestures of friendship prove deceptive, the ship's inhabitants must cooperate to survive the encounter. At his best, Reed approaches Arthur C. Clarke in the ability to combine scientific extrapolation with poetic diction. Here, despite some finely conceived nonhuman cultures, the very scale of the confrontation overwhelms the telling. After pages and pages explaining the strategies and weapons employed by the two sides, I still had no clear idea of what was happening or what grand principle, if any, was at stake. The questions raised in the first book of the series remain unresolved. Mere survival seems too narrow a goal for a creation as awesome as ''the Great Ship.'' THE CARPET MAKERS (Tor/Tom Doherty, $24.95), by Andreas Eschbach, is set in an unimaginably far future, after the fall of a galactic empire that lasted 250,000 years. Eschbach, an award-winning author in his native Germany, wisely begins with a tightly focused scene that introduces us to a backward planet dominated by a single enterprise: the laborious knotting of ''hair carpets'' for the Imperial Palace. The beautiful carpets are made of human hair, cut from the heads and armpits of the wives and daughters of the carpet maker, who spends his entire life completing one carpet. The society that supports this enterprise knows little or nothing about the larger culture to which it supposedly belongs. Its customs may seem cruel, but they appear at first to have the virtue of serving a higher purpose. Then Eschbach widens the exposure to reveal, in a series of carefully calculated moves, the immensely crueler truth behind the carpet makers' labors. This is a novel of ideas that evokes complex emotions through the working out of an intricate and ultimately satisfying plot, with echoes of Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guin and Isaac Asimov. The smooth English translation is by Doryl Jensen. From checker at panix.com Sun Aug 7 02:09:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 22:09:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Danica McKellar: Mathematics Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 13:55:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Premise Checker To: Human Biodiversity Subject: Danica McKellar: Mathematics Danica McKellar: Mathematics http://danicamckellar.com and click on "mathematics." [Okay, you mathematicians, go to it! She has an intriguing face, quite beautiful, but just enough away from the stereotype to make her fascinating. Are there any other math majors among celebrities?] As some of you already know, Danica took a hiatus from acting for college, and she graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics! While she was there, she even co-authored a math proof - new research proving an original math theorem - highly unusual for an undergraduate. In fact, she was the only undergraduate invited to speak at Rutgers University's biannual Statistical Mechanics conference a few years back. Although she has returned to acting full time, she still retains a passion for it, and likes to stay active. Listen to a radio interview Danica did on the connection between mathematics and the arts for Studio 360. And for you hard core mathematicians, here is a PDF of Danica's published proof Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z2. http://danicamckellar.com/math/percolation.pdf Danica loves math so much that she wants to share it with you, and help you get through some of your tough questions. Only a few questions each month will be forwarded to her for answering, and you can submit your questions to: math at danicamckellar.com Says Danica: Let's face it; by and large math is not easy, but that's what makes it so rewarding when you conquer a problem, and reach new heights of understanding! I'll be answering questions ranging from middle school math to Calculus and beyond, so skim along until you find something helpful or interesting to YOU. I challenge all of you to embrace the mind-sharpening qualities of practicing mathematics. Now let's roll up our sleeves and do some! Doing the math Q: Hi Danica, I heard a question from Mr. Feenie on a "Boy Meets World" episode which he claimed to be unanswerable. After hearing that, I decided to figure it out. If it takes Sam 6 minutes to wash a car by himself, and it takes Brian 8 minutes to wash a car by himself, how long will it take them to wash a car together? Danica Answers: Hm, unanswerable? That's TV for you. :) Let's do it: This is a "rates" problem. The key is to think about each of their "car washing rates" and not the "time" it takes them. Alot of people would want to say "it takes them 7 minutes together" but that's obviously not right, after you realize that it must take them LESS time to wash the car together than either one of them would take. So, what is Sam's rate? How much of a car can he wash in one minute? Well, if he can wash one car in six minutes, then he can wash 1/6 of a car in one minute, right? (think about that until it makes sense, then keep reading). Similarly, Brian can wash 1/8 of a car in one minute. So just add their two rates together to find out how much of a car they can do together, in one minute, as they work side by side on the same car: 1/6 + 1/8 = 7/24 of a car in one minute. That's their combined RATE. (Note: that's a little bit less than 1/3 of a car in one minute). From this point, the way you want to think of it depends on your favorite way of dealing with fractions. You now have their rate. It's 7/24 cars per minute. You can either just take its reciprcal and say: 24/7 minutes for one car, and you're done. Or, equivalently, you can think of the 7/24 cars/minute RATE as 24 minutes for 7 cars. (think about that until it makes sense, too) So just divide 24 by 7 to find out how many minutes it would take to do just one car. You get around 3.42 minutes for one car, just a little less than 3 and 1/2 minutes. Done! Yes, I think they should work together, it gets done much more quickly that way. :) By the way, you said when you watched the TV show you decided that YOU would figure it out, right? How did you do? Q: I'm an adult trying to pass the GED test and you do alot of studying on your own, and no matter what I do, I keep getting wrong answers. I know the equations for parellelograms, the area of circles, etc. But I can't seem to get the right answers. They only grade you on the final answer you get, not on the work. I have no clue where I'm going wrong. I want to take this test so I can go to school and become a drug and alcohol counselor. Thanks so much! -Pat Danica Answers: Hi Pat- First of all, congratulations on having the fortitude to go back and get your high school diploma! And I admire your goal of helping people by becoming a counselor. to you. Now- Let me see if I can shed some light on your problem. Understanding and yet getting the wrong answers usually means one thing: You're making a lot of avoidable, careless mistakes. This is a VERY common problem these days, more than ever before. But it's totally solvable. Believe it or not, I think this is a symptom of a larger issue that our society is facing, and it makes it that much more important that we deal with it. It seems that in our ever-increasingly fast paced information age, we are more and more often finding shorter and faster ways to do every day tasks: Abbreviating whole phrases in emails to "lol" and "imo", our computers type in our own addresses for us on websites, etc. We are accustomed to skipping steps. One of the unfortunate results of this, is that students are more and more often, skipping steps in solving math problems-- skipping the act of writing down every step along the way. And no matter how well they understand the concepts, they believe they cannot "do math" because they so often get the wrong answer. You would be AMAZED, truly amazed, at how much more often you would get the *right* answer, if you took the time to write down every step when you are solving problems. We ALL make careless mistakes, but the chances of making careless mistakes goes up at least tenfold when we skip steps. Other ways to help avoid making careless mistakes, in addition to writing down every step: -Pay attention to WHAT is being asked for- you may have done a perfect job at answering a slightly different question. Did they ask for the radius or the diameter? etc. -Restate the problem on your page; just write down all the info you're given. This is especially helpful for word problems. Trust me, it works. -If parentheses are used in the problem, keep them during the solution until the last step. Especially if you've done any algebra, you know exactly what I'm talking about. :) -Don't try to squeeze too much onto one page. When numbers get scrunched and small, mistakes are made. -Once you've gotten the answer, then REREAD the problem to make sure you solved for exactly what it was g for. So listen, the next time you solve a problem that you know you have the right formula and understanding for, but you get the wrong answer-- do this: Write down every step you can. Write down the formula. Then write down in information you're given, etc. So if the book says that the radius of a circle is 3, and you are supposed to get the area, then literally WRITE DOWN: A=pi*r2 r=3 Then, beginning to solve it, don't do anything in your head without writing it down: A=pi*32 A=9pi You'll get the right answer and you'll understand the value in making this a habit. What takes a few extra moments now, will save you many minutes of frustration and-- your grade. Another note on this: THIS IS HARDER TO DO THAT YOU THINK. We all think to ourselves, "Oh, I'm smarter than this. I don't need to write down every step. That's what you do in kindergarten, etc." So be patient with yourself if you can't discipline yourself to do it right away-- but rest assured that when you choose to practice this method of not skipping steps, your success will follow, I promise. :) Q: I think you are great on "The West Wing"! Here's my current problem, it's in advanced finite math (I'm a high school senior): At the height of the Beatles' popularity, it was estimated that every popular music station played their music 40% of the time. If you tuned through 10 such stations at any given moment, what is the probability that at least *one* of the stations would be playing a Beatles song? Thanks! Danica Answers: A probability question! Okay, let's call "x" the probability that "at least one of the 10 stations would be playing a Beatles song at that moment." That's what we're asked to find. Then let' s call "y" the probability that "none of those 10 stations would be playing a Beatles song at that moment." Notice that x+y = 1, since the two situations are mutually exclusive, but combined they make up ALL possible scenarios. And the probability that one of "ALL possible scenarios" occuring is of course 100%, which equals 1. Okay, so we' ll now determine the value of "y" which is much easier than going through all the necessary calculations required to determine "x" directly. This is a common strategy in probability. So, what is the probability that NONE of the stations are playing a Beatles song? That would be the (multiplicative) product each of the probabilities of each station NOT playing the Beatles. We know from the statement of the problem, that the probability of any given station, at any point in time, PLAYING a Beatles song is 40% = .4. This means that the probability of a station NOT playing a Beatles song is 60%, or .6. (After all, either a station is playing a Beatles song or it's not: the two scenario's probabilities must add up to 1 = 100%) So, if the probability of 1 station NOT playing a Beatles tune at any particular moment is .6, then the probability of all 10 stations NOT playing a Beatles tune at that moment = [.6 raised to an exponent of 10]. Multiply .6 times itself 10 times and you will get a number like: .0060466176. This is our "y." To get "x" we must solve x = 1-y, and we get that x = .9939533824. Translated back into percentages, we get that, at any given time, there is a 99.39533824% chance that the Beatles are playing on at least one of the ten stations. Wow! Did you expect it to be that high? :) Q: Hi Danica, I am working on equivalent fractions. I forget the formula but once I relearn it I'm usually ok. Do you know any tricks for this? Thanks! Dena. Danica Answers: Yes, there is a trick. It' s called "cross-multiplication." Say you have the two fractions, a/b and c/d. To determine whether or not they are equivalent, you can multiply "a" times" d," and also "b" times "c", and if their products (ad and bc) are equal, then you have equivalent fractions. For example, 2/3 and 8/12. You could "cross multiply" and see that 2 times 12 = 24, and 3 times 8 = 24, so the two fractions must be equivalent. Tricks are a good shortcut when you already understand the concepts, but tricks can get you in trouble if you're fundamentally confused. So let's make sure you understand the concept of equivalent fractions. First of all, what does it mean for fractions to be equivalent? It means that they represent the same VALUE. Just like if I wrote down the expressions "5-3" and "10-8". They are *different* ways of writing the same VALUE. They both equal "2." Equivalent fractions do the same thing. They are different ways of writing the same number. 2/3 and 8/12 HAVE THE SAME VALUE. If you were to cut a pie, and you said, "give me 2/3 of that pie" or if you said "give me 8/12 of that pie", you'd end up with the *same* amount of pie. (That's a lot of pie!) So the "real" way of determining if two fractions are equivalent would be to determine if they represent the same value. After all, it is clear that 2/3 does NOT equal 24. We simply used a trick, and "24" has little to do with the *value* of either fraction. A good way to determine if two fractions are equivalent is to REDUCE them. That is, take out common factors in the numerator and denominator. So, with 8/12, you might notice that both 8 and 12 have a factor of "4" in them. So you can reduce the numerator and denominator by 4. Then the fraction becomes 2/3. And certainly, we can see that 2/3 = 2/3. No tricks needed. Hope this helped, and Good luck! Q: I think you are great on "The West Wing" and I just saw you on NYPD Blue! This may be more of a physics question, but I was curious- a friend of mine was talking about an outfielder who could throw a ball from the outfield, have it go no higher than head height, and reach the catcher at home. It seemed IMPOSSIBLE but then I started thinking about the viability of this being possible. Can you help? Here are the assumptions: 1. The outfielder (pt. A) and home plate (pt. B) are 180 feet apart (roughly twice the distance from home plate to 1st base). 2. The ball is released from a height of 6 feet. 3. The ball travels along a curved path (pulled down by the force of gravity (32 ft/sec2)). 4. It reaches home plate at ground level after not traveling at any time above 8 ft above the ground (roughly head height for the tallest human). 5. An official baseball weighs 5 ozs. (although I'm not sure if that's relevant.) Thanks! Danica Answers: A Hi there! Alright, let's solve this. Some physics and algebra knowledge is definitely needed to make it through this proof. I'm going to skip most of the algebra steps, assuming you can do those on your own if you like. So don't be discouraged if you don't follow it all- I answer all sorts of levels of problems on this site. :) First we will assume that there is no wind drag-- just to simplify things. You are right that (with no wind velocity) the weight of the ball does not matter. What we will do is find out what the velocity of the ball would have to be in order for this hypothetical situation to be possible, and then see if a human is capable of it. So, the way we do this is to first find out how long the ball would be in the air. (it will be clear "why" later) I recommend drawing a diagram just to make it clear to yourself. One thing to remember is that we can treat the up/down component of velocity separately from the side to side component of velocity. First, looking only at the up/down motion: The ball gets thrown in the air from 6 ft, goes to 8ft, and then down to 0ft. (the ground). The equation for the height change of the ball (when it starts with zero velocity) is: H = (1/2)gt2 You can find this equation in any elementary physics book. g= the acceleration of gravity, which is 32ft/sec2. (or 9.8 meters/sec2 ) First let's see the time it takes for a ball to reach the ground, when dropped from a height of 8ft. Since it starts with zero velocity, we can use this formula. Solving for "t" when "H" = 8ft, using basic algebra, we get approx. .707 of a second. Since when the ball is arcing across the baseball field, its up/down velocity is zero at the point when it hits 8ft, this .707 of a second also represents the time it takes the ball to go from the highest point of its arc, to the ground. If that sounds completely foreign, there's a great lesson on this concept at: http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/vectors/u3l2b.html So now we need the first part: the time it takes the ball to go from the pitcher's hand to the highest point of its arc (8ft). Since the ball reaches an up/down velocity of zero at its highest point (meaning that the vertical component of its velocity is zero at that moment), and because the only external force acting on the ball's up/down velocity is gravity, this would be the same amount of time it would take for the ball to be dropped from 8ft, and have it caught by someone at the height of 6ft. So now, using the same above formula, we'd say that the change in height, H, equals 2ft. And solving for "t" we get approx. .354 of a second. So now we know, that in this hypothetical situation, the ball is in the air for approx. 1.061 seconds and travels for 180 feet. So how fast would the ball have to be going? It's a simple rt = d problem. Solving for r, the rate, we get approx. 169.65ft/sec. Using the conversions 3600sec = 1 hour, and 5280ft = 1 mile, we get the rate of approx. 115.7 mph. 115.7 mph? Hm. And that's WITHOUT drag. If there were drag, the ball would be slowing down throughout its journey, so the initial throw would have to be FASTER than this. I've checked the Guiness Book of World Records and it seems that the fastest anyone's ever thrown a baseball was 100.9 mph by Lynn Nolan Ryan (California Angels) at Anaheim Stadium in California on August 20, 1974. As was pointed out by one reader, (Thanks, Alan!) if we assume that the thrower dropped his arm down as he let go of the ball at a height of 4ft, then the thrower would only have to throw the ball with a speed of approx. 101.9 mph. I would have assumed it to be harder to throw a ball with incredible speed from far below shoulder height, but perhaps it's easier. I certainly know more about math than I do about baseball! Of course, you could also run these numbers using a very short (but fast) pitcher. Assume the guy (or gal) is only 5 ft. tall; then a 4 ft release point becomes even more feasible. Experiment, and have fun discovering what math can tell you! Q: I have a calculus question for you: Gravel is being dumped from a conveyor belt at a rate of 30 ft-cubed/min and its coarseness is such that it forms a pile in the shape of a cone whose base diameter and height are always equal. How fast is the height of the pile increasing when the pile is 10 ft high? Danica Answers: Okay, this is a typical "related rates" problem, and it' s a good problem to understand for ALL related rates problems in first year calculus. We need the RATE of the changing height at a certain point in time. We' re told the RATE of the changing volume (30 ft-cubed/min). So we will need to "relate" the "rates" of the height and the volume. So we need to FIRST write down an equation that determines: 1) The relationship between the VALUES of the heights and volumes, h and V. And then we'll take the DERIVATIVE of this equation, which will then give us: 2) The relationship between the RATES of these values, dh/dt and dV/dt. When determining this first, important, equation between the VALUES of height and volume, always start with what you know. Well, we know that for every cone, V = (1/3)h(pi)r2. Additionally, we are told that for THIS cone, the diameter, which equals 2r, is always equal to the height. So we know that r = h/2. Plug this in for r, and we get: V = (1/12)(pi)h3. This is our important equation #1 relating VALUES. Now, to get the #2 "related rates" equation, we must take the derivative of the entire thing with respect to time, t. Don't forget to use the chain rule! dV/dt = (1/12)(pi)3h2dh/dt Now remember that this equation, as it's written, is true for ALL moments in time. And now let' s consider the moment in time that we were asked about: the moment when the height = 10ft. So, at that moment, we can plug in h = 10. We also know dV/dt; we were told in the problem that the "rate the volume is increasing" is constant. It' s 30 ft-cubed/min. So we can certainly plug that value in for this moment in time. Now the only variable left is dh/dt?the rate that the height is growing. And when we solve for it with simple algebra, we've solved the problem! (You should get dh/dt = 6/(5pi) ft/min.) Q: How do you figure out percentages using word problems such as: To finish a certain job, John made 35 parts while Allen made 15. So, how much MORE of the job did John do than Allen? Express your answer in terms of percentages. Thank you! Danica Answers: Percentages rely on parts of a total. So what's the total number of parts made? 35+15 = 50 total parts. How many more parts did John make? 35-15 = 20 more parts than Allen made. So John did 20/50 more of the job than Allen, which equals 2/5 = .4 = 40% more. The answer is: John did 40% more than Allen. As a check, figure out what percentage of the job that each of them did. So John did 35 parts total out of 50. That's 35/50th's of the job, which equals .7 = 70% of the job. And Allen did 15/50th's of the job, which equals .3 = 30% of the job. Thus, you can see that John did 70%-30% = 40% MORE than Allen did. It's always a good idea to check your work like this. Hope that helped! Q: Danica, This is a problem for Calculus II f(x)= x2+2x+3 Problem:Subdivide the function's domain into subintervals on which each function has an inverse, and find the inverse function for each subinterval. Now I found the critical #'s by first finding the derivative which is 2x+2 thus the critical # is x= -1 Then I found the intervals which would be [negative infinity, -1] & [-1, infinity]. But now I can't seem to find the inverse of f(x). So I'm asking; What is the inverse of f(x)? What are the two inverse functions for each interval? Danica Answers: You started correctly! If f(x) = y, then you must solve for x, in terms of y. That will give you the inverse function. [hint: currently the function is in ax2 + bx + c form; subtract the ?y? from both sides and make it look like ax2 + bx + (c-y) and then solve it with the quadratic formula] Then, you'll get an answer--a "function" that says "x = (something with Y in it) with a "+/-" in it, and that will show you that you have two functions represented. And then it is up to you to determine which of the functions is applicable for which domain. [hint: substitute values and see what makes sense] I highly recommend sketching a crude graph of the function. Then turn your head sideways and get a feel for the inverse functions that will come from it. Just do a simple drawing based on the critical value, and what the "zeros" of the function are. Remember, the definition of a function includes the rule that for each value in its domain, there must be a unique function value, not more than one. Sketching graphs can be a GREAT aid in solving many of these problems, and it's very fast to do once you get the hang of it! This function is especially easy to get zero values from. (that means where x=0 on the graph of f(x)). A grouping solution will show you that the zeros are 1 and -3. Good luck! Q: Danica, I teach high school math and just read about your "Figure This!" campaign to promote mathematics. How can I find out more about this? Danica Answers: You can visit www.figurethis.org; it has all sorts of fun math puzzles, and can give you more information about this organization. Best of all, you can get ideas about how to bring math into the "real world" from this site. Have fun! Q: Hi Danica, my advanced calculus prof asked us to prove that the square root of 5, Sqrt(5), is not a rational number. Any suggestions about where to start? Also, I really loved your Wonder Years show, and I've seen you on West Wing, too. Thanks a bunch. Danica Answers: Thanks! Okay- as with most "disprove this" proofs, start by writing down the hypothesis (as if the thing you are trying to disprove were true) and then work with the equation until you get a contradiction. Here the hypothesis is that the square root of 5 is a rational number, and we're going to show that it's a faulty hypothesis. In "math language" this is equivalent to saying that you can write the square root of 5 as a fraction of whole numbers; that's in fact the definition of a rational number. We can assume that this fraction looks like p/q where p and q do not divide each other; that is, they share no common factors (except 1). In other words, we are assuming the fraction is written in reduced form, and we shall also assume that q is greater than 1. (And why can we do this? Here's a "mini sub-proof": This is really the same as proving that Sqrt(5) itself is not a whole number; although this seems obvious, we can easily prove it for those who like the detail: So- let's say that q=1, then Sqrt(5) = p/1, where p is a whole number. This is the same as saying that Sqrt(5) = p. But because Sqrt(5)>2 and Sqrt(5)<3 and no whole number p satisfies those conditions, we arrive at a contradiction and we may now assume that q is GREATER than 1 for the rest of the proof.) Now it's time to work with the original expression and hope for a contradiction to appear, that expression being: Sqrt(5) = p/q. Remember that p/q is a fraction in reduced terms. That is, q does NOT share any factors with p. Since every fraction can be written in reduced form, we are "allowed" to make this assumption. So, let's square both sides of the equation: Sqrt(5) = p/q and we get: 5=p2/q2. But if q does not share any factors with p, then q2 certainly cannot be a factor of p2. Then p2/q2 cannot be a whole number, so it can't be equal to 5! There's the contradiction we needed, which tells us that our original hypothesis was false. We proved it! Q: Hi Danica, my teacher (loves puzzles) has given us a problem, which, can easily be solved using algebra. However, I have trouble grasping the question, please help here it is: "I am three times the age that you were when I was your age. When you get to be my age, our ages will equal 63. How old will we be? Thanks, Glynis, The Netherlands. Danica Answers: This was not easy! Think of three timelines: Before, Now, and Future. Let's call "I" Sam, and let's call "you" Daisy. I'll reword the question here, with added timelines to help make the problem easier to understand: "Sam is NOW three times the age that Daisy was (BEFORE) when Sam (BEFORE) was Daisy's (NOW) age. When (FUTURE) Daisy gets to be Sam's (NOW) age, THE SUM OF their (FUTURE) ages will equal 63. How old will they be? Let's label these ages. For the BEFORE time, Daisy's age = y, and Sam's age = x. Let's say there are m years between BEFORE and NOW, and there are n years between NOW and FUTURE. Since NOW Daisy's age is Sam's age BEFORE, we know that Daisy's age NOW = x, and that Sam's age NOW = 3y. (stop and go over this, make sure you're following so far) We also know that y+m=x, and that x+m = 3y. This is how Sam's and Daisy's ages have progressed from BEFORE to NOW. Let's say that there are n years between NOW and FUTURE. Then their ages will be: Daisy FUTURE = x+n, and Sam FUTURE = 3y +n. We also know that the future ages add up to 63, which means that x+n+3y+n=63. One more thing we know is that in the FUTURE, Daisy will be Sam's age NOW, so x+n = 3y. Put all of our known equations together that will need to be reconciled: y + m = x x +m = 3y x + n +3y + n = 63 x + n = 3y. This is a set of four equations with four unknown variables, which can be solved by regular algebra steps of substitution, etc. I highly recommend making a chart with the timeline and ages data: Put across the top: BEFORE m NOW n FUTURE and along the left write Daisy, and (below that) Sam. This is how I came to better understand the age relationships. The hardest part of most word problems is simply being able to translate English into Math! By the way, you'll get that their future ages are 27 and 36 for Daisy and Sam, respectively. From checker at panix.com Sun Aug 7 02:10:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 22:10:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: The Irascible Prophet: V. S. Naipaul at Home Message-ID: The Irascible Prophet: V. S. Naipaul at Home New York Times Book Review, 5.8.7 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/books/review/07DONADIO.html By RACHEL DONADIO Two monuments rise like emblems from the green countryside of Wiltshire, England, not far from the secluded house of V. S. Naipaul: Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. They are signposts in a landscape Naipaul has been traversing for more than half a century, one in which the impulses of culture, civilization and progress have always existed in close and uneasy proximity to the impulses of paganism, religion and disorder. A prophet of our world-historical moment, in his more than 25 works of fiction and nonfiction, Naipaul has examined the clash between belief and unbelief, the unraveling of the British Empire, the migrations of peoples. They are natural subjects for a writer who, as he has recorded in his many fully, semi- and quasi-autobiographical books, was born in Trinidad, where his grandfather had emigrated from India as an indentured servant. His father, a newspaper reporter and aspiring fiction writer, was the model for what is arguably Naipaul's finest novel, ''A House for Mr. Biswas'' (1961). At 18, Naipaul left Trinidad on a scholarship to University College, Oxford, and has lived in England ever since. Alfred Kazin once described him as ''a colonial brought up in English schools, on English ways and the pretended reasonableness of the English mind.'' Knighted in 1990, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul is Britain's only living Nobel laureate in literature, having been [3]awarded the prize in October 2001, a season when many were just awakening to realities Naipaul had been writing about for more than 20 years. Also significant is that he had explored Islamic fundamentalism and other issues of global import not through fiction, but through nonfiction reportage. The novel's time was over, he had said. Others had made the claim before, but it resonated more deeply coming from a contemporary giant. What is more, Naipaul said, only nonfiction could capture the complexities of today's world. It was a profound observation. But did it speak to a larger cultural situation, or was it simply the personal judgment of one cantankerous writer, who in fact continued to publish a novel every few years even after declaring the form dead? Naipaul recently offered some thoughts on the matter, in an interview in the cozy sitting room of his cottage in Wiltshire. Photograph portraits were on the mantle. French novels lined one bookshelf. The sounds of the outside world could be heard: a lawnmower, the buzzing of a fighter jet from a nearby airbase. A compact man of 72, Naipaul has been ill in recent months, and said he is not working on a book at the moment. Although it was unseasonably hot on the splendid sunny afternoon of the longest day of the year, he wore a tweed jacket and corduroy pants. Unsmiling, he settled somewhat stiffly onto a straight-backed armchair and began to chart the trajectory of his thinking. ''What I felt was, if you spend your life just writing fiction, you are going to falsify your material,'' he said. ''And the fictional form was going to force you to do things with the material, to dramatize it in a certain way. I thought nonfiction gave one a chance to explore the world, the other world, the world that one didn't know fully.'' Naipaul's voice is rich and deep and mellowed by tobacco, and when he pronounced the word ''world,'' he savored it, drawing it out to almost three syllables. ''I thought if I didn't have this resource of nonfiction I would have dried up perhaps. I'd have come to the end of my material, and would have done what a writer like [4]Graham Greene did. You know, he took the Graham Greene figure to the Congo, took him to Argentina, took him to Haiti, for no rhyme or reason.'' Naipaul has said he wrote the novel [5]''Half a Life'' (2001) only to fulfill a publisher's contract, and that [6]''Magic Seeds'' (2004) would be his last novel. (Over the years, he has often hinted at retirement, only to publish another book soon after.) Yet the fact that Naipaul has continued to write novels does not undercut his acute awareness of the form's limitations; indeed, it amplifies it. His is the lament of a writer who, through a life devoted to his craft, has discovered that the tools at his disposal are no longer adequate. ''If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account,'' Naipaul said. ''If you're a romantic writer, you write novels about men and women falling in love, etc., give a little narrative here and there. But again, it's of no account.'' What is of account, in Naipaul's view, is the larger global political situation -- in particular, the clash between belief and unbelief in postcolonial societies. ''I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery,'' he said. To what extent, he wondered, had ''people who lock themselves away in belief . . . shut themselves away from the active busy world''? ''To what extent without knowing it'' were they ''parasitic on that world''? And why did they have ''no thinkers to point out to them where their thoughts and their passion had led them''? Far from simple, the questions brought a laserlike focus to a central paradox of today's situation: that some who have benefited from the blessings of the West now seek to destroy it. In November 2001 Naipaul told an audience of anxious New Yorkers still reeling from the attack on the World Trade Center that they were facing ''a war declared on you by people who passionately want one thing: a green card.'' What happened on Sept. 11 ''was too astonishing. It's one of its kind. It can't happen again,'' he said in our conversation. ''But in the end it has had no effect on the world. It has just been a spectacle, like a bank raid in a western film. They will be caught by the sheriff eventually.'' The bigger issue, he said, is that Western Europe, while built on tolerance, today lacks ''a strong cultural life,'' making it vulnerable to Islamicization. He even went so far as to say that Muslim women shouldn't wear headscarves in the West. ''If you decide to move to another country and to live within its laws you don't express your disregard for the essence of the culture,'' he said. ''It's a form of aggression.'' No matter how uncomfortable or debatable, there is a painful prescience to Naipaul's observations on Islam and the West. That prescience was in evidence once again when, just two weeks after our meeting, bombers struck the London Underground and a city bus, killing more than 50 people. Naipaul was at home in Wiltshire that day, and professed no surprise that the attacks appeared to have been carried out by British citizens. ''We must stop fooling ourselves about what we are witnessing,'' he said in a telephone conversation a week after the July 7 attacks. The debate in Britain about British detainees held at Guantanamo Bay was evidence of the foolishness. ''People here talk about those people who were picked up by the Americans as 'lads,' 'our lads,' as though they were people playing cricket or marbles,'' Naipaul said. ''It's glib, nonsensical talk from people who don't understand that holy war for Muslims is a religious war, and a religious war is something you never stop fighting.'' These remarks, like so many of Naipaul's utterances over the years, seem calculated to provoke. In his interviews as in his life, Naipaul is famously irascible, difficult, contradictory, an ideological lightning rod. Yet in his writing, he is an artist on whom nothing is lost. Naipaul addressed this split in his Nobel acceptance speech, in which he seconded Proust's argument that ''a book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices.'' Naipaul's work is as subtle as his interviews are clamorous. In [7]''Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey,'' his 1981 travelogue through the ironies and intricacies of non-Arab Islamic countries, and in its 1998 follow-up, [8]''Beyond Belief,'' Naipaul listened seriously and empathetically to people in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia: countries that were converted to Islam over the course of centuries and, in the late 70's, witnessed a rise in both power and Islamic fundamentalism. The books raise but don't necessarily answer deep and vexing questions: Is secularism a precondition of tolerance? Does one necessarily have to abandon one's individual cultural and religious identity to become part of the West? Why do people willingly choose lives that restrict their intellectual freedom? What becomes of modern societies founded on Islam, whose strictest aherents long for a return to the time of Muhammad? Like Salim, the protagonist of his classic novel [9]''A Bend in the River,'' who describes himself as ''a man without a side,'' Naipaul has cultivated political detachment. In his Nobel acceptance speech, he said: ''I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.'' This is both true and incomplete. Naipaul's cold, unsparing look at the corruption and disarray of the postcolonial world, his disdain for Marxist liberation movements and his view that Islamic society leads to tyranny are implicitly political positions, and have made him the object of much political criticism. He has been sharply criticized by, among others, Derek Walcott, the Caribbean poet and Nobel laureate, and Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist, who said ''although Naipaul was writing about Africa, he was not writing for Africans.'' The scholar and critic Edward Said, who died in 2003, called ''Beyond Belief'' ''an intellectual catastrophe.'' Naipaul, he added, thinks ''Islam is the worst disaster that ever happened to India, and the book reveals a pathology.'' But what spares Naipaul's work from the ideology of critics who would dismiss him as anti-Muslim and admirers who would laud him for essentially the same thing is its unsentimental, often heartbreaking detail. In ''Among the Believers,'' Naipaul speaks with Mr. Jaffrey, a newspaper journalist and British-Indian-educated Shiite in Tehran who supported Khomeini as a way of bringing about the Islamic dream of a ''society of believers.'' Mr. Jaffrey ate a plate of fried eggs as he spoke. In ''Beyond Belief,'' Naipaul revisits one of the journalist's colleagues, who also relishes his lunch. Ideology is abstract; fried eggs are not. Naipaul's nonfiction has the force, the almost unbearable density of detail and the moral vision of great fiction. It comes as no surprise that Dickens and Tolstoy are his heroes. For all Naipaul's talk about the limitations of the novel, the power of his work is ultimately rooted in a novelist's preternatural attentiveness to individual human lives and triumphs, to the daily things we do that make us who we are, and are the key to our survival. A breakthrough in Naipaul's own understanding of himself as a writer and his turning away from the novel toward nonfiction came in a remarkable essay he wrote on Joseph Conrad. First published in The New York Review of Books in 1974, it appears in his 2003 collection, [10]''Literary Occasions.'' It is not entirely surprising that Naipaul would turn to the work of the Polish ?migr?; both were raised in one world and willed themselves into becoming artists in another, England. ''I suppose that in my fantasy I had seen myself coming to England as to some purely literary region, where, untrammeled by the accidents of history or background, I could make a romantic career for myself as a writer,'' Naipaul wrote in that essay. ''It came to me that the great novelists wrote about highly organized societies,'' he wrote. ''I had no such society; I couldn't share the assumptions of the writers; I didn't see my world reflected in theirs. My colonial world was more mixed and secondhand, and more restricted. The time came when I began to ponder the mystery -- Conradian word -- of my own background.'' Along the way, Naipaul kept coming up against Conrad. ''I found that Conrad -- 60 years before, in the time of a great peace -- had been everywhere before me,'' he wrote. ''Not as a man with a cause, but a man offering . . . a vision of the world's half-made societies as places which continuously made and unmade themselves, where there was no goal, and where always 'something inherent in the necessities of successful action . . . carried with it the moral degradation of the idea.' Dismal, but deeply felt: a kind of truth and half a consolation.'' Yet in our conversation, although Naipaul said he thought Conrad was ''great'' because he ''wished to look very, very hard at the world,'' he also insisted that Conrad ''had no influence on me.'' ''Actually, I think 'A Bend in the River' is much, much better than Conrad,'' he said. ''I think the best part of Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' is the reportage part. The fictional part is excessive and feeble. And there is no reportage in my thing. I was looking and creating that world. I actually think the work I've done in that way is better than Conrad.'' Naipaul also dismissed the idea there might be a direct link between his Conrad essay and subsequent works in which he explored some of the same places and themes. ''These things might appear like that. But that's only for a person on the outside,'' he said. A different picture emerges from Naipaul's bibliography. After the Conrad essay, Naipaul in fact followed Conrad's itinerary to the Congo -- the subject of his nonfiction essay on Mobutu, ''A New King for the Congo''(1975), and of ''A Bend in the River'' (1979); and to Aceh, Indonesia, for ''Among the Believers'' and ''Beyond Belief.'' Naipaul has also gone where Conrad went as a narrator, cultivating a kind of finely wrought ambiguity and moving toward reportage. ''To understand Conrad,'' as he wrote in his essay, ''it was necessary to begin to match his experience. It was also necessary to lose one's preconceptions of what the novel should do and, above all, to rid oneself of the subtle corruptions of the novel or comedy of manners.'' In conversation, another dynamic becomes apparent, in which the more dismissive Naipaul is of a writer, the more likely it is that he has engaged deeply with that writer's work. Sitting a few feet away from a bookshelf of French novels, Naipaul called Proust ''tedious,'' ''repetitive,'' ''self-indulgent,'' concerned only with a character's social status. ''What is missing in Proust is this idea of a moral center,'' he said. Naipaul also had little respect for Joyce's ''Ulysses'' -- ''the Irish book,'' he sniffily called it -- and other works ''that have to lean on borrowed stories.'' Lately, he has found Stendhal ''repetitive, tedious, infuriating,'' while ''the greatest disappointment was Flaubert.'' All this points to another idea: Modernism is over. ''We are all overwhelmed by the idea of French 19th-century culture. Everybody wanted to go to Paris to paint or to write. And of course that's a dead idea these days,'' Naipaul said. ''We've changed. The world has changed. The world has grown bigger.'' Which brings us back to the limitations of the novel. The writer must leave the sitting room and travel abroad into the active, busy world. It is the tragic vision only a novelist can reach: that the world cannot be contained in the novel. And yet, for all his laments, Naipaul is not invested in the notion that Western civilization is in decline. ''That's a romantic idea,'' he said brusquely. ''A civilization which has taken over the world cannot be said to be dying. . . . It's a university idea. People cook it up at universities and do a lot of lectures about it. It has no substance.'' The ''philosophical diffidence'' of the West, he maintains, will prevail over the ''philosophical shriek'' of those who intend to destroy it. Naipaul formulated those terms in a lecture he delivered in 1992 at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank in New York. (Called ''Our Universal Civilization,'' it appears in his 2002 essay collection, [11]''The Writer and the World.'') In it, he cites a remarkable passage from Conrad: ''A half-naked, betel-chewing pessimist stood upon the bank of the tropical river, on the edge of the still and immense forests; a man angry, powerless, empty-handed, with a cry of bitter discontent ready on his lips; a cry that, had it come out, would have rung through the virgin solitudes of the woods as true, as great, as profound, as any philosophical shriek that ever came from the depths of an easy chair to disturb the impure wilderness of chimneys and roofs.'' As for evidence of the diffidence: ''I think it actually is all around us. It's all around us,'' Naipaul said. But where, exactly? ''There are millions and millions of people all around us,'' was all he would say. In [12]''India: A Million Mutinies Now'' (1990), his third nonfiction book about India, Naipaul celebrated the million manifestations of daily life, of lives undefeated by the chaos, disarray and poverty of the larger society. A Hindu by birth, though not observant, Naipaul finds India a place of great hope. It is, he says, the country where belief and unbelief coexist most peaceably. The economic development of India -- and China -- he said, will ''completely alter the world,'' and ''nothing that's happening in the Arab world has that capacity.'' Yet Naipaul called it ''a calamity'' that, even with its billion people, ''there are no thinkers in India'' today. India is also where he turns for a theory of history. ''The only theory is that everything is in a state of flux,'' he said. This is his own ''personal idea,'' he said, but one linked to a philosophical concept in Indian religion. ''I find it impossible to contain the history of Europe in my head. It's so much movement, so much movement,'' he said. ''Even when you go back to the Roman times there are these tribal groups pressing all the time, pressing and pressing and pressing,'' he continued, pushing his fists together for emphasis and fixing his gaze intently at the near distance. He has recently been reading the letters of Mary Wortley Montagu, an Englishwoman who traveled across the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century. The chaos of history pressed in on the Wiltshire sitting room. ''You have this picture of the devastation the Turks had created in Hungary,'' he said. ''Who ever thought that world would have changed if you were living at that time? But it has changed. And what we're living in will of course change again.'' Dismal, but deeply felt: a kind of truth and half a consolation. Rachel Donadio is a writer and editor at the Book Review. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 8 01:35:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 21:35:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Wiki: Golden Plates Message-ID: Golden Plates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Plates [Links omitted for readability.] The Golden Plates is the name most frequently used to refer to the "gold plates" that Joseph Smith, Jr. said he received from the angel Moroni and used as the ancient source for the English translation of The Book of Mormon. In reference to the plates, the Book of Mormon was commonly known as the "Golden Bible" during the 1830s. Smith later became the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. Contents * 1 Story of the plates + 1.1 Joseph obtains the plates + 1.2 Palmyra, New York + 1.3 Harmony, Pennsylvania + 1.4 Translation + 1.5 Special witnesses + 1.6 Other spiritual witnesses + 1.7 Plates returned to Moroni * 2 Physical description * 3 Other plates in the Latter Day Saint tradition + 3.1 Criticisms * 4 Plates outside of the Latter Day Saint tradition Story of the plates Joseph obtains the plates In the 1820s, Joseph Smith, Jr. lived with his father and mother Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack on a farm on the edge of Manchester Township near Palmyra, New York. For a number of years prior to 1827, he reported visitations from either an angel or a spirit, later identified as a resurrected angel Moroni. According to Smith, Moroni had been a Nephite, a member of one of the nations detailed in The Book of Mormon. Moroni indicated that a record of his people, engraved on gold plates, was deposited in a hill not far from the Smith farm and that Smith would one day receive and translate them. In successive years, Smith would travel to the hill, now known as the Hill Cumorah, but was forbidden to obtain the plates. Finally in late September of 1827, at the age of 21, Smith claimed that he had finally been allowed to receive the antique history. According to various reports, he brought a "60-lb." object "wrapped up in a tow frock" into his father's home (William Smith, "Sermon in the Saints' Chapel," Deloit, Iowa June 8, 1888, Saints Herald 31 (1884):643-44). Besides Joseph Jr., six of Joseph's siblings lived at home. According to Joseph's brother William's account, their father put the plates into a pillow case and asked "What, Joseph, can we not see them?" Joseph Jr. replied, "No. I was disobedient the first time but I intend to be faithful this time. For I was forbidden to show them until they are translated, but you can feel them." Again, according to William's account: "We handled them and could tell what they were. They were not quite as large as this Bible. Could tell whether they were round or square. Could raise the leaves this way (raising a few leaves of the Bible before him). One could easily tell that they were not a stone hewn out to deceive or even a block of wood. Being a mixture of gold and copper, they were much heavier than stone, and very much heavier than wood." Palmyra, New York Shortly after Smith claimed to receive the plates, rumors of their presence began to circulate among the residents of Palmyra. Several of Smith's neighbors made attempts to find and seize the plates, leading Joseph, Jr. (the translator) to keep them hidden and to operate in great secrecy. Smith's associate, Josiah Stowell, later claimed that he was the first person to receive the plates from Smith's hands. Stowell handled and lifted the plates which remained wrapped in a cloth that resembled a cloak or a pillow case. Other associates of Smith who reported that they handled the plates through the cloth included Smith's mother, Lucy Mack Smith, and his brothers Hyrum and William. Soon after acquiring the plates, Smith locked them in a box he procured from his brother Hyrum. Some of Smith's neighbors discovered the box's hiding place and smashed it. Meanwhile, however, Smith claimed a premonition had previously caused him to move the plates to a safer spot. (Joel Tiffany, Tiffany's Monthly 5 (1859): 167). Smith then acquired a wooden "Ontario glass-box". The plates were placed into this second box which was then nailed shut. Several witnesses reported lifting the plates while the were sealed in the box. Martin Harris recalled that his wife and daughter had lifted them and that they were "about as much as [his daughter] could lift". Harris then went to the Smith house himself while Joseph was away. Harris later recalled: "While at Mr. Smith's I hefted the plates, and I knew from the heft that they were lead or gold, and I knew that Joseph had not credit enough to buy so much lead." (Tiffany's Monthly 5 (1859): 168-69). Harmony, Pennsylvania Excitement around the Palmyra area and growing opposition encouraged Smith to relocate to his father-in-law's farm in Harmony, Pennsylvania. According to Smith's brother-in-law, who helped Smith and his wife Emma move, the box containing the plates was placed "into a barrel about one-third full of [dry] beans"; after the plates were so secured, the barrel was filled up with more beans. Residents of Harmony also reported encounters with the plates, either sealed in the box or covered by a cloth. Smith's brother-in-law Isaac Hale recalled that he was "shown a box, in which it is said they were contained, which had, to all appearances, been used as a glass box of the common sized window glass." Hale said that he "was allowed to feel the weight of the box, and they gave me to understand that the book of plates was then in the box -- into which, however, I was not allowed to look." (Isaac Hale Statement, reprinted in Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents IV:286.) Translation Emma later recalled that "she often wrote for Joseph Smith during the work of translation..." (Joseph Smith III to James T. Cobb, Feb. 14, 1879, Letterbook 2, pp. 85-88, RLDS Archives, courteously shared with Richard Lloyd Anderson by Smith family scholar Buddy Youngreen). By her account: "The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at concealment, wrapped in a small linen table cloth, which I had given him to fold them in. I once felt of the plates as they thus lay on the table tracing their outline and shape. They seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book." (Saints' Herald 26 (1879):290) Special witnesses As Smith and his associates neared the end of their translation of the plates, Smith revealed that a number of special witnesses would be called to testify of the reality of the Golden Plates. There are two sets of witnesses: the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses. Both sets of witnesses signed joint statements in June of 1829 which were subsequently published along with the text of the Book of Mormon. The Three Witnesses -- Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris -- claimed to have seen an angel descend from heaven and present the plates. They claimed to have seen the plates but not touch them. They heard a voice from heaven declaring that the book was translated by the power of God and that they should bear record of it. The Eight Witnesses were members of the families of Joseph Smith and David Whitmer. Like the Three Witnesses, the Eight signed a joint statement in June 1829. Many of these men had previously handled the plates either when they were in one of the boxes or wrapped in a cloth. According to their statement, they also saw and hefted the plates, "the translator of this work, has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship." Other spiritual witnesses Mary Whitmer, the wife of Peter Whitmer, Sr., also reported seeing the plates in supernatural or visionary experiences (see Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses by Richard Lloyd Anderson). She said she saw the angel Moroni, conversed with him, and was shown the gold plates as a comfort and testimony to her while she kept house for a large party during the translation work (Peterson, H. Donl. Moroni: Ancient Prophet, Modern Messenger. Bountiful, Utah, 1983. pp. 114, 116). Most of her immediate family was directly involved with Joseph Smith and/or the translation. Plates returned to Moroni After the work of translation was complete and after the visionary experiences of the Special Witnesses, Smith reported that the plates were returned to Moroni in the summer of 1829. Many Latter Day Saints believe that Moroni returned the plates to the Hill Cumorah and that other ancient records lie buried there. Physical description Smith said Moroni used the term "gold plates" rather than "golden plates." Smith's brother William believed that the plates were "a mixture of gold and copper." Other witnesses said the plates had the "appearance of gold" and were sheets of metal about 6 inches wide by 8 inches high and somewhat thinner than common tin. The plates were said to be bound together with three rings, and made a book about 6 inches thick. Reports from Smith and others who lifted the plates (while wrapped in cloth or contained within a box) agree that they weighed about 60 pounds. In his famous letter to Chicago Democrat publisher John Wentworth ([1]), Smith wrote: "These records were engraven on plates which had the appearance of gold, each plate was six inches [150 mm] wide and eight inches [200 mm] long, and not quite so thick as common tin... The volume was something near six inches [150 mm] in thickness, a part of which was sealed." These plates are typically referred to as the "gold plates" or other similar phrases. William Smith (Joseph's brother) wrote in an 1883 account: "I was permitted to lift them as they laid in a pillow-case; but not to see them, as it was contrary to the commands he had received. They weighed about sixty pounds [22 kg if troy pounds, 27 kg if avoirdupois] according to the best of my judgment." Other plates in the Latter Day Saint tradition In addition to the Golden Plates, there are several other mentions of ancient records recorded on metal plates in the Latter Day Saint tradition. The text of the Book of Mormon itself refers to several other sets of plates: * The brass plates -- originally owned by Laban, containing the writings of Old Testament prophets up to the time shortly before the Babylonian Exile, as well as the otherwise unknown prophets Zenos and Zenoch, and possibly others. * The plates of Nephi (sometimes the "large plates of Nephi") -- the source of the text abridged by Mormon and engraved upon the Golden Plates. * The small plates of Nephi -- the source of the First Book of Nephi, the Second Book of Nephi, the Book of Jacob, the Book of Enos, the Book of Jarom, and the Book of Omni, which replaced the lost 116 pages. * The twenty-four plates found by the people of Limhi containing the record of the Jaredites, translated by King Mosiah and abridged by Moroni as the Book of Ether. In addition to plates relating to the Book of Mormon, Smith acquired a set of 6 plates known as the Kinderhook Plates in 1843. James J. Strang, one of the rival claimants to succeed Smith also claimed to discover and translate a set of plates known as the Voree Plates. Criticisms A criticism involves the descrepancy concerning the weight of the plates. If the plates were of pure gold, 60 pounds would be a very low for an estimate of its weight. Dan Vogel writes: A block of solid tin measuring 7 x 8 x 6 inches, or 288 cubic inches, would weigh 74.67 pounds. If one allows for a 30 percent reduction due to the unevenness and space between the plates, the package would then weigh 52.27 pounds. Using the same calculations, plates of gold weigh 140.50 pounds; copper, 64.71 pounds; a mixture of gold and copper, between 65 and 140 pounds. (Vogel, The Making of a Prophet, 600) While this does not cast doubt on the existence of the plates, it challenges the assumption that they were pure gold. Referring to Smith's statement that the plates "had the appearance of gold," some have speculated that the metal of the plates was tumbaga, the name given by the Spaniards to a versatile alloy of gold and copper which could "be cast, drawn, hammered, gilded, soldered, welded, plated, hardened, annealed, polished, engraved, embossed, and inlaid." Tumbaga can be treated with a simple acid like citric acid to dissolve the copper on the surface. What is then left is a shiny layer of 23-karat gold on top of a harder, more durable copper-gold alloy sheet. This process was widely used by the pre-Columbian cultures of central America to make religious objects. Tumbaga plates of the dimensions Joseph Smith described would weigh between fifty-three and eighty-six pounds. With the lack of physical evidence today, the Golden Plates remain solely an article of faith rather than an actual artifact or religous relic. Plates outside of the Latter Day Saint tradition Other cultures have kept records on metal plates, and those found to date have been extremely thin, so as to facilitate their being engraven into with a pointed utensil. For utilitarian reasons alone, to make it both easier and feasible, the plates would need to be thin enough to allow depressions to be made into them simply by applying pressure, rather than having to scratch and dig as thicker plates would necessitate. Michael R. Ash points to the discovery of objects made from tumbaga, a gold-copper alloy in South America. He writes that using this alloy would make the plates more rigid and lighter. [2] This claim is congruent with William Smith's idea (cited above) that the plates might be part gold and part copper. Orichalcum, the legendary metal of Atlantis and the Temple of Solomon, is held by many to match this same description. In 500 B.C (concurrent with the Book of Mormon), Darius the Great of Persia inscribed his history on a gold plate and sealed it in a stone box in the temple at Persepolis. [3], [4]. The BBC wrote a news story about a six page gold book on display in Bulgaria. This is claimed to be the world's oldest multiple-page book. The book is written in the lost Etruscan language. Unique book goes on display. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 8 01:36:06 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 21:36:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Modelling conflict: Rules of engagement Message-ID: Modelling conflict: Rules of engagement http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4197737&CFID=60149428&CFTOKEN=122d592-080ff44f-c382-402f-bbdb-c7f42ed6965f 5.7.21 Scientists find surprising regularities in war and terrorism ON JULY 19th, IraqBodyCount, a group of academics who are attempting to monitor the casualties of the conflict in that country, published a report suggesting that almost 25,000 civilians have been killed in it so far. In other words, 34 a day. But that is an average. On some days the total is lower, and on some higher--occasionally much higher. It is this variation around the mean that interests Neil Johnson of the University of Oxford and Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway College, London. They think it is possible to trace and model the development of wars from the patterns of casualties they throw up. In particular, by analysing IraqBodyCount's data and comparing them with equivalent numbers from the conflict in Colombia, they have concluded that, from very different beginnings, these conflicts are evolving into something rather similar to one another. The groundwork for this sort of study was laid by Lewis Fry Richardson, a British physicist, with a paper on the mathematics of war that was published in 1948. Using data from conflicts that took place between 1820 and 1945, Fry Richardson made a graph displaying the number of wars that had death tolls in various ranges. The outcome was startling: rather than varying wildly or chaotically, the probability of individual wars having particular numbers of casualties followed a mathematical relationship known as a power law. Power-law relationships crop up in many fields of science and are often a characteristic of complex and highly interacting systems (which war certainly is). Earthquake frequencies and stockmarket fluctuations are both described by power laws, for example. Power laws also have properties that make them different from statistical distributions such as the normal curve (or bell curve, as it is familiarly known). Unlike a bell curve, a power-law distribution has only one tail and no peak. Small tremors occur frequently, but over a few decades enormously large earthquakes will also occur with reasonable frequency. As will deadly wars and attacks. In May, Aaron Clauset and Maxwell Young, of the University of New Mexico, modified Fry Richardson's method to look at terrorist attacks. Instead of total casualties in a conflict, they plotted the deaths from individual incidents. Again, they got a power law. Actually, they got two. Power-law relationships are characterised by a number called an index. For each ten-fold increase in the death toll, the probability of such an event occurring decreases by a factor of ten raised to the power of this index, which is how the distributions get their name. Terrorist attacks within G7 countries could be distinguished from those inside non-G7 countries by their different indices. G7 countries were more likely to suffer large attacks. Indeed, in an article published earlier this year by Britain's Institute of Physics, Mr Clauset and Mr Maxwell said that "if we assume that the scaling relationship and the frequency of events do not change in the future, we can expect to see another attack at least as severe as September 11th within the next seven years." Dr Johnson and Dr Spagat took the method a couple of steps further. They extended Mr Clauset's and Mr Maxwell's idea of looking at the sizes of individual incidents within a campaign to other sorts of conflict, and also looked at how those conflicts have changed over time. As they report in a paper published recently in arXiv, an online archive, they found, yet again, that the data follow power laws. And for both of the wars they studied, the indices of those power laws have been approaching the value Mr Clauset and Mr Maxwell found for non-G7 terrorism, though from different directions. In other words, for the war in Iraq, the data indicate a transition from an index characteristic of more lethal, conventional war between armies to one closer to terrorism. No real surprise there, perhaps, though it is interesting to see perceptions on the ground reflected in the maths. For the Colombian conflict, though, the data show the opposite, a transition from a war characterised by smaller, less cohesive forces to a more unified rebel front--something that ought to worry Colombia's government. Dr Johnson and Dr Spagat put forward as an explanation a mathematical model they have developed. It consists of a group of self-contained "attack units", each of a particular strength. Such units can join together or fragment into smaller pieces. Over time, an equilibrium of joining and breaking is reached, but where that equilibrium lies depends on the strength of any central organisation. The model explains the power-law behaviour seen in both conventional wars and terrorist attacks. Different rates of fragmentation lead to different indices--conventional war is fought with robust armies that are unlikely to fragment, while terrorists are more likely to have shifting alliances. Dr Spagat points out that, if their model is correct, it makes casualty data useful in a situation where intelligence about the enemy is hard to come by--as seems to be the case in Iraq at the moment. For instance, it should be possible to distinguish an insurgency with a rigid command structure from a group of smaller, randomly linked units. Learning about the distribution of earthquakes may not prevent the Big One, but for war and terrorism, power-law statistics may teach governments something about how to defeat the enemy, and make war less deadly. From The Economist [55]Colombia's paramilitary demobilisations Jul 21st 2005 [56]A wave of bombings in Iraq Jul 21st 2005 [57]The uncertainty principle and codes Jun 21st 2001 Country Briefing: [58]Colombia, [59]Iraq More articles about... [60]War in Iraq [61]Jargon and statistics [62]Wars [63]Colombia's wars [64]Terrorism Websites The [65]report from IraqBodyCount is available online. [66]ArXiv posts a [67]paper by [68]Mr Johnson and [69]Mr Spagat, and a [70]study by [71]Mr Clauset and Mr Young. Royal Holloway College provides [72]conflict analysis resources. Wikipedia gives details and links about [73]Fry Richardson and [74]power-law relations. See also the [75]Institute of Physics. [I own a copy of Richardson's classic Statistics of Deadly Quarrels. It's a scarce book. Copies at http://bookfinder.com range from $50 to $100.] References 55. http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=4198496 56. http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=4198920 57. http://economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=S%26%2884%28QA%3B%2B%0A 58. http://economist.com/countries/Colombia/index.cfm 59. http://economist.com/countries/Iraq/index.cfm 60. http://economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/display.cfm?id=348966 61. http://economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/display.cfm?id=348972 62. http://economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/display.cfm?id=540162 63. http://economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/display.cfm?id=1223026 64. http://economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/display.cfm?id=1604388 65. http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php 66. http://arxiv.org/ 67. http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0506213 68. http://www.lincoln.ox.ac.uk/fellows/johnson/ 69. http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Economics/About-Us/spagat.html 70. http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0502014 71. http://www.cs.unm.edu/~aaron/ 72. http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/pkte/126/Pages/ccar.htm 73. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Fry_Richardson 74. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law 75. http://www.iop.org/ From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 8 01:36:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 21:36:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Wiki: Lewis Fry Richardson Message-ID: Lewis Fry Richardson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Fry_Richardson [I omit all the links to make this more readable. To get them, just click on the URL.] Lewis Fry Richardson (October 11, 1881 - September 30, 1953) was a mathematician, physicist and psychologist. One of seven children, he was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, into a well-off, merchant Quaker family, and was the son of Catherine Fry and David Richardson. Contents * 1 Education and early working life * 2 Pacifism * 3 Weather forecasting * 4 Mathematical analysis of war * 5 Research on the length of coastlines and borders * 6 Lewis Fry Richardson Medal * 7 References Education and early working life He entered Bootham School in York in 1894 and fell under the dual influences of pacifist Quaker beliefs and, under master J. Edmund Clark, science, in particular, meteorology. In 1898 he attended Durham College of Science, to study mathematics, physics, chemistry, zoology and botany, before graduating from King's College, Cambridge with a first-class degree in the Natural Science Tripos in 1903. Richardson's working life reflected his eclectic interests: * National Physical Laboratory (1903-1904, 1907-1909) * University College Aberystwyth (1905-1906) * National Peat Industries (1906-1907) - as a chemist * Sunbeam Lamp Company (1909-1912) - as manager of the physical and chemical laboratory * Manchester College of Technology (1912-1913) * Meteorological Office (1913-1916) - as superintendent of Eskdalemuir Observatory * Friends Ambulance Unit in France between 1916 and 1919 * Works at the Meteorological Office at Benson, Oxfordshire between 1919 and 1920. * In 1920 is made Head of the Physics Department at Westminster Training College. * Between 1929 and 1940 is principal of the Paisley Technical College, now the University of Paisley. Pacifism Richardson's Quaker beliefs entailed an ardent pacifism that exempted him from military service during World War I as a conscientious objector though this subsequently disqualified him from holding any academic post. Richardson worked from 1916 to 1919 for the Friends' Ambulance Service attached to the 16th French Infantry Division. After the war, he rejoined the Meteorological Office but was compelled to resign on grounds of conscience when it was amalgamated into the Air Ministry in 1920. He subsequently pursued a career on the fringes of the academic world before retiring in 1940 to research his own ideas. Weather forecasting Richardson's interest in meteorology led him to propose a scheme for weather forecasting by solution of differential equations, the method used today, though, when he published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922, suitable fast computing was unavailable. He, somewhat eccentrically, envisaged bands of messengers on motor-cycles cruising the Royal Albert Hall to communicate arithmetical results between banks of clerks in order to obtain the necessary numerical solutions. He was also interested in atmospheric turbulence and performed many terrestrial experiments. The Richardson number, a dimensionless parameter in the theory of turbulence is named after him. He famously summarised the field in the parody: Big whorls have little whorls that feed on their velocity, and little whorls have smaller whorls and so on to viscosity. Mathematical analysis of war Richardson also attempted to apply his mathematical skills in the service of his pacifist principles, in particular in understanding the roots of international conflict. As he had done with weather, he analyzed war using differential equations. Considering the armament of two nations, Richardson posited an idealized system of equations whereby the rate of a nation's armament build-up is directly proportional to the amount of arms its rival has and also to the grievances felt toward the rival, and negatively proportional to the amount of arms it already has itself. Solution of this system of equations allows insightful conclusions to be drawn regarding the nature, and the stability or instability, of various hypothetical conditions which might obtain between nations. He also originated the theory that the propensity for war between two nations was a function of the length of their common border. And in Arms and Insecurity (1949), and Statistics of Deadly Quarrels (1950), he sought to statistically analyze the causes of war. Factors he assessed included economics, language, and religion. In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "There is in the world a great deal of brilliant, witty political discussion which leads to no settled convictions. My aim has been different: namely to examine a few notions by quantitative techniques in the hope of reaching a reliable answer." Research on the length of coastlines and borders While studying the causes of war between two countries, Richardson decided to search for a relation between the probability of two countries going to war and the length of their common border. While collecting data, he realised that there was considerable variation in the various gazetted lengths of international borders. For example, that between Spain and Portugal was variously quoted as 987 or 1214 km while that between The Netherlands and Belgium as 380 or 449 km. As part of his research, Richardson investigated how the measured length of a border changes as the unit of measurement is changed. He published empirical statistics which led to a conjectured relationship. This research was quoted by mathematician Beno?t Mandelbrot in his 1967 paper How Long Is the Coast of Britain?. Suppose the coast of Britain is measured using a 200 km ruler, specifying that both ends of the ruler must touch the coast. Now cut the ruler in half and repeat the measurement, then repeat again: Notice that the smaller the ruler, the bigger the result. It might be supposed that these values would converge to a finite number representing the "true" length of the coastline. However, Richardson demonstrated that the measured length of coastlines and other natural features appears to increase without limit as the unit of measurement is made smaller. Note that Richardson's results do not mean that the coastline of Britain is actually infinitely long. This would require the ability to measure with infinitesimally small rulers, something which quantum physics says cannot be done, as there is a lower limit to the smallness of a measurement, the Planck length. What Richardson's results do show is that natural geographic features, when considered over a wide range of scales, do not behave in the same way as the objects of Euclidean geometry. At the time, Richardson's research was ignored by the scientific community. Today, it is seen as one element in the birth of the modern study of fractals. Richardson died in Kilmun, Argyll, Scotland. Lewis Fry Richardson Medal This is a medal awarded (since 1997) by the European Geophysical Society. http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/egs/award6s.htm References Richardson, Lewis Fry, "Generalized foreign politics," The British Journal of Psychology, monograph supplement #23, 1939. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 8 01:36:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 21:36:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Journal of Clinical Epidemiology: Trends in old-age mortality in seven European countries, 1950-1999 Message-ID: Trends in old-age mortality in seven European countries, 1950-1999 Journal of Clinical Epidemiology Volume 57, Issue 2 , February 2004, Pages 203-216 F. Janssen [Corresponding Author Contact Information] , [E-mail The Corresponding Author] , a, J. P. Mackenbacha, A. E. Kunsta and for NEDCOMa, a, a, a, a, b, b, a, b, 1 a Department of Public Health, Erasmus MC, University Medical Center Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR, Rotterdam, The Netherlands b Population Research Centre, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV, Groningen, The Netherlands Accepted 24 July 2003. Available online 20 May 2004. Abstract Objective Different from the general observed decline in old-age mortality, for The Netherlands and Norway there have been reports of stagnation in the decline since the 1980s. We detect periods of stagnation in recent old-age mortality trends, and explore for which causes of death the recent stagnation is most apparent. Study design and setting We applied Poisson regression analysis to total and cause-specific mortality data by age (80+), period (1950-1999), and sex for seven European low-mortality countries. Results We found large heterogeneity in the pace of decline in the countries under investigation, with periods of stagnation being widespread. In the 1980s and 1990s, stagnation was observed in Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway (males). Continued mortality decline was observed especially in France. Although smoking has had a marked influence on the trends in old-age mortality, the role of smoking in the recent stagnation seems only modest and restricted to Norway. Mortality from cardiovascular diseases showed important crossnational variations in the pace of decline. Mortality from diseases specifically related to old age increased recently in all countries, except France. Conclusion Old-age mortality seems highly plastic and susceptible to many factors, with both favorable and unfavorable effects on trends over time. Author Keywords: Mortality; Trends; Causes of death; Elderly; Smoking; Europe Article Outline 1. Background 2. Data and methods 2.1. Data 2.2. Statistical analysis 2.3. Concordance 3. Results 4. Discussion 4.1. Evaluation of data and methods 4.2. Explanations of the trends observed 4.3. Implications Acknowledgements Appendix I. The concordance table used for bridging five revisions of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) References 1. Background The general tendency in the trends in old-age mortality (80+) in low-mortality countries since the 1950s has been a declining one [1, 2, 3 and 4 ]. This tendency has contributed to the current increase in the number, the proportion, and the mean age of elderly people in these populations. Because these developments will have huge implications for policy, society, and the demand of health care services, there has been much interest in possible future trends in life expectancy, especially in the debate on the limit to life expectancy [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 ]. On the one hand, proponents of "the limited-lifespan paradigm" state that biologic and practical constraints on reducing old-age mortality set an upper limit to life expectancy of approximately 85 years [5, 9 and 10 ]. On the other hand, "the mortality-reduction paradigm" is adhered to by researchers who argue that life expectancy will continue to increase?at least for some time to come?due to substantial reductions in mortality rates at all ages, including the oldest old [6, 8 and 11 ]. They support their view by referring to mortality development in subpopulations with extreme good health, to foreseen biomedical progress, and to historic observations that old-age mortality has been decreasing continuously. Recently, however, research on old-age mortality has shown some exceptions to this continuous decline in old-age mortality. For The Netherlands and Norway, there have been reports of stagnation or even increases in old-age mortality since the 1980s [2, 13 and 14 ]. This raises the question of whether the mortality decline among elderly in low-mortality countries has been as consistent as previously reported, and whether these developments coincide with the idea that life expectancy continues to increase in the future. However, before making inferences about future trends in old-age mortality, it is important to investigate the determinants of trends in old-age mortality. Although there have been studies on old-age mortality in the past that acknowledge the heterogeneity of the trends between countries [2, 15 and 16 ], they were mostly descriptive in nature. As a result, little is known about the reasons behind the crossnational differences in the pace of mortality decline among the elderly. Knowing about the determinants of trends in old-age mortality could provide important clues on future mortality among the elderly population, especially in the short and medium term. Studying the trends in cause-specific mortality can generate evidence on the determinants of the trends in all-cause mortality among the elderly, because many of the intermediate factors or risk factors that could determine mortality trends among the elderly are related to specific causes of death. In doing so, we will emphasize the role of smoking. It is commonly known that smoking has a strong negative effect on survival. The impact of smoking on mortality trends may vary considerably between countries [17 ]. In fact, the stagnation observed in some countries could be the result of the increased lifetime exposure to smoking for those birth cohorts who reached old age at the end of the 20th century [18 and 19]. The objective of this article is to describe mortality trends among the elderly in Denmark, England and Wales, Finland, France, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, and to contribute to the explanation of these trends. Focus will be on the trends from 1980 onwards. The research questions we will address are: (a) in which countries did trends in mortality at old age show signs of stagnation instead of continued decline, (b) to what extent did mortality increase for causes of death related to smoking, and (c) for which other specific causes of death did an increase occur? In this analysis we will extend earlier studies on trends in old-age mortality by using detailed mortality data over a long period of time (1950?1999), with a distinction by specific causes of death and 5-year age groups up to 100+. Furthermore, in our analysis an extensive effort was made to carefully bridge the different revisions of the International Classification of Diseases (IDC). 2. Data and methods 2.1. Data Data were obtained from national statistical offices and related institutes on total mortality, cause-specific mortality, and population at risk for Denmark, England and Wales, Finland, France, The Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, for the years 1950?1999 (National Institute of Public Health [Denmark], ONS [England and Wales] [Twentieth Century Mortality], Statfin [Finland], INDE and INSERM [France], Statistics Netherlands, NIDI [The Netherlands], Statistics Norway and National Board of Health and Welfare [Sweden]). For Denmark, Finland, and Norway data were available only from 1951, for Sweden from 1952. Data for France were available until 1997 and for Denmark until 1998. The selection of countries was restricted to low-mortality countries in North Western Europe. The seven countries we included were selected on the basis of the quality of the data [1 and 2] and on the availability of cause of death data. For most countries, data on the total number of death by 5-year age groups were available, with a maximum age ranging from 85+ to 100+. For The Netherlands and France, deaths by single year of age were available to us (no maximum age) (see for France, http://www.ined.fr/publications/cdrom_vallin_mesle/continu.htm . Tables de mortalit? fran?aises 1806?1997 et projections jusqu'en 2102 by J. Vallin and F. Mesl? [INED]). To calculate mortality rates we used the midyear-population at risk. Population data were available either by single year of age (France, The Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, England, and Wales 1961?1999), or by 5-year age groups (Denmark, Norway, England, and Wales 1950?1960), with the maximum age ranging from 85+ to no maximum age. For those aged 80 and over we had additional data on total mortality and population data available from the Kannisto-Thatcher Database on Old Age Mortality (K-T Database) at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (http://www.demogr.mpg.de/databases/ktdb) [2 ]. The data were grouped by both year of death and year of birth of the deceased and by single year of age (no maximum age). We used these data (1) to redistribute the population numbers and deaths in the older age groups over 5-year age groups up to 100+, (2) to redistribute the population numbers and total deaths for those aged 80 and over from 5-year age groups into data by single year of age, and (3) to check whether the population and mortality data from the different data sources (Kannisto-Thatcher Database and national data) were consistent. For the causes of death, we obtained data on their prevalence as the underlying cause of death. These data were available by three-digit codes, 5-year age groups, sex, and year of death for all countries. The maximum age ranged from 85+ for England and Wales and The Netherlands (until 1969), and 90+, 95+, and 100+ for all other countries and periods. The deaths per cause in the older age groups were redistributed over 5-year age groups up to 100+ based on the distribution of total mortality in these age groups. Table 1 lists the causes of death we selected and their relative share in all-cause mortality among those aged 80 and over in 1995?1999. Cancers have been designated "smoking-related" if their population attributable risk was larger than 0.25 (according to the American Cancer Study) [20]. Table 1. List of selected causes of death and their relative share in all-cause mortality in the period 1995?1999,a males and females, aged 80 and over [Full Size Table] DK = Denmark; E&W = England and Wales; FIN = Finland; F = France; NL = The Netherlands; NO = Norway; S = Sweden. COPD = chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. 2.2. Statistical analysis We analyzed the mortality data by means of a (log-linear) Poisson regression model with linear splines. The dependent variable was the number of deaths, with the person-years at risk as offset variable. As independent variables, we used age (single year of age for total mortality and 5-year age groups for cause-specific mortality) and year of death. Spline functions divide the overall trend into a number of separate, adjacent segments [21 ]. In our analysis, we used five segments each covering a period of 10 years (1950?1959, 1960?1969, 1970?1979, 1980?1989, 1990?1999). The analysis using splines thus yielded estimates of annual changes in mortality within each 10-year period, thereby taking into account the overall trend. Comparison of these five decade-specific rates of change enabled us to detect and quantify changes in the secular trend in mortality, such as a stagnation of the decrease in mortality for a specific country. "Stagnation" of the mortality decline was defined as either a leveling off of the mortality decline leading to small declines or a reversal into increasing mortality. All our analyses are conducted using SAS package version 8. In addition, in Fig. 1 for total mortality, directly standardized observed and fitted mortality rates were calculated, using the total population of England and Wales in 1999 as the reference. [Enlarge Image] (34K) [Enlarge Image] (31K) Fig. 1.. Trends in standardized observed and fitted all-cause mortality rates in seven countries, 1950?1999, aged 80 and over. (A) Males. (B) Females. The use of 5-year age groups in the cause of death analyses was due to the restriction that these data were not available to us by single year of age. To evaluate to what extent a possible change over time in the distribution of deaths within a 5-year age group could affect our results, we compared the results for total mortality using data by 5 years of age with the results for total mortality using data by single year of age. Because this comparison generated virtually the same results, we expected that, although age patterns can differ for the specific causes of death, the bias when using the data by 5-year age groups will be minimal. 2.3. Concordance When analyzing trends in causes of death for a longer period, numerous revisions of the World Health Organization (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD) have to be taken into account, because they can lead to biases in the trends. In our analysis we had to bridge four or five different ICD revisions per country. For this purpose we constructed a general concordance table in which the different three-digit codes for a specific cause of death in successive ICD revisions were linked (see Janssen et al. [14] for more information; see also Appendix 1 ). To accurately bridge the revision from ICD6/7 to ICD8 for ischemic heart disease we obtained the numbers of death for one additional four-digit code (422.1) under ICD6/7. These numbers were not available for Finland until 1963, and Sweden until 1961. We estimated them on the basis of the ratio of the number of deaths from ischemic heart diseases with and without 422.1 calculated for the first year in which 422.1 was coded. On the basis of this general concordance table, data on the required three-digit codes were obtained from the different countries. For Finland, however, not all causes of death were available by three-digit code and part of the data we had to request by short list consisting of slightly different groups of causes of death. In depth analysis of the Finnish mortality trends suggested that this approximation has not led to irregularities. Cause-specific trends based on the concordance table can, however, still contain irregularities due to (1) remaining problems with ICD revisions, because at the level of three-digit codes the continuity of the medical content of some causes of death could not always be optimized; (2) incidental changes in coding rules, for example, changes within ICD revisions in the reporting of causes of death by physicians or in coding rules applied at the statistical offices; and (3) incidental outliers, that is, causes of death with a single year of exceptional mortality levels. In addition to the use of the concordance table, it was therefore necessary to trace these irregularities and to control for them when assessing long-term trends in mortality. We identified outliers and incidental changes in coding rules on the basis of visual analysis of cause-specific trends for males and females combined for those aged 60 and over, and using country-specific background information on the irregularities observed. To evaluate the existence of remaining problems with ICD revisions, we identified possible mortality jumps due to the ICD revisions, using cause-specific regression models (with splines) applied to data for males and females combined, aged 60 and over. To these regression models we added transition variables indicating the ICD revisions, that is, ICD6/7to8, ICD8to9 or ICD9to10. In this way these regression models generated parameter estimates for the transition variables. A transition variable was included in our final regression model if: (1) the parameter estimate corresponding to this variable was statistically significant, (2) the significant effect could not be attributed to nonlinear trends or to a single outlier, for instance, an influenza epidemic nearby; and (3) the observed effect could be traced back to a ICD transition problem, for example, due to a four-digit code not included in the concordance table or an effect on one cause of death mirrored by an opposite effect on a complementary cause of death. For France, no check on the concordance was needed, because J. Vallin and F. Mesl? reconstructed coherent series of data for causes of death, the results of which are available from a Web site (http://matisse.ined.fr/%7Etania/causfra/data/) [22 and 23]. From this Web site the cause of death data we distinguished could be extracted using ICD9 codes. 3. Results Old-age mortality showed an overall decline and a convergence in the mortality level between countries over time (Fig. 1 ). However, there was a large heterogeneity in the pace of decline, with periods of stagnation (defined as either a leveling off of the mortality decline leading to small declines or a reversal into increasing mortality) being widespread. In the 1950s, and to a lesser extent in the 1960s, mortality in the Nordic countries declined slightly or even increased. From the 1980s onwards, small declines or even increases were observed in Denmark, The Netherlands, and among Norwegian males. In contrast, mortality decline continued in England and Wales (females), and especially in France, resulting in the lowest mortality level in the 1990s. Striking is the huge mortality decline in Finland in the 1970s, which was followed by a much more modest decline in the 1980s. The mortality rates were higher among males compared to females, with the mortality level of males in the 1990s being about equal to the mortality level of females in the 1950s. To identify the periods of stagnation more precisely, we quantified the pace of all-cause mortality decline within each of the 5 decades by means of annual changes (%) (Table 2 ). If the confidence intervals for successive decades do not overlap the changes in the pace of mortality decline are statistically significant. Stagnation was more widespread among males compared to females. In Denmark, mortality decline leveled off from the 1970s onwards for males, and from the 1980s onwards for females. Mortality decline among Dutch males turned into increase in the 1980s, followed by a small decline in the 1990s. Among Dutch females mortality decline levelled off in the 1980s and 1990s. Among Norwegian males the small (nonsignificant) increase in the 1980s changed into a modest decline in the 1990s. Table 2. Annual trends in total mortality by country and decade (1950-1999), males and females, aged 80 and over [Full Size Table] Bold indicates a significant increase. Underlined indicates annual changes (%)??0.60. The annual trends for the "smoking-related diseases," that is, smoking-related cancers and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), showed an overall pattern of long-term increases (Table 3 ). Due to this overall increase these diseases had an increased share in total mortality, and thus their trends had increasingly more effect on the trends observed for all-cause mortality. Since the 1980s, mortality from smoking-related diseases among men decreased in Finland and France, whereas in Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway in the 1980s mortality still increased rapidly. However, only Norway showed a clear persistence of the increase among males in the 1990s. For females, recent increases are more frequent, and are most pronounced in Norway, Denmark, and The Netherlands. Overall, lung cancer reveals the strongest increases, but COPD showed a more unfavorable trend in the 1990s. Table 3. Annual trends in mortality from smoking-related diseases by country and decade (1950?1999), males and females, aged 80 and over [Full Size Table] Bold indicates an increase. COPD = chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Mortality from cardiovascular diseases declined, at least after the 1960s (Table 4 ). During the last 2 decades, declines were largest in France and England and Wales and smallest in Norway and The Netherlands. Trends in mortality from ischemic heart disease (IHD) were least favorable with increases in mortality in the 1950s and 1960s. Mortality from IHD also increased in the 1980s in Norway (males) and Finland. Mortality from cerebrovascular diseases increased in the 1950s, followed by a sustained decrease in mortality. Striking were the enormous decreases in mortality from stroke in France since the 1980s. For both IHD and stroke, the mortality decrease in France sets in later compared to the other countries. Mortality from "other cardiovascular diseases" decreased, especially in Finland and England and Wales, whereas in Denmark and Norway mortality increased since the 1980s. Table 4. Annual trends in mortality from cardiovascular diseases by country and decade (1950?1999), males and females, aged 80 and over [Full Size Table] Bold indicates an increase. For the "other causes of death," that is, total mortality minus "smoking-related diseases" and all cardiovascular diseases, mortality since the 1980s increased in all countries, except France (Table 5 ). The increases are most pronounced in Denmark and The Netherlands, in the 1990s. Especially mortality from diseases specifically related to old-age (infectious diseases, pneumonia, dementia, and ill-defined conditions) increased substantially. Differences between the countries, however, exist in which of these causes showed the largest mortality increases. In France, the increase in diseases specifically related to old age has been offset by the continuation of the strong decline for "other diseases." Caution, however, should be exercised when interpreting the annual changes for causes of death with a low mortality level in 1980 and 1990, especially infectious diseases, diabetes mellitus, dementia (males), and all ill-defined causes (in England and Wales, Finland, and Sweden). Annual changes for such causes tend to be large, even though the change is small in absolute terms. Table 5. Annual trends in mortality from "other causes of death" by country and decade (1980?1999), males and females, aged 80 and over [Full Size Table] Bold indicates an increase. 4. Discussion This article provides important new findings on the trends in old-age mortality (80+) in seven low-mortality countries. First, although old-age mortality tends to decline and to converge, there is large heterogeneity in the pace of decline in the countries under investigation, with periods of stagnation being widespread. Since the 1980s, stagnation was observed in Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway, whereas England and Wales and especially France showed a continuation of a strong mortality decline. Second, the long-term mortality increase for smoking-related cancers and COPD turned into declines since the 1980s among males. Only for Norway the mortality increase among males clearly persisted. Third, mortality from cardiovascular diseases showed clear crossnational variations in the general decline since the 1970s. Fourth, mortality from diseases specifically related to old age (infectious diseases, pneumonia, dementia, and ill-defined conditions) increased recently in all countries except France. Previous studies on trends in old-age mortality also report some heterogeneity in the speed of the mortality decline, but found only rare periods of stagnation [2 and 15]. The overall conclusion reached in most of these studies therefore has been a continued decline in old-age mortality [2, 4, 15, 24 and 25 ]. The present study, however, shows that periods of stagnation are more frequent than previously observed. This conclusion could be reached by, on the one hand, extending the observation period to the 1990s, and on the other hand, by looking in more detail at the trends within specific decades in stead of broader periods. Our results thus show a more differentiated picture than suggested by previous analyses on old-age mortality. The heterogeneity between countries and periods as observed in this analysis and in previous analyses suggests that the findings obtained in this study may not be considered to be representative of other countries nor of earlier periods. 4.1. Evaluation of data and methods The mortality and population data used in this study stem from countries considered to have good or excellent population and vital registries [1 and 2]. Reported survivorship counts are highly accurate [2 and 26 ]. Comparison of our mortality data to the mortality data from the Kannisto-Thatcher Database?in which the data was checked for age-heaping and were subjected to a number of checks for plausibility?showed only small discrepancies, that had no appreciable effects on our results. Analyses of long-term trends in causes of death have to deal with several transitions between ICD revisions. Considerable effort was made to bridge these ICD revisions by carefully constructing a concordance table and by controlling for the remaining biases due to these revisions in our regression model. Further checks showed minimal sensitivity. Thus, even though some residual effects of problems with ICD revisions could not be excluded, we expect that these problems do not affect the results to any substantial extent. More difficult to tackle were changes within an ICD revision, either in coding practices at the Statistical Offices or in the reporting of causes of death by physicians. Although all countries under investigation use the coding rules of the WHO, the national statistical offices might change, over time, their interpretation of these international coding rules. Because changes in coding practices most probably led to quite abrupt and sometimes temporal changes, the changes could be traced and controlled for. Changes in the reporting of causes of death on the death certificate by physicians, however, result in more gradual shifts that could not be controlled for. The causes of death expected to suffer substantial effects are diabetes mellitus, dementia, and "all ill-defined causes." The huge increases for dementia that were observed especially in the 1980s could partly be explained by a growing propensity of physicians to report dementia as an underlying cause of death. The recent increases in "all ill-defined causes" (especially in England and Wales, Denmark, Sweden, and The Netherlands) could be the result of less detailed and less accurate diagnosis and reporting by physicians. An increase in the doctor's tendency to list only one cause on the death certificate could perhaps explain the huge increases observed for pneumonia in The Netherlands and Denmark in the 1990s, because diseases that were formerly reported mainly as secondary causes of death could increasingly be listed as primary causes of death. The more stable trends for diabetes mellitus seem to be less affected by this coding problem. Thus, especially the recent increases found for dementia, "all ill-defined causes" and pneumonia should be viewed with caution. Moreover, one should be aware of the opposite effects these increases in mortality might have on other diseases. For example, an increasing tendency to report these diseases as the underlying cause of death may result in an overestimation of the recent decreases observed for cardiovascular diseases. However, this cannot account for the recent declines observed for cardiovascular diseases, because in absolute terms, the decline in cardiovascular diseases was much larger than the increases for diseases prone to changes in reporting causes of death (data not shown). Diseases that have a more straightforward diagnosis, like smoking-related cancers and likely COPD as well, are probably relatively resistant to changes in coding practices. 4.2. Explanations of the trends observed Our findings suggest both favorable trends in old-age mortality (e.g., the continued decline in England and Wales, and especially France, and the huge decline in Finland in the 1970s), but also unfavorable trends (e.g., stagnation since the 1980s in Denmark, The Netherlands, and to a lesser extent Norway). In this section, we will discuss possible explanations of these trends. Although many smokers die already before the age of 80, our results indicate that smoking is a possible determinant of mortality trends even among the oldest old. Smoking-related cancers and COPD contributed to the recent stagnation, especially in Norway, for which mortality from these causes of death increased recently. The absence of clear increases in Denmark and The Netherlands in the 1990s suggests that the contribution of smoking-related diseases to the recent stagnation as observed in The Netherlands and Denmark was more modest. However, by looking merely at the trends in these smoking-related diseases, other diseases, of which smoking is a risk factor as well, would be neglected. The recent declines observed for cardiovascular diseases?that are not correlated with the trends for lung cancer?suggest that smoking did not contribute much to the recent stagnation as observed in The Netherlands and Denmark. On the contrary, the significant decline in smoking prevalence among elderly men in recent periods [27 ], suggests a favorable effect of smoking on recent trends in mortality from cardiovascular diseases (and other causes of death), for which current smoking levels are more important than life-time smoking exposures [28 ]. Thus, although smoking has had a marked influence on the trends in old-age mortality, the role of smoking in the stagnation since the 1980s seems only modest and restricted to Norway. Another explanation for the recent stagnation in Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway could be that further improvement in old-age mortality in these countries is no longer possible, due to low levels of mortality already attained and a limit to life expectancy being approached. However, we observed further improvements in old-age mortality in both England and Wales and France, who had reached the same low level of mortality as Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway around the 1980s. Life expectancy at age 80 in 1980?1990 was slightly higher in France (7.52) compared to Denmark (7.43) and Norway (7.49), suggesting that the limit to life expectancy is not yet being approached in the latter countries [29]. Mortality trends were unfavorable for infectious diseases, pneumonia, dementia, and ill-defined causes of death. The recent increase of mortality from these causes of death?which were not only restricted to Denmark and The Netherlands but appeared in all countries except France?could be partly artificial due to changes in the coding and reporting of causes of death (as discussed above). However, part of the recent increase in these causes, which are specifically related to old age, might be real, and perhaps due to increased frailty. Increased comorbidity or increased frailty among elderly in itself could easily lead to an increased occurrence of symptoms or comorbid conditions as causes of death. Increased frailty could be due to decreased mortality selection as a result of the declines in all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality in earlier periods and ages, and indirectly due to improvements in medical care. The increasing proportions of elderly people surviving to old ages might be expected to be less healthy compared to their more selected predecessors [30], resulting in increases in (cardiovascular) morbidity [31 ] and in mortality increases from diseases specifically related to old age. Although recent studies on disability among the elderly suggest that disability among the elderly is declining [32, 33 and 34 ], we still think that increased frailty might have played a role in explaining the recent increases in diseases specifically related to old age. Another important finding from our study is the crossnational variations in the pace of decline in cardiovascular disease, which is still the most important cause of death among the elderly. In the last 2 decades declines for cardiovascular disease mortality were highest in England and Wales and France and lowest in Norway, The Netherlands, and Denmark (1980s only). Previous research on trends in cardiovascular mortality [35, 36 and 37 ] suggested the importance of several factors like physical activity, hypertension control, diet, smoking, and accessibility of medical care. It might be possible that the developments in some of these risk factors were more beneficial in England and Wales and France compared to the other countries. Strikingly favorable were the trends in old-age mortality in France and Finland (1970s). France showed the strongest decline for cardiovascular diseases, and, contrary to the other countries, did not witness an increase from "other causes of death." Within "other causes of death" the declining trend for "other diseases" is striking. The latter trend seems the result of the reported declines of acute respiratory diseases and digestive diseases among the French elderly [38 ]. Changes in alcohol consumption might be one of the factors involved. The sharp decline in all-cause mortality in the 1970s in Finland was also observed among those aged 60 and over [39], and seems the result of rapid economic and social progress in this period [39, 40 and 41 ]. Together with the development of a national health and social care system, this has resulted in improvements in the living conditions and health care, also for the elderly [41 ]. In addition, a favorable effect of rapid declines in behavioral risk factors, like diet, blood pressure, and serum cholesterol levels, in part caused by preventive campaigns, can be expected [42 ]. In Finland, old-age mortality thus seems to have been highly susceptible to improvements in living conditions and in both preventive and secondary health care. 4.3. Implications Our finding that periods of stagnation were widespread both in the 1950s and since the 1980s, challenges the idea that mortality at old age is bound to decline steadily in the near future [6, 8 and 11 ]. Old-age mortality seems highly plastic and susceptible to many factors, both favorable and unfavorable. These factors should be taken into account when making projections of future old-age mortality and its implications on social and health care policies. Acknowledgements This article is part of a project that is financed by the sector of Medical Sciences of the Organisation for Scientific Research, The Netherlands (ZonMw). We are grateful to Jacques Vallin (INED, France), Martine Bovet (INSERM, France), Hillka Ahonen (Statfin, Finland), Annika Edberg (National Board of Health and Welfare, Sweden), ?rjan Hemstr?m (Sweden), Allan Baker and Glenn Meredith (ONS, England and Wales), Knud Juel (National Institute of Public Health, Denmark), and Jens-Kristian Borgan (Statistics Norway) for providing cause-specific mortality and population data, and for giving useful information on national coding practices. We gratefully acknowledge James Vaupel and Vladimir Scholnikov (Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research) for the use of the Kannisto-Thather Database on old-age mortality. We thank Tapani Valkonen, Tujia Martelin, and France Mesl? for their useful information on trends in respectively Finland and France. References 1. V. Kannisto, J. Lauritsen, A.R. Thatcher and J.W. Vaupel, Reductions in mortality at advanced ages: several decades of evidence from 27 countries. Popul Dev Rev 20 4 (1994), pp. 793?810. Abstract-GEOBASE | Abstract-EconLit | $Order Document 2. V. Kannisto, Development of oldest-old mortality, 1950?1990: evidence from 28 developed countries. , Odense University Press, Odense, Denmark (1994). 3. A.R. Thatcher, Trends in numbers and mortality at high ages in England and Wales. Popul Stud 46 (1992), pp. 411?426. Abstract-GEOBASE | Abstract-EconLit | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document | Full Text via CrossRef 4. J.W. Vaupel, The average French baby may live 95 to 100 years. In: J.-M. Robine, J. Vaupel, B. Jeune and M. Allard, Editors, Longevity: to the limits and beyond, Springer-Verlag, Berlin (1997). 5. J.F. Fries, Aging, natural death, and the compression of morbidity. N Engl J Med 303 3 (1980), pp. 130?135. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 6. K.G. Manton, E. Stallard and H.D. Tolley, Limits to human life expectancy: evidence, prospects, and implications. Popul Dev Rev 17 (1991), pp. 603?637. Abstract-EconLit | $Order Document 7. J.W. Vaupel and H. Lundstrom, The future of mortality at older ages in developed countries. In: W. Lutz, Editor, The future population of the world. What can we assume today?, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis [IIASA], Laxenburg, Austria (1994), pp. 295?315. 8. J. Oeppen and J.W. Vaupel, Demography. Broken limits to life expectancy. Science 296 5570 (2002), pp. 1029?1031. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-GEOBASE | Abstract-Elsevier BIOBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document | Full Text via CrossRef 9. S.J. Olshansky, B.A. Carnes and C. Cassel, In search of Methuselah: estimating the upper limits of human longevity. Science 250 (1990), pp. 634?640. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-GEOBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 10. S.J. Olshansky, B.A. Carnes and A. Desesquelles, Demography. Prospects for human longevity. Science 291 5508 (2001), pp. 1491?1492. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-Elsevier BIOBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document | Full Text via CrossRef 11. J.W. Vaupel, J.R. Carey, K. Christensen, T.E. Johnson, A.I. Yashin, N.V. Holm, I.A. Iachine, C. Kannisto, A.A. Khazaeli, P. Liedo, V.D. Longo, Y. Zeng, K.G. Manton and J.W. Cartsinger, Biodemographic trajectories of longevity. Science 280 5365 (1998), pp. 855?860. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-Elsevier BIOBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document | Full Text via CrossRef 12. J.R. Wilmoth, The future of human longevity: a demographer's perspective. Science 280 5362 (1998), pp. 395?397. Full Text via CrossRef 13. W.J. Nusselder and J.P. Mackenbach, Lack of improvement of life expectancy at advanced ages in The Netherlands. Int J Epidemiol 29 1 (2000), pp. 140?148. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-GEOBASE | Abstract-Elsevier BIOBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document | Full Text via CrossRef 14. F. Janssen, W.J. Nusselder, C.W.N. Looman, J.P. Mackenbach and A.E. Kunst, Stagnation in mortality decline among elders in The Netherlands. Gerontologist 43 (2003), pp. 722?734. Abstract-MEDLINE | Abstract-PsycINFO | $Order Document 15. G. Caselli, Future longevity among the elderly. In: G. Caselli and A. Lopez, Editors, Health and mortality among elderly populations, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1996), pp. 235?265. 16. G.C. Myers, Comparative mortality trends among older persons in developed countries. , Clarendon Press, Oxford (1996). 17. T. Valkonen and F. van Poppel, The contribution of smoking to sex differences in life expectancy. Four Nordic countries and The Netherlands 1970?1989. Eur J Public Health 7 (1997), pp. 302?310. Abstract-EMBASE | $Order Document 18. J.J. Barendregt, C.W.N. Looman and H. Br?nnum-Hansen, Comparison of cohort smoking intensities in Denmark and the Netherlands. Bull World Health Organ 80 1 (2002), pp. 26?32. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-GEOBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 19. A.D. Lopez, N.E. Collishaw and T. Piha, A descriptive model of the cigarette epidemic in developed countries. Tob Control 3 3 (1994), pp. 242?247. 20. N.J. Wald and A.K. Hackshaw, Cigarette smoking: an epidemiological overview. Br Med Bull 52 1 (1996), pp. 3?11. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 21. D.R. McNeil, T.J. Trussell and J.C. Turner, Spline interpolation of demographic data. Demography 14 2 (1977), pp. 245?252. Abstract-EconLit | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 22. J. Vallin and F. Mesl?, Les causes de d?c?s en France de 1925 ? 1978. , INED, PUF, Paris (1988). 23. J. Vallin and F. Mesl?, Comment suivre l'evolution de la mortalite par cause malgre les discontinuites de la statistique? Le cas de la France de 1925 a 1993. , INED, Paris (1996). 24. H. Kesteloot, Evolution of all-cause and cause-specific mortality in the age-class 75?84 years during the period 1970?1996. A worldwide overview. Verh K Acad Geneeskd Belg 63 5 (2001), pp. 405?430 (discussion, 431) . 25. H. Kesteloot, S. Sans and D. Kromhout, Evolution of all-causes and cardiovascular mortality in the age-group 75?84 years in Europe during the period 1970?1996; a comparison with worldwide changes. Eur Heart J 23 5 (2002), pp. 384?398. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 26. A.G. Condran, C.L. Himes and S.H. Preton, Old-age mortality patterns in low-mortality countries: an evaluation of population and death data at advanced ages, 1950 to the present. Popul Bull UN 30 (1991), pp. 23?60. 27. B. Forey, J. Hamling, P. Lee and N. Wald, Editors, International smoking statistics. A collection of historical data from 30 economically developed countries, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Oxford University Press, London, Oxford (2002). 28. R. Doll, R. Peto, K. Wheatley, R. Gray and I. Sutherland, Mortality in relation to smoking: 40 years' observations on male British doctors. BMJ 309 6959 (1994), pp. 901?911. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-Elsevier BIOBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 29. V. Kannisto, The advancing frontier of survival: life tables for old age. , Odense University Press, Odense, Denmark (1996). 30. E. Grundy, Demography and gerontology: mortality trends among the oldest old. Ageing Soc 17 6 (1997), pp. 713?725. Full Text via CrossRef 31. L. Bonneux, J.J. Barendregt, K. Meeter, G.J. Bonsel and P.J. van der Maas, Estimating clinical morbidity due to ischemic heart disease and congestive heart failure: the future rise of heart failure. Am J Public Health 84 1 (1994), pp. 20?28. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 32. R.F. Schoeni, V.A. Freedman and R.B. Wallace, Persistent, consistent, widespread, and robust? Another look at recent trends in old-age disability. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 56 4 (2001), pp. S206?S218. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | Abstract-PsycINFO | $Order Document 33. D.M. Cutler, Declining disability among the elderly. Health Aff (Millwood) 20 6 (2001), pp. 11?27. Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document | Full Text via CrossRef 34. I. Winblad, M. Jaaskelainen, S.L. Kivela, P. Hiltunen and P. Laippala, Prevalence of disability in three birth cohorts at old age over time spans of 10 and 20 years. J Clin Epidemiol 54 10 (2001), pp. 1019?1024. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (68 K) 35. C. Sarti, D. Rastenyte, Z. Cepaitis and J. Tuomilehto, International trends in mortality from stroke, 1968 to 1994. Stroke 31 7 (2000), pp. 1588?1601. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-Elsevier BIOBASE | $Order Document 36. K. Kuulasmaa, H. Tunstall-Pedoe, A. Dobson, S. Fortmann, S. Sans, H. Tolonen, A. Evans, M. Ferrario and J. Tuomilehto, Estimation of contribution of changes in classic risk factors to trends in coronary-event rates across the WHO MONICA Project populations. Lancet 355 9205 (2000), pp. 675?687. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (166 K) 37. R. Cooper, J. Cutler, P. Desvigne-Nickens, S.P. Fortmann, L. Friedman, R. Havlik, G. Hogelin, J. Marler, P. McGovern, G. Morosco, L. Mosca, T. Pearson, J. Stamler, D. Stryer and T. Thom, Trends and disparities in coronary heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases in the United States: findings of the national conference on cardiovascular disease prevention. Circulation 102 25 (2000), pp. 3137?3147. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-Elsevier BIOBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 38. F. Mesl? and J. Vallin, Mortality trends at older and oldest ages in France since 1950 (Evolution de la mortalite aux ages eleves en France depuis 1950). Dossiers et Recherches 68. , Institut National d'Etudes Demographiques [INED], Paris (1998). 39. T. Martelin, Trends in elderly mortality in the Nordic countries. Comp Gerontol [C] 1 (1987), pp. 39?48. Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 40. J.M. Sverre, A comparative study of trends in mortality rates of the ageing population in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, 1966?1986. Scand J Soc Med 23 4 (1995), pp. 227?232. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document 41. S.L. Kivela, Changes in mortality among the elderly Finnish population 1951?1979. Soc Sci Med 21 7 (1985), pp. 799?805. Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (684 K) 42. E. Vartiainen, P. Puska, J. Pekkanen, J. Tuomilehto and P. Jousilahti, Changes in risk factors explain changes in mortality from ischaemic heart disease in Finland. BMJ 309 6946 (1994), pp. 23?27. Abstract-EMBASE | Abstract-MEDLINE | $Order Document Appendix I. The concordance table used for bridging five revisions of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) [Corresponding Author Contact Information] Corresponding author. Tel.: +31-(0)10-4087714; fax: +31-(0)10-4089449 1 The Netherlands Epidemiology and Demography Compression of Morbidity research group, which also includes J. Barndregt, L. Bonneux, C. de Laet, W. Nusselder, A. Peeters, A. Al Mamun, and F. Willekens. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 8 01:37:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 21:37:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Science: Biodemographic Trajectories of Longevity Message-ID: Biodemographic Trajectories of Longevity Volume 280, Number 5365, Issue of 8 May 1998, pp. 855-860. Review James W. Vaupel, * James R. Carey, Kaare Christensen, Thomas E. Johnson, Anatoli I. Yashin, Niels V. Holm, Ivan A. Iachine, V?in? Kannisto, Aziz A. Khazaeli, Pablo Liedo, Valter D. Longo, Yi Zeng, Kenneth G. Manton, James W. Curtsinger Old-age survival has increased substantially since 1950. Death rates decelerate with age for insects, worms, and yeast, as well as humans. This evidence of extended postreproductive survival is puzzling. Three biodemographic insights--concerning the correlation of death rates across age, individual differences in survival chances, and induced alterations in age patterns of fertility and mortality--offer clues and suggest research on the failure of complicated systems, on new demographic equations for evolutionary theory, and on fertility-longevity interactions. Nongenetic changes account for increases in human life-spans to date. Explication of these causes and the genetic license for extended survival, as well as discovery of genes and other survival attributes affecting longevity, will lead to even longer lives. J. W. Vaupel is at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, D-18057 Rostock, Germany; Odense University Medical School, DK-5000 Odense C, Denmark; the Center for Demographic Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706, USA; and Andrus Gerontology Center, the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA. J. R. Carey is in the Department of Entomology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616-8584, USA. K. Christensen, N. V. Holm, I. A. Iachine, and V. Kannisto are at Odense University Medical School, DK-5000 Odense C, Denmark. T. E. Johnson is at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0447, USA. A. I. Yashin is at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, D-18057 Rostock, Germany, and the Center for Demographic Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706, USA. A. A. Khazaeli and J. W. Curtsinger are in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA. P. Liedo is with El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Tapachula 30700, Mexico. V. D. Longo is at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0191, USA. Y. Zeng is at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, D-18057 Rostock, Germany, and the Institute of Population Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. K. G. Manton is at the Center for Demographic Studies at Duke University, Durham, NC 27706, USA. * To whom correspondence should be addressed at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Doberaner Strasse 114, D-18057 Rostock, Germany. E-mail: jwv at demogr.mpg.de Humanity is aging. The social, economic, and health-care consequences of the new demography (Table 1) will drive public policy worldwide in coming decades (1). Growth of the older population is fueled by three factors. Baby-boom generations are growing older. The chance of surviving to old age is increasing. And the elderly are living longer--because of remarkable, largely unexplained reductions in mortality at older ages since 1950 (2-4). Biodemography, the mating of biology and demography, is, we argue, spawning insights into the enigma of lengthening longevity (5). Table 1. Estimated population, proportion of population, and growth of population above age 60 for the world and for selected countries in 1970 and 1997 and projected for 2025. Countries are ranked by percentage 60+ in 1997. Data are from (46). Country Millions 60+ Percent 60+ Growth 1970 1997 2025 1970 1997 2025 1997/1970 2025/1997 World 300.0 530.0 1200.0 8 9 15 1.8 2.3 Italy 9.0 13.0 18.0 16 23 33 1.4 1.4 Sweden 1.6 2.0 2.7 20 22 29 1.3 1.4 Germany 15.0 18.0 28.0 20 21 32 1.2 1.6 Japan 11.0 27.0 40.0 11 21 33 2.5 1.5 U.S.A. 29.0 44.0 83.0 14 17 25 1.5 1.9 China 57.0 118.0 290.0 7 10 20 2.1 2.5 India 29.0 64.0 165.0 6 7 12 2.2 2.6 Mexico 3.0 6.5 18.0 6 7 13 2.2 2.7 Increases in Old-Age Survival For Sweden, accurate statistics on mortality are available going back for more than a century. Female death rates at older ages have fallen since 1950, with large absolute reductions at advanced ages (Fig. 1). The pattern is similar for males, although from conception to old age males suffer higher death rates than females, and progress in reducing male mortality has generally been slower than for females. Consequently, most older people in Sweden--and nearly all other countries--are women. Fig. 1. Shaded contour maps (47) of death rates (48) for Swedish females from age 0 to 112 and years 1875 to 1995 (49), with contours on a ratio scale of mortality doublings (A) and on an arithmetic scale (B). The color of each small rectangle denotes the level of the death rate at that age and year. White rectangles indicate ages and years when no female deaths were recorded. Dark red rectangles at the highest ages mark the deaths of the last survivor of a cohort. The vertical black line marks the year 1950, when increases in old-age survival accelerated. The horizontal black line is at age 85. The large relative reductions in mortality at younger ages, especially before 1950, are apparent when a ratio scale is used to set contours (A). The vertical light line at 1919 in (A) is a consequence of deaths from the Spanish flu epidemic. The low level of mortality at ages below age 70 and the large absolute reductions in mortality at advanced ages are highlighted when an arithmetic scale is used (B). [View Larger Version of this Image (44K GIF file)] For other developed countries, trends in mortality since 1900 have been roughly similar to those in Sweden. For example, old-age survival has also increased since 1950 for female octogenarians in England, France, Iceland, Japan, and the United States (Fig. 2). If there were an impending limit to further declines in death rates at older ages, countries with low levels of mortality would tend to show slow rates of reduction. There is, however, no correlation between levels of mortality and rates of reduction (2). In most developed countries the rate of reduction has accelerated, especially since 1970 (2, 4). Japan, which enjoys the world's longest life expectancy and lowest levels of mortality at older ages, has been a leader in the quickening pace of increase in old-age survival (Fig. 2). Since the early 1970s female death rates in Japan have declined at annual rates of about 3% for octogenarians and 2% for nonagenarians. Mortality among octogenarians and nonagenarians has been low in the United States (Fig. 2). The reasons for the U.S. advantage and the recent loss of this advantage to Japan and France are not well understood (4, 6). Fig. 2. Deaths per 1000 women at ages 80 to 89 from 1950 to 1995 for Japan (dashed black line), France (blue line), Sweden (green line), England and Wales (red line), Iceland (gray line), the United States (light blue line), and U.S. whites (brown line). The U.S. data (light blue line) may be unreliable, especially in the 1960s. Source: (49, 50). [View Larger Version of this Image (26K GIF file)] The reduction in death rates at older ages has increased the size of the elderly population considerably (2, 4, 7). In developed countries in 1990 there were about twice as many nonagenarians and four to five times as many centenarians as there would have been if mortality after age 80 had stayed at 1960 levels. Reliable data for various developed countries indicate that the population of centenarians has doubled every decade since 1960, mostly as a result of increases in survival after age 80 (7). The decline in old-age mortality is perplexing. What biological charter permits us (or any other species) to live long postreproductive lives (8)? A canonical gerontological belief posits genetically determined maximum life-spans. Most sexually reproducing species show signs of senescence with age (9), and evolutionary biologists have developed theories to account for this (10). The postreproductive span of life should be short because there is no selection against mutations that are not expressed until reproductive activity has ceased (11-13). The logic of this theory and the absence of compelling countertheories (14) have led many to discount the evidence of substantial declines in old-age mortality. Often it is assumed that the reductions are anomalous and that progress will stagnate (15). Only time can silence claims about the future. And empirical observations are not fully acceptable until they are explicable. We have therefore focused on testing hypotheses and developing new concepts. Mortality Deceleration A key testable hypothesis is that mortality accelerates with age as reproduction declines. We estimated age trajectories of death rates (Fig. 3) for Homo sapiens, Ceratitis capitata (the Mediterranean fruit fly), Anastrepha ludens, Anastrepha obliqua, and Anastrepha serpentina (three other species of true fruit fly), Diachasmimorpha longiacaudtis (a parasitoid wasp), Drosophila melanogaster, Caenorhabditis elegans (a nematode worm), and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker's yeast). To peer into the remote realms of exceptional longevity we studied very large cohorts. Fig. 3. Age trajectories of death rates (48). (A) Death rates from age 80 to 122 for human females. The red line is for an aggregation of 14 countries (Japan and 13 Western European countries) with reliable data, over the period from 1950 to 1990 for ages 80 to 109 and to 1997 for ages 110 and over (49). The last observation is a death at age 122, but data are so sparse at the highest ages that the trajectory of mortality is too erratic to plot. Although the graph is based on massive data, some 287 million person-years-at-risk, reliable data were available on only 82 people who survived past age 110. The exponential (Gompertz) curve that best fits the data at ages 80 to 84 is shown in black. The logistic curve that best fits the entire data set is shown in blue (16). A quadratic curve (that is, the logarithm of death rate as a quadratic function of age) was fit to the data at ages 105 and higher; it is shown in green. (B) Death rates for a cohort of 1,203,646 medflies, Ceratitis capitata (17). The red curve is for females and the blue curve for males. The prominent shoulder of mortality, marked with an arrow, is associated with the death of protein-deprived females attempting to produce eggs (51). Until day 30, daily death rates are plotted; afterward, the death rates are averages for the 10-day period centered on the age at which the value is plotted. The fluctuations at the highest ages may be due to random noise; only 44 females and 18 males survived to day 100. (C) Death rates for three species of true fruit flies, Anastrepha serpentina in red (for a cohort of 341,314 flies), A. obliqua in green (for 297,087 flies), and A. ludens in light blue (for 851,100 flies), as well as 27,542 parasitoid wasps, Diachasmimorpha longiacaudtis, shown by the thinner dark blue curve. As for medflies, daily death rates are plotted until day 30; afterward, the death rates are for 10-day periods. (D) Death rates for a genetically homogeneous line of Drosophila melanogaster, from an experiment by A.A.K. and J.W.C. The thick red line is for a cohort of 6338 flies reared under usual procedures in J.W.C.'s laboratory. The other lines are for 17 smaller cohorts with a total of 7482 flies. To reduce heterogeneity, eggs were collected over a period of only 7 hours, first instar larvae over a period of only 3 hours, and enclosed flies over a period of only 3 hours. Each cohort was maintained under conditions that were as standardized as feasible. Death rates were smoothed by use of a locally weighted procedure with a window of 8 days (52). (E) Death rates, determined from survival data from population samples, for genetically homogeneous lines of nematode worms, Caenorhabditis elegans, raised under experimental conditions similar to (53) but with density controlled (21). Age trajectories for the wild-type worm are shown as a solid red line (on a logarithmic scale given to the left) and as a dashed red line (on an arithmetic scale given to the right); the experiment included about 550,000 worms. Trajectories for the age-1 mutant are shown as a solid blue line (on the logarithmic scale) and as a dashed blue line (on the arithmetic scale), from an experiment with about 100,000 worms. (F) Death rates for about 10 billion yeast in two haploid strains: D27310b, which is a wild-type strain, shown in red; and EG103 (DBY746), which is a highly studied laboratory strain, shown in blue (34). Surviving population size was estimated daily from samples of known volume containing about 200 viable individuals. Death rates were calculated from the estimated population sizes and then smoothed by use of a 20-day window for the EG103 strain and a 25-day window for the D27310b strain. Because the standard errors of the death-rate estimates are about one-tenth of the estimates, the pattern of rise, fall, and rise is highly statistically significant. (G) Death rates for automobiles in the United States, estimated from annual automobile registration data. An automobile "dies" if it is not re-registered (26, 54). The blue and dashed blue lines are for Chevrolets from the 1970 and 1980 model years; the red and dashed red lines are for Toyotas from the same years. [View Larger Version of this Image (29K GIF file)] For humans (Fig. 3A), death rates increase at a slowing rate after age 80. A logistic curve that fits the data well from age 80 to 105 indicates that death rates may reach a plateau (16). A quadratic curve fit to the data at ages 105+ suggests a decline in mortality after age 110. For four species of true fruit flies in two genera and for a parasitoid wasp (Fig. 3, B and C), death rates rise and then fall. The data on medflies (Fig. 3B) generated considerable controversy when published because it was generally believed that for almost all species mortality inexorably increases at ages after maturity (9, 17). Previously unpublished data on three species from a different genus and a species from a different order (Fig. 3C) demonstrate that mortality decline is not unique to medflies. Theories of aging will have to confront the vexing observation of mortality decline. Mortality deceleration can be an artifact of compositional change in heterogeneous populations (18). Previously unpublished Drosophila data (Fig. 3D) demonstrate that a leveling off of death rates can occur even when heterogeneity is minimized by rearing genetically homogeneous cohorts under very similar conditions. The mortality trajectories for C. elegans (Fig. 3E) are based on data from experiments more extensive than earlier ones. The trajectory for the wild-type strain decelerates when about a quarter of the cohort is still alive, similar to observations for Drosophila. For age-1 mutants mortality remains low throughout life, which demonstrates that simple genetic changes can alter mortality schedules dramatically. Data from about 10 billion individuals in two strains of S. cerevisiae were used to estimate mortality trajectories (Fig. 3F). Because the yeast were kept under conditions thought to preclude reproduction, death rates were calculated from changes in the size of the surviving cohort. Although they need to be confirmed, the observed trajectories suggest that for enormous cohorts of yeast, death rates may rise and fall and rise again. The trajectories in Fig. 3 differ greatly. For instance, human mortality at advanced ages rises to heights that preclude the longevity outliers found in medflies (3, 16, 17). Such differences demand explanation. But the trajectories also share a key characteristic. For all species for which large cohorts have been followed to extinction (Fig. 3), mortality decelerates and, for the biggest populations studied, even declines at older ages. A few smaller studies have found deceleration in additional species (19). For humans, the insects, and the worms, the deceleration occurs at ages well past normal reproductive ages. If older individuals contribute to the reproductive success of younger, related individuals, then they promote the propagation of their genes. Hence, in social species, the effective end of reproduction may be much later than indicated by fertility schedules (20). The deceleration of human mortality, however, occurs after age 80 and the leveling off or decline after age 110, ages that were rarely if ever reached in the course of human evolution (8) and ages at which any reproductive contribution is small. In our early experiments, flies and worms were held in containers, with the density of living individuals declining with age. To check whether mortality deceleration could be an artifact of such changes in crowding, we held density constant--and still observed deceleration (21). Biodemographic Explanations It is not clear how to reconcile our two key findings--that mortality decelerates and that human mortality at older ages has declined substantially--with theory about aging. The proximate and ultimate causes of postreproductive survival are not understood (12, 22). Theories that leave "non-zero late survival ... unexplained" are unsatisfactory (13). Three biodemographic concepts--mortality correlation, heterogeneity in frailty, and induced demographic schedules--point to promising directions for developing theory. Mortality correlation. Demographers have long known that death rates at different ages are highly correlated across populations and over time (23). In addition to environmental correlation, there may be genetic correlation: Mutations that raise mortality at older ages may do so at younger ages as well, decreasing evolutionary fitness (12). A pioneering Drosophila experiment found mortality correlation and no evidence of mutations with effects only at late ages (24). Postreproductive life-spans might be compared with postwarranty survival of equipment (25). Although living organisms are vastly more complex than manufactured products, they too are bound by mechanical constraints that may impose mortality correlations. The trajectory of mortality for automobiles (Fig. 3G) decelerates, suggesting the possibility that both deceleration and mortality correlation are general properties of complicated systems (26). Heterogeneity in frailty. All populations are heterogeneous. Even genetically identical populations display phenotypic differences. Some individuals are frailer than others, innately or because of acquired weaknesses. The frail tend to suffer high mortality, leaving a select subset of survivors. This creates a fundamental problem for analyses of aging and mortality: As a result of compositional change, death rates increase more slowly with age than they would in a homogeneous population (18). The leveling off and even decline of mortality can be entirely accounted for by models in which the chance of death for all individuals in the population rises at a constant or increasing rate with age (18). A frailty model applied to data on the life-spans of Danish twins suggests that mortality for individuals of the same genotype and with the same nongenetic attributes (such as educational achievement and smoking behavior) at some specified age may increase even faster than exponentially after that age (27). On the other hand, mortality deceleration could result from behavioral and physiological changes with age. Verification of the heterogeneity hypothesis hinges on empirical estimation of the variation in frailty within a population. If at specified ages cohorts of Drosophila (or some other species) could be subjected to a stress that killed the frail and left the survivors neither weaker nor stronger, then comparison of the trajectories of mortality for the stressed cohorts with the trajectories for control cohorts would reveal the degree of heterogeneity (28). In practice, however, stresses generally weaken some survivors and strengthen others. Experiments with multiple intensities of stress, including nonlethal levels, may permit experimental estimates of heterogeneity in frailty. Induced demographic schedules. A key construct underlying evolutionary theory is the Lotka equation, which determines the growth rate of a population (or the spread of an advantageous mutation) given age schedules of fertility and survival (29). The simplistic assumption in the Lotka equation that fertility and survival schedules are fixed is surely wrong for most species in the wild: Environments in nature are uncertain and changing (30). Many species have evolved alternative physiological modes for coping with fluctuating conditions, including dauer states (C. elegans), stationary phase (yeast), diapause (certain insects), and hibernation. In social insects the same genome can be programmed to produce short-lived workers or long-lived queens (9). That is, alternative demographic schedules of fertility and survival can be induced by environmental conditions. To reproduce medflies need protein--and this is only occasionally available in the wild. Medflies fed sugar and water can survive to advanced ages and still reproduce when fed protein. Regardless of when medflies begin reproducing, their subsequent mortality starts low and rises rapidly. This is a striking example of how, depending on the environment, organisms can manipulate their age-specific fertility and survival (31). In nematodes, exposure to nonlethal heat shock or other stresses early in life induces increases in both stress resistance and longevity (32). In Drosophila, stress can also produce increases in subsequent longevity, attributable in part to the induction of molecular chaperones (33). Deletion of the RAS2 gene in S. cerevisiae doubles the mean chronological life-span of yeast in stationary phase (34). RAS2 mutants exhibit striking similarities to long-lived nematode mutants, including increases in stress resistance (32, 34). Rodents raised on restricted diets have extended life-spans and increased resistance to environmental carcinogens, heat, and reactive oxidants (35). These findings suggest that stress-related genes and mechanisms may affect longevity across a broad range of species (32-35). In sum, induced physiological change can lower mortality substantially. There is also evidence for physiological remolding to cope with damage in organisms (9, 36). An individual does not face fixed fertility and survival schedules, but dynamically adopts alternative schedules as the environment and the individual's capabilities change. For this and other reasons (30, 37), Lotka-based evolutionary theory needs rethinking. Post-Lotka equations should incorporate "grandparental and multigenerational terms, ... homeostatic feedback and fluctuating environments" (37), as well as induced demographic schedules. Although simplistic, the Lotka equation captures a fundamental insight: It is reproductive success that is optimized, not longevity. Deeper understanding of survival at older ages thus hinges on intensified research into the interactions between fertility and longevity (19, 31, 38). Survival Attributes The concepts of mortality correlation, heterogeneity in frailty, and induced demographic schedules can be tied together by a general question: How important are an individual's survival attributes (that is, persistent characteristics, innate or acquired, that affect survival chances) as opposed to current conditions in determining the chance of death? For humans, nutrition and infections in utero and during childhood may program the development of risk factors for several important diseases of middle and old age (39). Conflicting evidence suggests that current conditions may affect old-age survival chances much more than conditions early in life (2, 40). A frailty model applied to Danish twin data sheds some even-handed light on this controversy. The model suggests that about 50% of the variation in human life-spans after age 30 can be attributed to survival attributes that are fixed for individuals by the time they are 30; a third to a half of this effect is due to genetic factors and half to two-thirds to nongenetic survival attributes (related to, for example, socioeconomic status or nutritional and disease history). The model suggests that the importance of survival attributes may increase with a person's life expectancy. For persons who at age 30 can expect to survive into their 90s, more than 80% of the variation in life-span may be due to factors that are fixed by this age (41). How many survival attributes account for most of the variation in life-spans? The number required to "survive ad extrema" may be "hundreds, not tens-of-thousands" (37); research over the next decade may resolve this question. For nematode worms and yeast, the mutation of a single gene can result in a qualitative change in the age trajectory of mortality (Fig. 3E) (34). For other species, including Drosophila and humans, no genes with such radical demographic effects have yet been discovered, but some polymorphisms, such as ApoE alleles in humans, alter substantially the chance of surviving to an advanced age (42). The emerging field of molecular biodemography seeks to uncover how variation at the microscopic level of genetic polymorphisms alters mortality trajectories at the macroscopic level of entire populations. Analyses of data on Danish twins and other populations of related individuals indicate that 20 to 25% of the variation in adult life-spans can be attributed to genetic variation among individuals; heritability of life-span is also modest for a variety of other species (43). The possibility that genetic polymorphisms may play an increasing role with age is supported by evidence of increases with age in the genetic component of variation in both cognitive and physical ability (44). Although genes and other survival attributes are fixed for individuals, their distribution in a cohort changes with age as the frail die. Hence, it is possible to develop survival attribute assays based on demographic analysis of changes with age in the frequency of fixed attributes. In longitudinal research in progress, we are gathering information on lifestyle and environmental conditions as well as DNA from 7000 Chinese octogenarians and nonagenarians, 3000 Chinese centenarians, and 14,000 elderly Danes. Survival-attribute assays applied to these data may uncover a suite of genetic and nongenetic determinants of longevity. Experiments with insects, worms, yeast, and other organisms permit alternative approaches for discovering survival attributes; the diet and stress experiments sketched above provide examples. That genes can alter mortality trajectories is now certain; research on the mechanisms will shed new light on aging and longevity (45). The importance of diet, stress, and reproduction in inducing alternative mortality schedules has been demonstrated, but the potential of such studies to clarify causal relationships is just beginning to be tapped. The emerging dialogue between biologists and demographers (5) is changing the terms of discourse and opening new vantage points for research on aging. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. In China the 60+ population in 2050 may number around half a billion people, about the number worldwide today (Table 1). To keep the proportion over 60 to a quarter that size, population size would have to rise from 1.25 to 2 billion [J. W. Vaupel and Y. Zeng, Policy Sci. 24, 389 (1991); Y. Zeng, J. W. Vaupel, Z. Wang, Math. Pop. Stud. 6, 187 (1997)]. More generally, see J. W. Vaupel and A. E. Gowan, Am. J. Public Health 76, 430 (1986) [Abstract] and D. A. Wise, Ed., Advances in the Economics of Aging (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1996). 2. V. Kannisto, J. Lauritsen, A. R. Thatcher, J. W. Vaupel, Pop. Dev. Rev. 20, 987 (1994); V. Kannisto, Development of Oldest-Old Mortality 1950-1990 (Odense Univ. Press, Odense, Denmark, 1994); V. Kannisto, The Advancing Frontier of Survival (Odense Univ. Press, Odense, Denmark, 1996); J. R. Wilmoth in (5), p. 38. 3. B. Jeune and J. W. Vaupel, Eds., Exceptional Longevity: From Prehistory to the Present (Odense Univ. Press, Odense, Denmark, 1995). 4. J. W. Vaupel, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. B 352, 1 (1997) [CrossRef][ISI] . 5. K. W. Wachter and C. E. Finch, Eds., Between Zeus and the Salmon: The Biodemography of Longevity (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1997). 6. K. G. Manton and J. W. Vaupel, N. Engl. J. Med. 333, 1232 (1995) [Abstract/Free Full Text] . 7. J. W. Vaupel and B. Jeune, in (3), p. 109. 8. Remaining life expectancy at age 65 for Paleolithic populations may have been about 7 years [R. E. Lee, in (5), p. 212]. For Swedish females in 1900, 1950, and 1995 it was 12.9, 14.3, and 19.8 years, and for Japanese females in 1995 it was over 20.8 years, triple the Paleolithic level. Remaining life expectancy at age 50 from the stone age through the middle ages may have varied from 10 to 16 years [J. R. Wilmoth in (3), p. 125], compared with values of 23.8, 26.4, and 33.0 for Swedish females in 1900, 1950, and 1995. 9. C. E. Finch, Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome (Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1990). 10. P. B. Medawar, An Unsolved Problem in Biology (Lewis, London, 1952); G. C. Williams, Evolution 11, 398 (1957) [ISI] ; W. D. Hamilton, J. Theor. Biol. 12, 12 (1966) [ISI][Medline] ; B. Charlesworth, Evolution in Age-Structured Populations (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 1994); P. Abrams and D. Ludwig, Evolution 49, 1055 (1995) [ISI] ; L. Partridge in (5), p. 78. For discussion of the mixed empirical support for this theory, see (13); J. W. Curtsinger, P. M. Service, T. Prout, Am. Nat. 144, 210 (1994) [CrossRef][ISI]; D. E. L. Promislow, M. Tatar, A. A. Khazaeli, J. W. Curtsinger, Genetics 143, 839 (1996) [Abstract/Free Full Text] . 11. J. W. Curtsinger, Genetica 96, 187 (1995) [ISI] ; S. Tuljapurkar, in (5), p. 65. 12. B. Charlesworth and L. Partridge, Curr. Biol. 7, R440 (1997) [ISI][Medline] . 13. The quote, from (12, p. R441), pertains to L. D. Mueller and M. R. Rose, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 93, 15249 (1996) [Abstract/Free Full Text] ; also see S. D. Pletcher and J. W. Curtsinger, Evolution, in press. 14. L. Keller and M. Genoud, Nature 389, 958 (1997) [CrossRef][ISI] . 15. N. Keilman, J. Off. Stat. 13, 245 (1997); J. F. Fries, N. Engl. J. Med. 303, 130 (1980) [Abstract] ; S. J. Olshansky, B. A. Carnes, C. Cassel, Science 250, 634 (1990) [ISI][Medline] . 16. A. R. Thatcher, V. Kannisto, J. W. Vaupel, The Trajectory of Mortality from Age 80 to 120 (Odense Univ. Press, Odense, Denmark, 1998). 17. J. R. Carey, P. Liedo, D. Orozco, J. W. Vaupel, Science 258, 457 (1992) [ISI][Medline] ; J. R. Carey, Demography 34, 17 (1997) [ISI][Medline] . 18. J. W. Vaupel, K. G. Manton, E. Stallard, ibid. 16, 439 (1979) [ISI][Medline]; J. W. Curtsinger, H. H. Fukui, D. R. Townsend, J. W. Vaupel, Science 258, 461 (1992) [ISI][Medline] ; J. W. Vaupel and J. R. Carey, ibid. 260, 1666 (1993) [ISI][Medline]; A. I. Yashin, J. W. Vaupel, I. A. Iachine, Mech. Aging Dev. 74, 1 (1994). 19. M. Tatar, J. R. Carey, J. W. Vaupel, Evolution 47, 1302 (1993) [ISI] ; D. L. Wilson, Mech. Aging Dev. 74, 15 (1994). But most smaller studies have not found deceleration (9). 20. J. R. Carey and C. Gruenfelder, in (5), p. 127; S. N. Austad, ibid., p. 161. 21. J. R. Carey, P. Liedo, J. W. Vaupel, Exp. Gerontol. 30, 605 (1995) [CrossRef][ISI][Medline] ; A.A. Khazaeli, L. Xiu, J. W. Curtsinger, J. Gerontol. 52, 48 (1995) ; A. A. Khazaeli, L. Xiu, J. W. Curtsinger, Genetica 98, 21 (1996) [ISI][Medline] . In our nematode experiments, the volume of the container was reduced as worms died, to keep density constant. 22. K. Christensen and J. W. Vaupel, J. Int. Med. 240, 333 (1996). 23. A. Coale and P. Demeny, Regional Model Life Tables and Stable Populations (Academic Press, New York, 1983); R. D. Lee and L. R. Carter, J. Am. Stat. Assoc. 87, 659 (1992) [ISI] . 24. S. D. Pletcher, D. Houle, J. W. Curtsinger, Genetics 148, 287 (1998) [Abstract/Free Full Text] . 25. L. Hayflick, How and Why We Age (Ballantine Books, New York, 1994); L. S. Gavrilov and N. S. Gavrilova, The Biology of Life Span (Harwood, Chur, Switzerland, 1991). Contrary to J. F. Fries and L. M. Crapo [Vitality and Aging (Freeman, San Francisco, 1981)] and R. Dawkins [Sci. Am. 273, 80 (November 1995)], reliability engineering constraints make it virtually impossible for organisms to approximate the "one-hoss shay" of Oliver Wendell Holmes, which ran perfectly until one day when all of its pieces fell apart simultaneously. 26. J. W. Vaupel, in (5), p. 17. 27. A. I. Yashin and I. A. Iachine, Demography 34, 31 (1997) [ISI][Medline] . 28. J. W. Vaupel, A. I. Yashin, K. G. Manton Math. Pop. Studies 1, 21 (1988); J. W. Curtsinger and A. A. Khazaeli, Exp. Gerontol., in press. 29. A.J. Lotka, Theorie Analytique des Associations Biologiques (Hermann, Paris, 1939). The equation is 1 = [int ] e [-] rxl(x)m(x)dx, where r is the intrinsic rate of growth of the population, l(x) is the proportion of females surviving to age x, and m(x) is the average number of female offspring to females at age x. 30. S. Orzack and S. Tuljapurkar, Am. Nat. 133, 901 (1989) [CrossRef][ISI]; M. Mangel and C. W. Clark, Dynamic Modeling in Behavioral Ecology (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1988). 31. J. R. Carey, P. Liedo, H.-G. M?ller, J.-L. Wang, J. W. Vaupel, in preparation. 32. G. Lithgow, T. M. White, S. Melov, T. E. Johnson, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 92, 7540 (1995) [Abstract] ; S. Murakami and T. E. Johnson, Genetics 143, 1207 (1996) [Abstract/Free Full Text] . 33. M. Tatar, A. A. Khazaeli, J. W. Curtsinger, Nature 390, 30 (1997) [CrossRef][ISI][Medline] . 34. V. Longo et al., in preparation. 35. E. J. Masoro and S. N. Austad, J. Gerontol. 51A, B387 (1996) [ISI] ; S. M. Jazwinski, Science 273, 54 (1996) [Abstract] . 36. C. Franceschi, et al., Int. Rev. Immunol. 12, 57 (1995) [Medline] ; E. G. Lakatta, Aging 6, 213 (1994) [Medline] . 37. K. W. Wachter in (5), p. 1. 38. L. Partridge and M. Farquhar, Nature 294, 580 (1981) [ISI] ; L. Partridge and P. Harvey, ibid. 316, 20 (1985) [ISI]. 39. W. Kermack, A. McKendrick, P. McKinlay, Lancet 1, 698 (1934) [CrossRef][ISI] ; D. J. P. Barker, Fetal and Infant Origins of Adult Disease (British Medical Journal, London, 1992); I. T. Elo and S. H. Preston, Pop. Index 58, 186 (1992); R.W. Fogel and D. R. Costa, Demography 34, 49 (1997) [ISI][Medline] . 40. K. Christensen, J. W. Vaupel, N. V. Holm, A. I. Yashin, Br. Med. J. 310, 432 (1995) [Abstract/Free Full Text] ; V. Kannisto, K. Christensen, J. W. Vaupel, Am. J. Epidemiol. 145, 987 (1997) [Abstract] . 41. Calculation by I. A. Iachine based on frailty model described in (27). 42. F. Sch?chter, et al., Nature Genet. 6, 29 (1994) [ISI][Medline] ; G. De Benedictis, et al., Hum. Genet. 99, 312 (1997) [CrossRef][ISI][Medline] ; J. Maynard Smith, Nature 181, 496 (1958) [ISI][Medline] . 43. A. M. Herskind, et al., Hum. Genet. 97, 319 (1996) [CrossRef][ISI][Medline] ; J.W. Curtsinger, et al., Annu. Rev. Genet. 29, 553 (1995) [CrossRef][ISI][Medline] ; C. E. Finch and R. E. Tanzi, Science 278, 407 (1997) [Abstract/Free Full Text] . 44. G. E. McClearn, et al., Science 276, 1560 (1997) [Abstract/Free Full Text] ; K. Christensen et al., in preparation. 45. A promising line of inquiry we are pursuing focuses on lines of medflies (31) and yeast (34) that survive to and reproduce at advanced ages. 46. Census Bureau International Data Base (updated 10 October 1997), available at http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html; United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 1996 Revision, Annex II and III (United Nations, New York, 1997). 47. J. W. Vaupel, Z. Wang, K. Andreev, A. I. Yashin, Population Data at a Glance: Shaded Contour Maps of Demographic Surfaces (Odense Univ. Press, Odense, Denmark, 1998). 48. Death rates are the so-called central death rates calculated by dividing the number of deaths at the specified age by the years or days of exposure for the population at risk. 49. Own calculations from data in the Kannisto-Thatcher Oldest-Old Database and other databases in the Archive of Population Data on Aging maintained by Odense University Medical School, Denmark [see (2)], as well as from data in the Berkeley Mortality Database (http://demog.berkeley.edu/wilmoth/mortality). 50. U.S. data are from the Social Security Administration. Data on U.S. whites are based on Social Security data supplied to J.W.V. by the Health Care Financing Administration. Concerning reliability and calculation methods, see (4, 6); B. Kestenbaum, Demography 29, 565 (1992) [ISI][Medline] ; L. B. Shrestha and S. H. Preston, Survey Method. 21, 167 (1995). 51. H.-G. M?ller, J.-L. Wang, W. B. Capra, P. Liedo, J. R. Carey, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 94, 2762 (1997) [Abstract/Free Full Text] . 52. T. J. Hastie and R. J. Tibshirani, Generalized Additive Models (Chapman & Hall, New York, 1990). 53. A. Brooks, G. J. Lithgow, T. E. Johnson, Science 263, 668 (1994) [ISI][Medline] ; J. W. Vaupel, T. E. Johnson, G. J. Lithgow, ibid. 266, 826 (1994) [ISI][Medline]. 54. Calculations by J.W.V. and C. R. Owens in manuscript on "Automobile Demography." 55. Our research was supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (grant AG08761), Danish Research Council, Max Planck Society, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Wellcome Trust. We thank K. Andreev, K. Brehmer, C. E. Finch, L. G. Harshman, B. Jeune, P. Laslett, H. Lundstr?m, M. K. McGue, H.-G. M?ller, D. Orozco, C. R. Owens, L. Partridge, S. D. Pletcher, S. H. Preston, D. Roach, R. Suzman, M. Tatar, A. R. Thatcher, S. Tuljapurkar, N. G. Vaupel, K. W. Wachter, J.-L. Wang, J. R. Wilmoth, and the Moscamed Program in Metapa, Mexico. This article has been cited by other articles: * Martin, G. M. (2005). Epigenetic drift in aging identical twins. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 102: 10413-10414 [Full Text] * McConnel, C., Turner, L. (2005). Medicine, ageing and human longevity: The economics and ethics of anti-ageing interventions. EMBO Reports 6: S59-S62 [Full Text] * Nuzhdin, S. V., Khazaeli, A. A., Curtsinger, J. W. (2005). Survival Analysis of Life Span Quantitative Trait Loci in Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics 170: 719-731 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Baudisch, A. (2005). Hamilton's indicators of the force of selection. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 102: 8263-8268 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Lucke, J. C., Hall, W. (2005). Who wants to live forever?: Real anti-ageing therapies may soon become reality. But, as yet, no one has asked the general public what they think about life extension. EMBO Reports 6: 98-102 [Full Text] * Robine, J.-M., Paccaud, F. (2005). Nonagenarians and centenarians in Switzerland, 1860-2001: a demographic analysis. J Epidemiol Community Health 59: 31-37 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Marmot, M (2001). Sustainable development and the social gradient in coronary heart disease. Eur Heart Journal 22: 740-750 * Gluckman, P. D., Hanson, M. A. (2004). Living with the Past: Evolution, Development, and Patterns of Disease. Science 305: 1733-1736 [Abstract] [Full Text] * de Bruin, J.-P., Gosden, R. G., Finch, C. E., Leaman, B. M. (2004). Ovarian Aging in Two Species of Long-Lived Rockfish, Sebastes aleutianus and S. alutus. Biol Reprod 71: 1036-1042 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Robine, J.-M., Michel, J.-P. (2004). Looking Forward to a General Theory on Population Aging. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 59: M590-M597 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Lynch, S. M., Brown, J. S., Harmsen, K. G. (2003). Black-White Differences in Mortality Compression and Deceleration and the Mortality Crossover Reconsidered. Research on Aging 25: 456-483 [Abstract] * Peng, J., Zhang, S. N., Lu, W., Chen, A. T. L. (2003). Public Health in China: The Shanghai CDC Perspective. Am J Public Health 93: 1991-1993 [Full Text] * Leslie, M. (2003). Rising Expectations. SCI AGING KNOWL ENVIRON 2003: ns7-7 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Janssen, F., Nusselder, W. J., Looman, C. W. N., Mackenbach, J. P., Kunst, A. E. (2003). Stagnation in Mortality Decline Among Elders in The Netherlands. Gerontologist 43: 722-734 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Erlangsen, A., Bille-Brahe, U., Jeune, B. (2003). Differences in Suicide Between the Old and the Oldest Old. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 58: S314-322 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Mair, W., Goymer, P., Pletcher, S. D., Partridge, L. (2003). Demography of Dietary Restriction and Death in Drosophila. Science 301: 1731-1733 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Pletcher, S. D. (2002). Mitigating the Tithonus Error: Genetic Analysis of Mortality Phenotypes. SCI AGING KNOWL ENVIRON 2002: pe14-14 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Olshansky, S. J., Hayflick, L., Carnes, B. A. (2002). Position Statement on Human Aging. SCI AGING KNOWL ENVIRON 2002: pe9-9 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Horiuchi, S., Finch, C. E., Mesle, F., Vallin, J. (2003). Differential Patterns of Age-Related Mortality Increase in Middle Age and Old Age. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 58: B495-507 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Arking, R., Novoseltseva, J., Hwangbo, D.-S., Novoseltsev, V., Lane, M. (2002). Different Age-Specific Demographic Profiles Are Generated in the Same Normal-Lived Drosophila Strain by Different Longevity Stimuli. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 57: B390-398 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Olshansky, S. J., Hayflick, L., Carnes, B. A. (2002). Position Statement on Human Aging. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 57: B292-297 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Bronikowski, A. M., Alberts, S. C., Altmann, J., Packer, C., Carey, K. D., Tatar, M. (2002). The aging baboon: Comparative demography in a non-human primate. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 99: 9591-9595 [Abstract] [Full Text] * PERLS, T. (2002). Genetic and Environmental Influences on Exceptional Longevity and the AGE Nomogram. Annals NYAS Online 959: 1-13 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Tan, Q., Yashin, A. I., Bladbjerg, E. M., de Maat, M. P.M., Andersen-Ranberg, K., Jeune, B., Christensen, K., Vaupel, J. W. (2002). A Case-Only Approach for Assessing Gene by Sex Interaction in Human Longevity. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 57: B129-133 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Yashin, A. I., Cypser, J. W., Johnson, T. E., Michalski, A. I., Boyko, S. I., Novoseltsev, V. N. (2002). Heat Shock Changes the Heterogeneity Distribution in Populations of Caenorhabditis elegans: Does It Tell Us Anything About the Biological Mechanism of Stress Response?. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 57: B83-92 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Ricklefs, R. E., Scheuerlein, A. (2002). Biological Implications of the Weibull and Gompertz Models of Aging. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 57: B69-76 [Abstract] [Full Text] * KIRKWOOD, T. B.L. (2000). Molecular Gerontology: Bridging the Simple and the Complex. Annals NYAS Online 908: 14-20 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Christensen, K., Gaist, D., Vaupel, J. W., McGue, M. (2002). Genetic Contribution to Rate of Change in Functional Abilities among Danish Twins Aged 75 Years or More. Am. J. Epidemiol. 155: 132-139 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Weitz, J. S., Fraser, H. B. (2001). Explaining mortality rate plateaus. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 98: 15383-15386 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Yashin, A. I., Ukraintseva, S. V., De Benedictis, G., Anisimov, V. N., Butov, A. A., Arbeev, K., Jdanov, D. A., Boiko, S. I., Begun, A. S., Bonafe, M., Franceschi, C. (2001). Have the Oldest Old Adults Ever Been Frail in the Past? A Hypothesis That Explains Modern Trends in Survival. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 56: B432-442 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Johnson, T. E., Wu, D., Tedesco, P., Dames, S., Vaupel, J. W. (2001). Age-Specific Demographic Profiles of Longevity Mutants in Caenorhabditis elegans Show Segmental Effects. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 56: B331-339 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Andersen-Ranberg, K., Vasegaard, L., Jeune, B. (2001). Dementia Is Not Inevitable: A Population-Based Study of Danish Centenarians. J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci 56: P152-P159 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Fabrizio, P., Pozza, F., Pletcher, S. D., Gendron, C. M., Longo, V. D. (2001). Regulation of Longevity and Stress Resistance by Sch9 in Yeast. Science 292: 288-290 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Carey, J. R., Liedo, P., M?ller, H.-G., Wang, J.-L., Love, B., Harshman, L., Partridge, L. (2001). Female Sensitivity to Diet and Irradiation Treatments Underlies Sex-Mortality Differentials in the Mediterranean Fruit Fly. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 56: 89B-93 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Anisimov, S. V., Volkova, M. V., Lenskaya, L. V., Khavinson, V. K., Solovieva, D. V., Schwartz, E. I. (2001). Age-Associated Accumulation of the Apolipoprotein C-III Gene T-455C Polymorphism C Allele in a Russian Population. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 56: 27B-32 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Doblhammer, G., Vaupel, J. W. (2001). Lifespan depends on month of birth. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 98: 2934-2939 [Abstract] [Full Text] * NIA Aging and Genetic Epidemiology Working Group, (2000). Genetic Epidemiologic Studies on Age-specified Traits. Am. J. Epidemiol. 152: 1003-1008 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Wilmoth, J. R., Deegan, L. J., Lundstr?m, H., Horiuchi, S. (2000). Increase of Maximum Life-Span in Sweden, 1861-1999. Science 289: 2366-2368 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Leips, J., Mackay, T. F. C. (2000). Quantitative Trait Loci for Life Span in Drosophila melanogaster: Interactions With Genetic Background and Larval Density. Genetics 155: 1773-1788 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Gems, D., Riddle, D. L. (2000). Genetic, Behavioral and Environmental Determinants of Male Longevity in Caenorhabditis elegans. Genetics 154: 1597-1610 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Christensen, K., Kristiansen, M., Hagen-Larsen, H., Skytthe, A., Bathum, L., Jeune, B., Andersen-Ranberg, K., Vaupel, J. W., ?rstavik, K. H. (2000). X-linked genetic factors regulate hematopoietic stem-cell kinetics in females. Blood 95: 2449-2451 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Sgr?, C. M., Partridge, L. (1999). A Delayed Wave of Death from Reproduction in Drosophila. Science 286: 2521-2524 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Pletcher, S. D., Houle, D., Curtsinger, J. W. (1999). The Evolution of Age-Specific Mortality Rates in Drosophila melanogaster: Genetic Divergence Among Unselected Lines. Genetics 153: 813-823 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Wachter, K. W. (1999). Evolutionary demographic models for mortality plateaus. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 96: 10544-10547 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Azbel', M. Ya. (1999). Phenomenological theory of mortality evolution: Its singularities, universality, and superuniversality. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 96: 3303-3307 [Abstract] [Full Text] * Carey, J. R., Liedo, P., M?ller, H., Wang, J., Vaupel, J. W. (1998). Dual Modes of Aging in Mediterranean Fruit Fly Females. Science 281: 996-998 [Abstract] [Full Text] From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 8 01:37:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 21:37:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Founders.net: The Determinants of Health from a Historical Perspective Message-ID: The Determinants of Health from a Historical Perspective http://www.founders.net/fn/papers.nsf/0/4d32bc73b6c6532c852565bb00716270?OpenDocument OUR CONCEPTIONS OF THE DETERMINANTS of health change periodically. At certain times socioeconomic factors have figured predominantly in policy-making; at other times the emphasis has been largely on identifying the causes of disease and treating the sick. Theories about the determinants of health--indeed, the definition of health--necessarily affect how illness is defined, what public policies are initiated, and how resources are allocated. The National Health Services was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1948. At that time, it was believed that the gradient in health across the social classes (the highest social class had the lowest mortality rates, and the lowest social classes had the highest mortality rates) would be decreased if the financial barriers to health care were removed.^1 Similar arguments were used when Canada introduced its national insurance program for health-care services nearly two decades later. In the 1970s the Merrison Royal Commission on the National Health Service in the United Kingdom^2 was surprised to find that the gradient in mortality across social classes had actually widened even though mortality rates had continued to fall. In 1977, the Labour government established a research group, headed by Douglas Black, the Chief Scientist in the Department of Health and Social Security, to look more broadly at the factors influencing health. A major conclusion of this compelling report, often referred to as the "Black Report,"^3 was that, while health care contributed to improved health and well-being, there were socioeconomic factors of equal or greater importance in determining health and well-being. These factors were primarily causing the gradient in health across social classes. The publication of the "Black Report" unleashed a vigorous and, at times, acrimonious debate and a deluge of studies. Black's working group was itself split over how resources should be allocated to reduce the inequalities in health. As Sir Douglas Black explained: We were all agreed that education and preventive measures, specifically directed towards the socially deprived, were necessary. But the sociological members of the group (Townsend and Smith) considered that the consequent expenditure should be obtained by diversion from the acute services. On the other hand the medical members-- and that means both of us (Black and Morris)--felt that the acute services played a vital part in the prevention of chronic disability and could not be further cut back without serious effects on emergency care, on the training of doctors for both hospital Work and for family practice and on the length of waiting lists. We spent a long time, without real success, trying to resolve this matter.^4 The relative importance of investments in health care versus investments in other determinants of health is still an unresolved issue. The "Black Report," recent population-based epidemiological studies, and new insights from medical science have begun to give us a better understanding of how socioeconomic factors influence the health and well-being of populations.^5 Some quite striking perspectives have emerged from recent studies of the records in Western countries over the last three hundred years. The early period of our history provides some insights about our changing social environments and health. PRE-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Ester Boserup has provided an informative account of hunter- gatherer societies and the Agricultural Revolution.^6 The hunter- gatherer societies had limited supplies of food and were constantly moving. Since only a small number of young children could be coped with under such conditions, birth spacing, infanticide, and short life expectancy constrained population growth. These groups, in addition to being affected by changes in food sources, were also exposed to physical hazards, predators, and, presumably, in certain environments, to pathogens. The basic social structure of the hunter-gatherer societies was the troop or tribe (usually fewer than one hundred individuals). Because the groups were so small, there was a great deal of social interaction and support. Since social support appears to influence health and well-being,^7 the individuals in these simple social units may not have suffered from the negative effects on health of social deprivation that are found in societies today. A different social framework emerged in the agricultural evolutionary stage, about ten thousand years ago, and began what some have called our experiment with civilization. Populations became less nomadic. New social environments with hierarchies were created through the establishment of farming communities and towns. Mechanisms for the control of land, food production, irrigation systems, and organization of labor evolved to ensure that these more complex systems could work. These new social orders did not have the collective, communal aspects of the hunter-gatherer societies. As Boserup points out, many hunter-gatherer societies stayed away from the new order to protect their communal form of existence. It has been suggested that hunter-gatherer societies knew of the technologies necessary for agriculture long before the development of agriculture. In the towns and cities that emerged, the quality of the water supply and sanitation systems became factors influencing health. The increased population density created extreme vulnerability to any new infectious agent that swept into the population. In addition, wars were largely fought over controlling the sources of food and its distribution. In this period, as today, war often contributed to famine and epidemics. Although medicine emerged as a profession during this period, the causes of disease were poorly under- stood and therapies were limited in their effectiveness. Despite these factors, there was steady population growth: from approximately 10 million in 8000 B.C. to approximately 750 million in A.D. 1750. Towards the end of this period insight into socioeconomic policies and the health of populations was gained. In the sixteenth century the authorities in England recognized that famines were man-made rather than natural disasters. Food was available, but the lower classes could not gain access to it.^8 The state interfered and surplus food was supplied to the poor. This intervention angered farmers, producers, and merchants and contributed to the grievance against Charles I and the Civil War. After the revolution the new government abandoned the Tudor-Stuart program of food relief. This policy change subjected England to nearly two centuries of periodic famines. For the poorer members of the population, food riots became common. The issue was not food production, but distribution. After the Industrial Revolution, the government reinstated the old Tudor-Stuart program. One of the criticisms that has been raised about the role of better nutrition in the improved health of populations is the observation that prior to the Industrial Revolution the peerage in England had the same mortality rate as the general population even though they had access to abundant supplies of food.^9 One explanation is that an abundance of food did not ensure that the upper-class children had a better diet than the general population.^10 After the Industrial Revolution, and its associated cultural and' social changes, the life expectancy and height (a measure of the adequacy of nutrition during childhood) of the peers increased rapidly, while those of the general population lagged behind. Interestingly, a health gradient between the peers and the rest of the population emerged only after the Industrial Revolution. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Although there were many technological innovations that affected socioeconomic development following the Agricultural Revolution, a major change occurred when it became possible to harness fossil fuels as a source of energy. Prior to this, slaves or serfs were used for most physical labor. Unfortunately, there is little data detailing the differences in the health and well-being of serfs and slaves versus those who were more privileged before the Industrial Revolution. As Rosenberg and Birdzell have emphasized, the Industrial Revolution was associated with vastly enhanced prosperity for Western societies, which led to better health, the disappearance of slavery and serfdom, and the development of democracy and universal surfrage.^11 During this period we find a substantial improvement in health and a dramatic rise in population. The world population has increased from approximately 750 million in 1750 to nearly 6 billion today. The decline in mortality rates over the past 150 years is one of the great triumphs in human history. A UN report in 1953 attributed the trend to four factors: 1) public health measures; 2) advances in medical knowledge and therapeutics; 3) improved personal hygiene; and 4) improved standards of living.^12 McKeown and Brown, attempting to better understand why health improved, explored factors influencing the major decline in mortality rates in the United Kingdom after 1840.^13 They found that the bulk of the change in mortality rates could not be explained through medical intervention because there were no effective treatments for the major causes of death during most of this period. Furthermore, a large decline in mortality from airborne diseases could not be easily explained by the improved water and sanitation systems at the end of the 1800s. McKeown's conclusion was that the decrease in mortality was due to improved prosperity and nutrition.^14 Critics pointed out that while McKeown's argument about improved nutrition was obviously part of the story, he gave too little credit to public health measures and medicine. He also did not account for discrepancies, such as why the mortality rate of infants and young children in the United Kingdom did not begin to fall until 1900 when the decline in death from tuberculosis started much earlier.^15 Reves showed that the increase in child spacing that occurred in the United Kingdom around the beginning of this century was sufficient to increase the median age of exposure, and thus decrease susceptibility, to infectious diseases.^16 In earlier societies, child spacing was, in part, driven by culture, population density, access to resources, and survival of the society. The dynamics of the practice of child spacing cannot be determined by a simple formula. However, increased birth spacing has been shown to have a positive effect on a nation's health. Improved water systems and sanitation greatly decreased the number of deaths due to waterborne diseases. The greatest decline occurred during the latter part of the nineteenth century, when water and sanitation systems in Britain were improved. Also in the nineteenth century, the hygiene movement and its public health accomplishments^17 reversed the deterioration of the British environment that was associated with the growth of urban centers during the Industrial Revolution. The socially conscious citizens of an increasingly prosperous society drove their economic and political institutions to improve the urban environment, thereby improving health and well-being for the society. Following McKeown's pioneering work, Fogel^18 and others^19 have provided new evidence about the relation between improved nutrition and changes in mortality rates during the Industrial Revolution. They shifted attention from famine (only a small factor in preindustrial mortality rates} to chronically poor or inadequate nutrition as a determinant of health. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, national food production in countries like England and France was not sufficient to provide adequate nourishment to the lower class. The bottom 20 percent of the labor force took in enough calories to stay alive but not enough to do much work.^20 In addition, undernourishment led to weakened immune systems and increased vulnerability to infectious diseases^21 Height and weight measurements have long been used as a means of better understanding the relationship between nutritional status and mortality. An individual's height in adulthood reflects the effects of the nutritional experience during the growing years, including the fetal period. Height at maturity is inversely associated with risk of chronic diseases and dying in the later stages of adult life.^22 Weight represents the balance between nutrition in adult life and energy demands. The association of height with adult mortality rates reveals not the effect of adult nutrition but of nutritional levels (and disease history) from conception to maturity. Individuals who are poorly nourished or overnourished in adult life show higher mortality rates than individuals who maintain an ideal weight for height. However, short men who maintain an ideal weight are at a greater risk of death than are taller men.^23 Height is determined by genetic factors and nutrition, and the relative importance of each in explaining individual variation in height is still being debated. However, population mean height over time, which is used in these population studies, is primarily determined by environmental factors.^24 In Western countries, where records are available, the improvement in nutritional status during infancy and childhood, as estimated by changes in the mean height of the populations, is associated with a decline in mortality rates. Examination of English and American data has shown that Americans achieved mean heights and levels of life expectancy by the middle of the eighteenth century which were not achieved by the British upper classes until the beginning of the twentieth century.^25 The evidence from these studies also shows that the lower classes in England did not show a marked increase in height until this century. Countries in which access to nutritious food varies by social class, for whatever reasons, tend to show class gradients in height and health status. In countries that have a high degree of income equity and equitable access to good food, height differentials by socioeconomic class have largely disappeared.^26 The historical records since the Industrial Revolution show fluctuations in mean heights in populations in Western countries that appear to be related to socioeconomic factors such as the state of the economy, income distribution, and the effects of urbanization. These studies of the relationship between poor nutrition during early life and health and well-being in later life have shown that chronic health problems are more common among short or stunted men than among tall men.^27 Rejection rates for recruits into the Union army in the US Civil War, based on medical conditions, were, coincidentally, inversely correlated with the height of the potential recruits. Fogel^28 notes that individuals in the last century who survived into the later stage of adult life were not freer of chronic disease than are persons of the same age today. He makes the point that reliance on cause-of-death information has led to a significant misrepresentation of the distribution of health conditions and an un- fortunate separation of the epidemiology of chronic diseases from contagious diseases. Poor development during early life, as a result of poor nutrition, not only increases the risk of dying from contagious diseases, it also increases the likelihood of chronic disorders in adult life. The evidence also indicates that this phenomenon is not disease-specific, but is related to the development of the immune system and other organ systems.^29 A historical analysis of the influences of economic growth and improved prosperity on health and well-being is constrained by the limited information available. Thus, while the case for improved nutrition, particularly during childhood, seems clear, the role of other factors, such as better nurturing of children, the environments in which individuals live and work, and other socioeconomic factors-, cannot be readily determined. More recent studies have begun to show the roles of these other factors. COMPETENCE, COPING SKILLS, AND HEALTH AND WELL-BEING The strong and pervasive relationship between an individual's place in the social structure of society and his health status is striking. Kitagawa and Hauser showed compelling evidence of different rates of mortality according to socioeconomic class in the United States between 1930 and 1960.^30 For several major causes of death, the rates were highest for the lower social classes. Even though the mortality rates in the United States have continued to decline, the social gradient in health, as measured by levels of income and education, is still present and the differences in mortality rates have widened.^31 This suggests that the widening in mortality rates is related to changing socioeconomic circumstances, such as increasing inequalities in income, education, and housing, a falling standard of living for a large segment of the US population, and limited access to health care for the poor and least educated. Although life expectancy has improved for all social classes in the United Kingdom for the last sixty years, the gradient in social class mortality has been widening.^32 In contrast, in Scandinavian countries the gradient in health has not widened and life expectancy has increased for all social classes.^33 It has recently been reported that the mortality rate for the lowest social class in Sweden is less than that for the top social class in the United Kingdom.^34 One of the best studies of the relation between socioeconomic factors and the health of the middle class is the Whitehall civil service study. This longitudinal study provides direct measures of the health of individuals against their position in a well-defined job hierarchy.^35 A striking finding from this study is the clear social gradient in health. As in larger population studies,^36 among those lower in the hierarchy there was found to be a higher risk of death from coronary heart disease, strokes, cancer, gastrointestinal disease, accidents, and suicides. The Whitehall study reported that the risk of dying of a heart attack for those in the bottom tier was more than 2.5 times that of the top tier. Marmot has shown that adjusting for conventional risk factors, such as cholesterol, blood pressure, and smoking, accounts for about 25 percent of the civil service social gradient in coronary heart disease. The remainder of the risk is related to factors in the social environments in which those in the civil service live and work. What in the social environment influences our vulnerability to a wide range of diseases and has an effect equal to or greater than more conventional risk factors? Since the civil service is largely a middle-class population, the "something" that influences health is not affecting some underprivileged minority, but is affecting a larger population. There are many beneficial medical interventions available today for sick or injured individuals. There are also a number of interventions of questionable benefit. In the Whitehall study, it was concluded that differences in medical care could not account for the three-fold differences in mortality among civil servants.^37 The Whitehall study also shows that life-style (e.g., smoking) is strongly influenced by an individual's position in the social hierarchy. The study also reinforced a key conclusion from the historical analysis: the mean height of the civil servants, in each job classification, correlates with position in the job hierarchy, sickness-absence rate, and risk of dying.^38 An individual's sense of achievement, self-esteem, and control over his or her work and life appears to affect health and well- being. Studies in Sweden have shown that individuals in high demand jobs who see themselves as having little control over their work have a much higher incidence of coronary heart disease than do people in similar jobs who believe they have control.^39 Similarly, the Whitehall study found that a high proportion of people in the lower tiers of the civil service feel they have less control of their work than do individuals in the top tiers of the civil service.^40 How competence and coping skills relate to vulnerability to disease may be explained by improved understanding of the links between the brain and the endocrine pathways and the immune system.^41 We now understand some of the biological pathways through which individuals, coping with the demands of the environment in which they live and work, can influence the host defense system and disease expression. One set of animal experiments found that a friendly, supportive environment influences the process of diet-induced atherosclerosis. In these studies, two groups of rabbits were fed a cholesterol-rich diet. Those that were treated kindly (i.e., had music played to them) had 60 percent fewer incidences of atherosclerosis than those given the usual laboratory treatment.^42 Another research group working with monkeys found that an unstable social environment can accelerate coronary artery atherosclerosis, and that animals in the Same colony, fed the same high cholesterol diets, show very different degrees of coronary artery occlusion depending upon their position in the hierarchy of the group.^43 Emerging evidence from fields such as psychology and the neuro- sciences points to how nurturing or stimulation influence brain development, particularly when it is most plastic.^44 The modifications and connections that are formed among the billions of cells in the cerebral cortex occur very rapidly during the first few months of life and continue throughout childhood. The development of the brain is strongly influenced by the quality of the nourishment and nurturance given to infants and children. The stimuli affect not only the number of brain cells in the cortex and the number of connections among them, but also the way the nerve cells are "wired." The stages in the development of the brain appear to be linked so that events early in life affect the development and function of the brain at later stages. In addition, in adverse environments activated stress hormones can have a negative effect on brain development and can damage neurons, leading to permanent defects in memory and learning.^45 Studies have suggested that children who were better nurtured in early life are healthier and do better in adult life.^46 There is evidence from studies in animals ranging from rats to nonhuman primates that show that this relationship exists.^47 This new understanding of the mind-body influence on disease expression also has relevance to some of the earlier observations. Could the post-1900 improvement in infant mortality in Britain^48 have been due, in part, to the link between breast-feeding and immune system responses, including the mother's early response to antigens in the infant's saliva? A mother, who is in circumstances that she has difficulty coping with and whose mind-body dynamics are suppressing her immune capability, may not be adequately building the defenses of the child she is feeding. McKeown observed the steady decline throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in mortality from tuberculosis, a disease which affects primarily children and young adults.^49 We know that tuberculosis is influenced not only by family age, structure, and crowding but also by host response capability, which may well be affected by the social environment as well as adequacy of nutrition. Thus, it may be that the increased prosperity and control people had over their lives after the Industrial Revolution, accompanied by improved nutrition, increased the population's host defense capabilities and this inhibited expression of the disease. The relationship among the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the immune system is emerging as a pathway that can help our understanding of the changes in health which are associated with changing social and economic conditions. People's positions in the hierarchy of a society, the degree of control they enjoy, and the adequacy of their diet appear to be important factors in determining vulnerability to a wide range of diseases. The relationship between the quality of nurturing and adequacy of nutrition in early childhood and health risks in adult life has implications not only for health policies but for policies concerning the competence and coping skills of the population (human capital). This is a key factor in determining economic growth. We need to better understand how economic forces influence the quality of social environments and human development. Countries with major improvements in health status and less in- equality in health tend to be countries that are prosperous and have a high degree of social and income equity, and a small proportion of children living in poor social environments. Are societies that are more coherent or communitarian in character likely to provide better environments for health than are extremely individualistic, fragmented societies? How does economic growth and prosperity determine the quality of social environments? ECONOMIC GROWTH, PROSPERITY, AND HEALTH AND WELL-BEING In a recent essay on economic growth, The Economist said: "true enough, economists are interested in economic growth. The trouble is that, even by their standards, they have been terribly ignorant about it. The depth of that ignorance has long been their best kept secret."^50 A key issue has been the inability of the theoretical frame- work of neoclassical economics to cope with the role of technological innovation as an endogenous force in economic growth. The new framework of understanding of the determinants of economic growth, that embraces the role of technological innovation,^51 makes it important to understand better the relationships between technological innovation, economic growth, and the effects of these changes on society. In his analysis of the improvements in the health of populations since the Industrial Revolution, Fogel points out that technological innovation can be a mixed blessing for populations that have to live through the associated socioeconomic changes^52 For example, there have been periods of technological change and vigorous economic growth which produced limited, if any, improvements in the health status of the populations.^53 As Sen has pointed out, how societies create and distribute their wealth determines the health and well-being of the population.^54 In periods of profound technological change, with associated changes in wealth creation and distribution, individuals, particularly the young, will be at risk. Changes since World War II in Eastern Europe and Japan illustrate this relationship. The decline in the economies of Eastern Europe has been associated with a decline in the health status of the populations while the improved prosperity of Japan has been associated with a marked improvement in health status. In a recent analysis for the World Bank on the decline in health status in Eastern Europe, Hertzman concluded that, in addition to the deterioration in the physical environment, a strong factor seems to be the deterioration in the quality of the social environment in which families live and work.^55 In contrast, the extraordinary improvement in the health of the Japanese^56 is associated with enhanced prosperity and what appears to have been a remarkable ability to sustain the quality of social environments and reasonable income equity throughout the society. Wilkinson has found in his analysis of a number of Western countries that life expectancy is correlated with the degree of in- come equity in the society.^57 A recent study of Northern England showed a widening inequality in health that was linked to increasing income inequality.^58 How societies create and distribute the resources necessary to sustain their populations is a fundamental question. Adam Smith concluded that there were sectors of the economy that produced the wealth that made other activities in society possible. Smith described these sectors in his chapter entitled "Of the Accumulation of Capital, or of Productive and Un-Productive Labour:" The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realise itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past, and for which an equal quantity of labour could afterwards be procured. The sovereign, for example, with all the officers both of justice and war who serve under him, the whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers. They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can afterwards be procured. The protection, security and defence of the commonwealth, the effect of their labour this year will not purchase its protection, security, and defence for the year to come. In the same class must be ranked, some both of the gravest and most important, and some of the most frivolous professions: churchmen, lawyers, physicians, men of letters of all kinds, players, buffoons, musicians, opera-singers, opera-dancers etc.^59 The new understanding of the factors determining economic growth has implications for Smith's splitting of the economy into productive and nonproductive labor. Since both sectors are important to a society, the productive labor section can be considered the primary wealth-creating sector (the engine of economic growth) and the other sector, the secondary wealth-creating component (the quality of the environment in which we live and work). When the primary wealth-creating sector falters, the income that flows to the secondary sector decreases, with associated changes in our social environment that can reduce our quality of life. The old economic theory tended to treat all outputs in the economy as being equal in wealth creation. The new concept clearly brings out the importance of a better understanding of a healthy primary wealth-creating sector and the synergy between this sector and the secondary wealth- creating sector. Many activities in the secondary sector, like some aspects of education, health care, and the support of children, are key parts of the infrastructure for all innovative economies. Britain is regarded by many as a nation that has failed to make investments during this century in new technologies on the scale necessary to maintain its wealth-creating capacity, and its economy has fallen behind those of other developed countries.^60 An interesting question is how many of the inequalities in health in the United Kingdom, particularly in the regions of major economic decline,^61 are products of the failure to invest in the key technological innovations that determine economic growth? Krugman makes the point that the United States has two major problems: slow growth in productivity and rising poverty.^62 To increase the nation's wealth through enhanced productivity, ideas, and innovation is key. To help control expenditures, he points out, it is necessary to make the nation's health-care system more cost- effective. In a sense, we are back to the debate in the "Black Report" concerning the need to allocate resources wisely in the secondary wealth-creating sector of our economies. In Canada this debate has become part of the policy considerations concerned with health in the provincial governments.^63 In Manitoba, the new Centre for Health Policy and Evaluation has shown from its analysis of the records of their health-care system^64 (a proxy for the health status of the population) that there is a clear gradient in health against measures of social deprivation. It is not lack of access to health care that is setting this gradient but the underlying social economic factors (unemployment, income, and education) as in Marmot's study of the Whitehall civil service. As might be expected, the most deprived part of the population places the greatest demands on the health-care system. Manitoba is trying to confront the need for reallocation of resources, from the least appropriate health-care expenditures to the social needs of the population in greatest difficulty, particularly children in poverty. As Sen has pointed out, it is not the level of wealth a country has that improves the health of the population, but its commitment to allocate resources to key sectors, such as mothers and children, education, and adequate nutrition.^65 Canada, for the past twenty years, has not been creating sufficient wealth to sustain its consumption in the public and private sectors. Consequently, it has borrowed to maintain its standard of living, leading to the largest external debt per capita (private and public sector) in the developed world.^66 Canada faces the challenge of trying to sustain its social systems, including health care, social support, and education with diminished resources while simultaneously trying to rebuild the economy. To sustain quality social environments with diminished resources is a difficult task. It is possible that societies with high-quality social capital will be better able to adjust than will fragmented individualistic societies. Societies that have a strong, coherent sense of what is important, and a collective will, will probably be most successful. Putnam's description of what constitutes "civic societies" appears to be important in this regard.^67 It is time to integrate our understanding of the determinants of health and the determinants of economic growth. Governments and their societies are mistaken to concentrate on the economics of business cycles rather than the long-term forces affecting economic growth, prosperity, and health and well-being. Fogel has concluded that 50 percent of the economic growth in Britain since the Indus- trial Revolution has been due to better nutrition of the population.^68 A society that handicaps large segments of its population during periods of major technological change may be handicapping its future economic growth. We now have a better understanding of the relationships among economic growth, prosperity, and health and well-being, and the need for a long-term, integrated perspective on the determinants of health and economic growth. Can we make intelligent and wise use of this understanding? ENDNOTES 1 William Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services (New York: Macmillan, 1942). 2 Great Britain Royal Commission on the National Health Service, "Report of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service (The Merrison Report)" (London: HMSO, 1979). 3. Douglas J. Black, Cyril Smith, and Peter Townsend, Inequalities in Health: The Black Report (New York: Penguin Books, 1982). Since the contribution of socio- economic factors was not a thesis the Thatcher government wished to have widely publicized, the government only allowed 260 copies of the report to be published. It was subsequently published by Penguin Books under the title Inequalities in Health. 4. Ibid. 5. Margaret Whitehead, The Health Divide (London: Health Education Council, 1987). 6. Ester Boserup, Population and Technological Change (Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1981). 7. Lisa Berkman and S. Leonard Syme, "Social Networks, Host Resistance, and Mortality: A Nine-Year Follow-up Study of Alameda County Residents," American Journal of Epidemiology 109 (2) ( 1979): 186 -204. 8. Robert W. Fogel, "The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms," in David Landes, Patrice Higgonet, and Henry Rosovsky, eds., Favorites of Fortune: Technology, Growth and Economic Development Since the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991 ). 9. Robert W. Fogel, "Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality since 1700: Some Preliminary Findings in Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth," in Stanley L. Engerman and Robert E. Gallman, eds., Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 41 (Chicago, II1.: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 10. The quality of early childhood nutrition can set health risks in adult life. See David J.P. Barker, Fetal and Infant Origins of Adult Diseases (London: BMJ, 1992). 11. Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell, How the West Grew Rich (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1986). 12. The United Nations, The Determinants and Consequences of Population Trends, Population Studies no. 17 (New York: United Nations Publication, 1953). 13. Thomas McKeown and R. G. Brown, "Medical Evidence Related to English Population Changes in the Eighteenth Century," Population Studies 9 (1955): 119- 41. 14. Thomas McKeown, The Modern Rise of Population (New York: Academic Press, 1976). 15. Randall Reyes, "Declining Fertility in England and Wales as a Major Cause of the Twentieth Century Decline in Mortality," American Journal of Epidemiology 122 (1985): 112-26; Simon Szreter, "The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain's Mortality Decline c. 1850-1914: A Re-interpretation of the Role of Public Health," The Society for the Social History of Medicine 1 (1988): l-17. 16. Reyes, "Declining Fertility in England and Wales as a Major Cause of the Twentieth Century Decline in Mortality." 17. Ibid. Anthony S. Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain, report on Public Health and Social Conditions (London: J. M. Dent, 1983). 18. Robert W. Fogel, "Economic Growth, Population Theory, and Physiology: The Bearing of Long-Term Processes in the Making of Economic Policy," working paper no. 4638 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, April 1994). 19. Edward A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1954-1871: A Reconstruction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). Patrick Galloway, "Differentials in Demographic Responses to Annual Price Variations in Pre-Revolutionary France: A Comparison of Rich and Poor Areas in Rouen, 1681-1787," European Journal of Populations 2 (1986): 269-305. Zvi Eckstein, Paul T. Schultz, and Kenneth I. Wolpin, "Short-Run Fluctuations in Fertility and Mortality in Pre-industrial Sweden," European Economic Review 26 (1985): 297-317. Alfred Perrenoud, "The Mortality Decline in a Long-Term Perspective," in Tommy Bengtsson, Gunnar Fridlizius, and Roll Ohlsson, eds., Pre-lndustrial Population Change (Stockholm: Almquist and Wikseli, 1984), 41-69. 20. Wohl, Endangered Lives. Public Health in Victorian Britain. Herman Freudenberger and Gaylord Cummins, "Health, Work, and Leisure Before the Industrial Revolution," Explorations in Economic History 13 (1976): 1-12. 21. Ranjit Kumar Chandra, "Nutrition and Immunity: Lessons from the Past and New Insights into the Future," ( 1990 McCollum Award Lecture) American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 53 (1991): 1087-102. 22. Wohl, Endangered Lives. Public Health in Victorian Britain. Michael G. Marmot, Martin J. ShipIcy, and Geoffrey Rose, "Inequalities in Death--Specific Explanations of a General Pattern?," Lancet I (1984): 1003-1006. Hans T. Waaler, "Height, Weight and Mortality: The Norwegian Experience," Acta Medica Scandinavica suppl. 679 (1984): 1-51. A. Meridith John, The Plantation Slaves of Trinidad, 1783-1816: A Mathematical and Demographic Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 23. Wohl, Endangered Lives. Public Health in Victorian Britain. Marmot et al., "Inequalities in Death--Specific Explanations of a General Pattern?." 24. Wohl, Endangered Lives. Public Health in Victorian Britain. 25. Fogel, "The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms." 26. Go H. Bruntland, Knut Liestl, and Lars Walle, "Height, Weight, and Menarcheai Age of Oslo Schoolchildren During the Last 60 Years," Annals of Human Biology 7 (1980): 307-22. 27. Wohl, Endangered Lives. Public Health in Victorian Britain. Chandra, "Nutrition and Immunity: Lessons from the Past and New Insights into the Future." 28. Fogel, "The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms." 29. Barker, Fetal and Infant Origins of Adult Diseases. 30. Evelyn Mac Kitagawa and Philip M. Hauser, Differential Mortality in the United States: A Study in Socioeconomic Epidemioiogy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973). 31. Gregory Pappas, Susan Queen, Wilbur Hadden, and Gail Fisher, "The Increasing Disparity in Mortality Between Socioeconomic Groups in the United States, 1960 and 1986," New England Journal of Medicine 329 (1993): 103-109. 32. George Davey-Smith, Mel BartIcy, and David Blanc, "The Black Report on Socio- economic Inequalities in Health 10 Years On," BM] 301 (1990): 373-77. 33. Whitehead, The Health Divide. Eero Lahelma and Tapani Valkonen, "Health and Social Inequalities in Finland and Elsewhere," Social Science and Medicine 31 (1990): 257-65; Jonathan S. Feinstein, "The Relationship between Socioeconomic Status and Health: A Review of the Literature," The Milbank Quarterly 71 (1993): 279; Denny Vagero and Olle Lundberg, "Health Inequalities in Britain and Sweden," Lancet I1 (1989): 35. 34. Feinstein, "The Relationship between Socioeconomic Status and Health: A Review of the Literature." 35. Chandra, "Nutrition and Immunity: Lessons from the Past and New Insights into the Future." Michael G. Marmot, "Social Inequalities in Mortality: The Social Environment in Class and Health," in Richard G. Wilkinson, ed., Class and Health (London: Tavistock Publications, 1986), 21-34. Michael G. Marmot, George Davey-Smith, Stephen Stansfeld et al., "Health Inequalities Among British Civil Servants: The Whitehall II Study," Lancet I (1991): 1387-393. Fiona North, S. Leonard Syme, Amanda Feehey, Jennifer Head, Martin J. ShipIcy, and Michael G. Marmot, "Explaining Socio-Economic Differences in Sickness Absence: The Whitehall II Study," BM] (1993). 36. Vera Carstairs and Russell Morris, Deprivation and Health In Scotland (Scotland: Aberdeen University Press, 1991). 37. Chandra, "Nutrition and Immunity: Lessons from the Past and New Insights into the Future." 38. Ibid. 39. Robert Karasek and Totes Theore!l, Health Vi7ork: Stress, Productivity, and the Reconstruction of Working Life (New York: Basic Books, 1990). 40. Michael G. Marmot and Tores Theorell, "Social Class and Cardiovascular Disease: The Contribution of Work," International Journal of Health Services 18 (1988): 659-74. 41. Seymour Reichlin, "Neuroendocrine-Immune Interactions," New England ]ournal of Medicine 329 (1993): 1246. Robert M. Sapolsky, Stress, The Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1992). 42. Robert M. Nerem, Murina J. Levesque, and J. Fredrick Cornhill, "Social Environment as a Factor in Diet-induced Atherosclerosis," Science 208 (1980): 1475. 43. Jay R. Kaplan, Stephen B. Manuck, Thomas B. Clarkson, and Robert W. Prichard,"Animal Models of Behavioral Influences on Atherogenesis," Advanced Behavioral Medicine 1 (1985): 115. 44. Carnegie Corporation of New York, "Starting Points, Meeting the Needs of Your Youngest Children," report of the Carnegie Task Force on Meeting the Needs of Young Children (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1994). Gerald D. Fischbach, "Mind and Brain," Scientific American 267 (1992): 48 -57. 45. Reichlin, "Neuroendocrine-Immune Interactions." Kaplan et al., "Animal Models of Behavioral Influences on Atherogenesis." 46. Kristina Orth-Gomer and Jeffrey V. Johnson, "Social Network Interaction and Mortality: A Six Year Follow-Up Study of a Random Sample of the Swedish Population," Journal of Chronic Diseases 40 (10) (1987): 949-57. 47. Ibid. Stephen J. Soumi, "Adolescent Depression and Depressive Symptoms: Insights from Longitudinal Studies with Rhesus Monkeys," Journal of Youth and Adolescence 20 (1991): 273- 87. 48. McKeown, The Modern Rise of Population. 49. McKeown and Brown, "Medical Evidence Related to English Population Changes in the Eighteenth Century." 50. "Economic Growth, Explaining the Mystery," The Economist (4 January 1992}: 15-18. 51. Richard G. Lipsey, Giobalisation, Technological Change and Economic Growth (Ireland: Northern Ireland Economic Council Report, July 1993). 52. Fogel, "The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms." 53. Ibid. 54. Amartya Sen, "The Economics of Life and Death," Scientific American (May 1993): 40 - 47. 55. Clyde Hertzman and Wendy Ayers, "Environment and Health in Central and Eastern Europe," Report for the World Bank, No. 12270-ECA, 1993. 56. Michael G. Marmot and George Davey-Smith, "Why are the Japanese Living Longer?" BMJ 299 (1989): 1547-51. 57. Richard G. Wilkinson, "Divided We Fall," BMJ 308 (1994): 1113; Richard G. Wilkinson, "National Mortality Rates: The lmpact of Inequality?," American Journal of Public Health 82 (1992): 1082. 58. Peter Phillimore, Alastair Beattie, and Peter Townsend, "Widening Inequality of Health in Northern England, 1981-91," BMJ 308 (1994): 1125. 59. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Everyman's Library, Alfred A. Knopf, lnc., 1910). 60. Bernard Elbaum and William Laxonick, eds., The Decline o[tbe British Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Ralf Dahrendorf, On Britain (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1982). 61. Michael Eames, Yoav Ben-Shlomo, and Michael G. Marmot, "Social Deprivation and Premature Mortality: Regional Comparison Across England," BMJ 307 (1993): 1097. 62. Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity, Economic Sense and Nonsense in the Age of Diminished Expectations (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1994). 63. Nurturing Health: A Framework on the Determinants of Health" (Toronto: Premier's Council on Health Strategy, Government of Ontario, 1991). 64. Norman Frohlich and Cameron Mustard, Socio-Economic Characteristics (Winnipeg: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and Evaluation, 1994). 65. Sen, "The Economics of Life and Death." 66. Peter J. Nicholson, "Competitiveness and the Canadian Economy" (Toronto: The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, 1992). 67. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993). 68. Fogel, "The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms." John W. Frank is Director of Research at the Institute for Work and Health, Toronto, and a Fellow of The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Population Health Program at the University of Toronto. ]. Fraser Mustard is President of The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, Canada. ..... [1]Show details for Doc Info Doc Info References 1. http://www.founders.net/fn/papers.nsf/0/4d32bc73b6c6532c852565bb00716270!OpenDocument&ExpandSection=2#_Section2 From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Mon Aug 8 04:49:54 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2005 22:49:54 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] Wiki: Golden Plates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <42F6E472.20705@solution-consulting.com> Frank, I am not sure why you sent this, but it is a fair and balanced (Fox? Golden Plates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Plates > [Links omitted for readability.] > > The Golden Plates is the name most frequently used to refer to the > "gold plates" that Joseph Smith, Jr. said he received from the angel > Moroni and used as the ancient source for the English translation of > The Book of Mormon. In reference to the plates, the Book of Mormon was > commonly known as the "Golden Bible" during the 1830s. Smith later > became the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. > > Contents > > * 1 Story of the plates > + 1.1 Joseph obtains the plates > + 1.2 Palmyra, New York > + 1.3 Harmony, Pennsylvania > + 1.4 Translation > + 1.5 Special witnesses > + 1.6 Other spiritual witnesses > + 1.7 Plates returned to Moroni > * 2 Physical description > * 3 Other plates in the Latter Day Saint tradition > + 3.1 Criticisms > * 4 Plates outside of the Latter Day Saint tradition > > Story of the plates > > Joseph obtains the plates > > In the 1820s, Joseph Smith, Jr. lived with his father and mother > Joseph Sr. and Lucy Mack on a farm on the edge of Manchester Township > near Palmyra, New York. For a number of years prior to 1827, he > reported visitations from either an angel or a spirit, later > identified as a resurrected angel Moroni. According to Smith, Moroni > had been a Nephite, a member of one of the nations detailed in The > Book of Mormon. Moroni indicated that a record of his people, engraved > on gold plates, was deposited in a hill not far from the Smith farm > and that Smith would one day receive and translate them. > > In successive years, Smith would travel to the hill, now known as the > Hill Cumorah, but was forbidden to obtain the plates. Finally in late > September of 1827, at the age of 21, Smith claimed that he had finally > been allowed to receive the antique history. According to various > reports, he brought a "60-lb." object "wrapped up in a tow frock" into > his father's home (William Smith, "Sermon in the Saints' Chapel," > Deloit, Iowa June 8, 1888, Saints Herald 31 (1884):643-44). Besides > Joseph Jr., six of Joseph's siblings lived at home. According to > Joseph's brother William's account, their father put the plates into a > pillow case and asked "What, Joseph, can we not see them?" Joseph Jr. > replied, "No. I was disobedient the first time but I intend to be > faithful this time. For I was forbidden to show them until they are > translated, but you can feel them." Again, according to William's > account: > > "We handled them and could tell what they were. They were not > quite as large as this Bible. Could tell whether they were > round or square. Could raise the leaves this way (raising a few > leaves of the Bible before him). One could easily tell that > they were not a stone hewn out to deceive or even a block of > wood. Being a mixture of gold and copper, they were much > heavier than stone, and very much heavier than wood." > > Palmyra, New York > > Shortly after Smith claimed to receive the plates, rumors of their > presence began to circulate among the residents of Palmyra. Several of > Smith's neighbors made attempts to find and seize the plates, leading > Joseph, Jr. (the translator) to keep them hidden and to operate in > great secrecy. > > Smith's associate, Josiah Stowell, later claimed that he was the first > person to receive the plates from Smith's hands. Stowell handled and > lifted the plates which remained wrapped in a cloth that resembled a > cloak or a pillow case. Other associates of Smith who reported that > they handled the plates through the cloth included Smith's mother, > Lucy Mack Smith, and his brothers Hyrum and William. > > Soon after acquiring the plates, Smith locked them in a box he > procured from his brother Hyrum. Some of Smith's neighbors discovered > the box's hiding place and smashed it. Meanwhile, however, Smith > claimed a premonition had previously caused him to move the plates to > a safer spot. (Joel Tiffany, Tiffany's Monthly 5 (1859): 167). Smith > then acquired a wooden "Ontario glass-box". The plates were placed > into this second box which was then nailed shut. Several witnesses > reported lifting the plates while the were sealed in the box. Martin > Harris recalled that his wife and daughter had lifted them and that > they were "about as much as [his daughter] could lift". Harris then > went to the Smith house himself while Joseph was away. Harris later > recalled: > > "While at Mr. Smith's I hefted the plates, and I knew from the > heft that they were lead or gold, and I knew that Joseph had > not credit enough to buy so much lead." (Tiffany's Monthly 5 > (1859): 168-69). > > Harmony, Pennsylvania > > Excitement around the Palmyra area and growing opposition encouraged > Smith to relocate to his father-in-law's farm in Harmony, > Pennsylvania. According to Smith's brother-in-law, who helped Smith > and his wife Emma move, the box containing the plates was placed "into > a barrel about one-third full of [dry] beans"; after the plates were > so secured, the barrel was filled up with more beans. > > Residents of Harmony also reported encounters with the plates, either > sealed in the box or covered by a cloth. Smith's brother-in-law Isaac > Hale recalled that he was "shown a box, in which it is said they were > contained, which had, to all appearances, been used as a glass box of > the common sized window glass." Hale said that he "was allowed to feel > the weight of the box, and they gave me to understand that the book of > plates was then in the box -- into which, however, I was not allowed > to look." (Isaac Hale Statement, reprinted in Dan Vogel, Early Mormon > Documents IV:286.) > > Translation > > Emma later recalled that "she often wrote for Joseph Smith during the > work of translation..." (Joseph Smith III to James T. Cobb, Feb. 14, > 1879, Letterbook 2, pp. 85-88, RLDS Archives, courteously shared with > Richard Lloyd Anderson by Smith family scholar Buddy Youngreen). By > her account: > > "The plates often lay on the table without any attempt at > concealment, wrapped in a small linen table cloth, which I had > given him to fold them in. I once felt of the plates as they > thus lay on the table tracing their outline and shape. They > seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a > metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one > does sometimes thumb the edges of a book." (Saints' Herald 26 > (1879):290) > > Special witnesses > > As Smith and his associates neared the end of their translation of the > plates, Smith revealed that a number of special witnesses would be > called to testify of the reality of the Golden Plates. There are two > sets of witnesses: the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses. Both > sets of witnesses signed joint statements in June of 1829 which were > subsequently published along with the text of the Book of Mormon. > > The Three Witnesses -- Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin > Harris -- claimed to have seen an angel descend from heaven and > present the plates. They claimed to have seen the plates but not touch > them. They heard a voice from heaven declaring that the book was > translated by the power of God and that they should bear record of it. > > The Eight Witnesses were members of the families of Joseph Smith and > David Whitmer. Like the Three Witnesses, the Eight signed a joint > statement in June 1829. Many of these men had previously handled the > plates either when they were in one of the boxes or wrapped in a > cloth. According to their statement, they also saw and hefted the > plates, "the translator of this work, has shown unto us the plates of > which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many > of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our > hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the > appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship." > > Other spiritual witnesses > > Mary Whitmer, the wife of Peter Whitmer, Sr., also reported seeing the > plates in supernatural or visionary experiences (see Investigating the > Book of Mormon Witnesses by Richard Lloyd Anderson). She said she saw > the angel Moroni, conversed with him, and was shown the gold plates as > a comfort and testimony to her while she kept house for a large party > during the translation work (Peterson, H. Donl. Moroni: Ancient > Prophet, Modern Messenger. Bountiful, Utah, 1983. pp. 114, 116). Most > of her immediate family was directly involved with Joseph Smith and/or > the translation. > > Plates returned to Moroni > > After the work of translation was complete and after the visionary > experiences of the Special Witnesses, Smith reported that the plates > were returned to Moroni in the summer of 1829. Many Latter Day Saints > believe that Moroni returned the plates to the Hill Cumorah and that > other ancient records lie buried there. > > Physical description > > Smith said Moroni used the term "gold plates" rather than "golden > plates." Smith's brother William believed that the plates were "a > mixture of gold and copper." Other witnesses said the plates had the > "appearance of gold" and were sheets of metal about 6 inches wide by 8 > inches high and somewhat thinner than common tin. The plates were said > to be bound together with three rings, and made a book about 6 inches > thick. Reports from Smith and others who lifted the plates (while > wrapped in cloth or contained within a box) agree that they weighed > about 60 pounds. > > In his famous letter to Chicago Democrat publisher John Wentworth > ([1]), Smith wrote: > > "These records were engraven on plates which had the appearance > of gold, each plate was six inches [150 mm] wide and eight > inches [200 mm] long, and not quite so thick as common tin... > The volume was something near six inches [150 mm] in thickness, > a part of which was sealed." These plates are typically > referred to as the "gold plates" or other similar phrases. > > William Smith (Joseph's brother) wrote in an 1883 account: > > "I was permitted to lift them as they laid in a pillow-case; > but not to see them, as it was contrary to the commands he had > received. They weighed about sixty pounds [22 kg if troy > pounds, 27 kg if avoirdupois] according to the best of my > judgment." > > Other plates in the Latter Day Saint tradition > > In addition to the Golden Plates, there are several other mentions of > ancient records recorded on metal plates in the Latter Day Saint > tradition. > > The text of the Book of Mormon itself refers to several other sets of > plates: > * The brass plates -- originally owned by Laban, containing the > writings of Old Testament prophets up to the time shortly before > the Babylonian Exile, as well as the otherwise unknown prophets > Zenos and Zenoch, and possibly others. > > * The plates of Nephi (sometimes the "large plates of Nephi") -- the > source of the text abridged by Mormon and engraved upon the Golden > Plates. > > * The small plates of Nephi -- the source of the First Book of > Nephi, the Second Book of Nephi, the Book of Jacob, the Book of > Enos, the Book of Jarom, and the Book of Omni, which replaced the > lost 116 pages. > > * The twenty-four plates found by the people of Limhi containing the > record of the Jaredites, translated by King Mosiah and abridged by > Moroni as the Book of Ether. > > In addition to plates relating to the Book of Mormon, Smith acquired a > set of 6 plates known as the Kinderhook Plates in 1843. > > James J. Strang, one of the rival claimants to succeed Smith also > claimed to discover and translate a set of plates known as the Voree > Plates. > > Criticisms > > A criticism involves the descrepancy concerning the weight of the > plates. If the plates were of pure gold, 60 pounds would be a very low > for an estimate of its weight. > > Dan Vogel writes: > > A block of solid tin measuring 7 x 8 x 6 inches, or 288 cubic > inches, would weigh 74.67 pounds. If one allows for a 30 > percent reduction due to the unevenness and space between the > plates, the package would then weigh 52.27 pounds. Using the > same calculations, plates of gold weigh 140.50 pounds; copper, > 64.71 pounds; a mixture of gold and copper, between 65 and 140 > pounds. (Vogel, The Making of a Prophet, 600) > > While this does not cast doubt on the existence of the plates, it > challenges the assumption that they were pure gold. Referring to > Smith's statement that the plates "had the appearance of gold," some > have speculated that the metal of the plates was tumbaga, the name > given by the Spaniards to a versatile alloy of gold and copper which > could "be cast, drawn, hammered, gilded, soldered, welded, plated, > hardened, annealed, polished, engraved, embossed, and inlaid." > > Tumbaga can be treated with a simple acid like citric acid to dissolve > the copper on the surface. What is then left is a shiny layer of > 23-karat gold on top of a harder, more durable copper-gold alloy > sheet. This process was widely used by the pre-Columbian cultures of > central America to make religious objects. > > Tumbaga plates of the dimensions Joseph Smith described would weigh > between fifty-three and eighty-six pounds. > > With the lack of physical evidence today, the Golden Plates remain > solely an article of faith rather than an actual artifact or religous > relic. > > Plates outside of the Latter Day Saint tradition > > Other cultures have kept records on metal plates, and those found to > date have been extremely thin, so as to facilitate their being > engraven into with a pointed utensil. For utilitarian reasons alone, > to make it both easier and feasible, the plates would need to be thin > enough to allow depressions to be made into them simply by applying > pressure, rather than having to scratch and dig as thicker plates > would necessitate. Michael R. Ash points to the discovery of objects > made from tumbaga, a gold-copper alloy in South America. He writes > that using this alloy would make the plates more rigid and lighter. > [2] This claim is congruent with William Smith's idea (cited above) > that the plates might be part gold and part copper. Orichalcum, the > legendary metal of Atlantis and the Temple of Solomon, is held by many > to match this same description. In 500 B.C (concurrent with the Book > of Mormon), Darius the Great of Persia inscribed his history on a gold > plate and sealed it in a stone box in the temple at Persepolis. [3], > [4]. > > The BBC wrote a news story about a six page gold book on display in > Bulgaria. This is claimed to be the world's oldest multiple-page book. > The book is written in the lost Etruscan language. Unique book goes on > display. > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Aug 9 01:38:32 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2005 18:38:32 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] "Zero Energy Homes" Message-ID: <01C59C48.61477AE0.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8852127/site/newsweek/ Aug. 15, 2005 issue - Nicholas and Loan Gatai used to cringe when they received power bills that routinely topped $200. Last September the Sacramento, Calif., couple moved into a new, 1,500-square-foot home in Premier Gardens, a subdivision of 95 "zero-energy homes" just outside town. Now they're actually eager to see their electric bills. The grand total over the 10 months they've lived in the three-bedroom, stucco-and-stone house: $75. For the past two months they haven't paid a cent. Almost unknown outside California, ZEH communities are the leading edge of technologies that might someday create houses that produce as much energy as they consume. Premier Gardens, which opened last summer, is one of a half-dozen subdivisions in California where every home cuts power consumption by at least 50 percent, mostly by using low-power appliances and solar panels. Several more are under construction this year, including the first ZEH community for seniors. Aside from the bright patch of solar modules on the roof, Premier Gardens looks like a community of conventional homes. But inside, it's clear why they save energy. "Spectrally selective" windows cut power bills by blocking solar heat in the summer and retaining indoor warmth in cold weather. Fluorescent bulbs throughout use two thirds the juice of incandescents. A suitcase-size tankless hot-water heater in the garage, powered by gas, saves energy by warming water only when the tap is turned on. The rest of the energy savings comes from the solar units. Set flush with the roof tiles, the two-kilowatt photovoltaic panels unobtrusively turn the sun's rays into AC power with the help of an inverter in the garage. An LED readout shows the system's electrical output. Just looking at it can give owners a warm feeling. "When I pull into the garage, sometimes I just like to look at the Sunny Boy [inverter] to see how much power we've generated," says homeowner Kurt Gonzales, whose family bought a 2,200-square-foot house. In ZEHs, the solar production doesn't just feed the home it serves. If the panels are generating more power than the home is using-when the house is empty during a sunny day-the excess flows into the utility's power grid. Gonzales and other residents are billed by "net metering": they pay for the amount of power they tap off the grid, less the kilowatts they feed into it. If a home generates more power in one month than it uses, the bill is zero. That sounds like a bad deal for the power company, but it's not. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District's solar expert Mike Keesee says that's because solar homes produce the most power on the hot sunny afternoons when everyone rushes home to turn up the air conditioner. "It helps us lower usage at peak power times," says Keesee. "That lets us avoid building costly plants or buying expensive power at peak usage time." Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Aug 9 03:04:17 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 21:04:17 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] "Zero Energy Homes" In-Reply-To: <01C59C48.61477AE0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C59C48.61477AE0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <42F81D31.1070502@solution-consulting.com> It is interesting that I used those tankless water heaters when I lived in Argentina in 1966-67. They were kind of spooky, sitting right by the shower. They sounded like a jet taking off, when I started to shower, they'd roar into life. Lynn Steve Hovland wrote: > A suitcase-size tankless hot-water heater in the garage, >powered by gas, saves energy by warming water only when the tap is turned >on. > > > From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 11 21:18:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:18:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Rise of the Digital Thugs Message-ID: The Rise of the Digital Thugs New York Times, 5.8.7 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/07/business/yourmoney/07stalk.html By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN EARLY last year, the corporate stalker made his move. He sent more than a dozen menacing e-mail messages to Daniel I. Videtto, the president of MicroPatent, a patent and trademarking firm, threatening to derail its operations unless he was paid $17 million. In a pair of missives fired off on Feb. 3, 2004, the stalker said that he had thousands of proprietary MicroPatent documents, confidential customer data, computer passwords and e-mail addresses. Using an alias of "Brian Ryan" and signing off as "Wounded Grizzly," he warned that if Mr. Videtto ignored his demands, the information would "end up in e-mail boxes worldwide." He also threatened to stymie the online operations of MicroPatent's clients by sending "salvo after salvo" of Internet attacks against them, stuffing their computers so full of MicroPatent data that they would shut down. Another message about two weeks later warned that if he did not get the money in three days, "the war will expand." Unbeknownst to the stalker, MicroPatent had been quietly trying to track him for years, though without success. He was able to mask his online identity so deftly that he routinely avoided capture, despite the involvement of federal investigators. But in late 2003 the company upped the ante. It retained private investigators and deployed a former psychological profiler for the Central Intelligence Agency to put a face on the stalker. The manhunt, according to court documents and investigators, led last year to a suburban home in Hyattsville, Md., its basement stocked with parts for makeshift hand grenades and ingredients for ricin, one of the most potent and lethal biological toxins. Last March, on the same day that they raided his home, the authorities arrested the stalker as he sat in his car composing e-mail messages he planned to send wirelessly to Mr. Videtto. The stalker has since pleaded guilty to charges of extortion and possession of toxic materials. What happened to MicroPatent is happening to other companies. Law enforcement authorities and computer security specialists warn that new breeds of white-collar criminals are on the prowl: corporate stalkers who are either computer-savvy extortionists, looking to shake down companies for large bribes, or malicious competitors who are trying to gain an upper hand in the marketplace. "It's definitely a growing issue and problem, and it's something we think will definitely increase in both the numbers and severity," said Frank Harrill, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who specializes in computer crimes and who has investigated corporate stalkers and online extortionists. The reason, he said, is that "the Internet is ceasing to be a means for communication and commerce and is becoming the means for communication and commerce." Though the number of corporate stalkers appears to be growing - along with the number of payoffs to online extortionists - quantifying the dimensions of the threat is difficult. Last fall, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh published a study of online extortion involving small and medium-sized businesses, saying that the Internet's global reach had produced "a profound change in the nature of crime, as the existence of information systems and networks now makes criminal acts possible that were not before, both in increased scope and ease." THE study also concluded that while the threat of cyberextortion was real and mounting, data and research about the subject were scant. That is because most businesses, particularly blue-chip companies, are concerned about negative publicity from computer security breaches and do not want to report digital bullying and intrusions to law enforcement officials. "Cyberextortion was the main threat I identified that I thought corporations were overlooking," said Gregory M. Bednarski, the author of the Carnegie Mellon study, who now works at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a computer security consultant. "Unfortunately, I think that's still the issue - most companies are still not taking cyberextortion seriously enough. They just don't see themselves as vulnerable." MicroPatent, based in East Haven, Conn., realized firsthand how vulnerable its data was. The company was also an exception in the world of cyberextortion victims: it chose not only to fight back and to contact the authorities, but it also assembled its own team of specialists familiar with the strategies and weaponry of cybercriminals. Even so, MicroPatent's stalker, using hijacked Internet accounts and pirated wireless networks, was remarkably elusive. "What this means is that the criminals are getting smarter," said Scott K. Larson, a former F.B.I. agent and a managing director of Stroz Friedberg, a private investigation firm that helped hunt down MicroPatent's stalker. "There's an arms race going on in cyberspace and in cybercrimes." MicroPatent, a business that court papers describe as one of the world's largest commercial depositories of online patent data, first came under attack four years ago. Someone penetrated the company's databases and began transmitting phony e-mail messages to its customers. The messages were what are known as "spoofs," online communications - embroidered with pilfered company logos or names and e-mail addresses of MicroPatent employees - that are meant to trick recipients into believing that the messages were authorized. The spoofs, according to court papers and investigators, contained derogatory comments about MicroPatent in the subject lines or text. Some included sexually explicit attachments, such as sex-toy patents that a computer hacker had culled from the company's online files. MicroPatent and its parent company, the Thomson Corporation, did not respond to several phone calls seeking comment. But others with direct knowledge of the hunt for the company's stalker said MicroPatent, which had grown rapidly through acquisitions, had a computer network containing stretches of online turf that were once used by acquirees but were abandoned after the takeovers. Those digital back alleys offered access to the entire MicroPatent network to people with old passwords. Once inside, they could inhabit the network undetected - in much the same way that anyone with a key to one abandoned house on a block of abandoned houses can live in a populous city without anyone knowing he is there. And MicroPatent's stalker was lurking on one of its network's nether zones. By 2003, MicroPatent had become so frustrated with its unknown stalker that it reached out to the F.B.I. for help. But with its resources spread thin, the F.B.I. could not pin down the stalker's identity, his motivations or how he managed to trespass on MicroPatent's electronic turf. A year later, MicroPatent hired Stroz Friedburg and secured the services of Eric D. Shaw, a clinical psychologist who had once profiled terrorists and foreign potentates for the C.I.A. The first order of business, investigators said, was to narrow the field of MicroPatent's potential stalkers and to try to isolate the perpetrator. "You need to take the temperature of the person on the other side and determine how seriously you need to take them," said Beryl Howell, who supervised the MicroPatent investigation for Stroz Friedburg. "Is it a youngster or is it someone who's angry? Is it someone who's fooling around or someone who's much more serious?" Investigators said their examination of the stalker's communications indicated that he was much more than a hacker on a joy ride. That would be consistent with what law enforcement authorities and computer security specialists describe as the recent evolution of computer crime: from an unstructured digital underground of adolescent hackers and script-kiddies to what Mr. Bednarski describes in his study as "information merchants" representing "a structured threat that comes from profit-oriented and highly secretive professionals." STEALING and selling data has become so lucrative, analysts say, that corporate espionage, identity theft and software piracy have mushroomed as profit centers for criminal groups. Analysts say cyberextortion is the newest addition to the digital Mafia's bag of tricks. "Generally speaking, it's pretty clear it's on the upswing, but it's hard to gauge how big of an upswing because in a lot of cases it seems companies are paying the money," said Robert Richardson, editorial director of the Computer Security Institute, an organization in San Francisco that trains computer security professionals. "There's definitely a group of virus writers and hackers in Russia and in the Eastern European bloc that the Russian mob has tapped into." Mr. Richardson is a co-author of an annual computer-security study that his organization publishes with the F.B.I. The latest version said that while corporate and institutional computer break-ins increased slightly last year from 2003, average financial losses stemming from those intrusions decreased substantially in all but two categories: unauthorized access to data and theft of proprietary information. Among 639 of the survey's respondents, the average loss from unauthorized data access grew to $303,234 in 2004 from $51,545 in 2003; average losses from information theft rose to $355,552 from $168,529. The respondents suffered total losses in the two categories of about $62 million last year. While many cyberextortionists and cyberstalkers may be members of overseas crime groups, several recent prosecutions suggest that they can also be operating solo and hail from much less exotic climes - like the office building just down the street. In March, a federal judge in San Francisco sentenced a Southern California businessman, Mark Erfurt, to five months in prison, followed by three and a half years of home detention and supervised release, for hacking into the databases of a competitor, the Manufacturing Electronic Sales Corporation, and disrupting its business. In June, the F.B.I. in Los Angeles arrested Richard Brewer, a former Web administrator for a trade show company, accusing him of disabling his employer's Web site and threatening further damage unless he was paid off. And last month in New York, the Westchester County district attorney's office charged a Tarrytown businessman, Gerald Martin, with hacking into a competitor's computer network in order to ruin its business by tampering with its phone system. Small-fry stuff, some of this, except that even local law enforcement officials say the episodes are multiplying. "We have 590,000 people in our county, but we're seeing lots of examples of lax or lackadaisical computer security," said Sgt. Mike Nevil, head of the computer crimes unit of the Ocean County, N.J., prosecutor's office. "We've seen lots of examples of people going onto a competitor's computer network and clearing out whatever information they can get." For its part, MicroPatent initially believed that its problems were the work of a competitor. It sued one company that it suspected but later dropped that lawsuit. After Ms. Howell's team joined the fray in late 2003, MicroPatent and its consultants began to isolate the stalker, using a small list of candidates distilled from earlier investigative work. Dr. Shaw's analysis of e-mail messages led them to believe that they were tracking a technologically sophisticated man, older than 30, with a history of work problems and personal conflicts, who was compulsively obsessed with details and who might own weapons. The stalker was extremely angry and "holding a grudge," Dr. Shaw recalled. "People like that can be very dangerous. He referred to himself as a soldier behind enemy lines." Within a few weeks, Dr. Shaw's analysis led the investigative team to focus on Myron Tereshchuk, a 43-year-old Maryland entrepreneur who ran his own patent business and had once been rebuffed by MicroPatent when he applied to the company for a job. And Mr. Tereshchuk was indeed their man. Members of Ms. Howell's investigative team all said that Dr. Shaw's profiling was a breakthrough in the pursuit, but that without the subsequent involvement of local and federal law enforcement officials, Mr. Tereshchuk would not have been captured. "It's about grinding out a lot of data; it's not about intuition - though years of working clinically with patients is certainly important," Dr. Shaw said. "The Myron case involved a fair amount of case management because we needed to keep him talking, we needed to keep him engaged, so we could set him up for an arrest." Indeed, the detective work that led to his arrest offers a revealing glimpse into how the new cat-and-mouse game is played in cyberspace - especially when the cloak of secrecy offered by newfangled wireless devices makes digital criminals so hard to track. In early 2004, private investigators began corresponding with the stalker, sending spoofed e-mail back to him in the "voice" of a MicroPatent lawyer. At the same time, federal authorities began physically tracking Mr. Tereshchuk's comings and goings in the real world. By February, the stalker had also become an active e-mail correspondent with Mr. Videtto, the MicroPatent president. It was then that the stalker made a series of mistakes. Among them, he began to brag. In an e-mail message titled "Fire them all," he informed Mr. Videtto that he had found valuable MicroPatent documents by going "Dumpster diving to the Dumpster and recycle bins located in a parking lot on Shawnee Road" in Alexandria, Va., where the company maintained a branch office. That allowed investigators to zero in on his location, further buttressing the notion that Mr. Tereshchuk, who lived nearby, was the author of the scheme. In the same message, the stalker wrote angrily that staff members at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in northern Virginia had snubbed him and given preferential treatment to MicroPatent employees. Several years earlier, a patent office worker accused Mr. Tereshchuk of threatening to bomb the agency. A computer forensics expert embedded a Web bug, a kind of digital tracking device, in one of the e-mail messages that Mr. Videtto sent to the stalker. But the stalker screened his e-mail with decoding devices that included a hex editor, software that allows users to preview the contents of incoming files, and he uncovered the bug. "Was it a script to capture my IP address?" the stalker wrote tauntingly to Mr. Videtto after finding the Web bug, referring to his Internet Protocol address. "I'll look at it later with a hex editor." Investigators said the failed bug worried them because they thought it might scare off the stalker, but by this point Mr. Tereshchuk had already demanded his $17 million extortion payment. He also clumsily revealed his identity by demanding that the money be sent to the person accused of threatening to bomb the patent office. And he kept sending e-mail messages telling Mr. Videtto that he had MicroPatent's customer lists, patent applications, customer credit card numbers and the Social Security numbers of some employees, as well as the employees' birth dates, home addresses and the names of their spouses and children. The stalker also threatened to flood the computer networks of MicroPatent clients with information pilfered from the company, overwhelming the customers' ability to process the data and thereby shuttering their online operations - a surreptitious digital attack known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S. Such assaults, analysts and law enforcement officials say, have become a trademark of cyberextortionists. Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are currently investigating a group of possible cyberextortionists linked to a television retailer indicted there last August. The retailer was accused of disrupting competitors' online operations, and prosecutors have called suspects in that case the "D.D.O.S. Mafia." "D.D.O.S. attacks are still one of the primary ways of extorting a company, and we're seeing a lot of that," said Larry D. Johnson, special agent in charge of the United States Secret Service's criminal division. "I think the bad guys know that if the extortion amounts are relatively low a company will simply pay to make them go away." Mr. Tereshchuk's apparent ability to start a D.D.O.S. attack attested to what investigators describe as his unusual technological dexterity, despite evidence of his psychological instability. It also explained how he was able to evade detection for years, and his methods for pulling off that feat surfaced after the F.B.I. began following him. Using wireless computing gear stashed in an old, blue Pontiac, and fishing for access from an antenna mounted on his car's dashboard, Mr. Tereshchuk cruised Virginia and Maryland neighborhoods. As he did so, federal court documents say, he lifted [3]Yahoo and America Online accounts and passwords from unwitting homeowners and businesspeople with wireless Internet connections. The documents also say he then hijacked the accounts and routed e-mail messages to MicroPatent from them; he used wireless home networks he had commandeered to hack into MicroPatent's computer network and occasionally made use of online accounts at the University of Maryland's student computer lab, which he had also anonymously penetrated. BY late February of last year, however, the F.B.I. had laid digital traps for Mr. Tereshchuk inside the student lab, which was near his home. As investigators began to close in on him, his e-mail messages to Mr. Videtto became more frantic. A note sent on Feb. 28 told Mr. Videtto that if he forked over the $17 million then "everything gets deactivated, sanitized, and life will go on for everybody." In his last e-mail message, sent several days later, he dropped his guard completely: "I am overwhelmed with the amount of information that can be used for embarrassment," he wrote. "When Myron gets compensated, things start to get deactivated." On March 10, 2004, federal agents swarmed Mr. Tereshchuk's home, where they found the hand-grenade components and ricin ingredients. The agents arrested him in his car the same day, in the midst of writing his new crop of e-mail messages to Mr. Videtto. Late last year, Mr. Tereshchuk was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to a criminal extortion charge filed by the United States attorney's office in Alexandria. Earlier this year he pleaded guilty to criminal possession of explosives and biological weapons, charges that the United States attorney's office in Baltimore had filed against him. Possessing illegal toxins carries a maximum term of life in prison. Mr. Tereshchuk is expected to be sentenced this fall. From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 11 21:18:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:18:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SW: On Lobotomy Message-ID: History of Medicine: On Lobotomy http://scienceweek.com/2005/sw050812-6.htm The following points are made by Barron H. Lerner (New Engl. J. Med. 2005 353:119): 1) In the early 1900s, relatives frequently committed their loved ones to long stays in understaffed, overcrowded, and often filthy mental institutions. The therapeutic options for severe mental illness were quite limited. One option, the lobotomy, also known as leucotomy, was devised in 1935 by the Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz (1847-1931). It involved drilling holes in the skull and using a blade to sever nerve fibers running from the frontal lobes to the rest of the brain. Moniz believed that psychiatric symptoms were caused by faulty nerve connections established over a period of years. If these nerves were severed and new connections were allowed to form, he postulated, patients' symptoms would improve. Lobotomies were originally used to treat patients with depression but were later often performed to treat schizophrenic patients suffering from agitation and paranoid delusions. 2) The principal US proponent of lobotomy was the neurologist Walter J. Freeman, of George Washington University Medical School. In June 1937, at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, Freeman and his colleague James W. Watts, a neurosurgeon, presented data on 20 patients who had undergone lobotomy.{1,2] Their paper launched a fierce debate on the procedure. On the one hand, certain members of the medical profession consistently condemned it as brutal, unscientific, and harmful. This appears to have been the case with the 1941 lobotomy performed on Rosemary Kennedy, the mildly retarded sister of John F. Kennedy, whose cognitive functions were severely worsened by the operation. The negative image of lobotomy entered the popular culture through Ken Kesey's 1962 novel ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST and the movie based on it, in which the rebellious hero becomes nearly catatonic after undergoing the operation. 3) On the other hand, Freeman's data painted quite a different picture. The condition of 13 of the 20 patients, he and Watts claimed, had improved. In one case, a 63-year-old housewife who had had increasing anxiety and agitation for a year, they said, "now manages home and household accounts, enjoys people, attends theater, drives her own car."[2] Bolstered by such results, which were confirmed by later studies, Freeman's enthusiasm for lobotomy increased. In 1946, he devised the so-called transorbital lobotomy, in which he used a mallet to pound an ice pick through the patient's eye socket into the brain, then moved the pick around blindly to sever the nerve fibers. He traveled the world promoting his new procedure. 4) Certain physicians, especially those who treated the roughly 400,000 patients in state mental hospitals, embraced the lobotomy. So did the media, thanks in part to Freeman's showmanship. Tens of thousands of lobotomies were performed in the United States before the introduction of chlorpromazine and other neuroleptic medications made the operation all but obsolete by the 1960s. In 1949, Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for inventing the procedure. 5) One of the virtues of historical scholarship is its dynamism: each scholar, building on new information and insights, can revise the conclusions of earlier works. The first book to evaluate lobotomy, Elliot S. Valenstein's GREAT AND DESPERATE CURES,[3] was highly critical of Freeman and his operation, which Valenstein saw as providing a cautionary tale about overzealous physicians. Joel Braslow's MENTAL ILLS AND BODILY CURES argued that a major motivation for lobotomies was to create "apathetic, indifferent, and docile" patients who would be more compliant than they had been.[4] But Jack D. Pressman, in LAST RESORT, emphasized the importance of evaluating historical events within the context of their own time.[5] Although the notion of cutting brain tissue in order to make people submissive is repugnant from our modern perspective, the ability to discharge psychiatric patients even to a limited existence at home was perceived as a therapeutic triumph in the 1940s and 1950s. References: 1. El-Hai J. The lobotomist: a maverick medical genius and his tragic quest to rid the world of mental illness. New York: Wiley, 2005 2. Laurence WL. Surgery used on the soul-sick: relief of obsessions is reported. New York Times. June 7, 1937:1, 10 3. Valenstein ES. Great and desperate cures: the rise and decline of psychosurgery and other radical treatments for mental illness. New York: Basic Books, 1986 4. Braslow J. Mental ills and bodily cures: psychiatric treatment in the first half of the twentieth century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 5. Pressman JD. Last resort: psychosurgery and the limits of medicine. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998 New Engl. J. Med. http://www.nejm.org -------------------------------- Related Material: ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE HUMAN FRONTAL LOBES Notes by ScienceWeek: The human cerebral hemispheres (collectively termed the "cerebrum") represent 85 percent of the brain by weight, and for nearly two centuries one sustained research effort, involving a large number of researchers, has been to identify which parts of the cerebral hemispheres are involved with which mental functions. Such identifications must be made carefully and in context, since essentially every part of the brain is directly or indirectly connected to every other part, with all parts in principle capable of interaction. Still, for certain higher functions, a high degree of localization is apparent. Apart from their large size in humans, what is most evident about the human cerebral hemispheres is the high degree of convolution, a tortuous array of foldings of tissue, one consequence of which is an enormous increase in surface area. This increase in surface area is of some significance, since the entire convoluted surface of the hemispheres comprises a laminated rind of neurons and supporting cells approximately 2 millimeters thick, the rind called the "cerebral cortex". The total surface area of the cerebral cortex comprises approximately 1.6 square-meters, and it is within this relatively thin layer of neurons that most of the processing for the so-called "higher functions" is accomplished. The convolutions of the cerebrum thus make it possible to have an enormous number of neurons distributed in two dimensions in the cerebral cortex without the necessity for an excessively large head. Seen in toto, each cerebral hemisphere consists of 4 lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital (named after the bones under which they lie), and it has been the frontal lobe, the large fore-part of the brain, which has been the most mysterious in terms of function. The most functionally well-defined region of the frontal lobe is the "primary motor area", which lies at the border between the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe, and which is involved in the voluntary control of movement. The back part of the frontal lobe anterior to the motor region is called the "prefrontal region", and prefrontal cortex is apparently involved in planning complex cognitive behaviors. In recent years, "*functional imaging" techniques, which are essentially non-invasive and which can be used with healthy and awake human subjects, have become important new approaches to an old problem. In general, the human frontal cortex apparently helps mediate "working memory", a system that is used by the brain for temporary storage and manipulation of information, and that is involved in many higher cognitive functions. Working memory apparently includes two components: short-term storage (on the order of seconds), and executive processes that operate on the contents of storage. The following points are made by E.E. Smith and J. Jonides (Science 1999 283:1657): 1) The authors present a review of current research concerning the functions of the human frontal lobes as revealed by experiments using *positron emission tomography or *functional magnetic resonance imaging to image subjects while the subjects engage in cognitive tasks designed to reveal processes of interest. 2) The authors report that studies of storage indicate that different frontal regions are activated for different kinds of information: storage for verbal materials activates Broca's area (an area specialized for the production of language) and left-hemisphere prefrontal areas adjacent to primary motor cortex; storage of spatial information activates right-hemisphere prefrontal cortex adjacent to primary motor cortex; storage of object information activates other areas of prefrontal cortex. Selective attention and task management, two of the fundamental executive processes, both activate regions of prefrontal cortex. The authors conclude: "Neuroimaging analyses of executive processes are quite recent, and they have yet to lead to clear dissociations between processes. Perhaps the highest priority, then, is to turn further attention to executive processes and their implementation in frontal cortex." Science http://www.sciencemag.org -------------------------------- Notes by ScienceWeek: functional imaging: In general, in this context, the term "functional imaging" refers to any technique which images neural activity produced by specific behaviors (functions). positron emission tomography: Positron emission tomography is a technique for producing cross-sectional images of the body after ingestion and systemic distribution of safely metabolized positron-emitting agents. The images are essentially functional or metabolic, since the ingested agents are metabolized in various tissues. Fluorodeoxyglucose and H(sub2)O(sup15) are common agents used for cerebral applications, and in cerebral applications of central importance to the technique is the fact that changes in the cellular activity of the brains of normal, awake humans and unanesthetized laboratory animals are invariably accompanied by changes in local blood flow and also changes in oxygen consumption. functional magnetic resonance: Magnetic resonance imaging is a technique involving images produced by mobile protons of a tissue excited by the application of a magnetic field, and when used in functional cerebral imaging, the basis of the technique is that it images very small metabolic, blood-flow, and perfusion-diffusion changes in vivo, in real time, and with no risk to the subject. From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 11 21:18:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:18:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Counterpunch: Amina Mire: Pigmentation and Empire Message-ID: Amina Mire: Pigmentation and Empire: The Emerging Skin-Whitening Industry http://counterpunch.com/mire07282005.html [Thanks to Laird for this.] 5.7.28 By AMINA MIRE Skin-whitening or skin-bleaching is a practice whereby women (and some men) use various forms of skin-whitening products in order to make their skin appear as white as possible. As an anti-aging therapy, skin-whitening promises to "restore" as well as to"transform" the aging skins of women and make them smooth, wrinkle-free-younger-looking. In this context, the natural aging process is systematically framed as a pathological condition which must be interrupted through measures such as "elective surgery" and or by bleaching out the signs of aging such as "age spots." In this way, in the case of white women, skin-whitening is presented as a legitimate intervention designed to 'cure' and mitigate the disease of aging. Skin-whitening as a biomedical intervention is predicated on the pathologization of the natural aging processes in all women, white women in particular. At least in the United States, racially white eastern and southern European women have used skin-whitening in order to appear as 'white' as their 'Anglo-Saxon' "native" white sisters. In the United States, women of colour also have practiced skin-whitening. Many of the early skin-bleaching commodities such as Nodinalina skin bleaching cream, a product which has been in the US market since 1889, contained 10 per cent ammoniated mercury. Mercury is a highly toxic agent with serious health implications. According to Kathy Peiss , in 1930, a single survey found advertising for 232 different brand names of skin-bleaching creams promoted in mainstream magazines to mainly white women consumers in the United States. If dark skinned eastern and southern Europeans can "pass" for white with a little help from skin-bleaching creams, those with sufficiently light skin tones but who are legally categorized as racially black by their invisible " one drop" of "black blood", could also "pass" for white as well. The "appearance of whiteness" is the key to accessing the exclusive cultural and economic privileges whiteness accrues. The fear of the infiltration of "invisible' blackness has fuelled both the marketing strategies of industry and the anxieties of white women that they may not appear "white enough". Peiss writes: Dorothy Dignam's ads for Nadinola skin bleach and Nadine face power, appearing in mass circulation women's magazine, resurrected the Old South. "This line made in the South was largely sold to the Negro market; the advertising was a planned attempt to capture the white market also. Her paean to "the beauty secret of Southern women," featuring plantations, magnolia blossoms, and hoop-skirted bells, erased any hint of Nadinola's black clientele. Although usually rendered obliquely, racial prejudice was an explicit talking point for manufacturers Albert F. Wood: "A white person objects to a swarthy brown-hued or mulatto-like skin, therefore if staying much out of doors use regularly Satin Skin Vanishing Greaseless Cream to keep the skin normally white (Peiss 1998,150). But even though the anxiety of bearing the invisible mark of black blood has, in part, fuelled white women's skin-whitening practices, Peiss rejects the actual possibility that some women of colour may have passed for white by using skin-whitening creams. This is because, according to Peiss, African American women had "disabling" African features that would not allow them to pass for white. In this way, while skin-whitening helped 'dark skinned' eastern and southern European immigrant women to blend into the "secure" domain of whiteness, the racial border between whiteness and blackness is magically secured by the social and political order of the colour line. Women might purchase a skin whitener that covered and colored the skin and simultaneously disclaim its status as paint. For women of European descent, whitening could be absorbed within acceptable skincare routine and assimilated into the ruling beauty ideas, the natural face of white genteel womanhood-although, as Jessie Benton Fr?mont testified, one glance at the hands could undo this careful effort to naturalize artifice. For African Americans, the fiction was impossible: Whitening cosmetics, touted as cures for "disabling" African features, reinforced a racialized aesthetic through a makeover that appeared anything but natural. What these more than "skin deep," uniquely "disabling" African features were is not stated by Peiss. However, this crude insinuation hints at Peiss' refusal to entertain the possibility that skin-whitening may have been used not just by eastern and southern dark skinned women to "pass for Anglo-Saxons," but that women of colour who were sufficiently light skinned have also practiced skin-whitening in order to "pass" for white. Since appearing white is the "only game in town," there are no other grounds outside of appearance on which whiteness as an exclusive racial identity can be secured. Piess's historical documentation of the history of the formation and consolidation of the American beauty industry clearly demonstrates that skin-whitening has facilitated the "racial passing" of certain dark skinned women from eastern and southern Europe. In this context, the practice of skin-whitening is implicated in the American history of racial segregation and racial "passing." Peiss's analysis precludes the possibility of African Americans with light skins passing for white by using skin-whitening creams, while claiming that eastern and southern European women with "dark skin tones" could do so, implicitly offers skin-whitening as 'legitimate' when practicd by 'white' women and as 'illegitimate' and futile for women of colour. This is also the paradigm of much of the published medical literature on the health risks associated with the use of skin-whitening creams with toxic chemical agents. Even though white women have been using both lead and mercury based skin-whitening creams in order to whiten their faces and bodies for centuries, when it comes to warning the public about the dangers associated with this deadly practice, it is often the terribly damaged faces of women of colour which are used for visual illustration. For example, almost all the medical literature published by western medical and dermatology journals offer us women of colour as victims of the dubious desire for unattainable corporeal whiteness. This same unattainable desire is often reinforced with horrifying images of the damaged faces and bodies of women of color after using cheap skin-whitening creams containing toxic chemical agents such as ammoniated mercury, corticosteroids, and hydroquinone. The faces of Black South Africans permanently damaged by long-term use of Over-the-Counter (OTC) 2 per cent hydroquinone based skin-whitening cream. The emphasis on such 'health risks'has facilitated the production, and marketing around the world, of new and, conceivably, 'safer' but highly expensive skin-whitening commodities and combatant technologies. The emerging 'high-end' skin-whitening commodities are marketed mainly to affluent Asian women to modify skin tone, also to white women as anti-aging therapy. So, as one might might expect, race, class and gender dynamics inform the marketing strategy of the new skin-whitening corporate drive. The symbolic and literal 'whitening' of darker bodies still conditions the advertising rhetoric for skin-whitening products. In Africa, the practice of skin-whitening is traditionally associated with white colonial oppression . Those who practiced skin-whitening, were and are still condemned as self-hating dupes, suffering from an inferiority complex. Consequently, those engaging in this practice often do so covertly. So it is only when users of skin-whitening seek medical help from the devastating effects of bodily damage caused by the use of toxic skin-whitening creams that news about this practice gets to the public domain. Tsitsi Dangarembga's novel Nervous Conditions (1988) succinctly captures the contradiction between the colonizing effects of white supremacy and African women's yearning for respectability and idealized feminine aesthetics of beauty. Lucia was my mother's sister, several years younger than my mother and a wild woman in spite of or may be because of her beauty. She was dark like my mother, but unlike my mother her complexion always had a light shinning from underneath the skin, so she could afford to scoff at the skin-lightening creams that other girls used. The association in the above quote of girls with "bad skin" with the use of skin-lightening cream is interesting. On the one hand, it suggests that skin-whitening has a therapeutic function. On the other hand, it may be referring to one of the sinister side effects of the use of skin-whitening: the systemic darkening of the affected area of the skin due to the accumulation of toxic skin-whitening residue inside the skin called exogenous ochrinosis (cf.2). Currently, many African countries have banned the commercial trafficking of skin-whitening. However, skin-whitening products, including those containing highly toxic chemical agents, are currently aggressively marketed to white women in North America as "anti-aging therapy." It is not clear how 2 per cent hydroquinone based skin-whitening cream can cause a permanent disfigurement of African women's faces and bodies while 4 per cent hydroquinone based skin-whitening cream can be promoted to white women as anti-aging therapy. The following ad is for a skin-whitening cream called Lustra which contains 4 per cent hydroquinone. This is the same chemical agent which has caused the disfigurement of the South African woman in the above image and of countless other women around the world. This product is manufactured by a major US- based pharmaceutical company. Lustra skin-whitening cream is extensively promoted on internet shops, beauty salons and dermatology offices in the United States. The primary clientele of Lustra are white middle-class women Currently, transnational biotechnology, pharmaceutical and cosmetics corporations are engaged in the research and development and the mass marketing of a plethora of new forms of skin-whitening products which can "bleach-out" the "dark skin tones" of women of colour and can remove corporeal evidence of the aging processes, 'unhealthy life-style' and overall pollution from the skin of white women. In North America and Europe, the emerging high-end skin-whitening products have been promoted as new 'therapeutic' regimes which can 'cleanse,' 'purify' and 'regenerate' aging skin. Consequently, in North America and Europe, skin-whitening commodities aimed at white women are often sold under the bannerof 'anti-aging skincare.' In other parts of the world skin-whitening commodities are promoted to 'whiten' and 'brighten' the 'dark skin tones' of women of colour. This growing industry is a lucrative one whose reach is greatly facilitated by systematic use of the internet as the main medium for the dissemination of advertising messages for skin-whitening products and related technologies. Some of the leading transnational corporations engaged in the 'trafficking' of skin-whitening products have extensive e-business domains. Often these companies set up internet domains and e-shops in specific countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, just to name a few. In addition to such e-business sales drives, extensive use of the internet allows these corporations to avoid both the negative political implications and legal regulatory restrictions they could face if they were to openly promote skin-whitening commodities in North America and European markets. The 'ethnic' skin-whitening market around the world is decentralized as well being covert. This is because many of the skin-whitening products which target poor women, particularly black women, including women of colour living in North America and Europe, are relatively cheap but often contain highly toxic chemical agents such as mercury, hydroquinone and corticosteroids. In Europe and North America, the 'ethnic" skin-whitening products are usually sold in 'ethnic-oriented' grocery stores and "beauty" salons. Many of these low end' but toxic skin-whitening products are manufactured in the Third World and are imported both legally and illegally to North America and Europe. Even though the western health authorities are well aware of the health risks associated with these toxic skin-whitening products they have taken very littlem if any, action to control their importation or to regulate their sales. The other, more robust trend is the marketing of expensive skin-whitening products to affluent Asian women in living in Pacific Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and others. This represents the largest slice of the skin-whitening global market. Partly because of the covert nature of the trafficking and informal circulation of toxic skin-whitening commodities, it is hard to gain accurate estimates of the market share of the 'low end' but highly toxic skin-whitening market. Similarly, because the 'high end' and, presumably less toxic skin-whitening commodities targeted to whites are promoted under the purview of 'anti-aging therapy,' it is as difficult to gain an accurate or even a generally reliable estimate of the North America and European market shares of skin-whitening products targeted to white women. However, in Asia, where the skin-whitening market outside of Europe and North America is anchored, in 2001, in Japan alone, the skin-whitening market was estimated to be worth $ 5.6. billion. According to the same report, the fastest growing skin-whitening market in Asia is China. In 2001, China's skin-whitening market was estimated to be over $ 1.3 billion. Based on the readily available mass of online advertising for emerging 'high end' skin-whitening products by transnational corporations, these products claim that they can 'improve' the 'appearance' as well as the 'health' of users. These skin-whitening commodities have powerful pharmaceutical properties; they can penetrate the skin and suppress the synthesis of the skin pigment, melanin . Indeed, the suppression of 'dark' pigment, melanin, is listed as an explicit example of skin-whitening health promotion benefits. Frantz Fanon wrote about the "corporeal malediction" of dark skin and here's the antidote! The damned of the earth can thus swiftly alleviate their condition by peaceful, albeit commercial means. In many of the advertisements for skin-whitening I come across during my research, a discursive link is made between youthfulness and whiteness and whiteness and racial superiority. Second, in these advertisements, the aging process of white women is often implicitly racialized by the construction of 'hyper-pigmentation,' 'age-spots,' 'dull' skin tone,' as signs of "pigmentation pathologies". Consequently, skin-whitening advertising directed to white women often promises to 'cleanse,' 'purify,' 'transform' and 'restore' white women's 'smooth' and 'radiant' youthful white skin. Such advertising tries to expand the skin-whitening market with the covert rhetoric of racializing aesthetics. One recurring theme which runs through most of the promotional ads for skin-whitening posted at Asia registered internet sites is the claim that skin-whitening cosmetics can transform the 'yellow' skin tones of Asian women to flawlessly 'radiant' white. These advertisements often deploy the visual technique of 'before' images of 'unhappy,' 'dark' faces of 'Asian-looking' models and 'after' images of smiling 'whitened' faces of the same models . I now want to take the reader to the internet-based advertisements for skin-whitening products by the world's largest cosmetics company a leading promoter of new skin-whitening cosmetics the L'Oreal cosmetics company. L'Oreal's advertisements for skin-whitening products posted at internet sites run by L'Oreal subsidiaries such as Lanc?me, Vichy Laboratories and L'Oreal Paris systematically deploy a mixture of racializing rhetoric and dazzling visual images. Many of these advertisements which are directed mainly to Asian women use images and narratives with implicit references to the aesthetic 'inferiority' of 'dark' and 'yellow' skin tones of Asian women. In these ads, this implied is often reinforced with illustrations of the pathological nature of 'dark' and 'yellow' skin tones of 'Asian-looking' models. With over US$14 billion sales in 2003, L'Oreal is the largest cosmetics company in the world. The company can be best understood as an economic 'super-structure' consisting of, at least, 12 major subsidiaries such as Lanc?me Paris, Vichy Laboratories, La Roche-Posay Laboratoire Pharmacaceutique, Biotherm, L'Oreal Paris, Garnier, L'Oreal professional Paris, Giorgio Armani Perfumes, Maybelline New York, Ralph Lauren, Helena Rubinstein skincare, Shu Uemura, Maxtrix, Redken, SoftSheen-Carlson(TM). Not all of the above listed L'Oreal subsidiaries deal with the promotion of skin-whitening cosmetics. However, this extensive list of L'Oreal subsidiaries illustrates the company's economic power and structural complexity. L'Oreal is also a 20 per cent shareholder of a major French based pharmaceutical firm, Sanofi-Synth?labo. A recent merger worth 60? billion with another European based pharmaceutical firm, Aventis, makes Sanofi-Aventis the third largest pharmaceutical company in the world behind Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. I emphasize the financial link between Sanofi-Aventis and L'Oreal cosmetics in the present work partly to highlight L'Oreal's close connection with the pharmaceutical industry. Skin-whitening, in this context, can be thought of as a lucrative 'spin-off' both for L'Oreal as well as a way to valorize research and development of pharmaceuticals outside the highly regulated biomedical domain. The influence of the pharmaceutical industry is evidenced by much of L'Oreal's promotional rhetoric for skin-whitening cosmetics and related technologies. L'Oreal's ads for skin-whitening cosmetics increasingly blur the line between cosmetic and pharmaceutical claims. Such close integration between the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries has serious social, medical, and political implications. In fact, L'Oreal has already designated some of its subsidiaries, such as Vichy Laboratories and LA Roche-Posay Laboratoire Pharmaceutique, as quasi-pharmaceutical outlets through which the company can successfully promote skin-whitening and other cosmetics under the rubric of skincare biomedicine. The following ads for Vichy Laboratories attest to this opportunistic cosmetic/pharmaceutical industrial cross-fertilization. Discover your healthy skin profile: skin type and hydration. Make an appointment with your Vichy dermatological skin care consultant to identify your skin type, its hydration level and receive a skin diagnosis and personalized skincare recommendation. Vichy Laboratories are devoted to the health of your skin. Backed by dermatological research, Vichy offers you a complete line of skincare products containing Vichy Thermal Spa Water. Dehydration, dryness, skin aging and dull complexion. Vichy, health skin's answer to all skin conditions. Not all of Vichy's advertising messages are couched in such biomedical rhetoric. For instance, when targeting women of colour, Asian women in particular, their 'dark' or 'yellow' skin tones are often conceptualized as pathological targets amenable to 'fixing' and transformation. L'Oreal's internet domains registered in South Korea and China, Singapore, Taiwan aggressively promote skin-whitening products with such provocative brand names as "BI-White," "White "Perfect" and "Blanc Expert." In one of the most stunning acts of commodity racism, an ad for Vichy's skin-whitening brand, "BI-White," features what appears to be an Asian woman peeling off her black facial skin with a zipper. As her black skin is removed a new 'smooth,' 'whitened' skin with no blemishes takes its place. The implications of this image are blunt and chilling. Blackness is false, dirty and ugly. Whiteness is true, healthy, clean and beautiful. "BI-White:The skin Pigmentation ID." Source: [221]http://www.vichy.com/gb/biwhite. L'Oreal calls this marketing strategy 'Geocosmetics: More than half of Korean women experience brown spots and 30 per cent of them have a dull complexion. Over-production of melanin deep in the skin that triggers brown spots and accumulation of melanin loaded dead cells at the skin's surface create a dull and uneven complexion. Vichy Laboratories has been able to associate the complementary effectiveness of Kojic Acid and pure Vitamin C in an everyday face care: BI-White. Another L'Oreal advertisement for skin-whitening brand is called "White Perfect." This particular skin-whitening brand is sold in L'Oreal's Asian markets and online e-shops. In that way, those who live outside Asia can purchase this and other L'Oreal skin-whitening brands over the internet. In this ad, the racist aesthetics of "White-Perfect" reinforces the biomedicalized intervention of Asian women's skin coded by the sign of "Melanin-Block(TM)." L'Oreal's advertisements for skin-whitening cosmetics are often reinforced by constant interplay between the ideological precepts of white supremacy and the technologically-mediated suppression or "blocking" of the capacity for Asian women's bodies and skins to produce skin pigment, melanin. One of the ways in which L'Oreal enacts the biomedicalization of women's bodies and the racialization of the aging processes of women (gendered degeneracy) is through the visual technology of dismembering women's bodies. A close examination of L'Oreal's advertisings for skin-whitening products shows a systematic fragmentation of women's bodies. Almost all the L'Oreal advertising images which I have came across use cropped faces of women. One of the visual techniques used by L'Oreal is the pairing of two cropped faces: one of which bears certain pseudo-pathologies such as 'age spots,' premature-aging,' 'hyper-pigmentation,' and 'wrinkles.' The other cropped image would feature the whitened, 'smooth, wrinkle-free' face of a woman. As a result, L'Oreal's advertising often visually conceptualizes the practice of skin-whitening both as a violent technological fragmentation of women's bodies as well as an instrument of bodily transformation. As the following advertising for L'Oreal's skin-whitening brand, Blanc Expert, shows, the visual fragmentation of women's bodies is often reinforced by the claims of the power of these skin-whitening products to penetrate deep inside the body thereby transforming both the inside and the outside of the users of these products. Lanc?me's exclusive Melo-No Complex(TM) limits the activity of the messenger NO, a newly-discovered stimulator of melanin, produced by keratinocytes. The complex, by targeting keratinocytes, boosts whitening action by 15 times. A powerful combination of active whitening ingredients targets melanocytes to more effectively inhibit the source of melanin production and as a result, diminishes the skin's yellowish tone. The image symbolically illustrates the technological prowess of advanced skin-whitening biotechnology; its ability to penetrate, fragment, colonize, and discipline the bodies of women. In this image, the fragmentation of women's bodies is symbolically illustrated by a beam of light shot through a tube. Upon penetrating the skin, this phallic beam of light produces a new "radiant," white face. In this powerful visually fragmenting technology, the symbolic order of masculinist technology and the aesthetics of white supremacy are rendered as flesh in the "flawless", perfectly whitened and fragmented face of a woman of colour. In this context, the aggressive world-wide marketing of skin-whitening commodities can be legitimated as benevolent 'cures' designed to transform and transcend the "dark" "diseased," bodies of women of colour. Ironically, not all women of colour can afford the "radiant" whitened faces this technology promises. The following is a price list for L'Oreal's Blanc Expert line. As I indicated earlier, this particular skin-whitening brand name is aggressively promoted to Asian women. Blanc Expert Mela-No Cx Blacc Expert Advanced Whitening Spot Corrector (30 ml= $125 US), Blanc Expert Mela-NO Cx Supreme Whitening Spot Corrector (30ml= $100 US ), Blanc Expert Advanced Whitening & Anti-Dark Circles Eye (100ml= $ 77 US), Blanc Expert Mela NO Cx Advanced Whitening Night Renovator (100ml= $ 83 US). This one has the 'cutest' and the most ironic name: Blanc Expert Mela-No Cx UV Expert Extra Large Double Protection SPF 50/PA+++ (30 ml= $59 US). This list clearly demonstrates two important points: that these products are highly expensive and that they contain relatively small amounts of skin-whitening products. There is a common joke in Africa to describe the practice of face whitening: "Fanta Faces & Coca Cola Bodies." Fanta, in this context, refers to the orange colour of a soft drink. The dark colour of the Coke soft drink in contrast refers to the unbleached bodies of African women. This analogy is particularly apt because, like skin-bleaching cosmetics, Coca Cola and Fanta soft drinks are western products which are extensively marketed in Africa. In its broadest sense, skin-whitening as 'anti-aging therapy' aims at intervening, 'halting' and if possible, 'reversing' the aging processes of mainly white women. I have suggested earlier that advertisements for skin-whitening products which are marketed to white women often use language suffused with the racialization of the aging processes of white women and the biomedicalization of women of colour's skin tones. In this market, the paradigmatic face against which both women of colour and middle aged white women must be appraised, and ultimately found wanting, is the 'smooth/ radiant/youthful-looking' white face unmarked by age, labour or class. This technologically-produced 'radiant,' 'age-spot-free,' 'pigmentation-free' young-looking white face is now the universal standard for the "beautiful" face. The cover of the 2002 L'Oreal Annual Report underscores the emergence of the "smooth". 'radiant', technologically produced, "air brushed" white face. In this image, a female with exceedingly blue eyes and perfectly white skin gazes vacantly. Her face shows no hint of life or emotions. This image is simultaneously as frightening as it is ambiguous. It is difficult to tell whether we are confronting a computer-generated animation or an image of an actual woman. This ambiguity is not innocent. The image at once suggests the corporeal possibility of a perfectly white skin and also whiteness as an abstract aesthetics. The ambiguity of the corporeality of this image can be read as an ironic comment on the image itself. In this reading, this computer-generated visual simulacrum recuperates the exclusionary aesthetics of whiteness. L'Oreal has also developed other powerful tools which are designed to monitor the states of women's skin and bodies. One instrument of surveillance is a silicon-based semiconductor sensory device called SkinChip?. First developed for biometric fingerprinting ID and related surveillance technologies, this technology has now been adapted as a 'diagnostic' tool designed to monitor changes in the 'interiors' of women's skin such as "pigmentation" and "hydration" levels and other 'pathological' signs. Monitoring the "interior" of women's skin to gauge their "pigmentation" status has the potential to usher in a new and sinter form of eugenicist white supremacist aesthetics. The fact that SkinChip has been imported from biometric surveillance technology is not insignificant. Surveillance technologies such as SkinChip also reinforce the aesthetics of white supremacy and the global expansion of skin-whitening as a capitalist commodity. L'Oreal is currently developing a personal-size version of the SkinChip device so that women can regularly monitor what is happening "inside" their bodies and on their skins. I hope that I have demonstrated that the emerging skin-whitening industry is a lucrative globalized economic enterprise with profound social and political implications. L'Oreal's advertising for skin-whitening commodities reinforces and consolidates the globalized ideology of white supremacy and the sexist practice of the biomedicialization of women's bodies. It is in this specific context of the continuum of the western practice of global racism and the economic practice of commodity racism that the social, political and cultural implications of skin-whitening must be located and resisted. Consequently, feminist/antiracist and anti-colonial responses must confront this social phenomenon as part and parcel of our old enemy, the "civilising mission" ; the violent moral prerogative to cleanse and purify the mind and bodies of the "dark/dirt/savage". On March 10, 2004, two weeks prior to the American invasion of Iraq, Time magazine's cover featured the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. The caption reads: "Life After Saddam: an inside look at Bush's high-risk plan to occupy Iraq and remake the Middle East" . Hussein's face is painted white by a white man wearing a white casual shirt with matching casual white pants and a white baseball hat using a white paint brush. The colour of the dictrator's unpainted skin looks exceedingly black and menacing. The lower half of the dictator's face and neck are riddled with bullet holes. Amina Mire is at the University of Toronto and can be reached at [222]amina.mire at utoronto.ca From checker at panix.com Thu Aug 11 21:18:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:18:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Brighter and Blander: A Feathered Role Reversal Message-ID: Brighter and Blander: A Feathered Role Reversal New York Times, 5.8.9 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/science/09obse.html [There have been many novels and stories about a device that forces everyone to tell the truth. The results are invariably disasterous. The article below is yet another one about new technology to ferrett out deception. We should wonder whether there will be too much of said technology.] By [3]HENRY FOUNTAIN A New Kind of Paper Trail Companies have gone to great lengths, and expense, to develop technologies to assure that checks, credit cards and important documents are authentic. Most credit cards carry holograms, and checks are often printed with security inks that cannot be easily duplicated. But there may be a much easier way to prevent document forgery or similar kinds of fraud. Scientists in England have come up with a simple technique to scan the surface of paper or other materials for the microscopic imperfections inherent in them. These flaws create a built-in "fingerprint," a unique digital code that can be used for authentication. A piece of paper or plastic may look smooth, but under a microscope there is a certain amount of roughness. Paper, for instance, is made up of tiny fibers that are compressed into a sheet, creating countless random high points and hollows. The technique, developed by researchers at Imperial College London, Durham University and the University of Sheffield, measures this inherent roughness using a basic laser with four detectors. As a section of material is scanned, the detectors continuously measure the intensity of the reflections off the surface at four angles. An average intensity is calculated, and changes from this average are converted into a short digital code (requiring only about 200 to 500 bytes of storage space). The researchers, who described the technique in the July 28 Nature, said the probability of the code being the same for two pieces of paper or other material was basically zero. The technique worked even when the researchers crumpled up a sheet of paper into a ball and smoothed it out, scorched it in an oven or scribbled heavily on it with a pen. The researchers say such built-in fingerprints would be highly secure, since there is no way to control surface imperfections when manufacturing paper or plastic. The technique could even be used with cardboard packaging as a built-in tracking code. Surf This It's not that the world needs any more evidence of the power of hurricanes, but scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory have provided some anyway. Ivan, the storm that killed more than 90 people in the Caribbean and United States last September, created waves as high as 91 feet when it churned through the Gulf of Mexico, the researchers report in the current Science. The scientists were fortunate that an array of pressure sensors they set up on the seabed some 75 miles south of Gulfport, Miss., for another research project were in the path of Ivan. (They were even more fortunate that the sensors survived the hurricane, which when it passed through the area was a Category 4 storm, the second most powerful.) Measurements of the water pressure can be used to calculate wave height. The sensor data showed that of 146 waves at three of the sensors, 24 were higher than 50 feet, and the tallest measured 91 feet. But the researchers say that the sensors may have missed the biggest waves, as the instruments were off when the most powerful part of the storm passed overhead. They estimate that some waves could have been 130 feet high. The waves dissipated in the rough gulf waters before reaching shore. But waves of such magnitude could easily destroy an oil platform, say, or a fishing boat. The largest waves would have peak-to-peak lengths of more than 600 feet, and a cargo ship or other large boat caught in such a wave likely would break in two. Moons of Saturn The greatest moments of the Cassini mission to Saturn involved the exploration of the moon Titan, which with its atmosphere and lakes of methane lakes is one of the most fascinating bodies in the solar system. But Cassini has spent time exploring Saturn's more mundane reaches. The latest is the moon Mimas, which the spacecraft flew by last week. Images taken during the flyby show Mimas, which is about 250 miles in diameter, to be deader than a doornail and heavily pockmarked with craters. The images are available at [4]nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main. From checker at panix.com Fri Aug 12 16:04:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:04:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: 2 New Methods to Sequence DNA Promise Vastly Lower Costs Message-ID: 2 New Methods to Sequence DNA Promise Vastly Lower Costs New York Times, 5.8.9 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/science/09dna.html By [3]NICHOLAS WADE A new way of decoding DNA, potentially far cheaper and quicker than the existing method, has been developed by researchers at the Harvard Medical School. The Harvard team, led by Jay Shendure and George M. Church, describes the method in the current issue of Science. Last week, another new method for sequencing DNA was announced by a company in Branford, Conn., 454 Life Sciences. The two methods, if they work, will represent a remarkable scaling down of Big Science, essentially putting the equivalent of a $50 million genome-sequencing center on the desk of every researcher and physician. The methods are giant strides toward the goal of sequencing the human genome so cheaply that it could be done routinely for medical reasons. The rallying cry for this goal is the $1,000 genome. "The $1,000 genome has been my passion and obsession ever since I was a graduate student," Dr. Church said. A price tag of even $20,000 or so, which now seems attainable in the next few years, would bring whole genome sequencing within the same range as other medical procedures. The new sequencing methods are quite similar in approach. They load the DNA fragments to be sequenced onto ultrasmall beads and visualize the sequence of each fragment through reactions that cause the beads to light up. A principal difference lies in the cost of the equipment. The DNA sequencing machine now being sold by 454 Life Sciences costs $500,000. Jonathan M. Rothberg, chairman of the board, says a single machine does the job of a $50 million sequencing center. The Harvard machine is even cheaper. It uses "off-the-shelf instrumentation and reagents," the authors say, explaining how researchers can set up sequencing centers with mostly standard equipment. The most expensive element is a $140,000, computer-controlled digital microscope needed to record the color changes on a slide containing millions of DNA-carrying beads. For labs that already possess such a microscope, as many do, the equipment costs would be small. All they need do is follow the free recipe provided by Dr. Church. Instead of using bacteria to amplify fragments of DNA by reproducing them, the Harvard method captures each fragment in a drop of liquid, which contains all the ingredients for the chemical amplification method - the polymerase chain reaction. The contents of each drop are loaded onto beads that are then embedded in a gel, with 14 million beads being packed into an area the size of a dime, and fluorescent chemical probes are used to indicate what the DNA sequences are. The machine developed by 454 Life Sciences uses the same amplification method, which was developed by Devin Dressman and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore. But the beads are made to signal their sequence by activating luciferase, the light producing enzyme in fireflies , and the flashes from each bead are recorded by a light-sensitive chip. Dr. Church and Dr. Rothberg are enthusiastic about their own methods. Dr. Church says his method is more accurate and the equipment is far cheaper. Dr. Rothberg says his machines can sequence novel genomes whereas the Harvard method is good only for resequencing, or looking for variations in a genome of known sequence. The first human genome to be completed, by the Human Genome Project in 2003, probably cost about $800 million. Doing a second human genome by the traditional methods would now cost around $20 million. The two new methods promise to be much cheaper. Dr. Rothberg says a human genome could be resequenced now by his method for $1 million. Dr. Church estimates that he can do a human genome for $2 million now and for $20,000 in the future. From checker at panix.com Fri Aug 12 16:04:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:04:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers Message-ID: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers New York Times, 5.8.9 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print By [3]BENEDICT CAREY "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," by Susan Clancy. Harvard University Press, $22.95. People who have memories of being abducted by aliens become hardened skeptics, of a kind. They dismiss the procession of scientists who explain away the memories as illusions or fantasy. They scoff at talk about hypnosis or the unconscious processing of Hollywood scripts. And they hold their ground amid snickers from a public that thinks that they are daft or psychotic. They are neither, it turns out, and their experiences should be taken as seriously as any strongly held exotic beliefs, according to Susan Clancy, a Harvard psychologist who interviewed dozens of self-described abductees as part of a series of memory studies over the last several years. In her book "Abducted," due in October, Dr. Clancy, a psychologist at Harvard, manages to refute and defend these believers, and along the way provide a discussion of current research into memory, emotion and culture that renders abduction stories understandable, if not believable. Although it focuses on abduction memories, the book hints at a larger ambition, to explain the psychology of transformative experiences, whether supposed abductions, conversions or divine visitations. "Understanding why people believe weird things is important for anyone who wishes to know more about people - that is, humans in general," she writes. Dr. Clancy's accounting for abduction memories starts with an odd but not uncommon experience called sleep paralysis. While in light dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders. Some of them must have an explanation as exotic as the surreal nature of the experience itself. Although no one has studied this group systematically, Dr. Clancy suggests based on her interviews, that they tend to be people who already have some interest in the paranormal, mystical arts and the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. Often enough, their search for meaning lands them in the care of a therapist who uses hypnotism to elicit more details of their dreamlike experiences. Hypnotism is a state of deep relaxation, when people become highly prone to suggestion, psychologists find. When encouraged under hypnosis to imagine a vivid but entirely concocted incident - like being awakened by loud noises - people are more likely later to claim the scene as a real experience, studies find. Where, exactly, do the green figures with the wraparound eyes come from? From the deep well of pop culture, Dr. Clancy argues, based on a review of the history of U.F.O. sightings, popular movies and television programs on aliens. The first "abduction" in the United States was dramatized in 1953, in the movie "Invaders From Mars," she writes, and a rash of abduction reports followed this and other works on aliens, including the television series "The Outer Limits." One such report, by a couple from New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill, followed by days a particularly evocative episode of the show in 1961. Mr. Hill's description of the aliens - with big heads and shiny wraparound eyes - was featured in a best-selling book about the experience, and inspired the alien forms in Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in 1977, according to Dr. Clancy. Thus does life imitate art, and vice versa, in a narrative hall of mirrors in which scenes and even dialogues are recycled. Although they are distinct in details, abduction narratives are extremely similar in broad outline and often include experimentation with a sexual or procreative subtext. "Oh! And he's opening my shirt, and - he's going to put that thing in my navel," says one 1970's narrative, referring to a needle. "I can feel them moving that thing around in my stomach, in my body," the narrative, excerpted in the book, continues. The passage echoes other abduction accounts, past and future. In a laboratory study in 2002, Dr. Clancy and another Harvard psychologist, Richard McNally, gave self-described abductees a standardized word-association test intended to measure proneness to false-memory creation. The participants studied lists of words that were related to one another - "sugar," "candy," "sour," "bitter" - and to another word that was not on the list, in this case, "sweet." When asked to recall the word lists, those with abduction memories were more likely than a group of peers who had no such memories to falsely recall the unlisted word. The findings suggest a susceptibility to what are called source errors, misattributing sources of remembered information by, say, confusing a scene from a barely remembered movie with a dream. In another experiment, the researchers found that recalling abduction memories prompted physiological changes in blood pressure and sweat-gland activity that were higher than those seen in post-traumatic stress syndrome. The memories produced intense emotional trauma, and each time that occurs it deepens the certainty that something profound really did happen. Although no one of those elements - sleep paralysis, interest in the paranormal, hypnotherapy, memory tricks or emotional investment - is necessary or sufficient to create abduction memories, they tend to cluster together in self-described abductees, Dr. Clancy finds. "In the past, researchers have tended to concentrate on one or another" factor, she said in an interview. "I'm saying they all play a role." Yet abduction narratives often have another, less explicit, dimension that Dr. Clancy suspects may be central to their power. Consider this comment, from a study participant whom Dr. Clancy calls Jan, a middle-age divorc?e engaged in a quest for personal understanding: "You know, they do walk among us on earth. They have to transform first into a physical body, which is very painful for them. But they do it out of love. They are here to tell us that we're all interconnected in some way. Everything is." At a basic level, Dr. Clancy concludes, alien abduction stories give people meaning, a way to comprehend the many odd and dispiriting things that buffet any life, as well as a deep sense that they are not alone in the universe. In this sense, abduction memories are like transcendent religious visions, scary and yet somehow comforting and, at some personal psychological level, true. Dr. Clancy said she regretted not having asked the abductees she interviewed about religious beliefs, which were not a part of her original research. The reader may regret that, too. The warmth, awe and emotion of abduction stories and of those who tell them betray strong spiritual currents that will be familiar to millions of people whose internal lives are animated by religious imagery. When it comes to sounding the depths of alien stories, a scientific inquiry like this one may have to end with an inquiry into religion. From checker at panix.com Fri Aug 12 16:04:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:04:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: M.B.A. Students Bypassing Wall Street for a Summer in India Message-ID: M.B.A. Students Bypassing Wall Street for a Summer in India http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10intern.html By [3]SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India, Aug. 9 - This summer, Omar Maldonado and Erik Simonsen, both students at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, did something different. Bypassing internship opportunities on Wall Street, just a subway ride away from their Greenwich Village campus, they went to India to spend the summer at an outsourcing company in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi. "The India opportunity grabbed me," said Mr. Maldonado, a Boston native whose family is from the Dominican Republic. "I wanted to get a global feel for investment banking and not just a Wall Street perspective." He and Mr. Simonsen, both 27, are spending three months at Copal Partners, an outsourcing firm with 100 analysts. It produces merger and acquisition pitch books and provides equity and credit analysis and other research to global banks and consultant groups, including those on Wall Street. Mr. Maldonado and Mr. Simonsen, of Riverside, Calif., are part of a virtual invasion of India by American students. Graduate students from top schools in the United States, most from master of business administration programs, are vying for internships at India's biggest private companies. For many, outsourcing companies are the destinations of choice. India is not just a line on an American student's r?sum?, said Kiran Karnik, president of the outsourcing industry trade body, Nasscom, "but also culturally fulfilling." Many students travel while in India, giving them a view of the country and its long history, he said. Nasscom is now trying to track the ever-increasing numbers of foreign interns. Many are in India to study globalization firsthand, Mr. Karnik said; that is often not possible in China because, unlike India, English is not widely spoken there. Mr. Karnik said he had met more than a dozen interns from the Harvard Business School who were spending this summer in India. "I expect a bigger horde of students to arrive next year because the ones here said they had a great time and will go home to talk about it," he said. Elsewhere, too, the trend is on the rise. Four students from Fuqua School of Business at Duke University are interning in India, compared with only one last year and none in 2003. Of this year's interns, three are at [4]Infosys Technologies, an outsourcing company in Bangalore, and the fourth is in Chennai at GlobalGiving, an organization based in Bethesda, Md., that helps support social, economic and environmental projects around the world. At Georgetown University, Stanley D. Nollen, a professor of international business at the Robert Emmett McDonough School of Business, said India was of growing interest to students. "No longer is India thought of as a land of snake charmers and bride burnings," he said. "Now India means the world's best software services, and increasingly, pharmaceuticals and auto parts." Professor Nollen directs the school's programs for M.B.A. students in India, which include "residencies" - academic courses that are centered on consulting projects for companies operating in India. A group of 49 students arrived this month and went to companies like Philips India Software and MindTree Consulting, both in Bangalore; the motorcycle-making unit of Eicher in Chennai; and the [5]ICICI Bank in Mumbai. India can be a jolt to a first-time American visitor. In Gurgaon, a small town despite its tall office complexes and shiny new malls, Mr. Maldonado and Mr. Simonsen share an apartment where the power fails several times a day. Temperatures are regularly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. The two men said they came prepared to find inadequate infrastructure, but were not prepared for the daily frustrations of Gurgaon. There is no mass transportation system, and shopping, even for something as basic as an umbrella, can take hours. They rumble to work in an auto rickshaw - a motorized three-wheeler that seats two and is a ubiquitous form of transport in Indian cities. But the sophistication of the work being done in Copal's Gurgaon office contrasts with the chaotic city outside. Mr. Simonsen said he was amazed. "I came expecting to see number-crunching and spreadsheet type of work; I didn't expect American banks to farm out intricate analytics," he said. The two students are working on a project that analyzes investment opportunities for clients across 23 countries. Infosys Technologies, the country's second-largest outsourcing firm after Tata Consultancy Services, discovered how popular India had become as an internship destination for Americans when the company began recruiting: for the 40 intern spots at its Bangalore headquarters, the company received 9,000 applications. Only those with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.6 or more made it to a short list, and then they were put through two rounds of interviews. The final 40, who cut a wide academic swathe from engineering schools like M.I.T. and Carnegie Mellon to business schools like Stanford, Wharton and Kellogg, have since arrived on campus for average stays of three months. The interns work in areas from marketing to technology. They live in a 500-room hotel complex on Infosys's expansive campus in the suburbs of Bangalore, exchanging coupons for meals at the food court and riding the company bus downtown to decompress at the many pubs and bars. Among the Infosys interns is Caton Burwell, 28, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "India has come to symbolize globalization and I wanted to participate in the workings of the global economy," he said. "Besides, it would look great on my r?sum?." Mr. Burwell said that, since arriving in India, he had developed a better grasp of the workings of the global economy and the logic behind the choices companies and countries make. "Being here is a powerful experience; it is impossible not to think differently," he said. Also, his attitude toward outsourcing has changed since meeting Indian employees, who he said work very hard and care a great deal about the quality of their work. "To come here, meet these people, and to return home and turn your back on outsourcing is hard," he said. Jeffrey Anders, 29, from the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., is similarly stirred. Mr. Anders is halfway through his internship at the business process outsourcing division of [6]Hewlett-Packard India in Bangalore. "I can't help but feel that I am witnessing the creation of a new global economic order, a new reality that most people back home don't realize is coming," said Mr. Anders. After a meeting with the recruiting head of Hewlett-Packard India's back-office unit at a conference at M.I.T., Mr. Anders came to India to help build a group of Indian economists and statisticians to perform complex analytics and predictive modeling for Western multinationals. "These highly educated and qualified people are not stopping at call centers and back-office work," he said. "They are getting ready to compete for every job." Meanwhile, Indian companies are looking at summer internships as a way of building a diverse work culture. "Bringing investment bankers here provides our Indian team a perspective and context of Wall Street," said Joel Perlman, co-founder of Copal Partners, a company based in London that has four employees each in New York and London and another 100 or so in India. Other companies, and even the schools themselves, are looking at internships as a step toward attracting bright young Americans to work in India. Infosys, for instance, hired Joshua Bornstein, a former intern from Claremont McKenna College in California, nearly two years ago as its first American employee based in India. "In this increasingly global economy, we would expect to see India become an even greater source of employment for our students," Sheryle Dirks, director of the Career Management Center at Fuqua, said. Mr. Anders, from the Sloan school, works in a new Hewlett-Packard building, where he sometimes works out at the gym in the basement and eats at the cafeteria on the terrace. The employees work in open cubicles, similar to those in offices anywhere in the West. His team consists of four Indians, all with M.B.A.'s like him, and they operate globally, collaborating with teams in California and elsewhere. Interns like Mr. Anders are getting a close view of social changes that are happening in India. Outsourcing has created thousands of better-paying jobs and spawned communities of young people who can afford cars, apartments and iPods. "I thought the stipend was the down side," said Mr. Anders, "but coming here is a priceless experience." From checker at panix.com Fri Aug 12 16:05:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:05:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Sigma Xi: Evolution's Many Branches Message-ID: Evolution's Many Branches http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/44476?&print=yes [28]Douglas Erwin Assembling the Tree of Life. Edited by Joel Cracraft and Michael J. Donoghue. xvi + 576 pp. Oxford University Press, 2004. $59.95. Big problems often require big science. For example, synchrotrons, cyclotrons, linear accelerators and interplanetary spacecraft all cost too much for single investigators. Thus high-energy experimental physicists and planetary geologists have been forced to come up with communal approaches to research and to acquire the political skills needed to get their projects funded. The advent of farms of DNA sequencers and of the necessary computational power to make them useful has brought molecular biology into the era of big science as well with a variety of efforts to sequence whole genomes, including the Human Genome Project. Related developments include various proteomic and structural biology projects and the sprouting of new departments of systems biology, in which computer scientists and underemployed physicists mix freely with biologists. But big science is not driven exclusively by problems requiring large, expensive instruments. Innovation in instrumentation can also be a factor, opening up new avenues for exploration and reopening old questions that had been abandoned because progress was so difficult. The effort to produce a Tree of Life--a "correct and verifiable family tree" of all life, both living and extinct--is unquestionably big science. This formidable undertaking will require the mobilization of vast numbers of systematists to acquire and analyze reams of morphological, behavioral and molecular data, and the informatics involved in the unenviable task of classifying and storing phylogenetic information is complex. The end result will show the evolutionary relationships between all organisms, from those whose diversity is still poorly explored--such as crenarchaea (sulfur-metabolizing organisms that thrive at high temperatures) and heterokonts (which include water molds, diatoms and brown algae)--to nematodes, probably the most species-rich group of animals. What might be the justifications for constructing a Tree of Life? E. O. Wilson nominates simply having a complete accounting of life on Earth, promoting conservation, searching for new biological products and improving our understanding of community assembly (how species coadapt to live together in a given spot). Not surprisingly, Wilson makes an effective case that a Tree of Life will revolutionize ecology by marrying NASA-like technology with old-fashioned fieldwork to allow rapid characterization of broad swaths of the members of a community. Assembling the Tree of Life grew out of a 2002 symposium (sponsored jointly by the American Museum of Natural History, Yale University, The International Union of Biological Science and the international biodiversity science program DIVERSITAS) that produced a synthesis of knowledge about evolutionary relationships among the major branches of the Tree of Life. The book is the first comprehensive scientific attempt to consider the tree of life since the publication in 1989 of The Hierarchy of Life (the proceedings of a Nobel Symposium, edited by Bo Fernholm and others). Although we are not yet within reach of Wilson's dream, we are much closer to it than one might have expected in 1989. The "debate" between molecules and morphology, which was a centerpiece of The Hierarchy of Life, has vanished with the recognition that no one source of information can provide an infallible guide; rather, a variety of combined-evidence approaches are required. Editors Joel Cracraft and Michael J. Donoghue have two ambitious and at times contradictory aims: to demonstrate to readers outside the field of systematics the broader significance of building the Tree of Life (that is, to explain why systematists need big science) and to provide a current assessment of phylogenetic efforts across the tree. The contributors, who include nearly 100 systematic biologists, are more successful in achieving the latter goal. There is no question that individual chapters will be useful for those seeking a meaty overview of a particular clade. Most of the systematic chapters are written by the premier experts in the area and include a brief synopsis of the morphology of the group, some anatomical highlights and comments on diversity. The better chapters include detailed and critical commentaries on previous phylogenetic analyses and discuss where they might have gone wrong; the chapter by Maureen A. O'Leary and colleagues on mammalian phylogeny is particularly noteworthy in this regard. The early chapters on microbial phylogeny provide a wealth of information on the problems of phylogenetic reconstruction in the face of an unknown degree of lateral gene transfer and serve as an excellent primer on the evolutionary history of these groups. The differing perspectives on phylogenetic relationships offered by Sandra L. Baldauf and colleagues, by Norman R. Pace and by W. Ford Doolittle illustrate the magnitude of the problem. The chapter on early algal evolution by Charles F. Delwiche and others provides an outstanding illustration of how critical a phylogenetic perspective is to unraveling the evolutionary history of a clade. It is particularly unfortunate that the authors of many of the chapters on animal groups did not make a similar effort; many of those authors appear to view a phylogeny as an end in itself, rather than as a tool to advance other questions. The volume is a treasury of unexpected information. Who knew that in the 1830s France imported 50 million leeches annually for medicinal bloodletting (and that the government collected a tax of one franc per thousand leeches)? And who would have guessed that the key to unraveling lepidopteran phylogeny lies in "an almost infinite variety of small, drab moths from multiple evolutionary lineages"? Curiously, different authors in the volume appear to mean different things by the Tree of Life. Most appear to be principally concerned with the topology of the tree--with the relationships between various subclades and species that the tree depicts. Others, including Wilson, seem more concerned with taxonomic descriptions, databases of images of types and the like--an effort that has also been described as the Encyclopedia of Life. The distinction between these disparate views is critically important for identifying the scope and likely cost of the project as well as for deciding how it should be carried out. If a tree alone is the goal, the new effort at DNA bar-coding might be all that is required. One can even imagine the whole process being automated, with organisms fed into a hopper at one end and the critical sequences isolated, sequenced and added to GenBank (the genetic sequence database of the National Institutes of Health) as the biological exudates are heaped on a growing recycling pile. Of course most of the contributors to this volume are not really interested in topology alone,which would provide us with none of the critical information that accompanies proper systematic treatments--information about functional adaptations essential for understanding evolutionary pattern and process, for example. What is missing from the volume? Understandably, most clades are not treated in much detail, with the exception of one subclade of aberrant, highly encephalized primates. Cnidarians (such as jellyfish and corals) get short shrift, which is rather unusual given that significant advances have been made recently in understanding the group. But Douglas J. Eernisse and Kevin J. Peterson, in their detailed discussion of metazoan phylogeny, do discuss the recent evidence that the calcareous and siliceous sponges arose independently. Happily, arthropods and their ecdysozoan relatives have been allotted just five chapters (some enthusiasts will doubtless be disappointed). [29]click for full image and caption [30]Ernst Haeckel's tree of life There are two more telling omissions. Although the editors' introduction provides a very brief historical synopsis of tree-building, complete with Darwin's canonical figure from The Origin of Species and Ernst Haeckel's 1866 Tree of Life, a contribution by a historian of science on evolving approaches to the subject would have been most welcome. The second omission is more procedural or methodological: Few contributions explicitly address our current abilities to actually produce a rigorous, well-substantiated tree of life. This is far from a simple matter, as the most serious discussion of this shortcoming (in the chapter by O'Leary and others) makes clear. Building supertrees is more complicated than adding up previously published trees or building a massive character matrix. The initial steps in resolving this problem have been quite positive, but ultimately the viability of the Tree of Life enterprise requires addressing these and related methodological issues. Some might suggest that it would have been inappropriate to include such dirty laundry in this volume, but I would argue that to have done so might have gotten additional computer scientists and mathematicians interested in these problems. Reviewers are expected to offer some platitudinous comments on the appropriate readership for a volume, although whether this is for the edification of librarians or the gratification of the publisher continues to elude me. The question is particularly apt in the case at hand, for the intended readership is as poorly resolved as some of the topologies. In their introduction, the editors note the impact of Fernholm's The Hierarchy of Life. My observations suggest that it is one of the more widely stolen library volumes, which is a sort of impact metric, and perhaps Assembling the Tree of Life will also disappear from shelves. It should probably be required reading for first-year biology graduate students, but otherwise the effort to demonstrate the significance of the Tree of Life project is largely preaching to the converted. The first three chapters (by Terry L. Yates and others, Rita R. Colwell and Douglas J. Futuyama) provide some stimulating insights into how the Tree of Life could be useful in human health, conservation and agriculture. The 26 systematic chapters are most likely to appeal to specialists in related areas and to students and teachers seeking a solid, tree-based introduction to specific clades. So why do we need to construct the Tree of Life? Because ultimately it is, like a synchrotron or a spaceship, a tool that will allow future generations of scientists to address a whole new set of questions--about the ecological and evolutionary processes that have produced the diversity of life on Earth. Reviewer Information Douglas H. Erwin is a senior scientist and Curator of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, and an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. His new book on the end-Permian mass extinction, Extinction: How Life Nearly Died 250 Million Years Ago, will be published by Princeton University Press in the fall. References 25. http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=43945&sourceid=0040348489&categoryid=homepage 26. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/EnewsletterLanding 27. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookshelfReviews/issue/741 28. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AuthorDetail/authorid/1411 30. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/44476?&print=yes#44627 31. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/44476?&print=yes&print=yes From checker at panix.com Fri Aug 12 16:17:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:17:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] ABC: (Flew) One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence Message-ID: One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976 [Doesn't Flew realize that the designer is more of a mystery than the world itself? It is quite true, of course, that current scientists do not understand the origin of life. What is increasing is our understanding of how complex systems evolve. To say, though that "science" will *someday* understand the origin of life, does involve quite a bit of optimism on the part of what we think we can get out of three-pound brains. Adopting a rule, "always keep looking, never stop and say there must have been design," is a very good rule from the standpoint of keeping scientific investigations open, but it does prejudge the issue. My own atheism has this weak point, which I do not try to make inconspicuous. Rather, I have come to talk about the evidence for Hell more than the evidence for God. I know very little about the arguments for the existence of the Hell and the existence of the Devil, beyond saying that both are attested to in various sacred writings. Any references?] NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 ? A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England. Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives. "I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose." Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates. There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife. Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?" The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews. The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote. The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman. This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Press. Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads." Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife. Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal." Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life. A Methodist minister's son, Flew became an atheist at 15. Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could constitute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything at all. Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists. From checker at panix.com Fri Aug 12 16:17:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:17:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Denis Dutton on Madame Bovary's Ovaries Message-ID: Denis Dutton on Madame Bovary's Ovaries http://denisdutton.com/barash_review.htm Survival of the Fittest Characters [1]Washington Post Book World, August 7, 2005 Denis Dutton ______________________________________________________________ [3]Madame Bovarys Ovaries: a Darwinian Look at Literature , by David P. Barash and Nanelle R. Barash. New York: Delacourt Press, 2005, 272 pp. $24.00 paper, $32.00 cloth. Human nature, evolved over millions of years and present in our genes, expresses itself not only in bedrooms, boardrooms, and battlefields but in creative human pursuits, including literature. This, anyway, is the premise of an amusing, if over-ambitious, book by psychologist/zoologist David P. Barash and his college-student daughter, Nanelle. The Barashes line up exemplary works of fiction from Homer to Saul Bellow alongside the major claims of evolutionary psychology. The prehistoric origins of human conduct and desires, so the idea goes, should be able to tell us something about the conduct and values of characters in fiction. The results are mixed: Some of the Barashes' explanations are far-fetched, but others have the power to jolt us into an altered view of familiar literary stories and characters. Among the authors' best insights is their description of Jane Austen's fiction in terms of sexual selection theory. Darwinian evolution depends on natural selection: Unfit individuals die off in a hostile environment, while the survivors pass their fitness on to descendants. But for Darwin, there is also a second, parallel and quite distinct process that drives evolution: sexual selection. The heavy, cumbersome peacock's tail, far from helping the bird survive, is a distinct hindrance, making peacocks more prone to being eaten by predators. This remarkable tail is a product not of natural, but of sexual selection: Peahens choose to mate with peacocks sporting the most gorgeous feathers, which indicate both healthy genes and the capacity to produce offspring with more gorgeous feathers, increasing the likelihood that the mother's gene line will survive into the future. By making discriminating mating choices over thousands of generations, it is actually peahens, and not their males, who by their choices have bred the peacock's tail. Likewise, discriminating human females are central to the world of Jane Austen, whom the Barashes call "the poet laureate of female choice." Selecting a good mate is Austen's major theme. She is particularly adept at bringing out, against the vast intricacies of a social milieu, the basic values women seek in men, and men tend to want in women (shortlist: good looks, health, money, status, IQ, courage, dependability and a pleasant personality -- in many different weightings and orderings). Not being a peacock, Mr. Darcy does not have iridescent feathers, but for human females his commanding personality, solid income, intelligence, generosity, and the magnificent Pemberley estate do very nicely. Cinderella is used to exemplify the well-known research of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson showing that children are statistically at much greater risk of murder or abuse by stepparents than by biological parents. In this connection, the Barashes also discuss Sarah Hrdy's study of the way dominant male langur monkeys kill the infant offspring of rivals before mating with the infants' mothers. In real life we may all know plenty of loving stepparents, but as the Barashes explain, historical statistics are sadly on the side of the European folk-tale tradition with its stereotype of the wicked stepmother. The battles of elephant seals are brought to bear on the rivalry between Agamemnon and Achilles. The Barashes use evolutionary principles to explain the tragic outrage of Othello in a world whose double standard treats straying women much more severely than philandering men. A discussion of John Steinbeck's portrayal of male friendship in Of Mice and Men follows a clear and pertinent analysis of reciprocity among animals. This includes a fascinating account of the process by which a vampire bat unsuccessful in a hunt can coax a well-fed fellow bat into vomiting up a meal of blood. That too is friendship, maybe, though I learned from this book more about vampire bats than about Steinbeck. It is easy to make fun of animal analogies, but in fairness, the Barashes are mostly modest and persuasive in drawing their comparisons. Nevertheless, despite the authors' enthusiasm for their subject, there is a curious flatness to Madame Bovary's Ovaries. First, the Barashes tend to pick and choose literary evidence as it suits their case, a procedure generally verboten in research psychology. They provide an adequate, if unsurprising, evolutionary explanation of Emma Bovary's adultery (a female searching for better genes). But what about another important event in the story, Emma's suicide? Maybe there is an evolutionary explanation for suicide as a solution for a person cornered in an intolerable social situation, but it's not hinted at here. At the same time, the authors also now and then claim for evolutionary psychology more than the evidence warrants. Catcher in the Rye is a tale of youthful alienation and rebellion. Parents, we're told, push their children around, and "it makes perfect sense that adolescents in particular are prone to fight back." Such conflict is bound to occur between "every young individual and the adult world that he or she must learn to negotiate." Fine, but platitudes about Holden Caulfield's rebelliousness hardly need validation by Darwin, and none is given here. The Barashes have slipped into doing the most ordinary brand of criticism without seeming to realize it. In fact, Madame Bovary's Ovaries is less a Darwinian look at literature than a discussion of evolutionary psychology that happens to trawl through fiction for examples. If readers don't know The Grapes of Wrath or the Iliad firsthand, they'll likely have seen the movies or read the Cliffs Notes, which will be good enough. The authors might as easily have clipped crime or human interest stories from last month's newspapers, except that fiction normally supplies interior monologues or narratives that reveal motivations. This is a plus if you're trying to explain how evolved psychology works. But by reducing literature to a convenient collection of anecdotes and case studies, the Barashes fail to engage broader features of an expressive and communicative art. There is nothing here about literary style, tone, and the crucial interaction between authors and their audiences. From both a human and aesthetic perspective, literature does not just report on what happened but shows us how individuals make sense of what happened. It is about the beliefs, attitudes, and modes of perception that distinguish us from each other. Literature also serves the human craving for novelty and surprise, including twists and shocks that go against our normal, evolved expectations and desires. The Barashes' approach can explain the vicarious pleasure we might get in following the choices and indecisions of a Jane Austen character as she settles on her man. It can explain any story of a mother who fights to protect her children from danger. But it has more trouble with the likes of a Medea, who murders her children to satisfy her consuming hatred for their father. The family story of Jason and Medea is one of the most revoltingly entertaining soap operas in literature, exactly because it perverts all expectations of a mother's normal conduct toward her children. David and Nanelle Barash wisely insist that they are not trying to provide the decisive framework to explain literature. They give us a few of the patterns of human behavior that contemporary science can explain, showing that reproduction, survival and social reciprocity are bread and butter topics of the fiction we love. Yes, Sophocles, Shakespeare and Flaubert knew the human race at least as well as any psychologist. The science in this book comes out better than the literary criticism, but classic literature remains, as ever, the ultimate winner. David and Nanelle Barash have written an [4]entertaining piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education summarizing their views. For another treatment of the relation between Darwinism and literary studies, take a look at the work of Joseph Carroll. I've reviewed Carroll's latest book [5]here. If you have access to the Johns Hopkins University Press journal [6]Philosophy and Literature through your library, I'd also recommend an excellent article in the latest issue. It's "[7]Literature and Evolution: a Bio-Cultural Approach," by the Nabokov scholar and literary theorist, Brian Boyd. -- D.D. [8]Denis Dutton teaches philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. References 1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/04/AR2005080401595.html 2. http://www.denisdutton.com/ 3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&camp=1789&tag=denisduttonco-20&creative=9325&path=ASIN/0385338015/qid=1123382462/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_ur_2_1 4. http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=ma6s0ryboo4uyna4dh4g8219cnzrqk 5. http://denisdutton.com/carroll_review.htm 6. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/toc/phl29.1.html 7. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/v029/29.1boyd.html 8. mailto:constant.force at netaccess.co.nz From checker at panix.com Fri Aug 12 16:17:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 12:17:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: David P. Barish: Red in Tooth, Claw, and Trigger Finger Message-ID: CHE: David P. Barish: Red in Tooth, Claw, and Trigger Finger (fwd) The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.8.12 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i49/49b01901.htm I well remember an exhibit at the Bronx Zoo when I was a child. (It has since been copied by zoos throughout the world.) It offered a view of the "world's most dangerous creature," and was, of course, a mirror. No reasonable person -- least of all anyone with environmental sensibilities -- can doubt the veracity of that assertion, intended to shock the zoogoer into a healthy degree of eco-friendly self-reflection. Nor can anyone doubt that human beings are dangerous not only to their planet and many of its life-forms, but, most of all, to themselves. Homo sapiens has much to answer for, including a gory history of murder and mayhem. The anthropologist Raymond Dart spoke for many when he lamented that "the atrocities that have been committed ... from the altars of antiquity to the abattoirs of every modern city proclaim the persistently bloodstained progress of man." An unruly, ingrained savagery, verging on bloodlust, has been a favorite theme of fiction, including, for example, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, while Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde developed an explicit notion of duality: that a predisposition to violence lurks within the most outwardly civilized and kindly person. There even seems to be a curious, Jekyll-and-Hyde-like ambivalence in humanity's view of itself. On the one hand, we have Protagoras' insistence that "man is the measure of all things," linked theologically to the biblical claim that "God made man in his own image." The upshot: Human beings are not only supremely important but maybe even supremely good. At the same time, however, there is another, darker perspective, promoted not only by environmental educators but also by certain Christian theologians as well as nonsectarian folks who so love humanity that they hate human beings -- largely because of what those human beings have done to other human beings. In extreme cases, the result has been outright loathing, often stimulated by the conviction that humanity is soiled by original sin and is, moreover, irredeemable, at least this side of heaven. According to the zealous John Calvin, "the mind of man has been so completely estranged from God's righteousness that it conceives, desires, and undertakes, only that which is impious, perverted, foul, impure, and infamous. The human heart is so steeped in the poison of sin, that it can breathe out nothing but a loathsome stench." Misanthropy can also be purely secular, as in this observation from Aldous Huxley: The leech's kiss, the squid's embrace, The prurient ape's defiling touch: And do you like the human race? No, not much. In a similar vein, human beings stand accused of being not only murderous but uniquely so, an indictment that has been largely transformed into a guilty verdict, at least in much of the public mind. Writing in 1904, William James described man as "simply the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species." A half-century later, that view was endorsed by no less an authority than the pioneering ethologist and Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz, who popularized the idea that lethally armed animals (wolves, hawks, poisonous snakes) are also outfitted with behavioral inhibitions that prevent the use of those weapons against conspecifics. Human beings emerge as the sole exception, since our lethality is "extrabiological," rendering us anomalous in our uninhibited murderousness. Paradoxically, such claims have been widely and even warmly embraced. "Four legs good, two legs bad," we eagerly learned from George Orwell, not least because Homo sapiens is supposed to be uniquely branded, among all living things, with this mark of Cain. There appears to be a certain pleasure, akin to intellectual self-flagellation, that many people -- college students, it appears, most especially -- derive in disdaining their own species. Maybe anathematizing Homo sapiens is a particularly satisfying way of rebelling, since it entails enthusiastic disdain of not merely one's culture, politics, and socioeconomic situation, but one's species, too. At the same time, such a posture is peculiarly safe because species-rejecting rebellion does not require casting aside citizenship, friends, and family, or access to one's trust account; having denounced one's species, nobody is expected to join another. In any event, Cain is a canard. We have no monopoly on murder. Human beings may be less divine than some yearn to think, but -- at least when it comes to killing, even war -- we aren't nearly as exceptional, as despicably anomalous and aberrant in our penchant for intraspecies death-dealing, as the self-loathers would have it. The sad truth is that many animals kill others of their kind, and as a matter of course, not pathology. When the anthropologist Sarah Hrdy first reported the sordid details of infanticide among langur monkeys of India, primatologists resisted the news: It couldn't be true, they claimed. Or if it was, then it must be because the monkeys were overcrowded, or malnourished, or otherwise deprived. They couldn't possibly stoop to killing members of their own species (and infants, to make matters even worse); only human beings were so depraved. But, in fact, that is precisely what they do. More specifically, it is what male langur monkeys commonly do when one of them takes over control of a harem of females. The newly ascendant harem-keeper proceeds, methodically, to kill any nursing infants, which, in turn, induces the previously lactating (and nonovulating) females to begin cycling once again. All the better to bear the infanticidal male's offspring. We now know that similar patterns of infanticide are common among many other species, including rats and lions, as well as other nonhuman primates. In fact, when field biologists encounter a "male takeover" these days, they automatically look for subsequent infanticide and are surprised if it doesn't occur. The slaughter of innocents is bad enough (by human moral standards), although not unknown, of course, in our own species. But from a strictly mechanistic, biological perspective, it makes perfect sense. It might also seem more "justifiable" than, say, adults killing other adults, if only because the risk to an infanticidal male is relatively slight (infants can't do much to defend themselves), and the evolutionary payoff is comparatively great: getting your genes projected into the future via each bereaved mother, who would otherwise continue to nourish someone else's offspring instead of bearing your own. But the evidence is overwhelming that among many species, adults kill other adults, too. Lorenz was right, up to a point. Animals with especially lethal natural armaments tend, in most cases, to refrain from using them against conspecifics. But not always. In fact, the generalization that animals -- predators and prey excepted -- occupy a peaceful kingdom was itself greatly overblown. Maybe some day the lion will lie down with the lamb, but even today lions sometimes kill other lions, and rams knock down (thereby knocking off) other rams. The more hours of direct observation biologists accumulate among free-living animals, the more cases of lethality they uncover. Indeed, a Martian observer spending a few weeks among human beings might be tempted to inform his colleagues, with wonderment and some admiration, that Homo sapiens never kills conspecifics. She would be as incorrect as those early reports that wolves invariably inhibit lethal aggression by exposing their necks, or that chimpanzees make love instead of war. In fact, wolves do kill other wolves, showing little mercy for outliers and other strangers. And chimpanzees make war. Of course, if one defines war as requiring the use of technology, then our chimp cousins aren't warmongers after all. But if by war we mean organized and persistent episodes of intergroup violence, often resulting in death, then chimps are champs at it. Jane Goodall has reported extensively on a four-year running war between rival troops of chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, in Tanzania. Similar accounts have emerged from other populations, in the Budongo and Kibale forests, in Uganda; Mahale Mountains National Park, in Tanzania; and Ta? National Park, in the Ivory Coast. Chimpanzee wars are not an aberration. As to why they occur, the anthropologist Richard Wrangham explains that "by wounding or killing members of the neighboring community, males from one community increase their relative dominance over their neighbors. ... This tends to lead to increased fitness of the killers through improved access to resources such as food, females, or safety." These episodes typically involve border patrols leading to organized attacks in which a coalition (composed almost exclusively of males) will attack, and often kill, members of the neighboring troop (once again, almost exclusively males). At this point, some readers -- struggling to retain the perverse pride that comes from seeing human beings as, if not uniquely murderous, then at least unusually so -- may want to backpedal and point out that chimps are, after all, very close to Homo sapiens. But lethal fighting -- if less organized than chimpanzee warfare -- has been identified in hyenas, cheetahs, lions, and many other species. In one study, nearly one-half of all deaths among free-living wolves not caused by humans were the result of wolves' killing other wolves. Even ants are incriminated. According to Edward O. Wilson, America's supreme ant-ologist, "alongside ants, which conduct assassinations, skirmishes, and pitched battles as routine business, men are all but tranquilized pacifists." In their great tome of ant lore, Wilson and Bert H?lldobler concluded that ants are "arguably the most aggressive and warlike of all animals. They far exceed human beings in organized nastiness; our species is by comparison gentle and sweet-tempered." The ant lifestyle is characterized, note the authors, by "restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week." The primatologists Alexander Harcourt and Frans de Waal (the latter having written extensively about "natural conflict resolution," and, if anything, predisposed to acknowledge the pacific side of animals) conclude that regrettably but undeniably "lethal intergroup conflict is not uniquely, or even primarily, a characteristic of humans." The bottom line: Our species is special in many ways, and we may even be especially accomplished when it comes to killing our fellow human, but insofar as same-species lethality goes, we are not alone. Jonathan Swift was no sentimental lover of the human species, verging, and sometimes settling, on outright misanthropy. Thus, during one of Gulliver's voyages, the giant king of Brobdingnag describes human beings as "the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." Swift himself wrote, "I hate and detest that animal called Man, yet I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth." It is Gulliver's final voyage, however, to the land of the admirable, rational, equably equine Houyhnhnms that constitutes what is probably the most sardonically critical account of humanity, in all its Yahoo nature, ever written. Sir Walter Scott wrote that this work "holds mankind forth in a light too degrading for contemplation." Especially degrading -- for Swift, Scott, and, as the story unfolds, the Master of the Houyhnhnms -- is the human capacity for lethal violence, especially during war: "Being no stranger to the art of war, I [Gulliver] gave him a description of cannons, culverins, muskets, carbines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, countermines, bombardments, seafights; ships sunk with a thousand men; twenty thousand killed on each side; dying groans, limbs flung in the air: smoke, noise, confusion, trampling to death under horse's feet: flight, pursuit, victory, fields strewed with carcasses left for food to dogs, and wolves, and birds of prey; plundering, stripping, ravishing, burning and destroying. And, to set forth the valour of my own dear countrymen, I assured him that I had seen them blow up a hundred enemies at once in a siege, and as many in a ship; and beheld the dead bodies drop down in pieces from the clouds, to the great diversion of all the spectators." Omitted, for obvious reasons: machine guns, submarines, mustard gas, mechanized artillery, land mines, fighter planes, bombers, cluster bombs, nuclear warheads, and other weapons of mass destruction (and this is a woefully incomplete list), not to mention the use of commercial airliners as weapons of mass destruction, or the use of lies about weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion that results in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Let's face it, human beings are a violent, murderous lot, destructive of each other no less than of their environment. But let's also admit that such misdeeds, grievous as they are, derive less from a one-of-a-kind bloodlust than from the combination of all-too-natural aggressiveness with ever-advancing technology -- which is itself natural, too. Tennyson was correct, after all. Nature really is red in tooth and claw -- not always, to be sure, but more often than a romanticized view of the animal world would have us believe. And not only when it comes to predators' dispatching their prey. Also, not merely in tooth and claw, but in antler and horn and stinger and tusk, and in butcher knife and Kalashnikov. We aren't so much separated from nature as connected to it, for worse as for better, empowered by our culture to act -- often excessively, because of the potent technological levers at our disposal -- upon impulses that are widely shared. And so, one and a half cheers for Homo sapiens, the world's most dangerous creature, whose dangerousness resides not in the originality of its sin, but in the reach of its hands. David P. Barash is a professor of psychology at the University of Washington. His most recent book, written with Nanelle R. Barash and based on an article originally appearing in The Chronicle Review, is Madame Bovary's Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature (Delacorte, 2005). From HowlBloom at aol.com Sat Aug 13 05:08:59 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 01:08:59 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] why do we need to SEE sex and violence? Message-ID: <13e.19284c06.302eda6b@aol.com> Judging from the following item, our perceptual system seems preprogrammed to stop, pause, and rivet on sights that promise sex or threaten violence. Makes sense. Sex makes sure that when we die our genes go marching on. Avoiding violence makes sure our body and mind live to see another day. Gawking at violence from a distance hopefully helps us learn how to avoid it?or overcome it-- in the future. Now the question is this. Is this fixation on violence and sex a product of Western Culture. Or is it universal in humans? If it?s universal in humans, does it also show up in lab rats, pigeons, and anolis lizards? In other words, does it go back to a common ancestor of birds, mammals, and lizards? At what age does this phenomenon appear in humans? When are babies able to perceive sex and violence? When do these two become emotionally potent to kids? Howard Retrieved August 13, 2005, from the World Wide Web http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7845 NewScientist.com Erotic images can turn you blind * 18:09 12 August 2005 * NewScientist.com news service * Gaia Vince Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all along ? erotic images make you go blind. The effect is temporary and lasts just a moment, but the research has added to road-safety campaigners? calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing accidents. The new study by US psychologists found that people shown erotic or gory images frequently fail to process images they see immediately afterwards. And the researchers say some personality types appear to be affected more than others by the phenomenon, known as ?emotion-induced blindness?. David Zald, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Marvin Chun and colleagues from Yale University in Connecticut, showed hundreds of images to volunteers and asked them to pick a specific image from the rapid sequence. Most of the images were landscape or architectural scenes, but the psychologists included a few emotionally charged images, portraying violent or sexually provocative scenes. The closer these emotionally charged images occurred prior to the target image, the more frequently people failed to spot the target image, the researchers found. ?We observed that people failed to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images,? Zald says. Primitive brain ?We think there is essentially a bottleneck for information processing and if a certain type of stimulus captures attention, it can jam up the bottleneck so subsequent information can?t get through,? Zald explains. ?It appears to happen involuntarily. The stimulus captures attention and once allocated to that particular stimulus, no other stimuli can get through? for several tenths of a second. He believes that a primitive part of the brain, known as the amygdala, may play a part. That region is involved in evaluating sensory input according to its emotional relevance and has an autonomic role, influencing heart rate and sweating. ?It is possible that emotionally-charged stimuli produce preferential rapid routing of the impulse that bypasses the slower cortical route via the amygdala," Zald told New Scientist. "Patients with amygdala lesions pick out the target image without reacting to violent images, although they show normal blindness reactions when sexual images are introduced, which suggests another mechanism may also be involved.? Harm avoiders The researchers think emotion-induced blindness could lead to drivers simply not seeing another car or pedestrian if they have just witnessed an emotionally charged scene, such as an accident or sexually explicit billboard. The effect could exacerbate the more obvious problem of drivers simply being distracted by large, arresting images. "It's the responsibility of drivers to ensure that when they are behind the wheel they keep their eyes on the job in hand," says a spokeswoman from Brake, a UK road safety organisation. And some people are more vulnerable than others. The study assessed participants using a personality questionnaire, rating them according to their level of ?harm avoidance?. Those scoring highly were more fearful, careful and cautious; those scoring low were more carefree and more comfortable in difficult or dangerous situations. The researchers found that those with low harm avoidance scores were better able to stay focused on a target image than those with high harm avoidance scores. ?People who are more harm avoidant may not be detecting negative stimuli more than other people, but they have a greater difficulty suppressing that information,? Zald suggests. The Brake spokeswoman says companies should think about the consequences of placing emotionally charged billboards at dangerous road junctions: ?We should be concerned if drivers are experiencing split-second breaks in concentration, which could result in an accident or death on the roads.? Journal reference: Psychonomic Bulletin and Review (August 2005 issue) Related Articles * Early blindness frees brain-power for hearing * http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524845.200 * 29 January 2005 * Porn panic over eroto-toxins * http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424750.800 * 27 November 2004 * Women's better emotional recall explained * http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2576 * 22 July 2002 Weblinks * David Zald, Vanderbilt University * http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/zalddh/zaldhomepage.htm * Marvin Chun, Yale University * http://www.yale.edu/psychology/FacInfo/Chun.html * Brake, UK road safety organisation * http://www.brake.org.uk/ * Psychonomic Bulletin and Review * http://www.psychonomic.org/PBR/ Close this window Printed on Sat Aug 13 05:53:57 BST 2005 ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Recent Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Institute for Accelerating Change ; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Sat Aug 13 13:06:00 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 07:06:00 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <42FDF038.306@solution-consulting.com> Clancy's hypothesis is almost certainly the best one I have seen, and explains the phenomena. She ignores the other side, where people report being abducted while wide awake. A psychiatrist friend brought two patients to my office because of my skill in hypnosis. These two recalled being abducted while in northwest Utah, raising copper wire from the Great Salt Lake from an old telephone line. They were unsure about whether it was legal, so it was a bit hush-hush. My MD friend wanted me to hypnotize them to get more info; I have never seen such abject terror in human beings before or since. It was extremely puzzling. I finally took a kind of agnosticism about it; I don't believe in abductions, but I cannot explain their reactions any other way. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers > New York Times, 5.8.9 > http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print > > By [3]BENEDICT CAREY > > "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," > by Susan Clancy. Harvard University Press, $22.95. > > People who have memories of being abducted by aliens become hardened > skeptics, of a kind. They dismiss the procession of scientists who > explain away the memories as illusions or fantasy. They scoff at talk > about hypnosis or the unconscious processing of Hollywood scripts. And > they hold their ground amid snickers from a public that thinks that > they are daft or psychotic. > > They are neither, it turns out, and their experiences should be taken > as seriously as any strongly held exotic beliefs, according to Susan > Clancy, a Harvard psychologist who interviewed dozens of > self-described abductees as part of a series of memory studies over > the last several years. > > In her book "Abducted," due in October, Dr. Clancy, a psychologist at > Harvard, manages to refute and defend these believers, and along the > way provide a discussion of current research into memory, emotion and > culture that renders abduction stories understandable, if not > believable. Although it focuses on abduction memories, the book hints > at a larger ambition, to explain the psychology of transformative > experiences, whether supposed abductions, conversions or divine > visitations. > > "Understanding why people believe weird things is important for anyone > who wishes to know more about people - that is, humans in general," > she writes. > > Dr. Clancy's accounting for abduction memories starts with an odd but > not uncommon experience called sleep paralysis. While in light > dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few > moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate > that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, > during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations > like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, > at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders. > > Some of them must have an explanation as exotic as the surreal nature > of the experience itself. Although no one has studied this group > systematically, Dr. Clancy suggests based on her interviews, that they > tend to be people who already have some interest in the paranormal, > mystical arts and the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. Often > enough, their search for meaning lands them in the care of a therapist > who uses hypnotism to elicit more details of their dreamlike > experiences. > > Hypnotism is a state of deep relaxation, when people become highly > prone to suggestion, psychologists find. When encouraged under > hypnosis to imagine a vivid but entirely concocted incident - like > being awakened by loud noises - people are more likely later to claim > the scene as a real experience, studies find. > > Where, exactly, do the green figures with the wraparound eyes come > from? From the deep well of pop culture, Dr. Clancy argues, based on a > review of the history of U.F.O. sightings, popular movies and > television programs on aliens. The first "abduction" in the United > States was dramatized in 1953, in the movie "Invaders From Mars," she > writes, and a rash of abduction reports followed this and other works > on aliens, including the television series "The Outer Limits." > > One such report, by a couple from New Hampshire, Betty and Barney > Hill, followed by days a particularly evocative episode of the show in > 1961. Mr. Hill's description of the aliens - with big heads and shiny > wraparound eyes - was featured in a best-selling book about the > experience, and inspired the alien forms in Steven Spielberg's "Close > Encounters of the Third Kind" in 1977, according to Dr. Clancy. > > Thus does life imitate art, and vice versa, in a narrative hall of > mirrors in which scenes and even dialogues are recycled. Although they > are distinct in details, abduction narratives are extremely similar in > broad outline and often include experimentation with a sexual or > procreative subtext. "Oh! And he's opening my shirt, and - he's going > to put that thing in my navel," says one 1970's narrative, referring > to a needle. > > "I can feel them moving that thing around in my stomach, in my body," > the narrative, excerpted in the book, continues. The passage echoes > other abduction accounts, past and future. > > In a laboratory study in 2002, Dr. Clancy and another Harvard > psychologist, Richard McNally, gave self-described abductees a > standardized word-association test intended to measure proneness to > false-memory creation. The participants studied lists of words that > were related to one another - "sugar," "candy," "sour," "bitter" - and > to another word that was not on the list, in this case, "sweet." > > When asked to recall the word lists, those with abduction memories > were more likely than a group of peers who had no such memories to > falsely recall the unlisted word. The findings suggest a > susceptibility to what are called source errors, misattributing > sources of remembered information by, say, confusing a scene from a > barely remembered movie with a dream. > > In another experiment, the researchers found that recalling abduction > memories prompted physiological changes in blood pressure and > sweat-gland activity that were higher than those seen in > post-traumatic stress syndrome. The memories produced intense > emotional trauma, and each time that occurs it deepens the certainty > that something profound really did happen. > > Although no one of those elements - sleep paralysis, interest in the > paranormal, hypnotherapy, memory tricks or emotional investment - is > necessary or sufficient to create abduction memories, they tend to > cluster together in self-described abductees, Dr. Clancy finds. "In > the past, researchers have tended to concentrate on one or another" > factor, she said in an interview. "I'm saying they all play a role." > > Yet abduction narratives often have another, less explicit, dimension > that Dr. Clancy suspects may be central to their power. Consider this > comment, from a study participant whom Dr. Clancy calls Jan, a > middle-age divorc?e engaged in a quest for personal understanding: > "You know, they do walk among us on earth. They have to transform > first into a physical body, which is very painful for them. But they > do it out of love. They are here to tell us that we're all > interconnected in some way. Everything is." > > At a basic level, Dr. Clancy concludes, alien abduction stories give > people meaning, a way to comprehend the many odd and dispiriting > things that buffet any life, as well as a deep sense that they are not > alone in the universe. In this sense, abduction memories are like > transcendent religious visions, scary and yet somehow comforting and, > at some personal psychological level, true. > > Dr. Clancy said she regretted not having asked the abductees she > interviewed about religious beliefs, which were not a part of her > original research. The reader may regret that, too. > > The warmth, awe and emotion of abduction stories and of those who tell > them betray strong spiritual currents that will be familiar to > millions of people whose internal lives are animated by religious > imagery. > > When it comes to sounding the depths of alien stories, a scientific > inquiry like this one may have to end with an inquiry into religio > n. > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Aug 13 15:24:04 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 08:24:04 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] why do we need to SEE sex and violence? Message-ID: <01C59FE0.5E4B96F0.shovland@mindspring.com> Because we like both of them. Some people really like being in war zones, either as participants or observers, even at the risk of being injured or killed. Patton "loved to see the arms and legs fly." Some say killing another human gives them a great sense of power. World War I was seen as an opportunity for "cleansing." Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Friday, August 12, 2005 10:09 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] why do we need to SEE sex and violence? << File: ATT00000.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00001.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00002.txt >> From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 13 15:52:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 11:52:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] why do we need to SEE sex and violence? In-Reply-To: <13e.19284c06.302eda6b@aol.com> References: <13e.19284c06.302eda6b@aol.com> Message-ID: Howard, Many cultures besides out have erotic literature. The Karma Sutra in India, the Thousand Nights and One in Arabia, the Tale of Genji in Japan. And they all have tales of great warriors. What's unique about the West, I think, is the notion of companionate marriage, as opposed to arragned marriage. Think Romeo and Juliet of Renaissance Italy. The West has also developed unique ideas about the self and moral agency. I'm trying to get a better fix on these ideas. As far as animals go, you can find many precursors to things human. What is a stretch is to go from animals directly to the modern West. In fact, understanding the Occident (which comprises Classical, Western, and what I call Darwinian civilizations) is *the* problem in human history. On 2005-08-13, HowlBloom at aol.com opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 01:08:59 EDT > From: HowlBloom at aol.com > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Subject: [Paleopsych] why do we need to SEE sex and violence? > > > Judging from the following item, our perceptual system seems preprogrammed > to stop, pause, and rivet on sights that promise sex or threaten violence. > Makes sense. Sex makes sure that when we die our genes go marching on. > Avoiding violence makes sure our body and mind live to see another day. Gawking > at violence from a distance hopefully helps us learn how to avoid it??or > overcome it-- in the future. > Now the question is this. Is this fixation on violence and sex a product > of Western Culture. Or is it universal in humans? If it??s universal in > humans, does it also show up in lab rats, pigeons, and anolis lizards? In other > words, does it go back to a common ancestor of birds, mammals, and lizards? > At what age does this phenomenon appear in humans? When are babies able to > perceive sex and violence? When do these two become emotionally potent to > kids? Howard > Retrieved August 13, 2005, from the World Wide Web > http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7845 NewScientist.com Erotic images can turn you blind * > 18:09 12 August 2005 * NewScientist.com news service * Gaia Vince > Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all > along ?? erotic images make you go blind. The effect is temporary and lasts just > a moment, but the research has added to road-safety campaigners?? calls to ban > sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing > accidents. The new study by US psychologists found that people shown erotic or > gory images frequently fail to process images they see immediately afterwards. > And the researchers say some personality types appear to be affected more > than others by the phenomenon, known as ??emotion-induced blindness??. David > Zald, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Marvin Chun and > colleagues from Yale University in Connecticut, showed hundreds of images > to volunteers and asked them to pick a specific image from the rapid sequence. > Most of the images were landscape or architectural scenes, but the > psychologists included a few emotionally charged images, portraying violent or > sexually provocative scenes. The closer these emotionally charged images occurred > prior to the target image, the more frequently people failed to spot the > target image, the researchers found. ??We observed that people failed to detect > visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, > whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images,?? > Zald says. Primitive brain ??We think there is essentially a bottleneck for > information processing and if a certain type of stimulus captures attention, it > can jam up the bottleneck so subsequent information can??t get through,?? Zald > explains. ??It appears to happen involuntarily. The stimulus captures > attention and once allocated to that particular stimulus, no other stimuli can get > through?? for several tenths of a second. He believes that a primitive part > of the brain, known as the amygdala, may play a part. That region is involved > in evaluating sensory input according to its emotional relevance and has an > autonomic role, influencing heart rate and sweating. ??It is possible that > emotionally-charged stimuli produce preferential rapid routing of the impulse > that bypasses the slower cortical route via the amygdala," Zald told New > Scientist. "Patients with amygdala lesions pick out the target image without > reacting to violent images, although they show normal blindness reactions when > sexual images are introduced, which suggests another mechanism may also be > involved.?? Harm avoiders The researchers think emotion-induced blindness could lead > to drivers simply not seeing another car or pedestrian if they have just > witnessed an emotionally charged scene, such as an accident or sexually explicit > billboard. The effect could exacerbate the more obvious problem of drivers > simply being distracted by large, arresting images. "It's the responsibility > of drivers to ensure that when they are behind the wheel they keep their eyes > on the job in hand," says a spokeswoman from Brake, a UK road safety > organisation. And some people are more vulnerable than others. The study assessed > participants using a personality questionnaire, rating them according to > their level of ??harm avoidance??. Those scoring highly were more fearful, > careful and cautious; those scoring low were more carefree and more comfortable in > difficult or dangerous situations. The researchers found that those with low > harm avoidance scores were better able to stay focused on a target image than > those with high harm avoidance scores. ??People who are more harm avoidant > may not be detecting negative stimuli more than other people, but they have a > greater difficulty suppressing that information,?? Zald suggests. The Brake > spokeswoman says companies should think about the consequences of placing > emotionally charged billboards at dangerous road junctions: ??We should be > concerned if drivers are experiencing split-second breaks in concentration, which > could result in an accident or death on the roads.?? Journal reference: > Psychonomic Bulletin and Review (August 2005 issue) Related Articles * Early > blindness frees brain-power for hearing * > http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524845.200 * 29 January 2005 * Porn panic over eroto-toxins * > http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424750.800 * 27 November 2004 * Women's > better emotional recall explained * > http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2576 * 22 July 2002 Weblinks * David Zald, Vanderbilt University * > http://www.psy.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/zalddh/zaldhomepage.htm * Marvin Chun, Yale > University * http://www.yale.edu/psychology/FacInfo/Chun.html * Brake, UK > road safety organisation * http://www.brake.org.uk/ * Psychonomic Bulletin > and Review * http://www.psychonomic.org/PBR/ Close this window Printed on Sat > Aug 13 05:53:57 BST 2005 > > ---------- > Howard Bloom > Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of > History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the > 21st Century > Recent Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; > Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute > www.howardbloom.net > www.bigbangtango.net > Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic > of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The > Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American > Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, > Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International > Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Institute for > Accelerating Change ; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. > For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: > www.paleopsych.org > for two chapters from > The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, > see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer > For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big > Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net > > From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 13 17:49:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 13:49:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers In-Reply-To: <42FDF038.306@solution-consulting.com> References: <42FDF038.306@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: I don't think one can rule out each and every case of alien abduction, or of other strange phenomena, since that would involve giving better explanations in each and every single case. But I noticed way back in high school or college that explaining away strange phenomena as the product of the "unconscious" (nowadays we'd talk about the brain) failed nearly as badly, for we simply don't know how the "unconscious" works. That said, the status on strange phenomena has been unchanged for 150 years. Lots of unexplained things out there, some of which go beyond ordinary coincidences (or so a good number of scientists who appear to be serious in every other way attest). But no accumulation of these events into general laws or even trends. There may be some websites that have systematized strange phenomena into various categories, but, as with so much on the Net, they will be of various degrees of reliability. You sent me a URL for a site that reported that the military was looking into possible military uses of (what was it? I forget) but abandoned the attempt. I don't think businesses have persisted for very long in finding commercial applications, either. Strange phenomena are likely to remain on my back burner. On 2005-08-13, Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 07:06:00 -0600 > From: "Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D." > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: The new improved paleopsych list > Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian > Kidnappers > > Clancy's hypothesis is almost certainly the best one I have seen, and > explains the phenomena. She ignores the other side, where people report being > abducted while wide awake. A psychiatrist friend brought two patients to my > office because of my skill in hypnosis. These two recalled being abducted > while in northwest Utah, raising copper wire from the Great Salt Lake from an > old telephone line. They were unsure about whether it was legal, so it was a > bit hush-hush. My MD friend wanted me to hypnotize them to get more info; I > have never seen such abject terror in human beings before or since. It was > extremely puzzling. I finally took a kind of agnosticism about it; I don't > believe in abductions, but I cannot explain their reactions any other way. > Lynn > > Premise Checker wrote: > >> Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers >> New York Times, 5.8.9 >> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print >> >> By [3]BENEDICT CAREY >> >> "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," >> by Susan Clancy. Harvard University Press, $22.95. >> >> People who have memories of being abducted by aliens become hardened >> skeptics, of a kind. They dismiss the procession of scientists who >> explain away the memories as illusions or fantasy. They scoff at talk >> about hypnosis or the unconscious processing of Hollywood scripts. And >> they hold their ground amid snickers from a public that thinks that >> they are daft or psychotic. >> >> They are neither, it turns out, and their experiences should be taken >> as seriously as any strongly held exotic beliefs, according to Susan >> Clancy, a Harvard psychologist who interviewed dozens of >> self-described abductees as part of a series of memory studies over >> the last several years. >> >> In her book "Abducted," due in October, Dr. Clancy, a psychologist at >> Harvard, manages to refute and defend these believers, and along the >> way provide a discussion of current research into memory, emotion and >> culture that renders abduction stories understandable, if not >> believable. Although it focuses on abduction memories, the book hints >> at a larger ambition, to explain the psychology of transformative >> experiences, whether supposed abductions, conversions or divine >> visitations. >> >> "Understanding why people believe weird things is important for anyone >> who wishes to know more about people - that is, humans in general," >> she writes. >> >> Dr. Clancy's accounting for abduction memories starts with an odd but >> not uncommon experience called sleep paralysis. While in light >> dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few >> moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate >> that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, >> during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations >> like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, >> at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders. >> >> Some of them must have an explanation as exotic as the surreal nature >> of the experience itself. Although no one has studied this group >> systematically, Dr. Clancy suggests based on her interviews, that they >> tend to be people who already have some interest in the paranormal, >> mystical arts and the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. Often >> enough, their search for meaning lands them in the care of a therapist >> who uses hypnotism to elicit more details of their dreamlike >> experiences. >> >> Hypnotism is a state of deep relaxation, when people become highly >> prone to suggestion, psychologists find. When encouraged under >> hypnosis to imagine a vivid but entirely concocted incident - like >> being awakened by loud noises - people are more likely later to claim >> the scene as a real experience, studies find. >> >> Where, exactly, do the green figures with the wraparound eyes come >> from? From the deep well of pop culture, Dr. Clancy argues, based on a >> review of the history of U.F.O. sightings, popular movies and >> television programs on aliens. The first "abduction" in the United >> States was dramatized in 1953, in the movie "Invaders From Mars," she >> writes, and a rash of abduction reports followed this and other works >> on aliens, including the television series "The Outer Limits." >> >> One such report, by a couple from New Hampshire, Betty and Barney >> Hill, followed by days a particularly evocative episode of the show in >> 1961. Mr. Hill's description of the aliens - with big heads and shiny >> wraparound eyes - was featured in a best-selling book about the >> experience, and inspired the alien forms in Steven Spielberg's "Close >> Encounters of the Third Kind" in 1977, according to Dr. Clancy. >> >> Thus does life imitate art, and vice versa, in a narrative hall of >> mirrors in which scenes and even dialogues are recycled. Although they >> are distinct in details, abduction narratives are extremely similar in >> broad outline and often include experimentation with a sexual or >> procreative subtext. "Oh! And he's opening my shirt, and - he's going >> to put that thing in my navel," says one 1970's narrative, referring >> to a needle. >> >> "I can feel them moving that thing around in my stomach, in my body," >> the narrative, excerpted in the book, continues. The passage echoes >> other abduction accounts, past and future. >> >> In a laboratory study in 2002, Dr. Clancy and another Harvard >> psychologist, Richard McNally, gave self-described abductees a >> standardized word-association test intended to measure proneness to >> false-memory creation. The participants studied lists of words that >> were related to one another - "sugar," "candy," "sour," "bitter" - and >> to another word that was not on the list, in this case, "sweet." >> >> When asked to recall the word lists, those with abduction memories >> were more likely than a group of peers who had no such memories to >> falsely recall the unlisted word. The findings suggest a >> susceptibility to what are called source errors, misattributing >> sources of remembered information by, say, confusing a scene from a >> barely remembered movie with a dream. >> >> In another experiment, the researchers found that recalling abduction >> memories prompted physiological changes in blood pressure and >> sweat-gland activity that were higher than those seen in >> post-traumatic stress syndrome. The memories produced intense >> emotional trauma, and each time that occurs it deepens the certainty >> that something profound really did happen. >> >> Although no one of those elements - sleep paralysis, interest in the >> paranormal, hypnotherapy, memory tricks or emotional investment - is >> necessary or sufficient to create abduction memories, they tend to >> cluster together in self-described abductees, Dr. Clancy finds. "In >> the past, researchers have tended to concentrate on one or another" >> factor, she said in an interview. "I'm saying they all play a role." >> >> Yet abduction narratives often have another, less explicit, dimension >> that Dr. Clancy suspects may be central to their power. Consider this >> comment, from a study participant whom Dr. Clancy calls Jan, a >> middle-age divorc?e engaged in a quest for personal understanding: >> "You know, they do walk among us on earth. They have to transform >> first into a physical body, which is very painful for them. But they >> do it out of love. They are here to tell us that we're all >> interconnected in some way. Everything is." >> >> At a basic level, Dr. Clancy concludes, alien abduction stories give >> people meaning, a way to comprehend the many odd and dispiriting >> things that buffet any life, as well as a deep sense that they are not >> alone in the universe. In this sense, abduction memories are like >> transcendent religious visions, scary and yet somehow comforting and, >> at some personal psychological level, true. >> >> Dr. Clancy said she regretted not having asked the abductees she >> interviewed about religious beliefs, which were not a part of her >> original research. The reader may regret that, too. >> >> The warmth, awe and emotion of abduction stories and of those who tell >> them betray strong spiritual currents that will be familiar to >> millions of people whose internal lives are animated by religious >> imagery. >> >> When it comes to sounding the depths of alien stories, a scientific >> inquiry like this one may have to end with an inquiry into religion. From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Aug 13 17:53:39 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 10:53:39 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers Message-ID: <01C59FF5.440947F0.shovland@mindspring.com> I have done past life exercises and even though I'm not a hard core believer in this, it is interesting that the "memories" are so specific. For example my most recent "past life" is that of a German soldier in WWII who ultimately dies on the Russian front. The memory is that of walking down a country road on a beautiful fall day, enjoying the moment, not thinking about what might come. Abductees also have very specific memories or else very good imaginations :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com] Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2005 10:49 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers I don't think one can rule out each and every case of alien abduction, or of other strange phenomena, since that would involve giving better explanations in each and every single case. But I noticed way back in high school or college that explaining away strange phenomena as the product of the "unconscious" (nowadays we'd talk about the brain) failed nearly as badly, for we simply don't know how the "unconscious" works. That said, the status on strange phenomena has been unchanged for 150 years. Lots of unexplained things out there, some of which go beyond ordinary coincidences (or so a good number of scientists who appear to be serious in every other way attest). But no accumulation of these events into general laws or even trends. There may be some websites that have systematized strange phenomena into various categories, but, as with so much on the Net, they will be of various degrees of reliability. You sent me a URL for a site that reported that the military was looking into possible military uses of (what was it? I forget) but abandoned the attempt. I don't think businesses have persisted for very long in finding commercial applications, either. Strange phenomena are likely to remain on my back burner. On 2005-08-13, Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 07:06:00 -0600 > From: "Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D." > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: The new improved paleopsych list > Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian > Kidnappers > > Clancy's hypothesis is almost certainly the best one I have seen, and > explains the phenomena. She ignores the other side, where people report being > abducted while wide awake. A psychiatrist friend brought two patients to my > office because of my skill in hypnosis. These two recalled being abducted > while in northwest Utah, raising copper wire from the Great Salt Lake from an > old telephone line. They were unsure about whether it was legal, so it was a > bit hush-hush. My MD friend wanted me to hypnotize them to get more info; I > have never seen such abject terror in human beings before or since. It was > extremely puzzling. I finally took a kind of agnosticism about it; I don't > believe in abductions, but I cannot explain their reactions any other way. > Lynn > > Premise Checker wrote: > >> Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers >> New York Times, 5.8.9 >> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print >> >> By [3]BENEDICT CAREY >> >> "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," >> by Susan Clancy. Harvard University Press, $22.95. >> >> People who have memories of being abducted by aliens become hardened >> skeptics, of a kind. They dismiss the procession of scientists who >> explain away the memories as illusions or fantasy. They scoff at talk >> about hypnosis or the unconscious processing of Hollywood scripts. And >> they hold their ground amid snickers from a public that thinks that >> they are daft or psychotic. >> >> They are neither, it turns out, and their experiences should be taken >> as seriously as any strongly held exotic beliefs, according to Susan >> Clancy, a Harvard psychologist who interviewed dozens of >> self-described abductees as part of a series of memory studies over >> the last several years. >> >> In her book "Abducted," due in October, Dr. Clancy, a psychologist at >> Harvard, manages to refute and defend these believers, and along the >> way provide a discussion of current research into memory, emotion and >> culture that renders abduction stories understandable, if not >> believable. Although it focuses on abduction memories, the book hints >> at a larger ambition, to explain the psychology of transformative >> experiences, whether supposed abductions, conversions or divine >> visitations. >> >> "Understanding why people believe weird things is important for anyone >> who wishes to know more about people - that is, humans in general," >> she writes. >> >> Dr. Clancy's accounting for abduction memories starts with an odd but >> not uncommon experience called sleep paralysis. While in light >> dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few >> moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate >> that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, >> during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations >> like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, >> at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders. >> >> Some of them must have an explanation as exotic as the surreal nature >> of the experience itself. Although no one has studied this group >> systematically, Dr. Clancy suggests based on her interviews, that they >> tend to be people who already have some interest in the paranormal, >> mystical arts and the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. Often >> enough, their search for meaning lands them in the care of a therapist >> who uses hypnotism to elicit more details of their dreamlike >> experiences. >> >> Hypnotism is a state of deep relaxation, when people become highly >> prone to suggestion, psychologists find. When encouraged under >> hypnosis to imagine a vivid but entirely concocted incident - like >> being awakened by loud noises - people are more likely later to claim >> the scene as a real experience, studies find. >> >> Where, exactly, do the green figures with the wraparound eyes come >> from? From the deep well of pop culture, Dr. Clancy argues, based on a >> review of the history of U.F.O. sightings, popular movies and >> television programs on aliens. The first "abduction" in the United >> States was dramatized in 1953, in the movie "Invaders From Mars," she >> writes, and a rash of abduction reports followed this and other works >> on aliens, including the television series "The Outer Limits." >> >> One such report, by a couple from New Hampshire, Betty and Barney >> Hill, followed by days a particularly evocative episode of the show in >> 1961. Mr. Hill's description of the aliens - with big heads and shiny >> wraparound eyes - was featured in a best-selling book about the >> experience, and inspired the alien forms in Steven Spielberg's "Close >> Encounters of the Third Kind" in 1977, according to Dr. Clancy. >> >> Thus does life imitate art, and vice versa, in a narrative hall of >> mirrors in which scenes and even dialogues are recycled. Although they >> are distinct in details, abduction narratives are extremely similar in >> broad outline and often include experimentation with a sexual or >> procreative subtext. "Oh! And he's opening my shirt, and - he's going >> to put that thing in my navel," says one 1970's narrative, referring >> to a needle. >> >> "I can feel them moving that thing around in my stomach, in my body," >> the narrative, excerpted in the book, continues. The passage echoes >> other abduction accounts, past and future. >> >> In a laboratory study in 2002, Dr. Clancy and another Harvard >> psychologist, Richard McNally, gave self-described abductees a >> standardized word-association test intended to measure proneness to >> false-memory creation. The participants studied lists of words that >> were related to one another - "sugar," "candy," "sour," "bitter" - and >> to another word that was not on the list, in this case, "sweet." >> >> When asked to recall the word lists, those with abduction memories >> were more likely than a group of peers who had no such memories to >> falsely recall the unlisted word. The findings suggest a >> susceptibility to what are called source errors, misattributing >> sources of remembered information by, say, confusing a scene from a >> barely remembered movie with a dream. >> >> In another experiment, the researchers found that recalling abduction >> memories prompted physiological changes in blood pressure and >> sweat-gland activity that were higher than those seen in >> post-traumatic stress syndrome. The memories produced intense >> emotional trauma, and each time that occurs it deepens the certainty >> that something profound really did happen. >> >> Although no one of those elements - sleep paralysis, interest in the >> paranormal, hypnotherapy, memory tricks or emotional investment - is >> necessary or sufficient to create abduction memories, they tend to >> cluster together in self-described abductees, Dr. Clancy finds. "In >> the past, researchers have tended to concentrate on one or another" >> factor, she said in an interview. "I'm saying they all play a role." >> >> Yet abduction narratives often have another, less explicit, dimension >> that Dr. Clancy suspects may be central to their power. Consider this >> comment, from a study participant whom Dr. Clancy calls Jan, a >> middle-age divorcee engaged in a quest for personal understanding: >> "You know, they do walk among us on earth. They have to transform >> first into a physical body, which is very painful for them. But they >> do it out of love. They are here to tell us that we're all >> interconnected in some way. Everything is." >> >> At a basic level, Dr. Clancy concludes, alien abduction stories give >> people meaning, a way to comprehend the many odd and dispiriting >> things that buffet any life, as well as a deep sense that they are not >> alone in the universe. In this sense, abduction memories are like >> transcendent religious visions, scary and yet somehow comforting and, >> at some personal psychological level, true. >> >> Dr. Clancy said she regretted not having asked the abductees she >> interviewed about religious beliefs, which were not a part of her >> original research. The reader may regret that, too. >> >> The warmth, awe and emotion of abduction stories and of those who tell >> them betray strong spiritual currents that will be familiar to >> millions of people whose internal lives are animated by religious >> imagery. >> >> When it comes to sounding the depths of alien stories, a scientific >> inquiry like this one may have to end with an inquiry into religion. << File: ATT00000.txt >> From Euterpel66 at aol.com Sat Aug 13 22:04:41 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 18:04:41 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers Message-ID: <1f9.fc492aa.302fc879@aol.com> A few years ago, I was visiting my aunt in VA and she very casually said that her deceased husband said that he had been abducted by aliens from childhood. I don't know why I didn't pursue the comment, but I didn't .Perhaps it was because my uncle was the very last person I would have ever imagined would have said such a thing, and my aunt was the last person I would ever imagine would admit that her husband had said such a thing. Both were extremely intelligent educated people. He was an aerospace engineer for Grumman and she had a degree in art history. When I got home I became more curious about the whole thing and started recalling my interactions with this family. My uncle was a big man. He was 6'7". Whenever we visited their house, he always disappeared into his study and I recall my mother thought this was an insult.She didn't like my father's sister any better. She thought my aunt was a snob. I remember my uncle as a kind and gentle man who seemed extremely shy. The only time I can remember his ever coming to our house was to help my father put up ceiling tiles when we were building our house. I suppose I should question my aunt about my uncle's admission, but somehow it seems an intrusion. Lorraine Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html In a message dated 8/13/2005 9:04:29 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ljohnson at solution-consulting.com writes: Clancy's hypothesis is almost certainly the best one I have seen, and explains the phenomena. She ignores the other side, where people report being abducted while wide awake. A psychiatrist friend brought two patients to my office because of my skill in hypnosis. These two recalled being abducted while in northwest Utah, raising copper wire from the Great Salt Lake from an old telephone line. They were unsure about whether it was legal, so it was a bit hush-hush. My MD friend wanted me to hypnotize them to get more info; I have never seen such abject terror in human beings before or since. It was extremely puzzling. I finally took a kind of agnosticism about it; I don't believe in abductions, but I cannot explain their reactions any other way. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers New York Times, 5.8.9 _http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/09/health/09alien.html?pagewanted=print) By [3]BENEDICT CAREY "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," by Susan Clancy. Harvard University Press, $22.95. People who have memories of being abducted by aliens become hardened skeptics, of a kind. They dismiss the procession of scientists who explain away the memories as illusions or fantasy. They scoff at talk about hypnosis or the unconscious processing of Hollywood scripts. And they hold their ground amid snickers from a public that thinks that they are daft or psychotic. They are neither, it turns out, and their experiences should be taken as seriously as any strongly held exotic beliefs, according to Susan Clancy, a Harvard psychologist who interviewed dozens of self-described abductees as part of a series of memory studies over the last several years. In her book "Abducted," due in October, Dr. Clancy, a psychologist at Harvard, manages to refute and defend these believers, and along the way provide a discussion of current research into memory, emotion and culture that renders abduction stories understandable, if not believable. Although it focuses on abduction memories, the book hints at a larger ambition, to explain the psychology of transformative experiences, whether supposed abductions, conversions or divine visitations. "Understanding why people believe weird things is important for anyone who wishes to know more about people - that is, humans in general," she writes. Dr. Clancy's accounting for abduction memories starts with an odd but not uncommon experience called sleep paralysis. While in light dream-rich REM sleep, people will in rare cases wake up for a few moments and find themselves unable to move. Psychologists estimate that about a fifth of people will have that experience at least once, during which some 5 percent will be bathed in terrifying sensations like buzzing, full-body electrical quivers, a feeling of levitation, at times accompanied by hallucinations of intruders. Some of them must have an explanation as exotic as the surreal nature of the experience itself. Although no one has studied this group systematically, Dr. Clancy suggests based on her interviews, that they tend to be people who already have some interest in the paranormal, mystical arts and the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors. Often enough, their search for meaning lands them in the care of a therapist who uses hypnotism to elicit more details of their dreamlike experiences. Hypnotism is a state of deep relaxation, when people become highly prone to suggestion, psychologists find. When encouraged under hypnosis to imagine a vivid but entirely concocted incident - like being awakened by loud noises - people are more likely later to claim the scene as a real experience, studies find. Where, exactly, do the green figures with the wraparound eyes come from? From the deep well of pop culture, Dr. Clancy argues, based on a review of the history of U.F.O. sightings, popular movies and television programs on aliens. The first "abduction" in the United States was dramatized in 1953, in the movie "Invaders From Mars," she writes, and a rash of abduction reports followed this and other works on aliens, including the television series "The Outer Limits." One such report, by a couple from New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill, followed by days a particularly evocative episode of the show in 1961. Mr. Hill's description of the aliens - with big heads and shiny wraparound eyes - was featured in a best-selling book about the experience, and inspired the alien forms in Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in 1977, according to Dr. Clancy. Thus does life imitate art, and vice versa, in a narrative hall of mirrors in which scenes and even dialogues are recycled. Although they are distinct in details, abduction narratives are extremely similar in broad outline and often include experimentation with a sexual or procreative subtext. "Oh! And he's opening my shirt, and - he's going to put that thing in my navel," says one 1970's narrative, referring to a needle. "I can feel them moving that thing around in my stomach, in my body," the narrative, excerpted in the book, continues. The passage echoes other abduction accounts, past and future. In a laboratory study in 2002, Dr. Clancy and another Harvard psychologist, Richard McNally, gave self-described abductees a standardized word-association test intended to measure proneness to false-memory creation. The participants studied lists of words that were related to one another - "sugar," "candy," "sour," "bitter" - and to another word that was not on the list, in this case, "sweet." When asked to recall the word lists, those with abduction memories were more likely than a group of peers who had no such memories to falsely recall the unlisted word. The findings suggest a susceptibility to what are called source errors, misattributing sources of remembered information by, say, confusing a scene from a barely remembered movie with a dream. In another experiment, the researchers found that recalling abduction memories prompted physiological changes in blood pressure and sweat-gland activity that were higher than those seen in post-traumatic stress syndrome. The memories produced intense emotional trauma, and each time that occurs it deepens the certainty that something profound really did happen. Although no one of those elements - sleep paralysis, interest in the paranormal, hypnotherapy, memory tricks or emotional investment - is necessary or sufficient to create abduction memories, they tend to cluster together in self-described abductees, Dr. Clancy finds. "In the past, researchers have tended to concentrate on one or another" factor, she said in an interview. "I'm saying they all play a role." Yet abduction narratives often have another, less explicit, dimension that Dr. Clancy suspects may be central to their power. Consider this comment, from a study participant whom Dr. Clancy calls Jan, a middle-age divorc?e engaged in a quest for personal understanding: "You know, they do walk among us on earth. They have to transform first into a physical body, which is very painful for them. But they do it out of love. They are here to tell us that we're all interconnected in some way. Everything is." At a basic level, Dr. Clancy concludes, alien abduction stories give people meaning, a way to comprehend the many odd and dispiriting things that buffet any life, as well as a deep sense that they are not alone in the universe. In this sense, abduction memories are like transcendent religious visions, scary and yet somehow comforting and, at some personal psychological level, true. Dr. Clancy said she regretted not having asked the abductees she interviewed about religious beliefs, which were not a part of her original research. The reader may regret that, too. The warmth, awe and emotion of abduction stories and of those who tell them betray strong spiritual currents that will be familiar to millions of people whose internal lives are animated by religious imagery. When it comes to sounding the depths of alien stories, a scientific inquiry like this one may have to end with an inquiry into religio n. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 01:21:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 21:21:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BBC: How hugs can aid women's hearts Message-ID: How hugs can aid women's hearts http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4131508.stm Women's heart health may benefit more from hugs than men's, a study suggests. A team from the University of North Carolina studied the effects of hugging on both partners in 38 couples. The study showed hugs increased levels of oxytocin, a "bonding" hormone, and reduced blood pressure - which cuts the risk of heart disease. But, writing in the Psychosomatic Medicine, the researchers said women recorded greater reductions in blood pressure than men after their hugs. During the study, the men and women were taken to separate rooms to test their blood pressure and levels of oxytocin, which is released during childbirth and breastfeeding, and cortisol, a stress hormone. The couples were then reunited and asked to sit together and talk about a time when they were particularly happy. They then watched five minutes of a romantic film before being left to talk to each other for a further 10 minutes. Next, the couples were asked to hug for 20 seconds. Protection Both men and women were seen to have higher levels of oxytocin after the hug. People in loving relationships were found to have higher levels of the hormone than others. But the study also found all women had reduced levels of cortisol following the hug, as well as reporting the blood pressure benefits. The researchers, led by psychologist Dr Karen Grewen, wrote in Psychosomatic Medicine: "Greater partner support is linked to higher oxytocin levels for both men and women. "However, the importance of oxytocin and its potentially cardioprotective effects may be greater for women." Dr Charmaine Griffiths, spokesperson for the British Heart Foundation, said: "Scientists are increasingly interested in the possibility that positive emotions can be good for your health. "This study has reinforced research findings that support from a partner, in this case a hug from a loved one, can have beneficial effects on heart health." She added: "British Heart Foundation researchers have already demonstrated links between a positive emotional state, such as happiness, and low levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. "This growing body of research only goes to highlight how important social support is for everyone, not just those in a relationship." From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 01:21:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 21:21:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Entrenched Epidemic: Wife-Beatings in Africa Message-ID: Entrenched Epidemic: Wife-Beatings in Africa http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/international/africa/11women.html By SHARON LaFRANIERE LAGOS, Nigeria - It was a typical husband-wife argument. She wanted to visit her parents. He wanted her to stay home. So they settled it in what some here say is an all-too-typical fashion, Rosalynn Isimeto-Osibuamhe recalled of the incident in December 2001. Her husband, Emmanuel, followed her out the door. Then he beat her unconscious, she says, and left her lying in the street near their apartment. Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe, then 31 and in the fifth year of her marriage, had broken an unwritten rule in this part of the world: she had defied her husband. Surveys throughout sub-Saharan Africa show that many men - and women, too - consider such disobedience ample justification for a beating. Not Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe. A university graduate and founder of a French school, she packed her clothes and walked out as soon as she got back from the hospital. So far, although her resolve sometimes wavers and she does not want a divorce, she has not gone back. "He doesn't believe I have any rights of my own," she said in an interview outside her French classroom. "If I say no, he beats me. I said: 'Wow. That is not what I want in life.' " Women suffer from violence in every society. In few places, however, is the abuse more entrenched, and accepted, than in sub-Saharan Africa. One in three Nigerian women reported having been physically abused by a male partner, according to the latest study, conducted in 1993. The wife of the deputy governor of a northern Nigerian province told reporters last year that her husband beat her incessantly, in part because she watched television movies. One of President Olusegun Obasanjo's appointees to a national anticorruption commission was allegedly killed by her husband in 2000, two days after she asked the state police commissioner to protect her. "It is like it is a normal thing for women to be treated by their husbands as punching bags," Obong Rita Akpan, until last month Nigeria's minister for women's affairs, said in an interview here. "The Nigerian man thinks that a woman is his inferior. Right from childhood, right from infancy, the boy is preferred to the girl. Even when they marry out of love, they still think the woman is below them and they do whatever they want." In Zambia, nearly half of women surveyed said a male partner had beaten them, according to a 2004 study financed by the United States - the highest percentage of nine developing nations surveyed on three continents. In South Africa, researchers for the Medical Research Council estimated last year that a male partner kills a girlfriend or spouse every six hours - the highest mortality rate from domestic violence ever reported, they say. In Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, domestic violence accounts for more than 6 in 10 murder cases in court, a United Nations report concluded last year. Yet most women remain silent about the abuse, women's rights organizations say. A World Health Organization study has found that while more than a third of Namibian women reported enduring physical or sexual abuse by a male partner, often resulting in injury, six in seven victims had either kept it to themselves or confided only in a friend or relative. Help is typically not easy to find. Nigeria, Africa's largest nation with nearly 130 million people, has only two shelters for battered women, both opened in the last four years. The United States, by contrast, has about 1,200 such havens. Moreover, many women say wifely transgression justify beatings. About half of women interviewed in Zambia in 2001 and 2002 said husbands had a right to beat wives who argue with them, burn the dinner, go out without the husband's permission, neglect the children or refuse sex. To Kenny Adebayo, a 30-year-old driver in Lagos, the issue is clear-cut. "If you tell your wife she puts too much salt in the dinner, and every day, every day, every day there is too much salt, one day you will get emotional and hurt her," he said. "We men in Africa hate disrespect." Nigeria's penal code, in force in the Muslim-dominated north, specifically allows husbands to discipline their wives - just as it allows parents and teachers to discipline children - as long as they do not inflict grievous harm. Assault laws could apply, but the police typically see wife-beating as an exception. Domestic violence bills have been proposed in six of Nigeria's three dozen provinces but adopted in just two. Women's rights activists say that the prevalence of abuse is emblematic of the low status of women in sub-Saharan Africa. Typically less educated, they work longer hours and transport three times as much weight as men, hauling firewood, water and sacks of corn on their heads. Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe does not fit that standard profile. Articulate, with a fashionable haircut and a sociology book in her bag, she speaks in a confident, even assertive tone of voice. Her diary is full of plans for various projects she hopes to undertake. "I am an organizer," she said in a series of interviews. "I am a leader." But that did not save her from a seemingly endless string of beatings during her eight-year marriage to her husband, Emmanuel. By Nigerian standards, Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe said, her parents were progressive. Her father occasionally beat her mother, but he also encouraged his daughter, the oldest of seven children, to pursue her studies and, later, her careers as a marketing executive, French teacher and host of a French educational television show. She was only about 16 when she met Emmanuel. Like her, he went on to graduate from a university, specializing in accounting. Slim and handsome, he slapped her only once during their long courtship, she said. She thought it was an aberration. It wasn't. Now 35, Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe says that Emmanuel beat her more than 60 times after she married him in 1997. He beat her, she says, while she was pregnant with their son, now 6. He threw a lantern at her. He held a knife to her head, she said, while a friend pleaded with him not to kill her. Emmanuel Osibuamhe, 36, now says he was wrong to beat his wife. But in a two-hour interview in his office, which doubles as barber shop, he insisted that she drove him to it by deliberately provoking him. Pacing the floor in freshly pressed pants, polished shoes and yellow shirt, he grew increasingly agitated as he recalled how she challenged his authority. "You can't imagine yourself beating your wife?" he said. "You can't imagine yourself being pushed to that level? But some people just push you over the edge, and you do things that you are not supposed to do." "For God's sake," he added. "You are the head of the home as the man. You must have a home that is submissive to you." To him, that means accepting that he is the head of the household and makes the final decisions. It also means that all property be in his name and that his wife ask his permission before she visits her family, he said. When Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe eventually sought help, others only seemed to support her husband's view. She went to the police. "They told me I am not a small girl," she recalled. "If I don't want to be married, I should get divorced." She told her father-in-law. He advised her that "beating is normal." She told her local pastor, who counseled her that "I shouldn't make him so angry," telling her "whatever my husband says, I should submit." She found support, finally, at Project Alert on Violence Against Women, a nonprofit organization that runs one of Nigeria's two shelters. She lived at the shelter for weeks. She titled her statement detailing the violence "A Cry for Help." Bridget Osekwe, the senior program officer, said the group's files contained 200 cases like Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe's. Even some women who are economically independent like Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe, she said, are loath to divorce their husbands for fear of social disgrace. "In this society, a woman must do everything she can to make her marriage work," said Josephine Effah-Chukwuma, who set up Project Alert in 1999. "If it fails, the woman gets the blame." Since she moved out, Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe said, her husband has hit her a dozen times, once knocking her to the floor of their church. She is torn over whether it is possible for him to change. She worries about how she will raise her son, now living with his grandparents, should she divorce. "Should I stay because of the baby and then get killed?" she asked. But at another point she asked a reporter to make sure that in any account of her story, her last name would be hyphenated to include his. Her diary is filled with notes on how his views are wrong. "Marriage to you: A slavery relationship!" she wrote this January. She has now found a new outlet as the creator and host of a local television show on domestic violence. After the first program was broadcast, she said, she was deluged with calls from women like herself. She hopes to pursue their cause through a little foundation she has formed called "Happy Family." "An African man believes his wife is like a piece of property, is like a car, is like a shoe, is like something for him to trample on," Ms. Isimeto-Osibuamhe said. "Our men need education." So do "our mothers, our fathers, our sons," she added. "The whole society needs to be overhauled." From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 01:22:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 21:22:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Alternet: Weird Science on the Religious Right Message-ID: Weird Science on the Religious Right http://www.alternet.org/story/24000/ By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted August 11, 2005. Seven of the greatest hits (or misses) of conservative Christian 'science' show just how little fact goes into these beliefs, and how much damage they can cause. --- "God said it. I believe it. That settles it." This familiar bumper sticker slogan appears to sum up the Religious Right's decision-making process on matters of heated public debate. But when policies involving human biology and behavior are being hammered out, faith alone isn't always sufficient to win over voters and decision-makers. At such times, a bit of scientific evidence comes in handy, and some of the Religious Right's operatives aren't too choosy about where they get it. Consider the following seven claims, the quality of the scientific evidence that supports them and the potential consequences, were they to be widely accepted: "Condoms are full of holes" That's according to Concerned Women For America and many other right-wing groups. How big are those holes? Big enough that an HIV particle or even a sperm can easily wander through, if you believe this scary diagram from abortionfacts.com: condom holes http://www.alternet.org/images/managed/Story+Image_thumb_holes.jpg Organizations that advertise gaping holes of 5 microns (.0002 inch) or more in condoms often turn out to be misapplying data from a 1993 paper by scientist C.M. Roland. Possibly confused by the title of the journal in which Roland published his work -- Rubber World -- they fail to note that his experiments were done with latex gloves, not condoms. On the other hand, a 1998 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report noted that when 1-micron holes were intentionally drilled in condom latex, a sensitive test could detect them, but the same test could find no holes in undrilled condoms. That indicated that condoms have no holes bigger than 1 micron, unless researchers poke the holes themselves. And in a 50-micron-thick condom, even a 1-micron-wide hole is really a narrow tunnel that would have little chance of reaching through the entire thickness, let alone allowing HIV particles through. The overall conclusion of the FDA study: "All the latex films representing a wide range of formulations and ages were effective barriers to transmission of the small virus. Thus, permeation through quite thin, stretched samples with this very sensitive test was not found." The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fact sheet on condoms states that "Laboratory studies have demonstrated that latex condoms provide an essentially impermeable barrier to particles the size of STD pathogens." And, of course, a far larger sperm cell has no chance of escape. That information is buried in the midst of a previously informative CDC document that was largely gutted under the Bush Administration. While noting, correctly, that condoms are not 100 percent effective, the current fact sheet no longer contains information on proper use of condoms. Condom failure is actually overwhelmingly due to mistakes or accidents during their use, not manufacture or testing, so the fact sheet now put out by the CDC, and influenced by the Religious Right, may be making unwanted pregnancy and HIV infection more likely, not less so. A footnote: Concerned Women for America's "full of holes" claim was based on a press release by the National Physicians Center for Family Resources. That obscure group came under fire this summer in Congress for the Bush administration's 4Parents.gov website, which it produced. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. and 145 nongovernmental organizations condemned the site for misleading teenagers about condoms and other sexual issues. "Phonics is the only effective way to teach reading" Have you ever wondered why right-wing Christian parents and educators are so intent on promoting phonics (a method of teaching reading that stresses basic symbol-sound relationships) and so abhor "whole language" learning (in which children learn words by reading them in context)? The answer you'll get from phonics advocates is simply that it works, as indicated by better test scores (at least when the tests include questions on phonics!). But there appears to be consensus among researchers outside the Religious Right that the most effective approach is a broad, integrated one that incorporates some phonics training and a lot of reading. The most pertinent research I've seen on the Christian phonics fixation (by the way, why do those last two words begin with different letters?) was done by Mark Thogmartin. Here are excerpts of some of the reasons he heard from phonics enthusiasts, as he listed them in a 1997 issue of Home Education magazine: * "More holistic approaches to reading instruction are more child-centered and seem to assert the inherent goodness of the child, which is opposed to the basic Christian doctrine of a sinful nature derived from the fall of Adam." * "A phonics approach to reading instruction, with its usual dependence on drill and rote memorization, is more compatible with the rigidly disciplined environment of most Christian schools." * "Often, theorists who believe in a more holistic, meaning-centered reading instruction philosophy have ... suggested that a child's ability to extract the meaning from print is the primary objective of reading any passage. This may sound almost blasphemous to Christians who believe in the literal, verbal inspiration of scripture." Probably the chief reason for the Christian Rights's crusade against whole-language learning is a concern about its association throughout the 20th century with the left side of the U.S. political spectrum. Indeed, conservative Christian writer Samuel Blumenfeld has suggested, according to Thogmartin, that whole-language-style methodology "was initiated as a deliberate attempt by socialists to lower the literacy rates in America. An illiterate society would be more dependent on the 'Big Brother' socialist government, making a socialist takeover much easier." "Abortion causes breast cancer" The heavily publicized "ABC Hypothesis" -- that having an abortion increases a woman's risk of developing breast cancer -- is not supported by valid research. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), it is "well established" that "induced abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer risk." But ABC proponents such as Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, claim that the NIH is party to a coverup, and that in fact "abortion causes breast cancer." To support that assertion, they often cite research in which women suffering from breast cancer, as well as women who are cancer-free, are asked whether they have ever had an abortion. But in such situations, say ABC's critics, healthy women are less likely to be forthcoming about past abortions than are those who are currently undergoing treatment for a grave illness. Studies that avoid that bias by relying wholly on medical records have found no link. Many environmental and genetic factors interact throughout a woman's life to push or pull her down a road either toward or away from breast cancer. No one factor can be said to "cause" the disease -- certainly not one like abortion, for which even a valid statistical association cannot be detected. In an attempt to seal her argument, Malec often claims that abortion "causes" breast cancer through the simple mechanism of preventing childbirth. Perhaps inadvertently shedding some light on her underlying motivations, she has written that "experts universally agree that having a child provides a woman with a natural protection against breast cancer and that it is healthier for a married woman not to postpone her first full-term pregnancy." "Remote prayer cures disease" There could well be all sorts of "mind-body" mechanisms through which prayer in the presence of a patient, or by the patient herself, might provide medical benefits. But what if so-called "remote intercessory prayer" -- that is, praying for a far-away patient without that patient's knowledge -- could be proven to produce medically detectable results? That would really be something, wouldn't it? Amazingly, in 2001, a paper demonstrating the effectiveness of remote prayer turned up in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. In that study, scientists at Columbia University showed that by saying appropriate prayers, groups of people in the US, Australia, and Canada apparently increased the pregnancy rate in women who had undergone in vitro fertilization in Korea. But before long, critics led by Bruce Flamm, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, Irvine, showed that the study was suspiciously designed and statistically flawed. Then it came to light that one of the paper's three authors, Daniel Wirth, lacked a medical degree but did sport an impressive criminal record. A year after the paper was published, Wirth, a faith-healing con man, was indicted for stealing $3.4 million in income and property through the use of false identities. He pled guilty to conspiracy charges in May 2004. (The charges were unconnected to the prayer study). In October 2004, the Journal of Reproductive Medicine published a correction stating that another of the paper's authors, Rogerio A. Lobo, had requested that his name be removed from the paper. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had found that Lobo first learned of the study six to 12 months after its completion. To date, no statistically significant evidence of successful remote intercessory prayer has been published. Private prayer has no obvious implications for government policy, unless research on the subject is paid for by taxpayers. And -- you guessed it -- that has indeed happened. The National Institutes for Health, through its National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, has funded research on remote intercessory prayer at least twice since 1992. "Emergency contraception is a health hazard" The so-called "morning-after pill" -- a single tablet containing hormones similar to those in birth control pills but in a larger dose -- prevents pregnancy by blocking fertilization or implantation of the egg. Side effects may include some flu-like symptoms, which appear to be less severe than common side effects of early pregnancy, and of shorter duration. David Reardon, Director of the anti-abortion Elliot Institute, offers this retort to FDA researchers who have declared the pill safe: "Actually, what they really mean by 'safe' is simply that women aren't dropping down dead." Like other critics of emergency contraception on the Religious Right, unencumbered by any scientific evidence, he conjures up dark images of devastating long-term health risks from taking the pill. What has Christian extremists up in arms about emergency contraception is that it may prevent implantation and development of an already fertilized egg, which they regard as the death of a human being. That belief, of course, has long been the subject of philosophical debate. Exaggerating health hazards is simply a way of doing an end run on the philosophical question and getting the pill's use restricted or banned outright. In 2004, the FDA refused to permit over-the-counter sales of Barr Laboratories' "Plan B" emergency contraception product. In so doing, the agency overruled its own scientific advisory panel, which had recommended that such sales be allowed. In May 2005, The Nation and the Washington Post quoted one conservative evangelical member of the advisory panel, W. David Hager, as he boasted to an Asbury College congregation -- in a videotaped sermon -- of his role in getting Plan B restricted: "After two days of hearings, the committees voted to approve this over-the-counter sale by 23 to 4. I was asked to write a minority opinion that was sent to the commissioner of the FDA. For only the second time in five decades, the FDA did not abide by its advisory committee opinion, and the measure was rejected. Now the opinion I wrote was not from an evangelical Christian perspective. ... But I argued it from a scientific perspective, and God took that information, and He used it through this minority report to influence the decision." He added, "Once again, what Satan meant for evil, God turned into good." The FDA is revisiting the question of over-the-counter sales of Plan B and will issue a ruling by the end of this month. "Terri Schiavo could have gotten better" When Schiavo's autopsy was released publicly on June 15, 2005, it showed, in the words of the district medical examiner, that her brain damage "was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons." The report did not state that Schiavo was in a "permanent vegetative state" (PVS), because PVS is defined in clinical terms and not demonstrated through autopsy. The Religious Right has latched onto the report's silence on PVS, continuing to insist that, based on the autopsy, "we really can't know how she died." Pointing to the absence of a PVS diagnosis in the autopsy report, a spokesperson for the organization Focus on the Family said that "People are grasping at straws to justify the dehydration death of Terri Schiavo." Of course, before Schiavo's death, clinical observation by medical experts did confirm that she was in a permanent vegetative state from which she could never recover. Evidence to the contrary, of course, could have provided a compelling reason to continue life support indefinitely. And for a while, hopes for restoration of Schiavo's consciousness appeared to rest on one man: William Hammesfahr, M.D. The Schiavo family selected the Clearwater, Fla. neurologist to testify before Florida's Sixth Circuit Court in 2002 that his "vasodilation therapy" could revive Schiavo. But the court order that followed was scathing in its assessment of Hammesfahr's arguments: It is clear that this therapy is not recognized in the medical community ... and what undermines his credibility is that he did not present to this court any evidence other than his generalized statements as to the efficacy of his therapy on brain damaged individuals like Terry Schiavo. He testified that he has treated about 50 patients in the same or worse condition than Terry Schiavo since 1994 but he offered no names, no case studies, no videos and no tests results to support his claim that he had success in all but one of them. The Court was also skeptical about Hammesfahr's claim to be a "Nobel Prize nominee," and with good reason. He based the claim on nothing more than a letter written on his behalf by Rep. Mike Bilirakis, R-Fla., who is not eligible to make Nobel nominations. "Humans are not descended from pre-human ancestors." For a good story, give me that old-time creationism, with its 6,000-year-old Earth and big flood. But that's not an easy sell when you're dealing with school boards and other government institutions. So these days, the anti-evolution Right talks mostly about intelligent design (ID). Many proponents of ID -- which is creationism dressed up in a white lab coat -- have accomodated scientific reality to some extent by admitting, for example, that the Earth really is 4.5 billion years old or that natural selection can occur within certain strict limits. However, they are unwavering in their insistence that individual species are the products of custom design, not natural selection. And that applies doubly to our own species. As they labor to explain how humans were created -- while trying to avoid being buried under a growing mountain of physical and genetic data that demonstrates our primate ancestry -- ID thinkers have exhibited some impressive creativity of their own. Among their efforts to reconcile the intelligent design of humans with real science, the award for Most Imaginative goes to Jonathan Wells. A Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle and author of the creationist classic Icons of Evolution (2000), Wells wrote the following as part of a paper he presented to the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, a forum established by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church: Some people believe that the first human beings were created fully grown. But ... a creature that begins life without passing through birth and childhood would be so unlike us that we could not regard it as truly human, regardless of how great the superficial resemblance. And because human babies are totally dependent on other creatures for their survival during early development, animals capable of raising the first human babies must have been a necessary part of the original plan. Human babies need milk to survive and grow, so mammals had to exist before humans appeared. And not just any mammal. The first human baby presumably had to be nurtured by a creature very much like itself -- a humanlike primate. This creature, in turn, could only have been nurtured by a creature intermediate in some respects between it and a more primitive mammal. In other words, a plan for the emergence of human beings must have included something like the succession of prehistoric forms we find in the fossil record. Intelligent Design is an attempt to squeeze a creation story -- any creation story, whether it features Adam and Eve or motherly monkeys -- through cracks in the First Amendment and into public classrooms. This process is at various stages of completion in Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states. And President Bush himself recently endorsed the teaching of ID. Well, you have to admit that when the Religious Right and its innovative researchers get involved, science is anything but dry and dull. But when society is trying to come to a collective decision on science-related issues that can have profound consequences for millions of people, we need something more substantial than gripping fiction and colorful characters. Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kansas. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 01:38:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 21:38:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: General Disobeyed Orders to End Affair, Officials Say Message-ID: General Disobeyed Orders to End Affair, Officials Say http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/13/politics/13general.html [I have googled and got thousands of hits, including the one from Prison Planet about a military coup involving Byrnes. Welcome to Paranoid Nation! My more mundane idea is that Byrnes was a dissident, that he was watched extra closely, and that an extra-marital affair was turned up, something that would ordinarily be overlooked, esp. when the man was about to get divorced.] By DAVID S. CLOUD WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 - A four-star general relieved of his command this week for adultery was ordered last January to break off the affair but continued to have contact with the woman, two senior Army officials said on Friday. A major reason the general, Kevin P. Byrnes, was dismissed as head of the Army Training and Doctrine Command was that the inspector general found that he had violated the direct order from the Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is still being adjudicated. Army officials disclosed the details of the inspector general's inquiry to explain the unusual decision to relieve a four-star officer with a distinguished record. The order to break off contact with the woman, whose identity has not been made public, came after the inspector general began an inquiry into an accusation that General Byrnes was involved in an adulterous affair, the officials said. General Schoomaker told him to cease contacts with the woman until the inspector general completed the inquiry, the officials said. But the inspector general later found that General Byrnes continued to make telephone calls to her, although the officials would not say if the contacts went beyond calls. "He was told to knock it off, and he ignored it and continued the affair," a senior Army official said. Several Army officers said they considered the punishment surprisingly harsh for a general who was nearing retirement. The Army officials also disclosed that another senior officer, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, has been appointed to determine if any additional action should be taken against General Byrnes. Possible penalties range from a reprimand to a court-martial. General Byrnes faces uncertainty over whether his rank will be reduced to major general, with a resulting loss of retirement benefits. The Army's Manual on Court Martial describes adultery as "unacceptable conduct," and Army officials say that it is barred under a provision of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that prohibits bringing discredit on the military. General Byrnes separated from his wife, Carol, in mid-2004, but the couple did not divorce until earlier this month. A lawyer for General Byrnes, Lt. Col. David H. Robertson, said Wednesday that the general had been relieved because of an accusation about "a consensual, adult relationship." The statement said the person was a female civilian. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 01:38:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 21:38:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] ParaPolitics Forum: United States Military Forces Begin Coup Message-ID: ParaPolitics Forum - EU / UN / Globalist Agendas - United States Military Forces Begin Coup http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/read.php?f=36&i=709&t=709 [Here's one roundup of articles about the coup now going on. This was not reported in the New York Times.] United States Military Forces Begin Coup Author: [9]Admin Date: 08-10-05 13:34 United States Military Forces Begin Coup, Top US General Arrested By Anti-Coup Factions, Russian and Chinese Military Forces Go To High Alert By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Russian Subscribers [coup-cover1.jpg] Russian Intelligence Analysts are reporting this evening that an apparent coup is taking place in the United States and that both Russian and Chinese Forces have been ordered to their highest non-nuclear defense status. This troubling news comes on the eve of joint Military exercises previously planned between both Russian and China, and as we can read as reported by the Guardian Unlimited News Service in their article titled "China and Russia flex their muscles as they join forces to play the war game [10]http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1545389,00.html" and which says; "Next week will see far larger war games involving Chinese and Russian troops in and around the Shandong peninsula in the Yellow sea. Regional observers say such military cooperation is unprecedented and could mark the start of something new. [11]http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1545389,00.html "The China-Russia exercise is intended to send a message to Taiwan," said Andrew Yang of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies in Taipei. "But it's also a very significant move in terms of the developing relationship between Russia and China and joint efforts to manage regional security. "China considers it's time to increase strategic cooperation with Russia to balance the US role in the region. Both are interested in demonstrating this is a multipolar rather than a unipolar world," Dr Yang said." [12]http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1545389,00.html One of the Coup Leaders in the United States, General Kevin P. Byrnes, and who is also one of their top Military Generals, has been arrested and taken prisoner by US Counter-Coup Forces, and as we can read as reported by the Newsday News Service in their article titled Senior general is relieved of duties at commander of key Army training organization" [13]http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--armygener alreliev0809aug09,0,2729727.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork and which says; "The Army, in a rare disciplinary act against a four-star officer, said Tuesday it relieved Gen. Kevin P. Byrnes of his command after a Pentagon investigation into unspecified "personal conduct." Byrnes, a native of New York City, was relieved as commander of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command on Monday by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker, according to a brief statement issued by Army headquarters at the Pentagon." [14]http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--armygener alreliev0809aug09,0,2729727.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork Russian Military Analysts are further reporting that US Military Forces still loyal to General Byrnes and the other Coup Leaders are continuing their preparations and as evidenced by a number of large scale Military movements within the Continental United States Regions. These reports further state that the Coup Leaders efforts are being hampered by the ordering last week of 7 Armor Brigades loyal to the Coup Leaders to depart immediately to the Iraqi War Zone. Speculation behind the reasons leading to these Coup Leader efforts centers upon the belief within the American Military Establishment that war with Iran is imminent and all that remains is the triggering event forecast by many World Intelligence Organizations to occur this month in the United States. Like the rest of the world knows, should the American Coup Leaders fail in their efforts Total Global War will be the result of any American attack upon Iran, and as exampled by yesterdays article from the Uruknet News Service in their article titled "Why Iran will lead to World War 3 [15]http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m14453&date=09-aug-2005_05:46_ECT" and which says; "In the short term, however, the plan is fraught with difficulties. At present, there is no wiggle room in the worlds oil supply for massive disruptions and most experts are predicting shortages in the 4th quarter of this year. If the administrations war on Iran goes forward we will see a shock to the worlds oil supplies and economies that could be catastrophic. That being the case, a report that was leaked last week that Dick Cheney had STRATCOM (Strategic Command) draw up contingency plans for a tactical nuclear war against Iran, is probably a bit of brinksmanship intended to dissuade Iran from striking back and escalating the conflict. [16]http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m14453&date=09-aug-2005_05:46_ECT It makes no difference. If Iran is attacked they will retaliate; that much is certain. It is always the mistake of extremists to misjudge the behavior of reasonable men; just as it is always the mistake of reasonable men to mistake the behavior of extremists. We should not expect the Bush administration to make a rational choice; that would be a dramatic departure from every preceding decision of consequence. The President of the United States always has the option of unleashing Armageddon if he so chooses. Normally, however, sanity prevails. When the bombs hit the bunkers in Iran; World War 3 will be underway." [17]http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m14453&date=09-aug-2005_05:46_ECT To the outcome of these present events we are not in the knowing, other than to state that should these American Military Coup Leaders fail the result will be Total Global War. To the American Presidents position as to which side of the Coup he is supporting there is also much speculation due to his fleeing of the United States to Saudi Arabia, and which we had previously reported on in our August 8th report titled "Bush Flees United States for Saudi Arabia as Israel Accelerates Attack Timetable in Continuing Secret War with America, US Prepares For Martial Law [18]http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index795.htm". Russian FSB also reports that the American Presidents demand to the Saudi King that all monies belonging to the Bush Family through their many Saudi linked companies be returned has been granted, and as we can read as reported by the United Press International News Service in their article titled "Saudis to retrieve $360 billion abroad [19]http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-200508 07-09573600-bc-saudi-funds.xml" and which says, "Saudi Arabia said Sunday it was working to bring back to the kingdom a total of $360 billion invested abroad in the last 18 months." [20]http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-200508 07-09573600-bc-saudi-funds.xml The FSB further reports the Saudi payment of these debts to the Bush Family were made in gold reserves and which are now in the process of being returned to the United States by the American President and his family members who accompanied him to Saudi Arabia. To the American peoples themselves not knowing of how these Coups work themselves out their remains the ominous possibility that we had reported on yesterday that they will be placed under Martial Law, and to which their Military Leaders have already prepared for, and as we can read as reported by the WSWS News Service in their article titled "Pentagon devising scenarios for martial law in US [21]http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml" and which says; "As for the claims that these military plans are driven by genuine concern over the threat of terrorist attacks, these are belied by the actual conduct of the American ruling elite since 9/11. The Bush administration has done everything possible to suppress any investigation into the circumstances of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagonmost likely because its own negligence, possibly deliberate, would be exposed. While the Pentagon claims that its plans are a response to the danger of nuclear, biological or chemical attacks, no serious practical measures have been taken to forestall such attacks or minimize their impact. The Bush administration and Congress have refused even to restrict the movement of rail tank cars loaded with toxic chemicals through the US capital, though even an accidental leak, let alone a terrorist attack, would cause mass casualties. [22]http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml In relation to bioterrorism, the Defense Science Board determined in a 2000 study that the federal government had only 1 of the 57 drugs, vaccines and diagnostic tools required to deal with such an attack. According to a report in the Washington Post August 7, in the five years since the Pentagon report, only one additional resource has been developed, bringing the total to 2 out of 57. Drug companies have simply refused to conduct the research required to find antidotes to anthrax and other potential toxins, and the Bush administration has done nothing to compel them. As for the danger of nuclear or dirty-bomb attacks, the Bush administration and the congressional Republican leadership recently rammed through a measure loosening restrictions on exports of radioactive substances, at the behest of a Canadian-based manufacturer of medical supplies which conducted a well-financed lobbying campaign. [23]http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml Evidently, the administration and the corporate elite which it represents do not take seriously their own warnings about the imminent threat of terrorist attacks using nuclear, chemical or biological weaponsat least not when it comes to security measures that would impact corporate profits. The anti-terrorism scare has a propaganda purpose: to manipulate the American people and induce the public to accept drastic inroads against democratic rights. As the Pentagon planning suggests, the American working class faces the danger of some form of military-police dictatorship in the United States." [24]http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml The devastating suddenness of all of these events will no doubt stun these Americans, who even in these last hours, and before total madness strikes, continue to ignore the very world they live in, and whom their Military Leaders are driving towards the abyss. [25]http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml [26]http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index796.htm [27]Reply To This Message Nuclear Terror Drill to Go Live? Let's Hope Not Author: [28]Admin Date: 08-10-05 18:16 Nuclear Terror Drill to Go Live? Let's Hope Not Infowars.com | August 10, 2005 by R. Leland Lehrman August 10, 2005 12:56PM Santa Fe, New Mexico (Mother Media) - On June 29th, United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) posted news of a nuclear terrorism drill on its website: [29]http://www.northcom.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.showstory&storyi d=C9BFBBAC-F3CA-BD2E-008C7B34AFE33114: "Heres the scenarioA seafaring vessel transporting a 10-kiloton nuclear warhead makes its way into a port off the coast of Charleston, S.C. Terrorists aboard the ship attempt to smuggle the warhead off the ship to detonate it." It went on to say that "Sudden Response 05 will take place this August on Fort Monroe and will be carried out as an internal command post exercise. The exercise is intended to train the JTF-CS staff to plan and execute Consequence Management operations in support of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IVs response to a nuclear detonation." As Alex Jones of infowars.com and others have pointed out, terror "drills" are now known to be the favorite "cover story" for New World Order terrorist operations [30]http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2005/090705bombingexercis es.htm, as evidenced by the eerily accurate terrorism drills happening on both 9/11 and 7/7. Recently, former CIA/DIA analyst Philip Giraldi has informed us that "Vice-President Cheney has tasked STRATCOM with "drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11- type terrorist attack on the United States [31]http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=38408" and that "the plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons." Investigators and counter-intelligence specialists are concerned that this upcoming August nuclear terror scenario might go live to create the pretext for tactical nuclear war against Iran. Mother Media contacted NORTHCOM Public Affairs this morning and learned that the Fort Monroe drill may begin tomorrow, 8/11. Mother Media hopes that mass awareness of New World Order methods could prevent the attacks, whether tomorrow, next week or next year. In the course of the conversation with NORTHCOM Public Affairs, Mother Media also learned that CNN recently launched their military operations news special "Situation Room" from inside the NORTHCOM situation room in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Wolf Blitzer is the show's famously hawkish and pro-Israel host. Imagine that - a new CNN "Situation Room" military focus news program debuts in NORTHCOM headquarters days prior to a nuclear terror drill. They're not even bothering to pretend there's separation between the press and the government anymore. CNN here makes it obvious that they are now the New World Order's propaganda mouthpiece. At the war crimes trials, let's not forget it. Adding to the drama, the four-star commander of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at the Fort Monroe base where the nuclear terror drill is to occur, Kevin P. Byrnes was just relieved of his command [32]http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3303832 amidst allegations of sexual misconduct. Veteran investigator Greg Szymanski has uncovered another plausible motive [33]http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31291.htm: "Sources close to the military who remain anonymous said Byrnes was part of a U.S. military faction discontented with the Bush administration war policies in Iraq and the potential for a nuclear disaster in Iran. In an effort to stop the Bush administration in its tracks, sources say Byrnes was about to lead a coup against the hawks in the military and executive branch determined to lead America into a global conflict, leading to devastating ramifications for the country, as well as financial and social chaos. Rumors inside the military say that a growing faction of discontented high-ranking officers are attempting internally to try and stop the Bush administrations imminent plans for war with Iran in an effort to avert global war. Although the exact number of high-ranking military involved is undetermined, sources have disclosed it appears to be evenly split between pro Bush and anti Bush factions. Even though speculation abounds about an attempted coup relating to the Byrnes firing, no one would question the strange rumblings of war against Iran and warnings of terrorist threats on the homeland that are beginning to circulate from administration officials and media talking heads almost on a daily basis. Further, ominous reports are even coming from the Washington Post this week that the Pentagon has developed its first ever war plans for operations within the United States, plans justifying and making necessary preparations for martial law in case of a homeland terrorist attack." If you look at NORTHCOM's website, you will find a discussion of the situations under which Posse Comitatus, the restriction against military policing in America, can legally be suspended [34]http://www.northcom.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.factsheets&facts heet=5. One of those conditions is an attack by a nuclear or other weapon of mass destruction. Another is "insurrection." Diabolically standing over all of these scenarios is Global Cleanse 2000 [35]http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/binladen_bros_tip_off_nasa _sept_11,htm.htm or just Global 2000, a population control methodology developed by the New World Order which includes triggered natural disasters, wars and diseases designed to reduce the world population by two thirds. Rene Welch, who had access to the Global Cleanse 2000 database in the late eighties, recently appeared on Mother Media's radio program to discuss her findings. In response to this author's article, Israel, Iran and a Nuclear False Flag Attack [36]http://www.physics911.net/nuclearfalseflag.htm, reports have been flowing into Mother Media's office confirming and buttressing this story. One former Air Force member writes that all military leaves have been cancelled after September 7th and that Homeland Security is beefing up security at local Draft Board Offices. Writing as TeaParty2Come, this source paints an ominous picture: "About 3 weeks ago I was surfing some of the sites I enjoy posting on, when someone posted in all caps that they had just heard from an officer friend in the military that all leaves had been cancelled for the month of September. Obviously aware of the false flags our government is famous for, this person sounded desperate, asking for help in confirming or denying this "rumor" from anyone who had connections in the military. I happened to ask a co-worker friend of mine whose son in-law is in the Army (82nd) about checking out the "rumor". Well guess what, they've had to move up their leave to this coming week to come home because his unit has to be back by September 7th where upon all leaves are cancelled! They have seen a steady build up of heavy materials just sitting in storage facilities. He also commented that they were rushed through a training course on new weapons systems they just rolled out. He thought this very odd and a first. This sent shivers all through me. Not to push any panic buttons I spoke with a dear woman with whom I work whose son is in the Army in an artillery unit. She is a former Captain, her husband is a former Colonel and Vietnam vet and successful attorney here in our area who also happens to be dying from the effects of Agent Orange. Lo and behold their son was told all leaves are cancelled for September and in December they may get leave, but can travel no further than 17 kilometers from their base. My niece is married to a young man in the Army stationed on the East Coast he is also 82nd, his leave has also been cancelled. Their first baby is due in December. ...I'm not prone to fits of paranoia but I have to tell you, I have begun stocking water and canned goods. I am ex Air Force, I was on three ring standby most of my enlistment and was in a constant training mode. I know how this works and it doesn't sound good. The draft board offices are in place with staff waiting for the word to go. I read an article from a guy who works in one of those offices, he said Homeland Security came in there early last month and put up bullet proof glass on the windows and iron bars, they installed blast proof glass on the doors, and removed the mail drop box slots on the outside of the building. When he asked what was going on they identified themselves as Homeland Security and said don't worry about the rest and left. It's coming no doubt about it. Sorry I can't be more positive, but this is what I have heard with my own ears from three independent military member sources in different parts of the country." A source in New Mexico passed this on to Mother Media a couple weeks ago: "A friend came by today. His relative is fairly high-level in regional counter-terrorism. My friend says his relative told him they are preparing for the strong possibility that there will be 7 U.S. cities attacked with small, backpack-held nuclear devices by 'al-Qaida types.' It sounds like the propaganda -- the cover stories for PNAC or whomever these bad guys are -- has begun." The sheer number of warnings and events, subtle hints and overt threats is now too much to ignore. More background and warning signs, especially as regards Israel and Iran can be found in my article at physics911.net [37]http://www.physics911.net/ entitled Israel, Iran, Mossad and a Nuclear False Flag Attack [38]http://www.physics911.net/nuclearfalseflag.htm. Americans should alert friends and family members and active citizens should inform their neighbors and local authorities. Mother Media has contacted FBI counterintelligence director David Szady, who is in charge of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spying investigation [39]http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6890, with some this information and plans to distribute it widely throughout the local, national and international media. An FBI investigation directed by Szady caught AIPAC using Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin to spy on America's Iran policy [40]http://www.physics911.net/franklinindictment.htm and more. Given that AIPAC is committed to war with Iran [41]http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=38408, we can imagine why they were interested in official American policy on Iran. It is still possible to stop this insanity, but it will require serious citizen initiative. Good Luck, Fellow Citizens, and God Bless You. [42]http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/nuclear_terror.htm [43]Reply To This Message Four Star General Fired For Organizing Coup Against Neo-Cons? Author: [44]Admin Date: 08-11-05 10:25 Four Star General Fired For Organizing Coup Against Neo-Cons? Reporter suggests Brynes discovered plan to turn nuke exercise into staged terror attack Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones / August 10 2005 The head of Fort Monroe's Training and Doctrine Command, four star general Kevin P. Byrnes, was fired Tuesday apparently for sexual misconduct according to official sources. Other sources however have offered a different explanation for Byrnes' dismissal which ties in with the Bush administration's unpopular plan to attack Iran and the staged nuclear attack in the US which would provide the pretext to do so. According to reporter Greg Szymanski, anonymous military sources said that Brynes was the leader of a faction that was preparing to instigate a coup against the neo-con hawks in an attempt to prevent further global conflict. Indications are that, much like popular opinion amongst the general public, half the military oppose the neo-con's agenda and half support it. Further revelations were imparted by journalist Leland Lehrman who appeared today on The Alex Jones Show. Lehrman's army sources, including a former Captain in intelligence, became outraged when they learned that the official story behind 9/11 was impossible. They told Lehrman that the imminent Northcom nuclear terror exercise [45]http://www.northcom.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.showstory&storyi d=C9BFBBAC-F3CA-BD2E-008C7B34AFE33114 based in Charleston, S.C, where a nuclear warhead is smuggled off a ship and detonated, was originally intended to 'go live' - as in the drill would be used as the cover for a real false flag staged attack. This website has relentlessly discussed similar style drills which took place on the morning of 9/11 and on the morning of 7/7 in London. "Speculation exists that he had potentially discovered the fact that it was gonna go live and that he was trying to put a stop to it or also speculation indicates that he may be part of a military coup designed to prevent the ridiculous idea of doing a nuclear war with Iran, " said Lehrman. Lehrman said that other sources had told him all army leave had been cancelled from September 7th onwards, opening the possibility for war to be declared within that time frame. Northcom officials also admitted to Lehrman that CNN had been using its situation room as a studio. Earlier this week, Washington Post reported [46]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/07/AR 2005080700843_pf.html that the Pentagon has developed its first ever war plans for operations within the continental United States, in which terrorist attacks would be used as the justification for imposing martial law on cities, regions or the entire country. American Conservative Magazine recently reported [47]http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/020805nukeiran.htm that Dick Cheney had given orders to immediately invade Iran after the next terror attack in the US, even if there was no evidence Iran was involved. Government and media mouthpieces have been fearmongering for weeks about how a nuclear attack within the US is imminent. Now would be the most opportune time for the Globalists to stage a major attack, as it would head off any potential indictments against the Bush administration for their involvement in illegally outing CIA agent Valerie Plame. While rumors circulating about indictments having already taken place against Bush and Cheney should rightly be treated very carefully, the fact that there is an ongoing criminal investigation into the matter is something that's admitted and shouldn't be viewed as speculation. [48]http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/100805fourstargene ral.htm [49]Reply To This Message Total411.info on the NORAD exercise / 4 Star General Stories Author: [50]Admin Date: 08-11-05 11:10 Key General fired as nuke terror drill set for Aug 17 News is flying in regard to the nuclear terror drill set for this month. It is feared by informed researchers that an actual nuclear detonation may be piggybacked on the drill, as was the modus operandi in the 9/11 and 7/7 inside jobs. As reported at this site, the drill involving a nuclear warhead being smuggled into Charleston, South Carolina is to involve the Atlanta-area FEMA office and be run out of Fort Monroe, Virginia. Today, the four-star general in charge of Fort Monroe was fired. Anonymously-sourced and speculative reports on the leading alternative media websites posited General Kevin Byrnes was fired for attempting to prevent the drill from going live. (See Lehrman/Physics911.net [51]http://www.physics911.net/nuclearterror.htm, Szymanski/Arctic Beacon [52]http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31291.htm, Jones,Watson/PrisonPlanet [53]http://prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/100805fourstargeneral. htm, Skolnick/Cloak/= . Now a Washington Times report, also anonymously-sourced, highlights the flimsy basis on which he was fired -- adultery. Not the Jeff Gannon kind of military adultery popular in the White House; but involvement, while separated from his wife, with a woman in a separate command. It also turns out Rumsfeld tried to chase him out the military three years ago. Looks like he finally found a pretext. From WashTimes August 10 [54]http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050809-110419-1753r.htm: An official announcement yesterday did not specify why Gen. Kevin P. Byrnes, 52, was removed from his command of all soldier training and doctrine development, but two retired Army officers said it was for having an extramarital affair. Adultery is illegal in the military, constituting conduct unbecoming an officer. The sources said they think the woman was not a subordinate of Gen. Byrnes at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, Va. It is rare in modern times for the Army to relieve a four-star general. ... Gen. Byrnes, one of 11 four-star Army generals, was nearing the end of a three-year term at U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command when Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, relieved him of command yesterday. [...] Gen. Byrnes had been under investigation for some time and had been in the throes of a divorce. A number of officers went to bat [for Byrnes] in 2002 when Mr. Rumsfeld threatened to end his career at lieutenant general. Mr. Rumsfeld was upset at Gen. Byrnes for fighting proposed troop cuts being outlined by the defense secretary's aide, Stephen Cambone. Then-Army Secretary Thomas White and top generals interceded and convinced Mr. Rumsfeld to keep him. Shortly thereafter, Gen. Byrnes won nomination to a fourth star and the TRADOC command... And, like the sevaeral drill occuring on 9/11, the Fort Monroe Casemate for August 5 reports a series of terror drills at the base on August 17. [55]http://tradoc.monroe.army.mil/casemate/stack/080505exercise.htm: An antiterrorism exercise to test the effectiveness of installation plans and procedures in response to a terrorist attack will take place here Aug. 17. A series of live emergency response drills are scheduled throughout the day, according to Bill Moisant, Fort Monroes antiterrorism officer. ... Impacts could include extremely thorough security checks at gates, restricted movement near emergency response drill sites and temporary closure of some customer service activities. Moisant explained that the Fort Monroe Crisis Action Team, first responders, supporting agencies, and assigned and tenant organizations will be evaluated on their ability to respond to a simulated terrorist incident. He said the exercise could involve City of Hampton police and fire officials, as well as other off-post agencies. [,..] Exact times and locations of exercise site events are not indicated due to OPSEC requirements. Cooperation by personnel and agencies affected by the exercise is greatly appreciated. The exercise is not open to the general public or local news media. PERMA-LINK [56]http://www.total411.info/2005/08/key-general-fired-as-nuke-terror- drill.html 'Amalgam Warrior' now 'Almagam Phantom' The names of several NORAD wargames and terror drills are being changed, including some, such as Amalgam Warrior , which was used to piggyback in the actual 9/11 inside job attacks. From THE WASHINGTON TIMES, August 10, 2005: The U.S.-Canadian military commands responsible for protecting North America... have changed the names of key readiness exercises... U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs have struck the word "warrior" from one major exercise and replaced it with "phantom," according to a July internal message from command headquarters. The message went to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Joint Chiefs and other senior leaders. ... A NORAD spokesman, Air Force Master Sgt. John Tomassi, [claimed] "warrior" and other words were changed with Indians in mind. [But] He said, "They have been using these names for quite some time, and I don't know of any complaints." An exercise called "Amalgam Chief" has been changed to "Amalgam Arrow," the message states. And an exercise dubbed "Amalgam Fabric Brave" is now "Amalgam Fabric Dart." "Fabric Indian" was deleted in favor of "Fabric Sabre." Northern Command and NORAD are keeping exercise labels of "Northern Edge," "Vigilant Shield," "Ardent Sentry," "Amalgam Mute" and "Vital Archer." The bottom line: warrior, chief, brave and Indian are out; phantom, arrow and dart are in. NORAD is a U.S.-Canadian organization commanded by U.S. Adm. Timothy J. Keating, who also heads Northern Command. ... Its largest exercise to practice those tactics is the twice-yearly Amalgam Warrior, which is scheduled for next April and is now Amalgam Phantom. [...] Amalgam Fabric Brave, which is now Amalgam Fabric Dart, involves deploying fighter jets to various NORAD regions to check their response times. [...] Phantom seems appropriate given the nonexistent nature of many or all of the alleged hijackers on 9/11. PERMA-LINK [57]http://www.total411.info/2005/08/amalgam-warrior-now-almagam-phant om.html References 9. http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/profile.php?f=36&id=1 10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1545389,00.html 11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1545389,00.html 12. http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1545389,00.html 13. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--armygeneralreliev0809aug09,0,2729727.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork 14. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--armygeneralreliev0809aug09,0,2729727.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork 15. http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m14453&date=09-aug-2005_05:46_ECT 16. http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m14453&date=09-aug-2005_05:46_ECT 17. http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m14453&date=09-aug-2005_05:46_ECT 18. http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index795.htm 19. http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20050807-09573600-bc-saudi-funds.xml 20. http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20050807-09573600-bc-saudi-funds.xml 21. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml 22. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml 23. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml 24. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml 25. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/mart-a09.shtml 26. http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index796.htm 27. http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/read.php?f=36&i=709&t=709#REPLY 28. http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/profile.php?f=36&id=1 29. http://www.northcom.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.showstory&storyid=C9BFBBAC-F3CA-BD2E-008C7B34AFE33114 30. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2005/090705bombingexercises.htm 31. http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=38408 32. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3303832 33. http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31291.htm 34. http://www.northcom.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.factsheets&factsheet=5 35. http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/binladen_bros_tip_off_nasa_sept_11,htm.htm 36. http://www.physics911.net/nuclearfalseflag.htm 37. http://www.physics911.net/ 38. http://www.physics911.net/nuclearfalseflag.htm 39. http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6890 40. http://www.physics911.net/franklinindictment.htm 41. http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=38408 42. http://www.infowars.com/articles/terror/nuclear_terror.htm 43. http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/read.php?f=36&i=710&t=709#REPLY 44. http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/profile.php?f=36&id=1 45. http://www.northcom.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.showstory&storyid=C9BFBBAC-F3CA-BD2E-008C7B34AFE33114 46. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/07/AR2005080700843_pf.html 47. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/020805nukeiran.htm 48. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/100805fourstargeneral.htm 49. http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/read.php?f=36&i=711&t=709#REPLY 50. http://www.parapolitics.info/phorum/profile.php?f=36&id=1 51. http://www.physics911.net/nuclearterror.htm 52. http://www.arcticbeacon.com/articles/article/1518131/31291.htm 53. http://prisonplanet.com/articles/august2005/100805fourstargeneral.htm 54. http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050809-110419-1753r.htm 55. http://tradoc.monroe.army.mil/casemate/stack/080505exercise.htm 56. http://www.total411.info/2005/08/key-general-fired-as-nuke-terror-drill.html 57. http://www.total411.info/2005/08/amalgam-warrior-now-almagam-phantom.html From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 01:38:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2005 21:38:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CNN: Border emergency declared in New Mexico Message-ID: Border emergency declared in New Mexico - Aug 12, 2005 http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/12/newmexico/ [On the other hand, this was not reported in the New York Times, either. Google News returns only ten sources for this. Lou Dobbs interviewed the governor last night. [So how *do* you distinguish good from bogus information on the Internet?] Governor says area 'devastated' by human and drug smuggling (CNN) -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency Friday in four counties along the Mexican border that he said have been "devastated" by crimes such as the smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants. The declaration said the region "has been devastated by the ravages and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, destruction of property and the death of livestock. ... "[It] is in an extreme state of disrepair and is inadequately funded or safeguarded to protect the lives and property of New Mexican citizens." New Mexico shares 180 miles of border with the Mexican state of Chihuahua. "The situation is out of hand," Richardson said Friday night on CNN, noting that one 54-mile stretch is particularly bad. The Mexican government issued a statement in which it acknowledged the problems along the border, but said it continues to make consistent efforts to target them along with U.S. authorities. It said some of Richardson's views stem from "generalizations that do not correspond to the spirit of cooperation and understanding that are required for dealing with problems of common concern along the border." Richardson's declaration makes $750,000 in state emergency funds available to Dona Ana, Luna, Grant and Hidalgo counties. Richardson pledged an additional $1 million in assistance for the area, his office said in a news release. He said on CNN that the funds will be used to hire additional law enforcement personnel and pay officers overtime. In announcing the state of emergency, Richardson -- a Democrat who served in President Clinton's Cabinet -- criticized the "total inaction and lack of resources from the federal government and Congress" in helping protect his state's residents along the border. "There's very little response from the Border Patrol," he said on CNN. "They're doing a good job, but they don't have the resources." The governor announced the move after a helicopter and ground tour of the border near Columbus, New Mexico, the statement said. He said on CNN that he "saw the trails where these illegal routes take place" as well as fenced areas along the border where the fence is "literally nonexistent." According to Richardson's statement announcing the declaration, "Recent developments have convinced me this action is necessary -- including violence directed at law enforcement, damage to property and livestock, increased evidence of drug smuggling, and an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants." He called on Mexico to "bulldoze the abandoned town of Las Chepas, which is directly over the border from Columbus." The statement went on to say that "Las Chepas is a notorious staging and resting area for those who smuggle drugs and immigrants into the United States." Some of the pledged funds will be used to create a field office for the New Mexico Office of Homeland Security to focus specifically on the border. There will also be new efforts to protect livestock in the area near Columbus, "along a favorite path for illegal immigration where a number of livestock have been stolen and killed," the statement said. Richardson said he wanted residents of the four counties "to know my administration is doing everything it can to protect them." Alejandro Cano, secretary of industrial development for the Mexican state of Chihuahua -- which borders New Mexico -- pledged to support Richardson's efforts, the statement said. Richardson told CNN he met with Mexican governors several weeks ago on border security. "My people on my side asked me to take this step, and I've done so reluctantly," Richardson told CNN. "As governor, I have to protect the people I represent." He noted he is the nation's only Hispanic governor, and "we're a state that's been very good to legal migrants. ... This action, I believe, had to be taken." The Mexican Foreign Ministry sent Richardson a letter Friday saying it has requested that Mexican consuls in Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, meet "as soon as possible" with New Mexico officials "to promote pertinent action by the authorities of both countries in the framework of existing institutional mechanisms." From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Mon Aug 15 15:30:25 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 09:30:25 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] CNN: Border emergency declared in New Mexico In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4300B511.3060600@solution-consulting.com> This morning, Wall Street Journal weighed in: http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007108 Their take: Democrats may have an issue against republicans that will resonate with the ordinary people who fear their culture and jobs are disappearing. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Border emergency declared in New Mexico - Aug 12, 2005 > http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/12/newmexico/ > > [On the other hand, this was not reported in the New York Times, > either. Google News returns only ten sources for this. Lou Dobbs > interviewed the governor last night. > > [So how *do* you distinguish good from bogus information on the > Internet?] > > Governor says area 'devastated' by human and drug smuggling > > (CNN) -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency > Friday in four counties along the Mexican border that he said have > been "devastated" by crimes such as the smuggling of drugs and illegal > immigrants. > > The declaration said the region "has been devastated by the ravages > and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, > destruction of property and the death of livestock. ... > > "[It] is in an extreme state of disrepair and is inadequately funded > or safeguarded to protect the lives and property of New Mexican > citizens." > > New Mexico shares 180 miles of border with the Mexican state of > Chihuahua. > > "The situation is out of hand," Richardson said Friday night on CNN, > noting that one 54-mile stretch is particularly bad. > > The Mexican government issued a statement in which it acknowledged the > problems along the border, but said it continues to make consistent > efforts to target them along with U.S. authorities. > > It said some of Richardson's views stem from "generalizations that do > not correspond to the spirit of cooperation and understanding that are > required for dealing with problems of common concern along the > border." > > Richardson's declaration makes $750,000 in state emergency funds > available to Dona Ana, Luna, Grant and Hidalgo counties. > > Richardson pledged an additional $1 million in assistance for the > area, his office said in a news release. > > He said on CNN that the funds will be used to hire additional law > enforcement personnel and pay officers overtime. > > In announcing the state of emergency, Richardson -- a Democrat who > served in President Clinton's Cabinet -- criticized the "total > inaction and lack of resources from the federal government and > Congress" in helping protect his state's residents along the border. > > "There's very little response from the Border Patrol," he said on CNN. > "They're doing a good job, but they don't have the resources." > > The governor announced the move after a helicopter and ground tour of > the border near Columbus, New Mexico, the statement said. > > He said on CNN that he "saw the trails where these illegal routes take > place" as well as fenced areas along the border where the fence is > "literally nonexistent." > > According to Richardson's statement announcing the declaration, > "Recent developments have convinced me this action is necessary -- > including violence directed at law enforcement, damage to property and > livestock, increased evidence of drug smuggling, and an increase in > the number of undocumented immigrants." > > He called on Mexico to "bulldoze the abandoned town of Las Chepas, > which is directly over the border from Columbus." > > The statement went on to say that "Las Chepas is a notorious staging > and resting area for those who smuggle drugs and immigrants into the > United States." > > Some of the pledged funds will be used to create a field office for > the New Mexico Office of Homeland Security to focus specifically on > the border. > > There will also be new efforts to protect livestock in the area near > Columbus, "along a favorite path for illegal immigration where a > number of livestock have been stolen and killed," the statement said. > > Richardson said he wanted residents of the four counties "to know my > administration is doing everything it can to protect them." > > Alejandro Cano, secretary of industrial development for the Mexican > state of Chihuahua -- which borders New Mexico -- pledged to support > Richardson's efforts, the statement said. > > Richardson told CNN he met with Mexican governors several weeks ago on > border security. > > "My people on my side asked me to take this step, and I've done so > reluctantly," Richardson told CNN. "As governor, I have to protect the > people I represent." > > He noted he is the nation's only Hispanic governor, and "we're a state > that's been very good to legal migrants. ... This action, I believe, > had to be taken." > > The Mexican Foreign Ministry sent Richardson a letter Friday saying it > has requested that Mexican consuls in Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, > meet "as soon as possible" with New Mexico officials "to promote > pertinent action by the authorities of both countries in the framework > of existing institutional mechanisms." > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From Thrst4knw at aol.com Mon Aug 15 20:21:13 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 16:21:13 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers Message-ID: <1c3.2ebc7bed.30325339@aol.com> It has long been established that alien abductee reportees are not usually psychotic or gullible. The research goes back decades. Even the anti-paranormal publications like Skeptical Inquirer eventually picked up on this, as much as they probably would rather have been able to refer to these people as crackpots or lunatics. It simply isn't true. On the other hand, it also doesn't appear to be true that they are reporting veridical events in most cases. The psychological explanations in the literature have for years been more in terms of fantasy proneness or other forms of imaginative talent rather than pathology or chicanery. The history of this 'abduction' topic parallels the history of hypnosis in some interesting ways. Hypnosis itself was considered first miraculous, then mysterious, then paranormal, then fakery of various kinds, and finally now a valid way of studying normal if somewhat less well understood and still fascinating psychological processes like dissociation, absorption, fantasy, and role taking. Today, abduction experiences are generally considered by researchers to be real, non-pathological, emotionally intense, imaginative experiences rather than psychotic hallucinations, alcoholic tales, the effluent of a weak mind, or deliberate fakery. The mainstream view is consistent with the author quoted in the NYT articles, and vice versa, from what I understand. So it turns out that there is, remarkably, already a fairly good sized scientific literature on the psychology of human exceptional experiences: exploring the relationship between hypnotic responding talent, fantasy proneness talent, dissociation talent, memory, confabulation, expectancy, involuntariness, and so on. There are even scientific explorations of the spiritual side of these experiences, by people like Kenneth Ring. The "spiritual" variations focus on how meaning is attributed in exceptional experiences and how people's lives are changed by them, rather than on how and why the experiences are produced. Overall, there are some pretty reliable findings in the former area, although the latter is somewhat less amenable to study. For an example of the former, talented people don't even need hypnosis or relaxation to produce the characteristic experiences of hypnotic responding. I don't believe in abductions, but I cannot explain their reactions any other way kind regards, Todd -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thrst4knw at aol.com Mon Aug 15 20:52:45 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 16:52:45 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] 1 in 25 dads is a cuckold Message-ID: <1b8.1946e62b.30325a9d@aol.com> Some previous estimates were even higher, so maybe this is good news for some of us? http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050812_dadsfrm.htm One in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man?s child, researchers find Aug. 12, 2005 Courtesy BMJ Specialty Journals and World Science staff Around one in 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man?s child, new research suggests. The study is published in the September issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The implications are huge, said the researchers, because of the growing reliance of judicial and health systems on DNA profiling and genetic testing, such as organ donation and criminal identification. More frequent testing means more parents are likely to learn about their children?s true status, with devastating consequences for some families, they warned. More instances of the phenomenon, which scientists politely term ?paternal discrepancy,? may come to light through the ever-more common paternity tests being conducted in Western countries, the researchers said. In the United States, rates of such tests more than doubled to 310,490 between 1991 and 2001. The authors based their conclusions on an array of international, published scientific research and conference findings, covering the period between 1950 and 2004. In the U.K., around a third of pregnancies are unplanned, the researchers said, around one in five women in long term relationships has had an affair. Other developed countries have reported similar figures. There are few support services to help those affected, added the researchers, Mark Bellis of Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, U.K., and colleagues. And there is little guidance on what roles healthcare or criminal justice system workers should play in disclosing paternal discrepancy. ?In a society where services and life decisions are increasingly influenced by genetics, our approach to [paternal discrepancy] cannot be simply to ignore this difficult issue,? wrote the researchers. * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 22:54:22 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:54:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Lifestyle May Be Key to Slowing Brain's Aging Message-ID: Lifestyle May Be Key to Slowing Brain's Aging http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/13/AR2005081300855_pf.html Scientists Test Simple Ways to Keep One's Wits By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, August 14, 2005; A01 Like many Americans sliding into middle age, Kimberly McClain started worrying that her memory was beginning to slip. "It was little things. I couldn't remember what I had for dinner the night before. I had to check to make sure I'd paid the insurance that month. I'd walk into a room and realize I had no idea why I was there," said the Los Angeles marriage counselor, who is 44. So McClain started a program designed to help -- a detailed regimen that includes daily memory exercises. "I'm much clearer now," McClain said. "I have no problem finding my keys. I can tell you what I had for dinner last night. I'm not walking into a room thinking, 'Why did I come in here?' " McClain is among the increasing number of Americans who are performing mental calisthenics, taking Italian classes, deciphering crossword puzzles and hunting for other ways to try to keep their minds from fading. A large body of evidence indicates that people who are mentally active throughout their lives are significantly less likely to suffer senility, and a handful of studies have found that mental exercises can boost brain function. Elderly people who go through training to sharpen their wits, for example, score much better on thinking tests for years afterward. The minds of younger people who drill their memories seem to work more efficiently. But it remains far from clear exactly which of the myriad use-it-or-lose-it methods promoted by researchers, self-help books and health groups protect the brain in the long term, and actually reduce the risk for dementia. So scientists, increasingly employing high-tech brain scans, have launched an incipient wave of research to determine what works and why. "We're right at the cusp of understanding this," said Sherry Willis of Pennsylvania State University. "Because brain imaging work has become so much more technologically sophisticated, we're now at the point where we literally look inside people's brains to try to understand what's going on." With the population aging, and the number of cases of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia rising rapidly, experts say preventing mental deterioration from occurring in the first place will be crucial to minimizing the mounting suffering and costs. "It's really critical that we find ways to prevent, or at least delay the onset of, cognitive decline," said Neil Buckholtz of the National Institute on Aging. "Once the pathology is established in the brain, it's very difficult to treat. We need better ways to prevent the disease in the first place, which could make a huge difference for the future." Several large studies are examining antioxidants such as selenium, vitamins C and E and folate, as well as the popular herbal remedy ginkgo biloba. Researchers also remain hopeful that anti-inflammatory painkillers such as Celebrex and the hormone estrogen may prove useful, despite safety concerns. Other researchers are exploring whether cholesterol drugs might protect the brain as well as the heart. It has become increasingly clear that the same strategies that cut the risk for heart attacks and strokes -- eating well, lowering cholesterol and blood pressure, avoiding obesity and diabetes, and exercising regularly -- protect the brain, too. "We don't have to wait until tomorrow when we have some kind of wonder drug," said Arthur Kramer of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has found that sedentary elderly people who start exercising regularly are sharper and experience growth in crucial brain areas. "Many things that we can do today can engender cognitive vitality and successful aging, and one of them is exercise." Among the most tantalizing evidence are studies that have given rise to the use-it-or-lose-it theory. Several large projects have found that people who are more educated, have more intellectually challenging jobs and engage in more mentally stimulating activities, such as attending lectures and plays, reading, playing chess and other hobbies, are much less likely to develop Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. Scientists suspect that a lifetime of thinking a lot may create a "cognitive reserve" -- a reservoir of brain power that people can draw upon even if they suffer damaging silent strokes or protein deposits that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer's. "Some people might have brain networks that are more efficient and so have a greater capacity to compensate for disease," said Yaakov Stern of Columbia University, who is using brain scans to try to zero in on the circuits that matter most. "So when they are challenged by disease, those networks continue to operate longer." But it is also possible that such people are born with brains that lead them to pursue intellectually stimulating lives, and are inherently less prone to dementia. Educated, successful people also tend to have more money and get better medical care. "There's a lot of things that highly educated people do to take care of themselves," said Jerome Yesavage of Stanford University, who is evaluating the benefits of combining cognitive training exercises with a drug already used to slow the progression of Alzheimer's. "You have to be cautious. We don't want to create false hopes that you can prevent Alzheimer's." In one of the first major attempts to test whether mental training works, a federally funded study involving more than 2,800 elderly people found that those who received 10 brain-training lessons scored much better on thinking tests, and the effect lasted for at least three years. The training taught strategies aimed at improving reasoning skills, the processing of new information, and memory, such as mnemonic devices for remembering names. Many researchers suspect, however, that people may benefit most from engaging in a rich diversity of stimulating activities. New experiences may be far more important than repeating the same task over and over. Moreover, it may be key to combine mental stimulation with social interaction, which studies have found also appears highly beneficial. Experts say the task should be enjoyable, because stress and other negative emotions appear harmful. So scientists have launched a series of pilot studies examining more real-life approaches. In Indiana, one team of researchers is testing whether elderly people who take quilting classes fare better, while another is following groups of elderly people as they participate in an adult version of the Odyssey of the Mind competition originally developed for schoolchildren. Outside Chicago, a husband-and-wife team of researchers is experimenting with acting classes. In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins aging experts are studying whether volunteering as tutors and librarians helps. All report promising, though preliminary, findings. "It was pretty amazing," said Michelle Carlson of Hopkins, whose team found that elderly volunteers scored much better on problem-solving tests and that their frontal lobes seem to have been reinvigorated. "We observed changes that appeared to show that their brains were functioning more like younger adults'." But none of the researchers said the findings are strong enough to merit specific recommendations. "I think we'll get there, but we're not there yet," Carlson said. Other researchers say that although the evidence may remain inconclusive, it is promising enough for people to start doing the things that look as though they may help. "It's hard to prove a lot of these things, but I'm convinced there's enough evidence that there is a cause-and-effect relationship," said Gary Small of the University of California at Los Angeles, who developed the "memory prescription" that McClain uses. The prescription combines a healthful diet with daily exercise, relaxation techniques and memory exercises, such as making a mental note of one piece of a family member's wardrobe each morning. Small tested the approach in a pilot study that included McClain. Not only did those on the prescription score better on memory tests, but brain scans lit up in ways that indicated key areas of their gray matter appeared to be working more efficiently, he said. "One of the most striking findings was how it affected function in the area of the brain that creates everyday working memory," Small said. "We may not have conclusive proof. But the evidence is strong. And these are all healthy choices for other reasons." Even if such strategies work, getting large numbers of people to fundamentally alter their daily lives remains daunting, many experts acknowledge. "We all know how difficult it is for all of us to exercise regularly even though we know we should. Now we're telling people they need to be more mentally active, too: 'Turn off "Wheel of Fortune" ' or 'Do your own taxes.' That's going to be a difficult public health message," said Michael Marsiske of the University of Florida. Marsiske and other experts note, however, that it has been done before. "The major way we've reduced the death rate from heart disease is through lifestyle changes: eating better, exercising more, smoking less," said David A. Bennett of Rush University in Chicago. "It would require a lot of people to change the way they live, but there's no reason to think we can't have the same impact on Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia." From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 22:54:28 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:54:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Candian Press: British bigamist undone as 3 wives attend his sickbed; gets suspended sentence Message-ID: British bigamist undone as 3 wives attend his sickbed; gets suspended sentence http://www.canada.com/news/oddities/story.html?id=520e2027-8b9d-450b-b566-951b0f314207 Cassandra Vinograd Canadian Press Thursday, August 11, 2005 LONDON (AP) - Some people bring flowers, others bring balloons. But when Melvyn Reed's three wives showed up to visit him in hospital they brought an unexpected end to his years as a bigamist. British police confirmed Thursday that after Melvyn Reed woke from his triple bypass heart operation earlier this year, his complicated marital affairs took a turn for a worse. All three of his spouses had turned up at the same time, despite his efforts to stagger their visits. Upon realizing that something was amiss, the wives held a meeting in the parking lot and learned they were all married to the same man, the British news media reported. The 59-year-old company director from Kettering, in central England, turned himself in on May 12. A spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service said Reed pleaded guilty July 19 to two charges of bigamy at Wimbledon Magistrates' Court in south London, and was given a four-month suspended sentence and ordered to pay 70 pounds (about $150 Cdn) in costs, police said. Reed, his three wives and Reed's lawyer, Laurence Grant, could not immediately be reached for comment. The London Metropolitan Police said Reed married his first wife, Jean Grafton, in 1966, then left her without divorcing her. He went on to marry Denise Harrington in 1998, then married Lyndsey Hutchinson in 2003. The British media have widely reported that Reed recently moved back in with his first wife. They say she is the mother of his three grown children. London's police said Harrington and Hutchinson had sought advice on getting their marriages annulled. But news reports say lawyers have advised the women that their marriages were never valid. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 22:54:31 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:54:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Materials science: Pasta alla fisica Message-ID: Materials science: Pasta alla fisica http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=4269826 Aug 11th 2005 Physicists have solved the long-standing puzzle of how spaghetti breaks IT WAS a problem that baffled the master himself. Richard Feynman--maverick physics genius, Nobel laureate and father of modern quantum theory--could not work out why, when a strand of dried spaghetti is snapped, it almost never breaks in half but instead fragments into three or more pieces. At dinner with Daniel Hillis, an old friend and computer scientist, the two became obsessed with this and spent hours theorising and experimenting. In the end, they left with a kitchen full of pulverised pasta and no reasonable answer. Basile Audoly and S?bastien Neukirch of the University of Paris VI think, however, that they have succeeded where Feynman failed. Their calculations, revealed in a forthcoming paper in Physical Review Letters, suggest that the key to the problem lies in so-called flexural waves. Each time part of a bent strand breaks, a series of these waves ripples down the length of the pasta. The mistake Feynman probably made was to assume that the strain released when a bent strand breaks allows the two half-strands to relax and become straight again. Instead, according to their equations, the passing waves cause parts of the daughter strands to curve even further. This triggers other breakages which, in turn, trigger further waves, causing the strand to fragment. To put their mathematical solution to the test, they devised a rigorous experiment. And, like all good researchers, they describe their materials and methods in a way that allows others to repeat what they did: "A Barilla no. 1 dry spaghetti pasta of length L=24.1cm was clamped and bent into an arc of circle," they write. "Twenty-five experiments were carried out with various pasta diameters." By snapping 1,000 photos per second as they released the bent strands, they were able to see the travelling waves and to show that the motion of the strands followed their equation exquisitely. Videos of all this can be viewed [4]here. Dr Audoly's and Dr Neukirch's research does have a serious point, of course. The steel struts that help to hold up skyscrapers and bridges are slightly less trivial examples of thin rods whose tendency to break needs to be understood. Knowing the mechanisms by which these rods fragment is important not only for designing such structures but also for reconstructing what has gone wrong when one fails. Having out-thought Feynman, though, it is hard to see what should be next on the pasta research agenda. Perhaps a suitably profound problem is that of the slowing down of time--a well-established part of the theory of relativity. Or, to put it in pasta terms, does a watched pot take longer to boil? From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 22:54:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:54:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Harvard to investigate origins of life Message-ID: Harvard to investigate origins of life http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apscience_story.asp?category=1501&slug=Harvard%20Evolution Monday, August 15, 2005 ? Last updated 6:03 a.m. PT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began. The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained. "My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard. The "Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative" is still in its early stages, scientists told the Boston Sunday Globe. Harvard has told the research team to make plans for adding faculty members and a collection of multimillion-dollar facilities. Evolution is a fundamental scientific theory that species evolved over millions of years. It has been standard in most public school science texts for decades but recently re-emerged in the spotlight as communities and some states debated whether school children should also be taught about creationism or intelligent design. The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation. Harvard has not been seen as a leader in origins of life research, but the university's vast resources could change that perception. "It is quite gratifying to see Harvard is going for a solution to a problem that will be remembered 100 years from now," said Steven Benner, a University of Florida scientist who is one of the world's top chemists in origins-of-life research. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 22:55:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:55:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Religious Belief Is Found to Be Less Lacking Among Social Scientists Message-ID: Religious Belief Is Found to Be Less Lacking Among Social Scientists News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.8.15 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/08/2005081504n.htm By DAVID GLENN Is godlessness moving from one end of the campus to the other? Perhaps so, according to a new survey described here on Sunday at the annual meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. Scholars in the natural sciences, the study found, are now more likely to identify themselves as nonreligious than are their counterparts in the social sciences. The finding, which is based on a recent survey of 1,646 scholars at 21 top-tier research universities, stands in counterpoint to several well-known studies from the mid-20th century, all of which found that social scientists were the least religious group on campus. The new study covers scholars in three natural-science fields (physics, chemistry, and biology) and four social sciences (sociology, economics, political science, and psychology). Among the natural scientists, 55.4 percent of the respondents identified themselves as atheists or agnostics. Only 47.5 percent of the social scientists said the same. The single most irreligious field covered in the study is biology, at 63.4 percent. The least irreligious is economics, at 45.1. In the entire study, only two respondents -- both of them chemists -- said that they agreed with the statement, "The Bible is the actual word of God and it should be taken literally." (Roughly a quarter of the respondents agreed with the statement, "The Bible is the inspired word of God, but not everything in it should be taken literally.") The study's authors -- Elaine Howard Ecklund, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at Rice University, and Christopher P. Scheitle, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Pennsylvania State University -- are in the early stages of a large-scale project that will assess the spiritual practices and ethical beliefs of religious and nonreligious scholars in the seven fields. Ms. Ecklund said that she hoped to explore how both religious and nonreligious scholars "understand the relationships between religion and spirituality and such questions as how to develop a research agenda and how to make ethical decisions involving human subjects." Their project has been financed by a $283,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation, a Philadelphia-based philanthropy that often supports studies of the intersection between religion and science. Ms. Ecklund and Mr. Scheitle conducted the survey in May and June, and they have only begun to analyze the data. Their project will also involve approximately 300 in-depth interviews with scholars who responded to the initial survey. In her presentation, Ms. Ecklund said that she strongly suspected that gender differences could explain the apparent shift of unbelief from the social sciences to the natural sciences. In contrast to the new survey, a well-known 1969 study by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education found that scholars in the natural sciences were far more likely than social scientists to identify themselves as religious. Since then, however, women have entered the academy in large numbers -- and they have entered the social sciences at higher rates than the natural sciences. (In the new study, for example, only 16.7 percent of the natural scientists were women, compared with 27 percent of the social scientists.) Across the American population, Ms. Ecklund said, women are consistently more likely than men to say that they are religious. So, all else equal, women's greater presence in the social sciences might account for the fact that those fields are now less irreligious than their hard-science counterparts. Ms. Ecklund has not yet performed the statistical tests that might confirm or refute her gender hypothesis. In their paper, Ms. Ecklund and Mr. Scheitle write that they hope that their study, once completed, will "increase our overall knowledge of cognitive moral reasoning processes and the role of science in providing spiritual insights, even for scientists who are not part of an established religion and who do not study specifically religious topics." In the new study, the proportion of nonreligious scholars is roughly consistent across all age groups: 52.3 percent of respondents younger than 36, for example, are nonreligious, compared with 54.2 percent of the respondents age 66 and older. The same is true of self-reported Protestants: Their proportions are roughly equal (around 17 percent) across all age levels. Self-reported Catholics, however, were much more prevalent among the younger academics: 11.2 percent of respondents under 36, but only 1.4 percent of those over 65, said they were Catholic. The opposite trend was apparent among Jews: 21.1 percent of the oldest group, but only 11.2 percent of the youngest, said they were Jewish. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 22:55:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:55:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] John Derbyshire: The Great Syllogism Message-ID: John Derbyshire: The Great Syllogism http://www.olimu.com/WebJournalism/Texts/Commentary/GreatSyllogism.htm National Review Online June 10th, 2003 ____________________________ Reader, I have been vouchsafed a revelation, a sudden flash of understanding, a satori, a glimpse of the inner workings of the universe, of the waters that are under the earth, of the hidden tissues that connect aspects of reality not normally thought of as being related to each other in any way at all. Illuminated by that flash was quite a large part of the entire political landscape of the present-day USA, as if seen from a plane through a sudden gap in the clouds. I am going to lay out my revelation in three parts: a preamble, then a syllogism, then a conclusion. The syllogism seems to me so all-encompassing and revelatory that, shucking off false modesty, I am going to call it The Great Syllogism. (Students of classical logic may complain that it is not, strictly speaking, a syllogism at all more like a dilemma. Syllogism has taken my fancy, though, and Merriam-Websters Third seems to permit this usage. How many students of classical logic are there nowadays anyway?) Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. * Preamble. Not so much a preamble as a actual amble, conducted here in the outer New York suburbs, through some leafy streets with houses standing on plots that vary from one-sixth to one-half of an acre, and that show up in real-estate catalogs, when they do show up, at prices from the low 300s to the high 600s. The time: around nine thirty on a weekday morning. My state of mind: I had finished my breakfast, read the newspaper, seen the kids off to school and the wife off to work, attended to some e-mail chores, and read some news and opinion pieces on the internet. Among the latter was [2]Peter Woods review of John Ogbus Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb. Then I set out to walk my dog. There arent many people around in the burbs at this time of the morning. Other than a couple of encounters with neighbors, the human beings I saw fell into three categories. * Garden-service contractors. These people pull up in vans and trucks, unload mowers, trimmers and blowers, and set to work keeping the gardens neat and tidy. Lots of these, very noisy and a bit of a nuisance on that account, but better they should do this on weekdays than at weekends. * Home-improvement contractors. I passed three or four houses that were being fixed up in one way or another having an extension built, getting a new roof or siding put on. * An elderly lady out walking. She had a baby with her, presumably a grandchild, in a stroller being pushed by a childrens nurse. The garden-service people are solidly Central-American Indian types, though often working for a white boss. They are small-built, dark-skinned and black-haired. When I give them a friendly greeting they seem pleased and greet me back, smiling, but in a way suggesting that Good morning! is just about the limit of their English-language skills. The construction people are a mix of white and Hispanic, the one constant factor being that everyone acting in a supervisory way is white. One of the roofing team the owner of the firm, it sounds like is talking up to his man on the roof. He is doing this through a third party, who translates his Noo Yawk English into Spanish. The elderly lady out walking with her grandchild is white, but the childrens nurse pushing the stroller is a Mayan sculpture come to life. The wordless smile with which she returns my greeting shows gold teeth. I dont see any black people at all, nor any East Asians. * Syllogism. (1) At any point in time this one, for example the United States economy needs different kinds of workers in different numbers. It needs a certain number of lawyers, accountants, architects and doctors. It needs a certain number of network supervisors, computer programmers, web designers, schoolteachers, tax preparers and nurses. It needs a certain number of garden-service workers, lumberjacks, auto mechanics, plumbers, steel-fixers, cops, soldiers and child-minders. (2) Always scornful of privileges bestowed by accidents of birth or place, this country has a deep attachment to the idea of meritocracy. In recent decades we have developed an equally strong emotional investment in the concept of racial equality. (3) Our very best efforts at creating a meritocratic education system always turn up the same unhappy results: students of Ashkenazi-Jewish and East or South Asian ancestry are over-represented among the educational successes, while students of West African ancestry are over-represented among the educational failures. (4) All sorts of theories are available to explain (3) John Ogbus is only the latest. Unfortunately we dont know which theory is true. Possibly just one of the theories is true. Possibly the true cause is something nobody has thought of yet. More likely the truth contains elements, in different proportions, from several theories. (5) Until we understand the causes of (3), the most meritocratic system of education we can devise will produce a society with a highly-paid cognitive elite in which persons of Ashkenazi-Jewish and East or South Asian ancestry are over-represented, a class of manual and service workers in which black people are over-represented, and a clerical or small-entrepreneurial class in which white gentiles are over-represented. (6) Such a society would be grossly offensive to American sensibilities. (See (2) above.) It would also, in all probability, be unhappy and unstable. (7) Adjustments to the meritocratic principle therefore need to be made: affirmative action, imposed diversity quotas in businesses, anti-discrimination laws, and so on. We must trade off some meritocracy for social harmony. (8) The effect of these adjustments is as it is intended to be! to move up into the clerical class people who, in a pure-meritocratic system, would be in the manual class. (And, to a less significant degree, to move up into the cognitive-elite class people who would otherwise be clerks.) (9) Corresponding adjustments to shift down into the manual class people who would, on a pure-meritocratic principle, be in the clerical class, are politically impossible. (10) Therefore the manual class is seriously under-staffed. (11) Millions of Third-worlders are only too glad to come to the USA to do manual or low-level service work. (12) Unfortunately the immigration laws do not allow them to come here. (13) The immigration laws should therefore be changed to permit a large inflow of unskilled aliens from the Third World. (14) Such changes are unpopular with large parts of the American public, who fear the cultural and economic consequences. (15) Politicians know (14) and therefore will not change the immigration laws. And so: (16) For the sake of social harmony, we have no choice but to turn a blind eye while several million unskilled aliens enter our country and stay here illegally. * Conclusion. The paradox is that this particular way of avoiding one kind of social disharmony racial stratification by class introduces a different kind: the colonization of large parts of our cities by non-English-speaking foreigners who, because of their illegal status, are stuck outside the mainstream of American life. Also because of that same status, they are looked on with mistrust by citizens and legal immigrants. This unhappy state of affairs is none the less considered, by most of us, to be the lesser of two evils. Rough, dirty and strenuous work must be done. If, as we suspect is the case, the choice is between having that work done by (a) large angry black people, or (b) small friendly brown people, well buy the package: affirmative action plus massive unrestrained illegal immigration. Our political classes, who of course know all that I have been saying here, had a plan to finesse the situation by simply regularizing the illegals, thus at least removing the stigma of law-breaker from them. That plan went up in the smoke of 9/11. It was, in any case, grossly unfair to legal immigrants, who have to jump through numberless hoops to get the right to live here (it took me seven years). We are stuck with the present situation, with the Great Syllogism. Probably we are storing up untold trouble for ourselves. The latest news in my own neighborhood is that an exceptionally vicious Central American gang named Mara Salvatrucha is now entrenched here on Long Island. (Working as landscapers and busboys by day and criminals at night, says the [3]New York Post. Which puts those cheery lawn-service workers in a new light.) Americans, though, do not lose much sleep over the prospect of future evils. This is a big, empty country filled with boundless optimism. [4]David Brooks has remarked that the usual reaction of Americans when faced with disapproval, anxiety, and potential conflict is to move away. Similarly, given the choice between a pressing problem today and a reckless policy likely to deliver far worse problems tomorrow, we opt for the second. The future, after all, is full of possibilities, and by the time that second batch of problems arrives, we may have found some way to cope with them. Lets hope that that is what happens. Ross Perot used to speak of the giant sucking sound of manufacturing jobs fleeing the U.S. to low-wage countries south of the border. The giant sucking sound I am actually hearing, ten years later, is the sound of millions of unskilled Third Worlders being pulled into this country by the vacuum at the bottom of the labor market a vacuum we have ourselves created by deciding that such low-quality work should not be done by Americans, especially not by those Americans most likely to be assigned to it by our educational system. We no longer believe in the dignity of labor. We all want our kids to go to law school, and have convinced ourselves that they have a right to do so. What do you think the slogan No child left behind means? It means that no American child should have to become a low-status worker. Thats what it means, and that is what we honestly and sincerely wish, because we fear we know what an American-born class of low-status workers would look like. Everything else follows by pure logic. From checker at panix.com Mon Aug 15 22:55:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:55:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] ParaPundit: Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin Message-ID: Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002938.html#002938 2005 August 14 Sunday Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin Over at [9]No Speed Bumps Dan reports on how [10]during a vacation trip in Wisconsin he found white people doing all the manual labor jobs that are done by Hispanics in Texas. Two weeks ago I vacationed near Oshkosh, Wisconsin. One thing strikingly different than living in Texas was that there were few Hispanics. In Texas, Hispanics are found in all walks of life, from doctors to janitors. With so many impoverished Hispanics illegally moving to Texas over the southern border each year, they have taken over most of the lower-skill jobs because they will work for less than American citizens. Go to any restaurant, hotel, or construction site and all of the basic manual labor tasks are being done by low-income Hispanics. Anyway, while on vacation, in the hotels we stayed in all of the maid staff and other help were white. The same was true of all of the restaurants we ate in, from the cooks, to the bus boys, to the grounds keepers. I felt like we were in a time machine and in a strange land. An interesting note about the maid staff at the hotels was the good cheer that they were in. They were constantly chatting among themselves and seemed very content as they went about their work. This reminded me that, yes, there is dignity to manual labor, and yes, white people can still do manual labor. This runs counter to the fashionable argument today justifying the open border policy with Mexico. The argument goes that America could just not function without all of the low-skill workers coming in to do all of the manual labor. Well, that is ridiculous. It may drive prices up some, if American citizens (whether white, black, or any other race) must do the work but the work will still get done, one way or another. One of the big whopper lies told by open borders advocates such as George W. Bush is that there are "jobs that Americans won't do". This is nonsense. One only need travel to those places where the bulk of the population is still white to see that this claim is false propaganda. As for the argument that a lack of cheap immigrant labor will drive up prices, it rests on three fallacies: * That low skilled labor makes up much of total costs. Wrong-o sleigh bell lovers. The bottom quintile of the United States population earns [11]only 3.5% of national income. 20% get 3.5%. If we deported all the illegal aliens and stopped all low skiilled and moderate skilled immigration the bottom 20% would see some significant increase in their wages. But that increase would be unlikely raise total prices by even a couple of percent. We don't pay them that much. A 10% or 20% increase in their salaries won't matter much to the rest of the population. * That there are no substitutes for cheap labor. Again, wrong-o sleigh bell lovers. Necessity is the mother of invention. In all likelihood, faced with higher labor costs industry would be more eager to develop and buy more capital equipment and to arrange the methods of purveying goods and services to decrease the amount of labor needed. In fact, we have an example available for what the lack of cheap immigrant labor will do to an industry. [12]The Australian wine industry is more automated than the American wine industry due to lack of cheap immigrant labor in Australia. Ben Franklin was right. We'd advance more rapidly without simple minds available to do simple tasks cheaply. * That there are no external costs to cheap unskilled immigrant labor. And once again, wrong-o sleigh bell lovers. Low skilled laborers can not afford to pay for their own medical care. They don't pay enough in taxes to pay for the educations of their children. They do not make enough to pay for their retirements in the United States. The list goes on. Oh, and they commit crime at higher rates. So they cost crime victims and also the criminal justice system. A year for an inmate at Rikers Island in New York costs $47,000. Criminals are expensive for the rest of us in many ways. The Open Borders advocates are deeply dishonest. America's elites are corrupt. They lie. They can not be trusted. America is going down a very wrong path. Our leaders in business and politics are to blame. But so are apathetic members of the public. It is time to wake up and demand a stop to massive immigration. The costs have become far too high and will be with us for decades to come. By Randall Parker at 2005 August 14 06:44 PM [13]Immigration Economics | [14]TrackBack Comments in vermont too. many more latinos work in oregon than 10 years ago though, and i hear that similar things are going on in the south. i suspect that for a variety of reasons the upper midwest and new england (distance, climate, cost of living) will resist latino labor the longest. Posted by: [15]razib on August 14, 2005 08:55 PM Resistance is futile. Viva La Rasa. Posted by: [16]Mark on August 14, 2005 10:59 PM There would be a net savings from reversing the antimerit immigrant flow, some of which would be passed on to the consumers. If the bottom 20% gets paid so little that their wages could double without the rich even noticing it, shifting 4% of the total income away from the top 80% over several years, that is a worthwhile price to pay. There is no economic need to increase the size of the bottom end; it isn't about money, it's about power. How to get power, when there are no ideas; won't they use immigration to increase racial conflict, and say that officials must have more power? Posted by: [17]John S Bolton on August 14, 2005 11:26 PM For some reason my trackbacks to this post don't take, so ping! Posted by: [18]Dave Schuler on August 15, 2005 07:47 AM Eastern Washington, North Idaho, and Montana are alot like Wisconsin in that low end labor jobs are done primarly by whites. We have very few illegal aliens in this part of the country. This is good because we have much less of the "servant" culture that you see in California and other places. People clean their own homes and often do their own yard work. If you have someone else do these things, they are done by outside services operating more like independent business people rather than as "domestics". Not having the illegal immigrants means that we have a much more "do it yourself" mentality than, say, in Southern California. I do not like that "class" mentality that illegal immigration has produced in places like California and Texas. I think having distinct social classes, especially if they are of different races, is very destructive to the future of the U.S. The "open-borders" people need to be grilled over this issue. Posted by: [19]Kurt on August 15, 2005 10:01 AM razib - don't underestimate the number of mexicans in the upper midwest - chicago has the 2nd highest mexican population in the u.s. after l.a. granted this isn't wisconsin, but.... randall - in a similar, practical manner that you approach alternative energy solutions, i.e. can't tell people to drive less or other inconveniences that would be a political non-starter in america today; what would be your political platform for immigration that would be politically feasible? i would love to know what you'd recommend, having put considerable thought to this issue, assuming something like you were an advisor to your senator. thanks. Posted by: [20]Jim on August 15, 2005 01:22 PM I spent a few days in Sierra Vista, AZ, a booming town about 15 miles north of the Mexican border. Strikingly, the maids in my motel were white, as were a lot of the other service workers. The answer to this paradox is that Sierra Vista is within the narrow band heavily policed by the Border Patrol. If illegal aliens are found there, they are deported. But if they make it far enough north to Tucson or Phoenix, well, they're Ollie Ollie Home Free. Posted by: [21]Steve Sailer on August 15, 2005 02:03 PM Jim, Perhaps I don't understand your question. Politically feasible? I think a candidate for the Presidency could run on a platform to deport all the illegals and win. The dollar cost to the government of deporting all the illegals would be pretty low. The anger about the immigrant deluge is building. But politicians are chasing the votes of Hispanics, the Democrats see them as a solid Democrat voting bloc (and they are), and some business interests want cheap labor. I'd tell a US Senator to submit a bill to fund a barrier along the entire length of the border. I'd also propose upping the number of Border Patrol by 20,000 and setting them loose in the interior with orders to round up all illegals. Congress should give instructions to DHS to resume interior enforcement. Posted by: [22]Randall Parker on August 15, 2005 03:33 PM References 9. http://nospeedbumps.com/ 10. http://nospeedbumps.com/?p=334 11. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg1791.cfm 12. http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002778.html 13. http://www.parapundit.com/archives/cat_immigration_economics.html 14. http://www.futurepundit.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=2938 15. http://www.gnxp.com/ 16. mailto:dfsf at hotmail.com 17. http://www.johnsbolton.net/ 18. http://www.theglitteringeye.com/ 19. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 20. mailto:knuckleballnews at yahoo.com 21. http://www.iSteve.com/ 22. http://futurepundit.com/ From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Aug 16 00:06:28 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 17:06:28 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] CNN: Border emergency declared in New Mexico Message-ID: <01C5A1BB.ADD01A20.shovland@mindspring.com> I don't think either the Democrats or Republicans have a populist approach to this. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 8:30 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] CNN: Border emergency declared in New Mexico This morning, Wall Street Journal weighed in: http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110007108 Their take: Democrats may have an issue against republicans that will resonate with the ordinary people who fear their culture and jobs are disappearing. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Border emergency declared in New Mexico - Aug 12, 2005 > http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/12/newmexico/ > > [On the other hand, this was not reported in the New York Times, > either. Google News returns only ten sources for this. Lou Dobbs > interviewed the governor last night. > > [So how *do* you distinguish good from bogus information on the > Internet?] > > Governor says area 'devastated' by human and drug smuggling > > (CNN) -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson declared a state of emergency > Friday in four counties along the Mexican border that he said have > been "devastated" by crimes such as the smuggling of drugs and illegal > immigrants. > > The declaration said the region "has been devastated by the ravages > and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, > destruction of property and the death of livestock. ... > > "[It] is in an extreme state of disrepair and is inadequately funded > or safeguarded to protect the lives and property of New Mexican > citizens." > > New Mexico shares 180 miles of border with the Mexican state of > Chihuahua. > > "The situation is out of hand," Richardson said Friday night on CNN, > noting that one 54-mile stretch is particularly bad. > > The Mexican government issued a statement in which it acknowledged the > problems along the border, but said it continues to make consistent > efforts to target them along with U.S. authorities. > > It said some of Richardson's views stem from "generalizations that do > not correspond to the spirit of cooperation and understanding that are > required for dealing with problems of common concern along the > border." > > Richardson's declaration makes $750,000 in state emergency funds > available to Dona Ana, Luna, Grant and Hidalgo counties. > > Richardson pledged an additional $1 million in assistance for the > area, his office said in a news release. > > He said on CNN that the funds will be used to hire additional law > enforcement personnel and pay officers overtime. > > In announcing the state of emergency, Richardson -- a Democrat who > served in President Clinton's Cabinet -- criticized the "total > inaction and lack of resources from the federal government and > Congress" in helping protect his state's residents along the border. > > "There's very little response from the Border Patrol," he said on CNN. > "They're doing a good job, but they don't have the resources." > > The governor announced the move after a helicopter and ground tour of > the border near Columbus, New Mexico, the statement said. > > He said on CNN that he "saw the trails where these illegal routes take > place" as well as fenced areas along the border where the fence is > "literally nonexistent." > > According to Richardson's statement announcing the declaration, > "Recent developments have convinced me this action is necessary -- > including violence directed at law enforcement, damage to property and > livestock, increased evidence of drug smuggling, and an increase in > the number of undocumented immigrants." > > He called on Mexico to "bulldoze the abandoned town of Las Chepas, > which is directly over the border from Columbus." > > The statement went on to say that "Las Chepas is a notorious staging > and resting area for those who smuggle drugs and immigrants into the > United States." > > Some of the pledged funds will be used to create a field office for > the New Mexico Office of Homeland Security to focus specifically on > the border. > > There will also be new efforts to protect livestock in the area near > Columbus, "along a favorite path for illegal immigration where a > number of livestock have been stolen and killed," the statement said. > > Richardson said he wanted residents of the four counties "to know my > administration is doing everything it can to protect them." > > Alejandro Cano, secretary of industrial development for the Mexican > state of Chihuahua -- which borders New Mexico -- pledged to support > Richardson's efforts, the statement said. > > Richardson told CNN he met with Mexican governors several weeks ago on > border security. > > "My people on my side asked me to take this step, and I've done so > reluctantly," Richardson told CNN. "As governor, I have to protect the > people I represent." > > He noted he is the nation's only Hispanic governor, and "we're a state > that's been very good to legal migrants. ... This action, I believe, > had to be taken." > > The Mexican Foreign Ministry sent Richardson a letter Friday saying it > has requested that Mexican consuls in Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, > meet "as soon as possible" with New Mexico officials "to promote > pertinent action by the authorities of both countries in the framework > of existing institutional mechanisms." > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Aug 16 00:31:59 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 17:31:59 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] 250 miles per gallon? They're doing it Message-ID: <01C5A1BF.3E7AFC40.shovland@mindspring.com> Tinkerers fiddle with hybrids to increase efficiency Bottom of Form 1 CORTE MADERA, California (AP) -- Politicians and automakers say a car that can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on foreign oil is years or even decades away. Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage. It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an 80-miles-per-gallon secret -- a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can burn even less fuel. Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car. Like all hybrids, his Prius increases fuel efficiency by harnessing small amounts of electricity generated during braking and coasting. The extra batteries let him store extra power by plugging the car into a wall outlet at his home in this San Francisco suburb -- all for about a quarter. He's part of a small but growing movement. "Plug-in" hybrids aren't yet cost-efficient, but some of the dozen known experimental models have gotten up to 250 mpg. They have support not only from environmentalists but also from conservative foreign policy hawks who insist Americans fuel terrorism through their gas guzzling. And while the technology has existed for three decades, automakers are beginning to take notice, too. So far, DaimlerChrysler AG is the only company that has committed to building its own plug-in hybrids, quietly pledging to make up to 40 vans for U.S. companies. But Toyota Motor Corp. officials who initially frowned on people altering their cars now say they may be able to learn from them. "They're like the hot rodders of yesterday who did everything to soup up their cars. It was all about horsepower and bling-bling, lots of chrome and accessories," said Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokeswoman. "Maybe the hot rodders of tomorrow are the people who want to get in there and see what they can do about increasing fuel economy." Plugged or unplugged? The extra batteries let Gremban drive for 20 miles with a 50-50 mix of gas and electricity. Even after the car runs out of power from the batteries and switches to the standard hybrid mode, it gets the typical Prius fuel efficiency of around 45 mpg. As long as Gremban doesn't drive too far in a day, he says, he gets 80 mpg. "The value of plug-in hybrids is they can dramatically reduce gasoline usage for the first few miles every day," Gremban said. "The average for people's usage of a car is somewhere around 30 to 40 miles per day. During that kind of driving, the plug-in hybrid can make a dramatic difference." Gremban promotes the CalCars Initiative, a volunteer effort encouraging automakers to make plug-in hybrids. Backers of plug-in hybrids acknowledge that the electricity to boost their cars generally comes from fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases, but they say that process still produces far less pollution than oil. They also note that electricity could be generated cleanly from solar power. Gremban rigged his car to promote the nonprofit CalCars Initiative, a San Francisco Bay area-based volunteer effort that argues automakers could mass produce plug-in hybrids at a reasonable price. But Toyota and other car companies say they are worried about the cost, convenience and safety of plug-in hybrids -- and note that consumers haven't embraced all-electric cars because of the inconvenience of recharging them like giant cell phones. Automakers have spent millions of dollars telling motorists that hybrids don't need to be plugged in, and don't want to confuse the message. Nonetheless, plug-in hybrids are starting to get the backing of prominent hawks like former CIA director James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney, President Reagan's undersecretary of defense. They have joined Set America Free, a group that wants the government to spend $12 billion over four years on plug-in hybrids, alternative fuels and other measures to reduce foreign oil dependence. Gaffney, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, said Americans would embrace plug-ins if they understood arguments from him and others who say gasoline contributes to oil-rich Middle Eastern governments that support terrorism. "The more we are consuming oil that either comes from places that are bent on our destruction or helping those who are ... the more we are enabling those who are trying to kill us," Gaffney said. Now vs. later DaimlerChrysler spokesman Nick Cappa said plug-in hybrids are ideal for companies with fleets of vehicles that can be recharged at a central location at night. He declined to name the companies buying the vehicles and said he did not know the vehicles' mileage or cost, or when they would be available. Others are modifying hybrids, too. Monrovia-based Energy CS has converted two Priuses to get up to 230 mpg by using powerful lithium ion batteries. It is forming a new company, EDrive Systems, that will convert hybrids to plug-ins for about $12,000 starting next year, company vice president Greg Hanssen said. University of California, Davis, engineering professor Andy Frank built a plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban. Frank has spent $150,000 to $250,000 in research costs on each car, but believes automakers could mass-produce them by adding just $6,000 to each vehicle's price tag. Instead, Frank said, automakers promise hydrogen-powered vehicles hailed by President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though hydrogen's backers acknowledge the cars won't be widely available for years and would require a vast infrastructure of new fueling stations. "They'd rather work on something that won't be in their lifetime, and that's this hydrogen economy stuff," Frank said. "They pick this kind of target to get the public off their back, essentially." From waluk at earthlink.net Tue Aug 16 01:14:09 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (Gerry Reinhart-Waller) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 18:14:09 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] 250 miles per gallon? They're doing it In-Reply-To: <01C5A1BF.3E7AFC40.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C5A1BF.3E7AFC40.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <43013DE1.1060109@earthlink.net> Well and good, Steve. But one robin does not a springtime make. Even if it is parked in your garage. Regards, Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >Tinkerers fiddle with hybrids to increase efficiency > >Bottom of Form 1 >CORTE MADERA, California (AP) -- Politicians and automakers say a car that >can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on >foreign oil is years or even decades away. >Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage. >It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an >80-miles-per-gallon secret -- a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that >boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can >burn even less fuel. >Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent >several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car. >Like all hybrids, his Prius increases fuel efficiency by harnessing small >amounts of electricity generated during braking and coasting. The extra >batteries let him store extra power by plugging the car into a wall outlet >at his home in this San Francisco suburb -- all for about a quarter. >He's part of a small but growing movement. "Plug-in" hybrids aren't yet >cost-efficient, but some of the dozen known experimental models have gotten >up to 250 mpg. >They have support not only from environmentalists but also from >conservative foreign policy hawks who insist Americans fuel terrorism >through their gas guzzling. >And while the technology has existed for three decades, automakers are >beginning to take notice, too. >So far, DaimlerChrysler AG is the only company that has committed to >building its own plug-in hybrids, quietly pledging to make up to 40 vans >for U.S. companies. But Toyota Motor Corp. officials who initially frowned >on people altering their cars now say they may be able to learn from them. >"They're like the hot rodders of yesterday who did everything to soup up >their cars. It was all about horsepower and bling-bling, lots of chrome and >accessories," said Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokeswoman. "Maybe the hot >rodders of tomorrow are the people who want to get in there and see what >they can do about increasing fuel economy." > >Plugged or unplugged? >The extra batteries let Gremban drive for 20 miles with a 50-50 mix of gas >and electricity. Even after the car runs out of power from the batteries >and switches to the standard hybrid mode, it gets the typical Prius fuel >efficiency of around 45 mpg. As long as Gremban doesn't drive too far in a >day, he says, he gets 80 mpg. >"The value of plug-in hybrids is they can dramatically reduce gasoline >usage for the first few miles every day," Gremban said. "The average for >people's usage of a car is somewhere around 30 to 40 miles per day. During >that kind of driving, the plug-in hybrid can make a dramatic difference." > >Gremban promotes the CalCars Initiative, a volunteer effort encouraging >automakers to make plug-in hybrids. >Backers of plug-in hybrids acknowledge that the electricity to boost their >cars generally comes from fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases, but >they say that process still produces far less pollution than oil. They also >note that electricity could be generated cleanly from solar power. >Gremban rigged his car to promote the nonprofit CalCars Initiative, a San >Francisco Bay area-based volunteer effort that argues automakers could mass >produce plug-in hybrids at a reasonable price. >But Toyota and other car companies say they are worried about the cost, >convenience and safety of plug-in hybrids -- and note that consumers >haven't embraced all-electric cars because of the inconvenience of >recharging them like giant cell phones. >Automakers have spent millions of dollars telling motorists that hybrids >don't need to be plugged in, and don't want to confuse the message. >Nonetheless, plug-in hybrids are starting to get the backing of prominent >hawks like former CIA director James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney, President >Reagan's undersecretary of defense. They have joined Set America Free, a >group that wants the government to spend $12 billion over four years on >plug-in hybrids, alternative fuels and other measures to reduce foreign oil >dependence. >Gaffney, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, >said Americans would embrace plug-ins if they understood arguments from him >and others who say gasoline contributes to oil-rich Middle Eastern >governments that support terrorism. >"The more we are consuming oil that either comes from places that are bent >on our destruction or helping those who are ... the more we are enabling >those who are trying to kill us," Gaffney said. > >Now vs. later >DaimlerChrysler spokesman Nick Cappa said plug-in hybrids are ideal for >companies with fleets of vehicles that can be recharged at a central >location at night. He declined to name the companies buying the vehicles >and said he did not know the vehicles' mileage or cost, or when they would >be available. >Others are modifying hybrids, too. >Monrovia-based Energy CS has converted two Priuses to get up to 230 mpg by >using powerful lithium ion batteries. It is forming a new company, EDrive >Systems, that will convert hybrids to plug-ins for about $12,000 starting >next year, company vice president Greg Hanssen said. >University of California, Davis, engineering professor Andy Frank built a >plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, >one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, >including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban. >Frank has spent $150,000 to $250,000 in research costs on each car, but >believes automakers could mass-produce them by adding just $6,000 to each >vehicle's price tag. >Instead, Frank said, automakers promise hydrogen-powered vehicles hailed by >President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though hydrogen's >backers acknowledge the cars won't be widely available for years and would >require a vast infrastructure of new fueling stations. >"They'd rather work on something that won't be in their lifetime, and >that's this hydrogen economy stuff," Frank said. "They pick this kind of >target to get the public off their back, essentially." > > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Aug 16 03:26:03 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:26:03 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Harvard to investigate origins of life In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43015CCB.4020907@solution-consulting.com> I can't help but wonder if the Intelligent Design folks were stimulii for this project, like "let's prove these folks are crackpots." I believe that science is often reactive; I get ideas from objecting to something someone else believes. I did a bit of editing to emphasize my concept. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Harvard to investigate origins of life > http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apscience_story.asp?category=1501&slug=Harvard%20Evolution > > > Monday, August 15, 2005 ? Last updated 6:03 a.m. PT > > THE ASSOCIATED PRESS > > > > "My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very > simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no > divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and > chemical biology at Harvard. > > > Evolution is a fundamental scientific theory that species evolved over > millions of years. It has been standard in most public school science > texts for decades but recently re-emerged in the spotlight as > communities and some states debated whether school children should > also be taught about creationism or intelligent design. > > The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to > have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must > have had a hand in creation. > > Harvard has not been seen as a leader in origins of life research, but > the university's vast resources could change that perception. > > "It is quite gratifying to see Harvard is going for a solution to a > problem that will be remembered 100 years from now," said Steven > Benner, a University of Florida scientist who is one of the world's > top chemists in origins-of-life researc > h. > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Aug 16 03:44:46 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:44:46 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] ParaPundit: Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4301612E.4070803@solution-consulting.com> More thanks for Frank's efforts. This is exactly right. The fast-food restaurant where I get my lunch salad used to be staffed by ordinary causasians, often with obvious mild retardation. They were good workers, and I enjoyed them. Now I can barely understand the girl at the register and sometimes I have to ask her to say it in Spanish because her English is so poor. I am deeply discouraged and disillusioned by President Bush's attitude about illegal emmigration. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin > http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002938.html#002938 > > 2005 August 14 Sunday > Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin > > Over at [9]No Speed Bumps Dan reports on how [10]during a vacation > trip in Wisconsin he found white people doing all the manual labor > jobs that are done by Hispanics in Texas. > > Two weeks ago I vacationed near Oshkosh, Wisconsin. One thing > strikingly different than living in Texas was that there were few > Hispanics. In Texas, Hispanics are found in all walks of life, from > doctors to janitors. > > With so many impoverished Hispanics illegally moving to Texas over > the southern border each year, they have taken over most of the > lower-skill jobs because they will work for less than American > citizens. Go to any restaurant, hotel, or construction site and all > of the basic manual labor tasks are being done by low-income > Hispanics. > > Anyway, while on vacation, in the hotels we stayed in all of the > maid staff and other help were white. The same was true of all of > the restaurants we ate in, from the cooks, to the bus boys, to the > grounds keepers. I felt like we were in a time machine and in a > strange land. > > An interesting note about the maid staff at the hotels was the good > cheer that they were in. They were constantly chatting among > themselves and seemed very content as they went about their work. > This reminded me that, yes, there is dignity to manual labor, and > yes, white people can still do manual labor. > > This runs counter to the fashionable argument today justifying the > open border policy with Mexico. The argument goes that America > could just not function without all of the low-skill workers coming > in to do all of the manual labor. Well, that is ridiculous. It may > drive prices up some, if American citizens (whether white, black, > or any other race) must do the work but the work will still get > done, one way or another. > > One of the big whopper lies told by open borders advocates such as > George W. Bush is that there are "jobs that Americans won't do". This > is nonsense. One only need travel to those places where the bulk of > the population is still white to see that this claim is false > propaganda. > > As for the argument that a lack of cheap immigrant labor will drive up > prices, it rests on three fallacies: > * That low skilled labor makes up much of total costs. Wrong-o > sleigh bell lovers. The bottom quintile of the United States > population earns [11]only 3.5% of national income. 20% get 3.5%. > If we deported all the illegal aliens and stopped all low skiilled > and moderate skilled immigration the bottom 20% would see some > significant increase in their wages. But that increase would be > unlikely raise total prices by even a couple of percent. We don't > pay them that much. A 10% or 20% increase in their salaries won't > matter much to the rest of the population. > * That there are no substitutes for cheap labor. Again, wrong-o > sleigh bell lovers. Necessity is the mother of invention. In all > likelihood, faced with higher labor costs industry would be more > eager to develop and buy more capital equipment and to arrange the > methods of purveying goods and services to decrease the amount of > labor needed. In fact, we have an example available for what the > lack of cheap immigrant labor will do to an industry. [12]The > Australian wine industry is more automated than the American wine > industry due to lack of cheap immigrant labor in Australia. Ben > Franklin was right. We'd advance more rapidly without simple minds > available to do simple tasks cheaply. > * That there are no external costs to cheap unskilled immigrant > labor. And once again, wrong-o sleigh bell lovers. Low skilled > laborers can not afford to pay for their own medical care. They > don't pay enough in taxes to pay for the educations of their > children. They do not make enough to pay for their retirements in > the United States. The list goes on. Oh, and they commit crime at > higher rates. So they cost crime victims and also the criminal > justice system. A year for an inmate at Rikers Island in New York > costs $47,000. Criminals are expensive for the rest of us in many > ways. > > The Open Borders advocates are deeply dishonest. America's elites are > corrupt. They lie. They can not be trusted. America is going down a > very wrong path. Our leaders in business and politics are to blame. > But so are apathetic members of the public. It is time to wake up and > demand a stop to massive immigration. The costs have become far too > high and will be with us for decades to come. > By Randall Parker at 2005 August 14 06:44 PM [13]Immigration > Economics | [14]TrackBack > Comments > > in vermont too. many more latinos work in oregon than 10 years ago > though, and i hear that similar things are going on in the south. i > suspect that for a variety of reasons the upper midwest and new > england (distance, climate, cost of living) will resist latino labor > the longest. > Posted by: [15]razib on August 14, 2005 08:55 PM > > Resistance is futile. Viva La Rasa. > Posted by: [16]Mark on August 14, 2005 10:59 PM > > There would be a net savings from reversing the antimerit immigrant > flow, some of which would be passed on to the consumers. If the bottom > 20% gets paid so little that their wages could double without the rich > even noticing it, shifting 4% of the total income away from the top > 80% over several years, that is a worthwhile price to pay. There is no > economic need to increase the size of the bottom end; it isn't about > money, it's about power. How to get power, when there are no ideas; > won't they use immigration to increase racial conflict, and say that > officials must have more power? > Posted by: [17]John S Bolton on August 14, 2005 11:26 PM > > For some reason my trackbacks to this post don't take, so ping! > Posted by: [18]Dave Schuler on August 15, 2005 07:47 AM > > Eastern Washington, North Idaho, and Montana are alot like Wisconsin > in that low end labor jobs are done primarly by whites. We have very > few illegal aliens in this part of the country. This is good because > we have much less of the "servant" culture that you see in California > and other places. People clean their own homes and often do their own > yard work. If you have someone else do these things, they are done by > outside services operating more like independent business people > rather than as "domestics". Not having the illegal immigrants means > that we have a much more "do it yourself" mentality than, say, in > Southern California. > > I do not like that "class" mentality that illegal immigration has > produced in places like California and Texas. I think having distinct > social classes, especially if they are of different races, is very > destructive to the future of the U.S. The "open-borders" people need > to be grilled over this issue. > Posted by: [19]Kurt on August 15, 2005 10:01 AM > > razib - don't underestimate the number of mexicans in the upper > midwest - chicago has the 2nd highest mexican population in the u.s. > after l.a. granted this isn't wisconsin, but.... > > randall - in a similar, practical manner that you approach alternative > energy solutions, i.e. can't tell people to drive less or other > inconveniences that would be a political non-starter in america today; > what would be your political platform for immigration that would be > politically feasible? i would love to know what you'd recommend, > having put considerable thought to this issue, assuming something like > you were an advisor to your senator. thanks. > Posted by: [20]Jim on August 15, 2005 01:22 PM > > I spent a few days in Sierra Vista, AZ, a booming town about 15 miles > north of the Mexican border. Strikingly, the maids in my motel were > white, as were a lot of the other service workers. The answer to this > paradox is that Sierra Vista is within the narrow band heavily policed > by the Border Patrol. If illegal aliens are found there, they are > deported. But if they make it far enough north to Tucson or Phoenix, > well, they're Ollie Ollie Home Free. > Posted by: [21]Steve Sailer on August 15, 2005 02:03 PM > > Jim, > > Perhaps I don't understand your question. Politically feasible? I > think a candidate for the Presidency could run on a platform to deport > all the illegals and win. The dollar cost to the government of > deporting all the illegals would be pretty low. > > The anger about the immigrant deluge is building. But politicians are > chasing the votes of Hispanics, the Democrats see them as a solid > Democrat voting bloc (and they are), and some business interests want > cheap labor. > > I'd tell a US Senator to submit a bill to fund a barrier along the > entire length of the border. I'd also propose upping the number of > Border Patrol by 20,000 and setting them loose in the interior with > orders to round up all illegals. Congress should give instructions to > DHS to resume interior enforcement. > Posted by: [22]Randall Parker on August 15, 2005 03:33 PM > > References > > 9. http://nospeedbumps.com/ > 10. http://nospeedbumps.com/?p=334 > 11. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg1791.cfm > 12. http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002778.html > 13. http://www.parapundit.com/archives/cat_immigration_economics.html > 14. http://www.futurepundit.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=2938 > 15. http://www.gnxp.com/ > 16. mailto:dfsf at hotmail.com > 17. http://www.johnsbolton.net/ > 18. http://www.theglitteringeye.com/ > 19. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw > 20. mailto:knuckleballnews at yahoo.com > 21. http://www.iSteve.com/ > 22. http://futurepundit.com/ > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Aug 16 04:02:24 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:02:24 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] 250 miles per gallon? They're doing it Message-ID: <01C5A1DC.A374B920.shovland@mindspring.com> These ideas can be applied on a wider scale. Here's a car we saw in Europe: This is the future in America :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Gerry Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 6:14 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] 250 miles per gallon? They're doing it Well and good, Steve. But one robin does not a springtime make. Even if it is parked in your garage. Regards, Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >Tinkerers fiddle with hybrids to increase efficiency > >Bottom of Form 1 >CORTE MADERA, California (AP) -- Politicians and automakers say a car that >can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on >foreign oil is years or even decades away. >Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage. >It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an >80-miles-per-gallon secret -- a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that >boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can >burn even less fuel. >Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent >several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car. >Like all hybrids, his Prius increases fuel efficiency by harnessing small >amounts of electricity generated during braking and coasting. The extra >batteries let him store extra power by plugging the car into a wall outlet >at his home in this San Francisco suburb -- all for about a quarter. >He's part of a small but growing movement. "Plug-in" hybrids aren't yet >cost-efficient, but some of the dozen known experimental models have gotten >up to 250 mpg. >They have support not only from environmentalists but also from >conservative foreign policy hawks who insist Americans fuel terrorism >through their gas guzzling. >And while the technology has existed for three decades, automakers are >beginning to take notice, too. >So far, DaimlerChrysler AG is the only company that has committed to >building its own plug-in hybrids, quietly pledging to make up to 40 vans >for U.S. companies. But Toyota Motor Corp. officials who initially frowned >on people altering their cars now say they may be able to learn from them. >"They're like the hot rodders of yesterday who did everything to soup up >their cars. It was all about horsepower and bling-bling, lots of chrome and >accessories," said Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokeswoman. "Maybe the hot >rodders of tomorrow are the people who want to get in there and see what >they can do about increasing fuel economy." > >Plugged or unplugged? >The extra batteries let Gremban drive for 20 miles with a 50-50 mix of gas >and electricity. Even after the car runs out of power from the batteries >and switches to the standard hybrid mode, it gets the typical Prius fuel >efficiency of around 45 mpg. As long as Gremban doesn't drive too far in a >day, he says, he gets 80 mpg. >"The value of plug-in hybrids is they can dramatically reduce gasoline >usage for the first few miles every day," Gremban said. "The average for >people's usage of a car is somewhere around 30 to 40 miles per day. During >that kind of driving, the plug-in hybrid can make a dramatic difference." > >Gremban promotes the CalCars Initiative, a volunteer effort encouraging >automakers to make plug-in hybrids. >Backers of plug-in hybrids acknowledge that the electricity to boost their >cars generally comes from fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases, but >they say that process still produces far less pollution than oil. They also >note that electricity could be generated cleanly from solar power. >Gremban rigged his car to promote the nonprofit CalCars Initiative, a San >Francisco Bay area-based volunteer effort that argues automakers could mass >produce plug-in hybrids at a reasonable price. >But Toyota and other car companies say they are worried about the cost, >convenience and safety of plug-in hybrids -- and note that consumers >haven't embraced all-electric cars because of the inconvenience of >recharging them like giant cell phones. >Automakers have spent millions of dollars telling motorists that hybrids >don't need to be plugged in, and don't want to confuse the message. >Nonetheless, plug-in hybrids are starting to get the backing of prominent >hawks like former CIA director James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney, President >Reagan's undersecretary of defense. They have joined Set America Free, a >group that wants the government to spend $12 billion over four years on >plug-in hybrids, alternative fuels and other measures to reduce foreign oil >dependence. >Gaffney, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, >said Americans would embrace plug-ins if they understood arguments from him >and others who say gasoline contributes to oil-rich Middle Eastern >governments that support terrorism. >"The more we are consuming oil that either comes from places that are bent >on our destruction or helping those who are ... the more we are enabling >those who are trying to kill us," Gaffney said. > >Now vs. later >DaimlerChrysler spokesman Nick Cappa said plug-in hybrids are ideal for >companies with fleets of vehicles that can be recharged at a central >location at night. He declined to name the companies buying the vehicles >and said he did not know the vehicles' mileage or cost, or when they would >be available. >Others are modifying hybrids, too. >Monrovia-based Energy CS has converted two Priuses to get up to 230 mpg by >using powerful lithium ion batteries. It is forming a new company, EDrive >Systems, that will convert hybrids to plug-ins for about $12,000 starting >next year, company vice president Greg Hanssen said. >University of California, Davis, engineering professor Andy Frank built a >plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, >one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, >including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban. >Frank has spent $150,000 to $250,000 in research costs on each car, but >believes automakers could mass-produce them by adding just $6,000 to each >vehicle's price tag. >Instead, Frank said, automakers promise hydrogen-powered vehicles hailed by >President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though hydrogen's >backers acknowledge the cars won't be widely available for years and would >require a vast infrastructure of new fueling stations. >"They'd rather work on something that won't be in their lifetime, and >that's this hydrogen economy stuff," Frank said. "They pick this kind of >target to get the public off their back, essentially." > > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 915972 bytes Desc: not available URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Aug 16 04:03:29 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:03:29 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] ParaPundit: Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin Message-ID: <01C5A1DC.C9BAB260.shovland@mindspring.com> It's eroding our society. I personally believe in the melting pot, not "diversity." Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 8:45 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] ParaPundit: Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin More thanks for Frank's efforts. This is exactly right. The fast-food restaurant where I get my lunch salad used to be staffed by ordinary causasians, often with obvious mild retardation. They were good workers, and I enjoyed them. Now I can barely understand the girl at the register and sometimes I have to ask her to say it in Spanish because her English is so poor. I am deeply discouraged and disillusioned by President Bush's attitude about illegal emmigration. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin > http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002938.html#002938 > > 2005 August 14 Sunday > Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin > > Over at [9]No Speed Bumps Dan reports on how [10]during a vacation > trip in Wisconsin he found white people doing all the manual labor > jobs that are done by Hispanics in Texas. > > Two weeks ago I vacationed near Oshkosh, Wisconsin. One thing > strikingly different than living in Texas was that there were few > Hispanics. In Texas, Hispanics are found in all walks of life, from > doctors to janitors. > > With so many impoverished Hispanics illegally moving to Texas over > the southern border each year, they have taken over most of the > lower-skill jobs because they will work for less than American > citizens. Go to any restaurant, hotel, or construction site and all > of the basic manual labor tasks are being done by low-income > Hispanics. > > Anyway, while on vacation, in the hotels we stayed in all of the > maid staff and other help were white. The same was true of all of > the restaurants we ate in, from the cooks, to the bus boys, to the > grounds keepers. I felt like we were in a time machine and in a > strange land. > > An interesting note about the maid staff at the hotels was the good > cheer that they were in. They were constantly chatting among > themselves and seemed very content as they went about their work. > This reminded me that, yes, there is dignity to manual labor, and > yes, white people can still do manual labor. > > This runs counter to the fashionable argument today justifying the > open border policy with Mexico. The argument goes that America > could just not function without all of the low-skill workers coming > in to do all of the manual labor. Well, that is ridiculous. It may > drive prices up some, if American citizens (whether white, black, > or any other race) must do the work but the work will still get > done, one way or another. > > One of the big whopper lies told by open borders advocates such as > George W. Bush is that there are "jobs that Americans won't do". This > is nonsense. One only need travel to those places where the bulk of > the population is still white to see that this claim is false > propaganda. > > As for the argument that a lack of cheap immigrant labor will drive up > prices, it rests on three fallacies: > * That low skilled labor makes up much of total costs. Wrong-o > sleigh bell lovers. The bottom quintile of the United States > population earns [11]only 3.5% of national income. 20% get 3.5%. > If we deported all the illegal aliens and stopped all low skiilled > and moderate skilled immigration the bottom 20% would see some > significant increase in their wages. But that increase would be > unlikely raise total prices by even a couple of percent. We don't > pay them that much. A 10% or 20% increase in their salaries won't > matter much to the rest of the population. > * That there are no substitutes for cheap labor. Again, wrong-o > sleigh bell lovers. Necessity is the mother of invention. In all > likelihood, faced with higher labor costs industry would be more > eager to develop and buy more capital equipment and to arrange the > methods of purveying goods and services to decrease the amount of > labor needed. In fact, we have an example available for what the > lack of cheap immigrant labor will do to an industry. [12]The > Australian wine industry is more automated than the American wine > industry due to lack of cheap immigrant labor in Australia. Ben > Franklin was right. We'd advance more rapidly without simple minds > available to do simple tasks cheaply. > * That there are no external costs to cheap unskilled immigrant > labor. And once again, wrong-o sleigh bell lovers. Low skilled > laborers can not afford to pay for their own medical care. They > don't pay enough in taxes to pay for the educations of their > children. They do not make enough to pay for their retirements in > the United States. The list goes on. Oh, and they commit crime at > higher rates. So they cost crime victims and also the criminal > justice system. A year for an inmate at Rikers Island in New York > costs $47,000. Criminals are expensive for the rest of us in many > ways. > > The Open Borders advocates are deeply dishonest. America's elites are > corrupt. They lie. They can not be trusted. America is going down a > very wrong path. Our leaders in business and politics are to blame. > But so are apathetic members of the public. It is time to wake up and > demand a stop to massive immigration. The costs have become far too > high and will be with us for decades to come. > By Randall Parker at 2005 August 14 06:44 PM [13]Immigration > Economics | [14]TrackBack > Comments > > in vermont too. many more latinos work in oregon than 10 years ago > though, and i hear that similar things are going on in the south. i > suspect that for a variety of reasons the upper midwest and new > england (distance, climate, cost of living) will resist latino labor > the longest. > Posted by: [15]razib on August 14, 2005 08:55 PM > > Resistance is futile. Viva La Rasa. > Posted by: [16]Mark on August 14, 2005 10:59 PM > > There would be a net savings from reversing the antimerit immigrant > flow, some of which would be passed on to the consumers. If the bottom > 20% gets paid so little that their wages could double without the rich > even noticing it, shifting 4% of the total income away from the top > 80% over several years, that is a worthwhile price to pay. There is no > economic need to increase the size of the bottom end; it isn't about > money, it's about power. How to get power, when there are no ideas; > won't they use immigration to increase racial conflict, and say that > officials must have more power? > Posted by: [17]John S Bolton on August 14, 2005 11:26 PM > > For some reason my trackbacks to this post don't take, so ping! > Posted by: [18]Dave Schuler on August 15, 2005 07:47 AM > > Eastern Washington, North Idaho, and Montana are alot like Wisconsin > in that low end labor jobs are done primarly by whites. We have very > few illegal aliens in this part of the country. This is good because > we have much less of the "servant" culture that you see in California > and other places. People clean their own homes and often do their own > yard work. If you have someone else do these things, they are done by > outside services operating more like independent business people > rather than as "domestics". Not having the illegal immigrants means > that we have a much more "do it yourself" mentality than, say, in > Southern California. > > I do not like that "class" mentality that illegal immigration has > produced in places like California and Texas. I think having distinct > social classes, especially if they are of different races, is very > destructive to the future of the U.S. The "open-borders" people need > to be grilled over this issue. > Posted by: [19]Kurt on August 15, 2005 10:01 AM > > razib - don't underestimate the number of mexicans in the upper > midwest - chicago has the 2nd highest mexican population in the u.s. > after l.a. granted this isn't wisconsin, but.... > > randall - in a similar, practical manner that you approach alternative > energy solutions, i.e. can't tell people to drive less or other > inconveniences that would be a political non-starter in america today; > what would be your political platform for immigration that would be > politically feasible? i would love to know what you'd recommend, > having put considerable thought to this issue, assuming something like > you were an advisor to your senator. thanks. > Posted by: [20]Jim on August 15, 2005 01:22 PM > > I spent a few days in Sierra Vista, AZ, a booming town about 15 miles > north of the Mexican border. Strikingly, the maids in my motel were > white, as were a lot of the other service workers. The answer to this > paradox is that Sierra Vista is within the narrow band heavily policed > by the Border Patrol. If illegal aliens are found there, they are > deported. But if they make it far enough north to Tucson or Phoenix, > well, they're Ollie Ollie Home Free. > Posted by: [21]Steve Sailer on August 15, 2005 02:03 PM > > Jim, > > Perhaps I don't understand your question. Politically feasible? I > think a candidate for the Presidency could run on a platform to deport > all the illegals and win. The dollar cost to the government of > deporting all the illegals would be pretty low. > > The anger about the immigrant deluge is building. But politicians are > chasing the votes of Hispanics, the Democrats see them as a solid > Democrat voting bloc (and they are), and some business interests want > cheap labor. > > I'd tell a US Senator to submit a bill to fund a barrier along the > entire length of the border. I'd also propose upping the number of > Border Patrol by 20,000 and setting them loose in the interior with > orders to round up all illegals. Congress should give instructions to > DHS to resume interior enforcement. > Posted by: [22]Randall Parker on August 15, 2005 03:33 PM > > References > > 9. http://nospeedbumps.com/ > 10. http://nospeedbumps.com/?p=334 > 11. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg1791.cfm > 12. http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002778.html > 13. http://www.parapundit.com/archives/cat_immigration_economics.html > 14. http://www.futurepundit.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=2938 > 15. http://www.gnxp.com/ > 16. mailto:dfsf at hotmail.com > 17. http://www.johnsbolton.net/ > 18. http://www.theglitteringeye.com/ > 19. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw > 20. mailto:knuckleballnews at yahoo.com > 21. http://www.iSteve.com/ > 22. http://futurepundit.com/ > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From Thrst4knw at aol.com Tue Aug 16 16:49:41 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:49:41 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Religious Belief Is Found to Be Less Lacking Among Soci... Message-ID: <20d.7293c1e.30337325@aol.com> I think the prevailing scientific view of religion is that it is primarily a social psychological phenomenon, an adaptation of sorts to group life, so it certainly makes sense that social scientists would tend to be interested in it in general, gender notwithstanding. It sounds like the researchers are looking for something more exotic, but I wonder if they are making the right distinctions to tease it out. It would be interesting to have this type of study distinguish between different kinds of faith underlying the profession of being "religious." Two people who claim a affiliation with a religious community or an affinity for religion and can do so with very different attitudes toward it, and research often ignores this important fact. My suspicion is that it is not a homogeneous phenomenon, but our research tradition often appears to treat it essentially as such. Two people with "religious belief" can sometimes believe in very different things and I suspect also in in very different *ways* cognitively. You can easily find Bible thumping evangelicals with clear religious beliefs and equally easily find "liberal" philosopher-theologians with distinct religious beliefs but they certainly seem to approach the same topics in entirely different ways, and their beliefs take on different roles in their behavior. kind regards, Todd -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From waluk at earthlink.net Tue Aug 16 18:34:22 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (Gerry Reinhart-Waller) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:34:22 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] ParaPundit: Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin In-Reply-To: <01C5A1DC.C9BAB260.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C5A1DC.C9BAB260.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <430231AE.7040801@earthlink.net> I think all of us grew up with grandparents or such who arrived in the U.S. expecting to be part of the great melting pot that America offered. Today, thoughts of merging have been replaced by ethnic diversity. What ethnic divisions create is group hatred, one for another. That's what is responsible for the crumbling of our society. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >It's eroding our society. > >I personally believe in the melting pot, not "diversity." > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 8:45 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] ParaPundit: Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin > >More thanks for Frank's efforts. This is exactly right. The fast-food >restaurant where I get my lunch salad used to be staffed by ordinary >causasians, often with obvious mild retardation. They were good workers, >and I enjoyed them. Now I can barely understand the girl at the register >and sometimes I have to ask her to say it in Spanish because her English >is so poor. I am deeply discouraged and disillusioned by President >Bush's attitude about illegal emmigration. >Lynn > >Premise Checker wrote: > > > >>Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin >>http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002938.html#002938 >> >> 2005 August 14 Sunday >> Whites Still Do Manual Labor In Wisconsin >> >> Over at [9]No Speed Bumps Dan reports on how [10]during a vacation >> trip in Wisconsin he found white people doing all the manual labor >> jobs that are done by Hispanics in Texas. >> >> Two weeks ago I vacationed near Oshkosh, Wisconsin. One thing >> strikingly different than living in Texas was that there were few >> Hispanics. In Texas, Hispanics are found in all walks of life, from >> doctors to janitors. >> >> With so many impoverished Hispanics illegally moving to Texas over >> the southern border each year, they have taken over most of the >> lower-skill jobs because they will work for less than American >> citizens. Go to any restaurant, hotel, or construction site and all >> of the basic manual labor tasks are being done by low-income >> Hispanics. >> >> Anyway, while on vacation, in the hotels we stayed in all of the >> maid staff and other help were white. The same was true of all of >> the restaurants we ate in, from the cooks, to the bus boys, to the >> grounds keepers. I felt like we were in a time machine and in a >> strange land. >> >> An interesting note about the maid staff at the hotels was the good >> cheer that they were in. They were constantly chatting among >> themselves and seemed very content as they went about their work. >> This reminded me that, yes, there is dignity to manual labor, and >> yes, white people can still do manual labor. >> >> This runs counter to the fashionable argument today justifying the >> open border policy with Mexico. The argument goes that America >> could just not function without all of the low-skill workers coming >> in to do all of the manual labor. Well, that is ridiculous. It may >> drive prices up some, if American citizens (whether white, black, >> or any other race) must do the work but the work will still get >> done, one way or another. >> >> One of the big whopper lies told by open borders advocates such as >> George W. Bush is that there are "jobs that Americans won't do". This >> is nonsense. One only need travel to those places where the bulk of >> the population is still white to see that this claim is false >> propaganda. >> >> As for the argument that a lack of cheap immigrant labor will drive up >> prices, it rests on three fallacies: >> * That low skilled labor makes up much of total costs. Wrong-o >> sleigh bell lovers. The bottom quintile of the United States >> population earns [11]only 3.5% of national income. 20% get 3.5%. >> If we deported all the illegal aliens and stopped all low skiilled >> and moderate skilled immigration the bottom 20% would see some >> significant increase in their wages. But that increase would be >> unlikely raise total prices by even a couple of percent. We don't >> pay them that much. A 10% or 20% increase in their salaries won't >> matter much to the rest of the population. >> * That there are no substitutes for cheap labor. Again, wrong-o >> sleigh bell lovers. Necessity is the mother of invention. In all >> likelihood, faced with higher labor costs industry would be more >> eager to develop and buy more capital equipment and to arrange the >> methods of purveying goods and services to decrease the amount of >> labor needed. In fact, we have an example available for what the >> lack of cheap immigrant labor will do to an industry. [12]The >> Australian wine industry is more automated than the American wine >> industry due to lack of cheap immigrant labor in Australia. Ben >> Franklin was right. We'd advance more rapidly without simple minds >> available to do simple tasks cheaply. >> * That there are no external costs to cheap unskilled immigrant >> labor. And once again, wrong-o sleigh bell lovers. Low skilled >> laborers can not afford to pay for their own medical care. They >> don't pay enough in taxes to pay for the educations of their >> children. They do not make enough to pay for their retirements in >> the United States. The list goes on. Oh, and they commit crime at >> higher rates. So they cost crime victims and also the criminal >> justice system. A year for an inmate at Rikers Island in New York >> costs $47,000. Criminals are expensive for the rest of us in many >> ways. >> >> The Open Borders advocates are deeply dishonest. America's elites are >> corrupt. They lie. They can not be trusted. America is going down a >> very wrong path. Our leaders in business and politics are to blame. >> But so are apathetic members of the public. It is time to wake up and >> demand a stop to massive immigration. The costs have become far too >> high and will be with us for decades to come. >> By Randall Parker at 2005 August 14 06:44 PM [13]Immigration >> Economics | [14]TrackBack >> Comments >> >> in vermont too. many more latinos work in oregon than 10 years ago >> though, and i hear that similar things are going on in the south. i >> suspect that for a variety of reasons the upper midwest and new >> england (distance, climate, cost of living) will resist latino labor >> the longest. >> Posted by: [15]razib on August 14, 2005 08:55 PM >> >> Resistance is futile. Viva La Rasa. >> Posted by: [16]Mark on August 14, 2005 10:59 PM >> >> There would be a net savings from reversing the antimerit immigrant >> flow, some of which would be passed on to the consumers. If the bottom >> 20% gets paid so little that their wages could double without the rich >> even noticing it, shifting 4% of the total income away from the top >> 80% over several years, that is a worthwhile price to pay. There is no >> economic need to increase the size of the bottom end; it isn't about >> money, it's about power. How to get power, when there are no ideas; >> won't they use immigration to increase racial conflict, and say that >> officials must have more power? >> Posted by: [17]John S Bolton on August 14, 2005 11:26 PM >> >> For some reason my trackbacks to this post don't take, so ping! >> Posted by: [18]Dave Schuler on August 15, 2005 07:47 AM >> >> Eastern Washington, North Idaho, and Montana are alot like Wisconsin >> in that low end labor jobs are done primarly by whites. We have very >> few illegal aliens in this part of the country. This is good because >> we have much less of the "servant" culture that you see in California >> and other places. People clean their own homes and often do their own >> yard work. If you have someone else do these things, they are done by >> outside services operating more like independent business people >> rather than as "domestics". Not having the illegal immigrants means >> that we have a much more "do it yourself" mentality than, say, in >> Southern California. >> >> I do not like that "class" mentality that illegal immigration has >> produced in places like California and Texas. I think having distinct >> social classes, especially if they are of different races, is very >> destructive to the future of the U.S. The "open-borders" people need >> to be grilled over this issue. >> Posted by: [19]Kurt on August 15, 2005 10:01 AM >> >> razib - don't underestimate the number of mexicans in the upper >> midwest - chicago has the 2nd highest mexican population in the u.s. >> after l.a. granted this isn't wisconsin, but.... >> >> randall - in a similar, practical manner that you approach alternative >> energy solutions, i.e. can't tell people to drive less or other >> inconveniences that would be a political non-starter in america today; >> what would be your political platform for immigration that would be >> politically feasible? i would love to know what you'd recommend, >> having put considerable thought to this issue, assuming something like >> you were an advisor to your senator. thanks. >> Posted by: [20]Jim on August 15, 2005 01:22 PM >> >> I spent a few days in Sierra Vista, AZ, a booming town about 15 miles >> north of the Mexican border. Strikingly, the maids in my motel were >> white, as were a lot of the other service workers. The answer to this >> paradox is that Sierra Vista is within the narrow band heavily policed >> by the Border Patrol. If illegal aliens are found there, they are >> deported. But if they make it far enough north to Tucson or Phoenix, >> well, they're Ollie Ollie Home Free. >> Posted by: [21]Steve Sailer on August 15, 2005 02:03 PM >> >> Jim, >> >> Perhaps I don't understand your question. Politically feasible? I >> think a candidate for the Presidency could run on a platform to deport >> all the illegals and win. The dollar cost to the government of >> deporting all the illegals would be pretty low. >> >> The anger about the immigrant deluge is building. But politicians are >> chasing the votes of Hispanics, the Democrats see them as a solid >> Democrat voting bloc (and they are), and some business interests want >> cheap labor. >> >> I'd tell a US Senator to submit a bill to fund a barrier along the >> entire length of the border. I'd also propose upping the number of >> Border Patrol by 20,000 and setting them loose in the interior with >> orders to round up all illegals. Congress should give instructions to >> DHS to resume interior enforcement. >> Posted by: [22]Randall Parker on August 15, 2005 03:33 PM >> >>References >> >> 9. http://nospeedbumps.com/ >> 10. http://nospeedbumps.com/?p=334 >> 11. http://www.heritage.org/Research/Taxes/bg1791.cfm >> 12. http://www.parapundit.com/archives/002778.html >> 13. http://www.parapundit.com/archives/cat_immigration_economics.html >> 14. http://www.futurepundit.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=2938 >> 15. http://www.gnxp.com/ >> 16. mailto:dfsf at hotmail.com >> 17. http://www.johnsbolton.net/ >> 18. http://www.theglitteringeye.com/ >> 19. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw >> 20. mailto:knuckleballnews at yahoo.com >> 21. http://www.iSteve.com/ >> 22. http://futurepundit.com/ >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From waluk at earthlink.net Tue Aug 16 18:38:14 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (Gerry Reinhart-Waller) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:38:14 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] 250 miles per gallon? They're doing it In-Reply-To: <01C5A1DC.A374B920.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C5A1DC.A374B920.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <43023296.3030400@earthlink.net> It is a good first step. That I agree with. Hybids are a wave of the future. But there are many other waves that need to follow. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >These ideas can be applied on a wider scale. > >Here's a car we saw in Europe: > > > >This is the future in America :-) > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Gerry Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 6:14 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] 250 miles per gallon? They're doing it > >Well and good, Steve. But one robin does not a springtime make. Even >if it is parked in your garage. > >Regards, >Gerry Reinhart-Waller > > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>Tinkerers fiddle with hybrids to increase efficiency >> >>Bottom of Form 1 >>CORTE MADERA, California (AP) -- Politicians and automakers say a car that >>can both reduce greenhouse gases and free America from its reliance on >>foreign oil is years or even decades away. >>Ron Gremban says such a car is parked in his garage. >>It looks like a typical Toyota Prius hybrid, but in the trunk sits an >>80-miles-per-gallon secret -- a stack of 18 brick-sized batteries that >>boosts the car's high mileage with an extra electrical charge so it can >>burn even less fuel. >>Gremban, an electrical engineer and committed environmentalist, spent >>several months and $3,000 tinkering with his car. >>Like all hybrids, his Prius increases fuel efficiency by harnessing small >>amounts of electricity generated during braking and coasting. The extra >>batteries let him store extra power by plugging the car into a wall outlet >>at his home in this San Francisco suburb -- all for about a quarter. >>He's part of a small but growing movement. "Plug-in" hybrids aren't yet >>cost-efficient, but some of the dozen known experimental models have gotten >>up to 250 mpg. >>They have support not only from environmentalists but also from >>conservative foreign policy hawks who insist Americans fuel terrorism >>through their gas guzzling. >>And while the technology has existed for three decades, automakers are >>beginning to take notice, too. >>So far, DaimlerChrysler AG is the only company that has committed to >>building its own plug-in hybrids, quietly pledging to make up to 40 vans >>for U.S. companies. But Toyota Motor Corp. officials who initially frowned >>on people altering their cars now say they may be able to learn from them. >>"They're like the hot rodders of yesterday who did everything to soup up >>their cars. It was all about horsepower and bling-bling, lots of chrome and >>accessories," said Cindy Knight, a Toyota spokeswoman. "Maybe the hot >>rodders of tomorrow are the people who want to get in there and see what >>they can do about increasing fuel economy." >> >>Plugged or unplugged? >>The extra batteries let Gremban drive for 20 miles with a 50-50 mix of gas >>and electricity. Even after the car runs out of power from the batteries >>and switches to the standard hybrid mode, it gets the typical Prius fuel >>efficiency of around 45 mpg. As long as Gremban doesn't drive too far in a >>day, he says, he gets 80 mpg. >>"The value of plug-in hybrids is they can dramatically reduce gasoline >>usage for the first few miles every day," Gremban said. "The average for >>people's usage of a car is somewhere around 30 to 40 miles per day. During >>that kind of driving, the plug-in hybrid can make a dramatic difference." >> >>Gremban promotes the CalCars Initiative, a volunteer effort encouraging >>automakers to make plug-in hybrids. >>Backers of plug-in hybrids acknowledge that the electricity to boost their >>cars generally comes from fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases, but >>they say that process still produces far less pollution than oil. They also >>note that electricity could be generated cleanly from solar power. >>Gremban rigged his car to promote the nonprofit CalCars Initiative, a San >>Francisco Bay area-based volunteer effort that argues automakers could mass >>produce plug-in hybrids at a reasonable price. >>But Toyota and other car companies say they are worried about the cost, >>convenience and safety of plug-in hybrids -- and note that consumers >>haven't embraced all-electric cars because of the inconvenience of >>recharging them like giant cell phones. >>Automakers have spent millions of dollars telling motorists that hybrids >>don't need to be plugged in, and don't want to confuse the message. >>Nonetheless, plug-in hybrids are starting to get the backing of prominent >>hawks like former CIA director James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney, President >>Reagan's undersecretary of defense. They have joined Set America Free, a >>group that wants the government to spend $12 billion over four years on >>plug-in hybrids, alternative fuels and other measures to reduce foreign oil >>dependence. >>Gaffney, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, >>said Americans would embrace plug-ins if they understood arguments from him >>and others who say gasoline contributes to oil-rich Middle Eastern >>governments that support terrorism. >>"The more we are consuming oil that either comes from places that are bent >>on our destruction or helping those who are ... the more we are enabling >>those who are trying to kill us," Gaffney said. >> >>Now vs. later >>DaimlerChrysler spokesman Nick Cappa said plug-in hybrids are ideal for >>companies with fleets of vehicles that can be recharged at a central >>location at night. He declined to name the companies buying the vehicles >>and said he did not know the vehicles' mileage or cost, or when they would >>be available. >>Others are modifying hybrids, too. >>Monrovia-based Energy CS has converted two Priuses to get up to 230 mpg by >>using powerful lithium ion batteries. It is forming a new company, EDrive >>Systems, that will convert hybrids to plug-ins for about $12,000 starting >>next year, company vice president Greg Hanssen said. >>University of California, Davis, engineering professor Andy Frank built a >>plug-in hybrid from the ground up in 1972 and has since built seven others, >>one of which gets up to 250 mpg. They were converted from non-hybrids, >>including a Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Suburban. >>Frank has spent $150,000 to $250,000 in research costs on each car, but >>believes automakers could mass-produce them by adding just $6,000 to each >>vehicle's price tag. >>Instead, Frank said, automakers promise hydrogen-powered vehicles hailed by >>President Bush and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, even though hydrogen's >>backers acknowledge the cars won't be widely available for years and would >>require a vast infrastructure of new fueling stations. >>"They'd rather work on something that won't be in their lifetime, and >>that's this hydrogen economy stuff," Frank said. "They pick this kind of >>target to get the public off their back, essentially." >> >> >> >> >>------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Tue Aug 16 19:31:12 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:31:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] multiculturalism and freedom In-Reply-To: <200508161801.j7GI14R01175@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050816193112.66306.qmail@web30804.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Steve says: >>I personally believe in the melting pot, not "diversity."<< --Everyone envisions something different when they hear those terms... I think the basic problem in our society is not that people have differences. There will always be differences and variations in culture and language. What's missing is civility between people who have different views that are not likely to change. Language barriers can be overcome when people want to overcome them. But not WANTING to overcome barriers is a whole other problem. We can't eliminate cultural or religious differences or force everyone to adopt enough corporate culture to be "typical fast-food Americans". A common national mythology is always nice to have. A belief in the wisdom of the Founding Fathers (even if they owned slaves and had some blind spots about women and children) and a basic understanding of the constitution and how the government works is good. But none of those things require the erasure of cultural differences. People can speak Spanish and live a very Mexican lifestyle in America, and still believe in the Constitution and freedom and the need to be a good citizen by voting and being honest on your taxes. But if people lack civility and empathy, they'll find any difference to pick on and make it a subject of hostility. We need a cultural immune system that tolerates, accepts or embraces difference, while retaining the core values of freedom, equal treatment under law, and human religious and rhetorical rights that have fueled the American vision. Rather than focusing on making people more similar, we should focus on giving people a shared appreciation of how precious it is to have a place to live where you can say what you want and worship your own deity or non-deity in peace. Protecting that is what the long term war on terrorism is really about. Michael ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From waluk at earthlink.net Tue Aug 16 19:42:26 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (Gerry Reinhart-Waller) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:42:26 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] multiculturalism and freedom In-Reply-To: <20050816193112.66306.qmail@web30804.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050816193112.66306.qmail@web30804.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <430241A2.2070201@earthlink.net> It is my opinion that we in America can no longer say what we want or even worship in peace. I'm afraid 911 changed everything and Homeland Security now has a very active role in snuffing out dissenters and other miscreants. I hope I'm wrong and we can return to principles our founding fathers felt were important to preserve....but I rather doubt it. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Michael Christopher wrote: >Rather than focusing on making people more similar, we >should focus on giving people a shared appreciation of >how precious it is to have a place to live where you >can say what you want and worship your own deity or >non-deity in peace. Protecting that is what the long >term war on terrorism is really about. > > From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Aug 16 22:36:46 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:36:46 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] multiculturalism and freedom Message-ID: <01C5A278.5051A3B0.shovland@mindspring.com> A lot of us are still practicing free speech. I'm pretty active but I wasn't on any terrorist list when I flew to Europe :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Gerry Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 12:42 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] multiculturalism and freedom It is my opinion that we in America can no longer say what we want or even worship in peace. I'm afraid 911 changed everything and Homeland Security now has a very active role in snuffing out dissenters and other miscreants. I hope I'm wrong and we can return to principles our founding fathers felt were important to preserve....but I rather doubt it. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Michael Christopher wrote: >Rather than focusing on making people more similar, we >should focus on giving people a shared appreciation of >how precious it is to have a place to live where you >can say what you want and worship your own deity or >non-deity in peace. Protecting that is what the long >term war on terrorism is really about. > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Aug 19 14:34:05 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:34:05 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Flywheels for energy storage Message-ID: <01C5A490.61DE6D60.shovland@mindspring.com> This is how to make an intermittent source like sun and wind into a continuous source. http://www.beaconpower.com/ A flywheel energy storage system draws electrical energy from a primary source, such as the utility grid, and stores it in a high-density rotating flywheel. The flywheel system is actually a kinetic, or mechanical battery, spinning at very high speeds (>20,000 rpm) to store energy that is instantly available when needed. Upon power loss, the motor driving the flywheel acts as a generator. As the flywheel continues to rotate, this generator supplies power to the customer load. Performance is measured in energy units indicating the amount of power available over a given period of time. Typical single-flywheel systems, such as the Smart Energy 6 and Smart Energy 25 , are intended for standby power applications. A more recent Beacon Power flywheel design proposes an integrated system of 10 higher-power (25 kWh) flywheels, interconnected in a matrix to provide energy storage for utility-grade applications. The Smart Energy Matrix is designed to deliver megawatts of power for minutes, providing highly robust and responsive frequency and voltage regulation capabilities for increased grid reliability. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Aug 19 14:50:48 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:50:48 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] More on wind power Message-ID: <01C5A492.DDD436A0.shovland@mindspring.com> WIND POWER Harnessing the power of the wind using modern wind generators is one of the most popular sources for green power. Wind is created when the sun's rays cause temperature and air density differences between two or more air masses on the earth's surface. To equalize these pressure differences, air is drawn to a new location, creating wind. Other geographic factors affect the speed of the wind and its consistency. Wind power is becoming an economically attractive energy source because of rising fuel costs, such as gas, coal and nuclear energy. It is also an environmentally attractive source of power because wind generators don't pollute the air or water. Extracting electric power from the wind requires the right site, a reliable machine and the flexibility of the power system to adapt to a capricious air stream. Evolution of wind technology: Wind power technology has advanced in recent years from smaller, single home generators, to larger, high-powered machines of several hundred kilowatts suitable for mass deployment in megawatt-scale machines. Sitting on towers as tall as a 20-story building, these wind plants often have blades 300 feet long from tip to tip. Several wind generators are often clustered together to create wind farms. California has been a leader in using wind power, due to their available wind resources in mountain regions, and their expanding need for electricity. Wind energy supplies one percent of the state's electricity. California's wind plants extend over more than 27,000 acres, yet only 10-15 percent of the area is actually occupied by the turbines. The blustery region just east of the San Francisco Bay area boosts more wind turbines than anywhere else in the world, nearly half of the state's total. The basic principles of wind turbines is fairly straightforward. A typical wind power system consists of a generator, blades, steel tower, meteorological equipment and on-site controls. Most wind generators require utility power to start and are subject to local rules/regulations. Drawbacks/dangers of wind machines: Windmills can be noisy because blade tips can approach the speed of sound; many turbine blades must be regularly scrubbed to avoid impairment of aerodynamic efficiency; large wind farms need expansive tracts of land; wind is intermittent and as wind speeds drop below eight mph, electricity generation stops; rotor blades could possibly kill or injure migratory birds. Several electric utilities and communities have recently launched wind power programs. EXAMPLES: Traverse City Mich. supplies power to 170 homes and businesses, which pay an additional 1.58 cents per kilowatt-hour, or about $7.58 per month. Their wind generator features 144-foot long blades perched on a 160-foot tower. With winds in that area averaging about 14.5 mph, it generates about 1.2 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, enough for about 200 homes. In 1993, Iowa's Waverly Light & Power installed and began operating an 80-kilowatt wind generator for a population of 9,000. The $129,000 system demonstrates how a small utility can own and operate wind generation. Alta, Iowa also broke ground in 1998 for a $200 million wind farm with 259,750 kilowatt turbines, the largest in the U.S. to date. Great River Energy in Minnesota (formerly United Power & Cooperative Power). This power supplier began by pre-selling 3,750 "blocks" of wind generated power to interested consumers (1 block = 100 kilowatt-hours). Businesses and home owners have contracted to pay $2 extra per month for each 100-kWh block of green power that they use. Now that all the needed energy has been sold, Great River is building the $1.7 million wind farm in southwestern Minnesota Altamont Pass and two smaller wind farms, all located in California, produced enough energy to power a city the size of San Francisco. That's 2.8 billion kWh of electricity, or the equivalent of about 5 million barrels of oil. One California-based turbine manufacturer, U.S. Windpower, joined forces with Iowa-Illinois Gas & Electric to set up wind farms on agricultural land. This will generate about 250 megawatts for area utilities and benefit 100,000 homes. Marshall (MN) Municipal Utilities and Minnesota Windpower worked and installed five 12-kilowatt (kW) wind turbines on city property, to serve 12,000 homes. Wind resources throughout the U.S. in relation to physical characteristic land surfaces: Highest wind energy (class 7): Alaska (the Aleutian Islands and coastal areas of western Alaska. Also producing high winds are isolated areas in Hawaii and the Pacific Islands and isolated, high mountain summits and ridge crests in portions of the eastern and western U.S. High averages of wind energy resources include (class 4 or higher): Great Plains, from the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma to North Dakota and western Minnesota; southern Wyoming; Northwestern Montana plains; the Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Maine; the Pacific coast from Point Conception, California to Washington; the Gulf Coast along southern Texas; much of the Great Lakes shorelines; portions of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Pacific Island; exposed ridge crests and mountain summits throughout the Appalachians and western U.S.; and isolated wind corridors such as the Columbia River gorge in Oregon and Washington and San Gorgonio Pass in California. The future of wind power: Wind power will not provide a reliable contribution to the energy mix until we can store excess electricity generated on windy days for use when the wind doesn't blow. However, Wind energy's environmental benefits, coupled with dramatic cost reductions in turbines and an increase in their reliability, are causing increases in wind projects being proposed to decision-makers and communities throughout the United States. For more information, available publications on wind power include: http://www.igc.apc.org/awea/faq/smsyslst.html htttp://www.wfec.org Click HERE to return to Green Power Opportunities From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Aug 20 16:42:28 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 09:42:28 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Painting from passion (letter to a godson who paints) Message-ID: <01C5A56B.7B120770.shovland@mindspring.com> Modern physics says our energetic state is encoded in our paintings. It says we stay connected to them wherever they go. It says that our customers connect to that energy and to us. So we want to project high energy into our pictures- passion. On way to enable ourselves to project passion is to clear our psychological undergrowth, whatever it is, so we can fully experience our feelings. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 20 20:21:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:21:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Meme 045: High- and Low-Cost Realities Message-ID: Meme 045: High- and Low-Cost Realities sent 5.8.18 This is the difference "between constructs of the world that require heavy investment of resources, such as time, money, efforts, and skills, and those which engage fewer resources on the part of those who consume these realities. Scientific knowledge constructs high-cost reality, usually based on a densely organized system of concepts, facts, rules, interpretation, methodological skills, equipment, and evidence. As such, the knowledge is not directly accessible to laypersons and remains esoteric. Low-cost realities may be expensive to produce, but are "cheap" to consume. They depend on the immediate experience of the flow of images and sounds. They become the shared means by which the public conceives, imagines, remembers, thinks, and relates or acts in politics. They allow the public to simulate the witnessing of real events without the trouble of being actually there. Low-cost reality is a spectacularly successful commercial product in our culture." That's from the article below, but Mr. Mencken said it better, in his first dispatch covering the Scopes Trial: The inferior man's reasons for hating knowledge are not hard to discern. He hates it because it is complex--because it puts an unbearable burden upon his meager capacity for taking in ideas. Thus his search is always for short cuts. All superstitions are such short cuts. Their aim is to make the unintelligible simple, and even obvious. So on what seem to be higher levels. No man who has not had a long and arduous education can understand even the most elementary concepts of modern pathology. But even a hind at the plow can grasp the theory of chiropractic in two lessons. Hence the vast popularity of chiropractic among the submerged- -and of osteopathy, Christian Science and other such quackeries with it. They are idiotic, but they are simple--and every man prefers what he can understand to what puzzles and dismays him. The popularity of Fundamentalism among the inferior orders of men is explicable in exactly the same way. The cosmogonies that educated men toy with are all inordinately complex. To comprehend their veriest outlines requires an immense stock of knowledge, and a habit of thought. It would be as vain to try to teach to peasants or to the city proletariat as it would be to try to teach them to streptococci. But the cosmogony of Genesis is so simple that even a yokel can grasp it. It is set forth in a few phrases. It offers, to the ignorant man, the irresistible reasonableness of the nonsensical. So he accepts it with loud hosannas, and has one more excuse for hating his betters. "Homo Neanderthalensis," _The Baltimore Evening Sun_, 1925.6.29 ----------- Helga Nowotny: High- and Low-Cost Realities for Science and Society Science 308 (2005.5.20): 1117-8 The author is chair of EURAB, the European Research Advisory Board of the European Commission, and Fellow at the Wissenschaftszentrum Wien, A-1080 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: helga.nowotny at wzw.at Through the ongoing proliferation of images and symbols, information overload and hi-tech-driven media, science increasingly communicates with the public in ways that are deliberately designed and intended to meet the public (and political) imagination. At the same time, the public is led to imagine what the sciences and scientists mean and say. The appeal to the imagination can be pursued through different avenues. One is that of fiction, a recent example of which is Michael Crichton's blockbuster The State of Fear (1 ). In his plot, scientists are colluding with the environmental movement, making up facts when necessary, in order to support a common cause. In a shrewd move of having environmental lawyers rehearse possible arguments that the defense might use against them, he lectures extensively in the guise of the scientific graphs and footnotes and by presenting whatever else looks like scientific evidence, about all that is wrong with global warming. It is a mix of science, advocacy, and a vision of scientists whose idealism leads them astray. It has been on 37 best-seller lists with another book that looks at the impact of environmental change in a very different way: Jared Diamond's Collapse (2 ), which is based on a scholarly analysis of a series of case studies of ancient civilizations. If Crichton's book is taken not as a work of fiction, but becomes equated with one of fact, like Diamond's, do we not run the risk that trust in science will be decided by market forces and continuing sales figures? The public has become accustomed in a media-saturated world to switching between fact and fiction--but how far does this extend? The question I want to pose is whether in the desire to communicate with "society," "science" has contributed to a confusion between facts and fiction, or as the political analyst Yaron Ezrahi described it, between high-cost and low-cost realities (3 ). Ezrahi distinguishes between constructs of the world that require heavy investment of resources, such as time, money, efforts, and skills, and those which engage fewer resources on the part of those who consume these realities. Scientific knowledge constructs high-cost reality, usually based on a densely organized system of concepts, facts, rules, interpretation, methodological skills, equipment, and evidence. As such, the knowledge is not directly accessible to laypersons and remains esoteric. Low-cost realities may be expensive to produce, but are "cheap" to consume. They depend on the immediate experience of the flow of images and sounds. They become the shared means by which the public conceives, imagines, remembers, thinks, and relates or acts in politics. They allow the public to simulate the witnessing of real events without the trouble of being actually there. Low-cost reality is a spectacularly successful commercial product in our culture. Richard Feynman once used the analogy (4 ) of a Mayan priest who had mastered the numerical concept of subtraction and other elaborate mathematical rules. He used them to predict the rising and setting of Venus. However, to explain his approach to an audience who did not know what subtraction is, the priest resorted to counting beans. The important thing, said Feynman, is that it makes no difference as far as the result is concerned: We can predict the rise of Venus by counting beans (slow, but easy to understand) or by using the tricky rules (which are much faster, but it takes years of training to learn them). However, we have not taken the public through the tedium of bean counting, nor--apart from some notable exemptions--focused on teaching the tricks. Instead, we have been proud to re-enact on the public stage the spectacle of the Maya priest stepping forward before the attentive crowd and announcing the rise of Venus--while Venus rises indeed under the applause and to the relief of the viewers. We have learned how to stage such events ourselves and have come to believe that we thereby render a public service. We have largely engaged in the construction of low-cost realities that appeal to emotions and the imagination. There have certainly been charges that selling science as sexy has gone too far (5), amusing as it may be to explain the magic in Harry Potter in scientific terms (6 ). Some have said that by turning the Year of Physics de facto into the Year of Einstein, the point is missed that physics, while central to our understanding of the Universe, is also central to making useful and practical things through engineering (7 ). Although it is exhilarating to think of science's role in extending the frontiers of our knowledge, it is critical that the public remembers how important science is to their day-to-day reality. There are critical issues that need to be discussed, although they are not especially glamorous, such as the ongoing shift between the public nature of science and the tendency toward its propertization (8 ) or the upcoming debate about security-oriented research and the potential clash between the public interest in scientific openness and its security interests. Sexy communication is not going to be enough to inform good decision-making. Declining trust in science and scientific experts has been clear in public controversies like genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis, as well as in the rejection of scientific evidence regarding vaccination safety in the UK. The Euro-barometer, conducted as an EU-wide survey, probes the state of mind of EU citizens and how they view science and technology. The most recent data are expected to be published in mid-May and, for the first time, will be commented on by a panel of experts. The 2001 survey (9 ) revealed that two-thirds of the public do not feel well-informed about science and technology, and the number of people who believe in the capacity of science and technology to solve societal problems is declining. Trust in science in general seems to be on the decline in many national surveys, although scientists still come out way ahead of politicians or other public institutions. There are currently clear examples of research on the frontiers of science clashing with human beliefs and values. From the United States, voices can be heard deploring the tendency of politicians to interfere with scientific agendas in teaching and in research (10 ) and faith-based opposition to the teaching of evolution and some forms of frontier research, like stem cells continue to raise serious concern. Luckily, creationism/evolution is not an issue in Europe, largely due to the centralized education systems in most countries. However, an analogous situation exists for stem cell research, with some countries, like Germany and Italy, completely opposed. There will be a referendum in Italy shortly on stem cell research. The Catholic church urges the public not to vote, in the hope that the necessary 50% quota will not be reached, and the referendum will be defeated. Although we may welcome greater public interest in science, if only to avoid another backlash in fields like nanotechnology as occurred with GMOs, we must also confront the thorny issue of how contemporary democracies will deal with minorities who, on faith-based or other, value-related grounds, refuse any compromise. There is no reason to believe that Europe will be immune to an ascendancy of groups who oppose otherwise promising lines of research on the basis of their value system. If the values dimension is here to stay, it is far from certain that the usual response of setting up ethical guidelines and committees will suffice, let alone that any of the efforts to "better communicate science" will have any effect. If the goal is a more research-friendly society, one in which research and innovation become embedded in society and an expression of "the capacity to aspire" (11 ), we have to explain what research is and how the process of research is actually carried out. We need to focus more on the processes of research; on the inherent uncertainty that is part and parcel of it; on how bottom-up and top-down approaches intersect; on the actual, and not only idealized, role that users play; and on how research funding agencies work, both on national and supranational levels. We should explain how research priorities are set, because it is not nature whispering into the ears of researchers, but an intricate mixture of opportunities and incentives, of prior investments and of strategic planning mixed with subversive contingencies. We would also be better poised to explain to the wider public the difference between claims or promises made on the part of researchers, depending on whether these claims have been peer-reviewed or not. How should the public know about these rules that play such an important part for the scientific community, see their significance as well as their limitations, unless we explain how they actually work? Or how should they know about the differences in scientific cultures, what counts as evidence, or how consensus is reached with criticism being an essential precondition for moving toward it, if nobody tells them? To observe and explain what scientists are really doing requires that we make the multiple links of interaction between science and society transparent, as well as the institutions that mediate and shape science policies. The dialogue needs to be extended into the world of politics, economics, and culture, including how scientists are influenced by globalization. There is a need for additional capacity building so that civil society can become a partner in this encounter with science. Apart from patient groups or organizations that have sponsored research into orphan diseases, there has been little organized effort in Europe so far. It is only fair to say that much has been accomplished. The initial notion of public understanding of science as a didactically conceived one-way street through which scientific literacy is diffused did not miraculously lead to increased public support for science. It is increasingly being replaced by concepts of public awareness of science and public engagement with science. Activities that have been undertaken in this more interactive and outreaching mode range from the "Physics for taxi drivers" in London (12 ) to the regular public science festivals occupying their place alongside other, cultural, festivals. The 16th International Science Festival which has recently occurred in Edinburgh (13), and the Swiss "Science et Cit?" initiatives stand out (14 ) as good examples of forums that encourage discussion and debate. Almost all member states of the European Union now celebrate European Science Week (15 ). The European Science Open Forum (ESOF) was a highly successful European event in Stockholm in 2004 and will be held again in Munich in 2006. The larger (and richer) research institutions, such as the Max Planck Society in Germany or the CNRS in France, have set up their own outreach and public relations units. The current Framework Programme of the EU foresees outreach activities as an integral part of the contract obligations, although it is regrettable that outreach is not considered a factor in evaluating research proposals. The European Commission's proposed 7th Framework Programme, published on 6 April 2005, foresees an expanded "Science in Society" action line with an increased provisional budget of [euro] 554 million (US$712 million) for 7 years. Successful communication can begin to be measured through short-term indicators, such as improvements in public opinion polls on trust in science or increases in enrollment figures for undergraduate physics or chemistry programs. In the longer term, we will need to measure evolution in the direction of scientific citizenship, which presupposes rights and duties on the part of citizens as much as on the part of political and scientific institutions. Innovation is the collective bet on a common fragile future, and neither science nor society knows the secret of how to cope with its inherent uncertainties. It can only be accomplished through an alliance among the participants and a shared sense of direction. References and Notes 1. M. Crichton, The State of Fear (HarperCollins, New York, 2004). 2. J. Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking, New York, 2004). 3. Y. Ezrahi, in States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and Social Order, S. Jasanoff, Ed. (Routledge, London, 2004), pp. 254-273. 4. R. P. Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ, 1986), pp. 10-12. 5. P. Weinberger, Falter, 16 February 2005, p. 14. 6. R. Highfield, Harry Potter: How Magic Really Works (Penguin, London, 2003). 7. "Einstein is dead," Nature 433, 179 (2005). 8. H. Nowotny, in The Public Nature of Science Under Assault: Politics, Markets, Science, and the Law, Helga Nowotny et al. (Springer Verlag, New York, 2005), pp. 1-28. 9. http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_154_en.pdf 10. A. I. Leshner, Science 307, 815 (2005). 11. A. Appadurai, in Culture and Public Action, V. Rao and M. Walton, Eds. (Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford, CA, 2004), pp. 59-84. 12. www.iop.org/news/860 13. www.edinburghfestivals.co.uk/science/ 14. www.science-et-cite.ch/de.aspx 15. www.cordis.lu/scienceweek/home.htm DOI: 10.1126/science.1113825 From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 20 20:22:06 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:22:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Music and Emotion Message-ID: Music and Emotion http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/16/science/16qna.html By [3]C. CLAIBORNE RAY Music and Emotion Q. Why is it that when I listen to particularly beautiful or moving music I get goose bumps and even cry? A. It is well known that areas of the brain that recognize and process music are linked with areas that handle emotions, and scientists are gradually mapping these areas in greater detail with brain-imaging technology. Last year, a study by English researchers at the University of Newcastle, published in The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, drew important insights from a single case, a 52-year-old radio announcer who lost his emotional response to music after a stroke. He was still able to recognize music that had given him particular pleasure, by Rachmaninoff, but he no longer experienced the intense emotional states that used to come from listening to it. Ordinarily, the researchers said, a stroke that causes loss of emotional response is accompanied by a loss of musical perception, called amusia. In this patient's case, however, they were able to separate musical perception from the emotional response and thus to identify a particular area of damage, called the left insula, as being involved in the emotional processing of music. It is part of a widely distributed brain network recruited by other powerful emotional stimuli, producing arousal of the autonomic nervous system and leading to various physiological reactions. C. CLAIBORNE RAY Readers are invited to submit questions by mail to Question, Science Times, The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036-3959, or by e-mail to question at nytimes.com. From checker at panix.com Sat Aug 20 20:22:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:22:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Ideas Bank: 60 Key Works: A Beginner's Guide to the Futures Literature Message-ID: 60 Key Works: A Beginner's Guide to the Futures Literature http://ide.idebanken.no/English/Framtidsbilder.html [Links omitted, for they would have cluttered the text. Click on the URL to get them.] Kjell Dahle, Ideas Bank Foundation, Oslo, Norway: This is a presentation of 60 selected works within the realm of futures studies. Earlier versions of the beginners guide have been published in Slaughter 1995 and Slaughter 1996. (1) The books and articles presented deal with possible, probable, desirable and undesirable futures. My intention is to give the reader a picture of what futures studies is about through a broad range of practical examples. For this purpose, brief information is provided on the background of each author. Some of them may not use labels like "futures studies" or "futures research" (not to mention "futurology"), about what they have written. But they have all developed or converted knowledge in order to contribute to long-term planning, the formulation of visions, or social change. This is what futures studies is about.(2) To make it easier for newcomers to browse amongst the rich offerings presented here, the literature has been categorised into the following seven groups: Classic Introductions Looking back - and ahead Trends Scenarios Utopias The world problematique Change As mutually exclusive categories are hard to find in the field of futures studies, the categorisation will to some extent be arbitrary. CLASSIC INTRODUCTIONS The notorious 1960s also meant the start of a golden age for futures studies. Having been dominated by a few big North American "think tanks", serving military and related industrial goals, the scope now broadened tremendously. Futurists developed their own tools in the shape of serious techniques and methodologies, and all kinds of futurist organisations popped up around the world. I will now present some sources to the state of the art in this "new" field of futures studies around 1970. The dynamic spirit of new academic fields often result in good introductury textbooks. This is also the case with futures studies. Some books from the 1960s and 1970s are still among the best introductions to the field. As early as in the middle of the 1960s, a major study was carried out for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD felt the need for an account of the state of the art of technological forecasting as well as practical applications. The work was done by an Austrian, Dr Erich JANTSCH, and resulted in the classic "Technological Forecasting in Perspective. A Framework for Technological Forecasting, its Techniques and Organisation". One of the main findings was that, in spite of its increasingly wide adoption in industry, research institutes and military environments, technological forecasting was not yet a science but an art. It was characterised more by attitudes than by intellectual tools. The development of special techniques had, however, gained momenteum in the last few years. The book thus includes a thorough discussion of more than 100 distinct versions of forecasting, grouped under some 20 approaches in four broad areas. Those are intuitive thinking, and exploratory, normative and feedback techniques. Like other basic terms, Jantsch defines them in ways that are still highly relevant. The same year, in 1967, a quite different classic, "The Art of Conjecture", was published in English. The author, Bertrand de JOUVENEL, was the founder of "Futuribles International" in Paris. Educated in law, biology, and economics, he worked as a journalist and author. Later, he became the first president of the World Futures Studies Federation. Baron de Jouvenel mistrusted pretentious terms such as "forecast", "foresight", "prediction" and "futurology", especially since prognosis-makers are often credited with aspirations they do not (or should not!) have. He wanted futures studies to be taken seriously, and thus preferred the unpretentious term "conjecture", stressing the uncertainty of the field. Like Jantsch, he regarded the intellectual formulation of possible futures (futuribles) as a piece of art, in the widest possible sense. By linking historical examples to current problems, the book underlines the complexity and unpredictability of society, and how difficult it is to make models of the future. 1967 was also the year of the first big international conference of futures studies. It was held in Oslo with 70 participants from more than a dozen countries in three continents. The conference was designed to meet what was seen as a new trend within futures research. After the departure from the military domination, the desire emerged to use futurist tools on civilian problems. Could information technology, systems analysis, operational research, forecasting, anticipating, scenario-writing and "futures creation" be used against such enemies as urban sprawl, hunger, lack of education and growing alienation? These were the major challenges for the participants of the Oslo conference, which was used as a source for the book "Mankind 2000". It was edited by the main initiators, Robert JUNGK from the Institute for Future Research in Vienna and Johan GALTUNG from the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo. Jungk and Galtung both had most diverse backgrounds, even for futurists. They were to become leading international figures within the field in the years to come. Robert Jungk was a German journalist, researcher and political activist. He inspired the creation of a whole lot of futures institutions around the world, academic as well as non-academic.(3) Galtung holds university degrees in both mathematics and sociology; has worked in five continents; and has been an advisor for ten UN organisations and a guest professor at more than 30 universities. He succeeded Bertrand de Jouvenel as the president of the World Futures Studies Federation. In his contribution to "Mankind 2000", Galtung discusses the traditional division of labour between ideologists who establish values, scientists who establish trends, and politicians who try to adjust means to ends. He claims that futures research rejects this artificial compartmentalisation, and tries to develop a more unified approach to the three fields. In a postscript, Jungk and Galtung advocate an internationalisation and a "democratisation" of the field, which should not be allowed to become 'the monopoly of power groups served by experts in the new branch of "futurism". Some national governments also came to see the potential of futures studies. In the early 1970s, a very thorough report entitled To Choose a Future" was presented by a Swedish Government committee, led by cabinet member Alva MYRDAL. Its task was to give advice on the development of futures studies in Sweden. It turned out to be most influential. The relationship between futures studies and public decision-making and planning is a central issue in the report. According to the committee, futures studies should help people shape their own future. Like Jungk and Galtung, the committee saw a risk of futures studies being the private preserve of influential specialists, thereby eroding the democratic and political element in the shaping of the future. Advise is given on how to avoid this, for instance always to present several possible futures. According to the commission's recommendations, the Secretariat for Futures Studies was established the following year, attached to the Cabinet office. "Handbook of Futures Research" is a US classic of the 1970s, containing no less than forty-one articles about various aspects of the new field. It was edited by Jib FOWLES, then chairman of the graduate program in Studies of the Future which still exists at the University of Houston. He defines the field as "the effort to anticipate and prepare for the future before it unfolds". The first part of the book deals with the emergence and international growth of futures research, providing a broad survey of institutions, literature, and people associated with the new field. The handbook further presents the most common methods and procedures of futures research, including scenarios, trend extrapolation, the Delphi technique, technological forecasting and assessment, simulation, and social forecasting. The dominant themes within the field and substantive disagreements among futurists are also discussed. Most articles in the book are written by heavyweighters within their subject. It is also a strength that the difficulties of futures research have been given so much consideration. Methodological shortcomings, tendencies of elitism, self-altering predictions an