Recent Posts
Misquoting Jesus - The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, by Bart D. Ehrman (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005) is an outstanding book. It is a scholarly delineation of the history of the Bible as a book - who wrote it, how the books were compiled, how it was transcribed, and how variations were introduced into the text during the transcriptions and compilations.
link: TYWKIWDBI: Misquoting Jesus
Over the past century, violent images from World War II concentration camps, Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, and many other times and places have been seared into our collective consciousness. These images have led to a common belief that technology, centralized nation-states, and modern values have brought about unprecedented violence.
Our seemingly troubled times are routinely contrasted with idyllic images of hunter-gatherer societies, which allegedly lived in a state of harmony with nature and each other. The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like, for example, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who argued that "war is not an instinct but an invention."
But now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler. In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.
Long before NASA was founded, the ABCs of sci-fi (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke) and others of their profession had been chronicling the exploration of the universe in works of imaginative fiction. The moon landing was their shining moment, and the public recognized it as much as did the writers themselves. When the TV networks sought out talking heads for their coverage, science fiction writers were on the top of their list.
At the moment that Eagle landed, Arthur C. Clarke was sitting next to Walter Cronkite. Earlier that day, the writer told millions of viewers, during an interview with Harry Reasoner, that the space mission was a “down payment on the future of mankind.” After the moonwalk, Cronkite engaged Clarke and Robert Heinlein in their favorite activity— speculation about the future. The sci-fi veterans could hardly have been more optimistic. Heinlein refused to put limits on where space travel might lead. “We’re going out indefinitely,” he proclaimed.
ABC countered with Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl, pulp fiction veterans, interviewed by Rod Serling. Ray Bradbury, for his part, had always been more partial to Mars than the moon in his writings, and he proved to be the spoilsport of the day. Bradbury walked out on David Frost’s Moon Party, a peculiar British TV concoction which countered the news coverage of the historic events with strange entertainment, featuring everything from Englebert Humperdink to a discussion on the ethics of the lunar landing involving A. J. P. Taylor and Sammy Davis, Jr. Bradbury was so moved by the Apollo landing that he was in tears. The irreverence of Frost’s coverage was more than he could bear.
link: Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
[Click over and read the whole piece: it's terrific.]
Ian Millhiser writes:
In a story that has become so common that it is almost passé, yet another conservative official has been busted sending racist e-mails. This time, the culprit is Atwater, CA Councilman Gary Frago, who sent at least half-a-dozen racist, anti-Obama e-mails to Atwater staff and community members:
Some compared Obama to O.J. Simpson while others suggested that “n[*****] rigs” should now be called “presidential solutions.”
Perhaps the most overboard e-mail was sent on Jan. 15. It read: “Breaking News Playboy just offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in the January issue. Michelle Obama got the same offer from National Geographic.”
Frago admitted sending the e-mails, but showed no regret. “If they’re from me, then I sent them,” he said. “I have no disrespect for the president or anybody, they weren’t meant in any bad way or harm.”
When given an opportunity to explain himself, Frago somehow managed to dig himself a deeper hole by saying: “I don’t see where there’s a story, I’m not the only one that does it. … I didn’t originate them, they came to me and I just passed them on.”
link: Think Progress » Home Page
Casey Kazan writes:
Neil deGrasse Tyson believes that BIG question of the 21st century is will we discover life somewhere other than on Earth? He views it as an "unimpeachable first goal" in our exploration of the cosmos.
And what most fascinating is the question of whether that life has DNA. It's fascinating, Tyson says, because either DNA is inevitable as the foundation for the coding of life, or life started with DNA in only one place in the solar system and then spread among the livable habitats through panspermia. Microbial life can land on and seed another planet, thereby not requiring that you have to create life from scratch multiple times and in multiple places.
Another totally intriguing possibility, one of many that deGrasse Tyson Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History and host PBS's NOVA scienceNOW., describes in Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, is that there is life that has encoding that has nothing to do with DNA.
It is the relentless shifting and mutating of DNA, says Dennis Overbye in a brilliant essay in The New York Times, that generates the raw material for evolution to act on and ensures the success of life on Earth (and perhaps beyond). Dr.Paul Davies co-director of the Arizona State University Cosmology Initiative said that he had been encouraged by the discovery a few years ago "that some sections of junk DNA seem to be markedly resistant to change, and have remained identical in humans, rats, mice, chickens and dogs for at least 300 million years."
But Dr. Gill Bejerano, Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology and of Computer Science at Stanford, one of the discoverers of these “ultraconserved” strings of the genome, said that many of them had turned out to be playing important command and control functions.
“Why they need to be so conserved remains a mystery,” Berjerano said, noting that even regular genes with known functions undergo more change over time. Most junk bits of DNA that neither help nor annoy an organism mutate even more rapidly, Overbye points out.
What's your guess: Is the DNA the cosmic code for life in the universe, or is it possible that there's are alien, unknown foundations? At the Galaxy, we place our chips on DNA.
link: Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Will DNA Prove to be the Life Code Throughout the Universe?"
Alex Dalenberg writes:
Walter Cronkite didn't just lend his name to the journalism school at Arizona State University. He let the dean raid his desk.
An entire wall filled with memorabilia from the iconic news anchor's career is on display in a gallery at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in downtown Phoenix.
The collection is the centerpiece of the Marguerite and Jack Clifford Gallery, a journalism museum on the second floor of the Cronkite School, 555 N. Central Ave.
With Cronkite central to the school's identity, Dean Christopher Callahan asked the longtime CBS news anchor if the school might have some souvenirs for the gallery. To Callahan's delight, Cronkite invited the dean to take his pick from the newsman's personal collection last summer.
"Walter told Dean Callahan, 'Come out to New York and take whatever you want.' So, Chris had a very fun day," said Kristin Gilger, an assistant dean at the Cronkite School.
The Cronkite wall contains a little bit of everything: books from the anchor's personal collection, historic newspapers the anchor socked away and a few of his trademark pipes.
"WALTER CRONKITE" is even written in bold marker on a few weathered copies of books from his personal library.
The museum is also filled with other artifacts from journalism's past: an Associated Press teletype machine, camera equipment that was operated by broadcast pioneers and a microphone used by Edward R. Murrow to broadcast radio reports from Europe in the late 1930s.
link: Cronkite let ASU dean raid closet for trove of memorabilia
John McPhaul and Ana Isabel Martinez write:
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya agreed on Saturday to give his enemies a share of power if he is allowed to return to office, but they rejected any deal that puts him back in the presidency.
Zelaya, who was toppled in a military coup on June 28 and is in exile in neighboring Nicaragua, backed the proposal for a government of national reconciliation put forward by the mediator in talks aimed at ending Honduras' political crisis.
Zelaya also said in an interview with a Honduran radio station that he would return to Honduras in the coming days despite warnings by the de facto government that he would be arrested.
Costa Rica's Nobel Peace Prize-winning president, Oscar Arias, is trying to broker a compromise deal between Zelaya and interim president Roberto Micheletti, the former speaker of Congress who replaced him in a June 28 military coup.
link: Honduras' Zelaya accepts unity government proposal | International | Reuters
« 1000 Frames of Hitchcock » is an attempt to reduce each of the 52 available major Hitchcock films down to just 1000 frames. The aim of the project is to create a library of images which can be used to illustrate blog posts, web articles and reviews, etc.
link: 1000 Frames of Hitchcock
Gordon Waller, half of the British rock duo, Peter and Gordon, died July 16 in Connecticut, RadarOnline.com has confirmed.
Gordon and Peter Asher were part of The British Invasion, the 1960s influx into the U.S. of bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Peter and Gordon even recorded several tunes written by Paul McCartney, whose sister was dating Asher at the time. The duo had recently reunited and had several tour dates scheduled for later this year.
link: BREAKING NEWS: Gordon Waller of Peter and Gordon Dies | RadarOnline.com
Shooting reportedly broke out in the Mauritanian capital between armed men and police, shortly before the country's presidential election got under way.
One armed man was wounded as he threatened to blow up an explosives-filled belt in Nouakchott, security sources said.
Another attacker was arrested while a third escaped, witnesses said.
The wounded man was lying in a street in the central Ksar district surrounded by security forces, who kept onlookers at bay, a correspondent for the AFP news agency reported.
The assailants may have been extremists who were being kept under police surveillance, a security source said
link: Al Jazeera English - Africa - Mauritania vote begins amid gunfire
Who knew that the EPA has its own most wanted list?
On Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that U.S. and Mexican agents nabbed Robert Wainwright living the high life south of the border. Wainwright, arrested in Zamora this week, was wanted for allegedly dumping steel mill waste in an Indiana wetland while working as a manager for Sterling Material Services in Lake County.
Based on the EPA’s Wanted poster, Wainwright is a portly 66-year-old with a scar above his left eye. A convicted child molester who was also found guilty of firearms violations in 2007, Wainwright fled the country while the Northern Indiana Environmental Crimes Task Force was investigating his alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.
link: Environmental fugitive arrested in Mexico: Scientific American Blog
Henry Allingham, the world's oldest man and one of the last survivors of World War One, has died at the age of 113, his care home said on Saturday.
Allingham, who once jokingly credited his long life to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women," died in his sleep at the St. Dunstan's care home near Brighton, on the south coast of England.
"He died very peacefully and very comfortably in his sleep," a spokeswoman for the home said. "It was a sad day. We are all very saddened .... There was nothing specific, he was just 113."
Allingham, who became the world's oldest man in June, following the death of Tomoji Tanabe of Japan, had five grandchildren, 12
great-grandchildren, 14 great-great grandchildren and one
great-great-great grandchild.
link: World's oldest man, Henry Allingham, dies at 113 | Lifestyle | Reuters
Somali gunmen kidnapped three foreign aid workers on Saturday in a raid on a Kenyan border town, then went back over the porous border into the Horn of Africa nation, rebels and residents said.
Cross-border raids are fairly common in the remote region, but usually involve cattle rustlers or gangs of robbers preying on business people in both countries. Ill-funded Kenyan security forces can do little to police the vast, impoverished area.
Somalia's militant al Shabaab group, which denied involvement, vowed to track down the captors who took the three workers from Mandera town, straddling the Kenya-Somali border.
"The authorities in Mandera (in Kenya) told us that those aid workers had been kidnapped. We're now going to run after them," said Sheikh Osman, an al Shabaab member in the neighboring district in Somalia.
link: Somali gunmen kidnap foreign aid workers: officials | International | Reuters
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian hardliners hit back at former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Saturday for criticizing the conduct of last month's election and its aftermath, highlighting deepening establishment divisions.
An editor seen as close to Iran's top authority said Rafsanjani was backing "law-breakers," a reference to opposition protesters, and a senior cleric accused him of creating rifts in the Islamic Republic and hinted he should face legal action.
In apparent defiance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Rafsanjani said in a sermon on Friday that many Iranians had doubts about the official result of the June 12 vote, which showed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won.
link: Iran hardliners round on Rafsanjani in election row | International | Reuters
Women represent the new face of emigration to the United States, overcoming risks and obstacles to join family members already in the country and ensure better opportunities for themselves and their loved ones, a new study revealed.
The story of migration has ceased to be “a masculine epic” and women are now making their way across the border as much as men are, according to the study “Women Immigrants: Stewards of the 21st Century Family,” discussed Thursday during a press conference at the Chicago office of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Pollster and analyst Sergio Bendixen, whose firm prepared the study for New America Media, said women do not emigrate as lone individuals, as men did prior to the first half of the 20th century. They instead do so as members – or even heads – of a family who are determined to keep that social unit intact.
At present, more than half of the migrants who enter the United States are women and worldwide females account for more than 50 percent of the total migrant population, according to the study, which was based on surveys last year of 1,002 female immigrants from Latin American, Asian, African, and Arab countries.
link: Latin American Herald Tribune - Study: Women Are New Face of Migration to U.S.
Techdirt writes:
Welcome to the "ownership" and "entitlement" society, where people feel that you can't do anything without paying everyone. The latest such example is a lawsuit against the US Postal Service over a recent stamp that is a photo of part of the Korean War Memorial in Washington DC. The Postal Service licensed the actual photo, but the sculptor who made the memorial itself claims that his copyrights were violated. Yes. Copyrights. On his sculpture. On a public memorial. We've seen this issue crop up before, such as with the famous sculpture in Millennium Park in Chicago. In this case, the argument for fair use is even stronger. The photo in question clearly was transformative. It wasn't just a random photo of the statues. The guy spent a ton of time, taking hundreds of different photos before getting the "one" that he liked, trying to get the exact composition, angle, lighting, snow, etc. to get the image to appear as he wanted. On top of that, there's almost no claim that this use by the USPS harmed the original sculptor's financial ability concerning his copyright. He was not even trying to exploit the copyright commercially (and, if anything, this probably provided him a lot more attention, because now his work was on a stamp). In the end, the artist's contention seems to just be "I own it, I get to decide what happens with it." Unfortunately for him, that's not how copyright law works.
link: Sculptor Sues Postal Service Over Stamp With Photo Of His Sculpture | Techdirt
Tom Wilkes, an art director, photographer and designer whose posters for the Monterey Pop Festival and album covers for the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, George Harrison and others helped illustrate the age of rock ’n’ roll, died on June 28 in Pioneertown, Calif., in the high desert east of Los Angeles. He was 69. The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter, Katherine Wilkes Fotch. Mr. Wilkes suffered from primary lateral sclerosis, a progressive neuromuscular disease.
Michael Cooper writes:
The anemic economy decimated state tax collections during the first three months of the year, according to a report released Friday by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. The drop in revenues was the steepest in the 46 years that quarterly data has been available.
The blow to state coffers, which the report said appeared to worsen in the second quarter of the year, reflects the gravity of the recession and suggests the extent to which many states will probably have to resort to more spending cuts or tax increases to balance their budgets.
Over all, the report found that state tax collections dropped 11.7 percent in the first three months of 2009, compared with the same period last year. After adjusting for inflation, new changes in tax rates and other anomalies, the report found that tax revenues had declined in 47 of the 50 states in the quarter.
All the major sources of state tax revenue — sales taxes, personal income taxes and corporate income taxes — took serious blows, the report found.
link: Study Finds Steep Drop in State Tax Revenues - NYTimes.com
