With heroes like these, we're in trouble--UPDATED

Google the words "hypocrisy.” What, you can’t? It’s been banned? —Before civil libertarians exhaust themselves praising the stand by Google to oppose subpoenas from the Big Brothers in Washington, a note of caution. In the words of W. S. Gilbert, “things are seldom what they seem.” Everyone was agog on learning that the company, born in a Stanford engineering dorm, that has a product almost universally acclaimed as indispensable, refused demands by the Justice Department to turn over search material so it could gather evidence for a court battle over a child pornography law. Three other companies, America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo, negotiated some limits and then handed over the information. Google refused. Everyone cheered. Why?

The government request was for what URLs people were asking for and not who the people were. None of the search engines were asked to identify customers. The government wanted to know how many times you (or rather, your children) put in an innocent URL request and got back filth. It did not ask who put in the request and saw the filth. They also asked for one million randomly selected web addresses. That might help them identify the owners of the sites but not who clicked their way there.

Unfortunately, the Bush Administration’s record on civil liberties is appalling and no one in their right minds trusts them. Clearly, the next subpoena could go further and ask how many people logged on www. whitehouse.com and got dirty pictures and who those little devils were. [That actually happened until someone put a stop to it and now you get, well, the White House.] Slippery slope and all that. But that’s a different argument. Moreover, Google’s concerns were less a question of customer privacy than trade secrets. Lots of people would love to know the algorithms Google uses to track down, oh say, the more than 1.84 million references to “Stepford Wives,” in .06 seconds, or the 6.94 million references to naked pictures of Paris Hilton in 011 seconds [I’m not making that up, and don’t bother], and the information demanded in the subpoena would compromise that, Google feared. And what a wonderful public relations position to be in: you look like a hero and our competitors look like schmucks.

Now, it seems, the company that promised it would do no evil [company motto], did agree to some evil. It agreed to ban certain “sensitive” terms from its Chinese search engines, oh, things like Falun Gong, the spiritual movement, and Taiwan independence. According to a Google lawyer [who else?], "In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn in response to local law, regulation or policy. While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission." How about telling the Chinese to bugger off? I thought that was supposed to be consistent with its supposed mission.

Sources in the company said he decision was the result of intense conversation within the company. Apparently, not intense enough. And how did Google report Google: According to the one report at SiliconValley.com:

"The main story on the Google.cn news site is about the resumption of direct flights between China and Taiwan. There is a lot about a visit by the Saudi King and more discussion of the toxic spill which poisoned a river in north-east China but no, there's no mention of this story about Google. I've been trying all day."

-- Jane Macartney, Beijing correspondent for The Times, finds the first sign of Google's complicity in Chinese censorship -- the omission of any news reporting that complicity

It also won’t do e-mail or blogging in China. Wouldn’t want the officials to get upset and e-mail and blogs are hard to control. Wouldn’t want to tinker with the ridiculous price of its stock either.

[Photo: Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. BBC]

Smoking stacks, murdered heros, and lying politicians--oh my.

We’re number 28! We’re number 28!--A survey of the countries of the world and how they treat the environment places the United States 28th, behind most of Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Chile. But don’t worry, the Russians are worse. Lovely, gentle New Zealand came in first and anyone whose been there is happy with that result. The joint study, by Yale and Columbia Universities, measured things like clean drinking water and low ozone levels, fisheries and greenhouse gas emission. Using the Environmental Performance Index, the survey measured how governments do with what the world has handed them. For instance, the British cut down all their trees 500 years ago and there’s not much the present government can do about that. Air quality rankings generally are higher in undeveloped countries because they are not spewing as much industrial waste into the air, while industrialized countries do better in the index in environmental health--things like lead poisoning.

Just because you love the world doesn’t mean the world will love you back--Joan Root, a conservationist and film maker, was murdered in her Kenya home Jan. 13, probably by poachers pissed at her interference in their commerce. It’s on the same lake outside of Nairobi where George Adamson and his wife Joy of “Born Free” fame, also were killed and probably also by poachers. Root was shoot down by a sniper. Root was trying to keep fishing poachers out of Lake Naivasha, knew she was a target and hired private bodyguards, but they were ineffective. She and her ex-husband made several noted documentaries about Africa and were nominated for an Academy Award.

Of course you can trust me, I’m a politician--A Canadian researcher used an algorithm that detects when politicians are “spinning,” and discovered that yes, they are. We're amazed aren't we? David Skillicom at Queen’s University in Ontario, analyzed the usage patterns of 88 deception-linked words within recent campaign speeches in Canada, which is holding an election today, and then determined the frequency of these patterns and averaged that number over the number of speeches. Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin scored higher than his Conservative opponent, Stephen Harper or the New Democratic Party’s Jack Layton. (Canada has three main parties, not counting the Quebec nationalist party--good for them). Martin scored 124, Harper and Layton 73 and 88. One polling expert was not surprised. The Liberals have been in power for the last 14 years and the party in power usually has the toughest time explaining themselves. The algorithm was developed by James Pennebacker at the University of Texas. I know another Texan he can try that on.

P.S. Harper won.

Politics, science and whales--Don't call me Ishmael--And don't call London

I'm sorry. What did you say about the whales? The sonar was so loud I couldn't hear a thing-- A federal scientist who linked navy sonar blasts to the stranding of 37 whales on the North Carolina coast last year, changed her report to eliminate the sonar before it was released. All references to the role the sonar played in the strandings were eliminated from the National Marine Fisheries Service report by the author, Teri Rowles, coordinator of the stranding response program, because, the service said, later investigation showed the early information was "inaccurate," the Washington Post reported. [Click on headline] Not everyone believes that since none of the early information was changed in the report, just the conclusion.

See, the navy wants to build a underwater sonar training range in the North Carolina area and any idea that the sonar might be harmful to marine life, particularly whales and dolphins, would create a public relations problem. So, to hell with science. This is the Bush Administration we're talking about here.

The early draft of the report, released under court order after the National Resources Defense Council sued the fisheries agency, said that injuries to several of the whales "may be indicative" of damage related tot he loud blasts of sound from active sonar. One injury, air bubbles in the liver of a pilot whale, was similar to mass strandings in the Bahamas and Canary Islands associated with sonar. But when the report was actually released, sonar was not mentioned. Rowles said the references were removed because sonar has not been implicated or eliminated. "It remains one of many possible causes." Right. And, she might have added--but didn't--I'd get fired if I left it in.

Meanwhile, a northern bottlenose whale (left) that decided to swim up the Thames and visit London had a bad trip despite heroic efforts by human allies. As it was being lifted into a barge to be brought back to sea, where it belongs, it went into convulsions and died. I wonder if it wasn't trying to flee the U.S. Navy's sonar. Probably not.

[Photos: Washington Post and AP]

Where is Doc Ricketts when we need him?

Just what we needed, a happy story about global warming--The sardines are back in Monterey Bay and in quantities that approach the heyday of John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. Besides being an excuse to write about one of my favorite places and favorite books by a favored author, the renaissance of the sardine may be further proof of changing climate. No one knows for sure.

Monterey Bay is a biologic treasure chest. Very cold water from a profoundly deep trench bubbles to the surface bringing with it clouds of food for marine creatures. Until the late 1940s, the bay also teamed with gigantic tides of sardines, which the good denizens of Monterey, caught and put in cans. Steinbeck chronicled their life in what I think is one of the great American comedies. Then, the sardines simply disappeared. No one knows why. The canneries closed and only in the last decade (mostly because of the fabulous aquarium there) has the place come back to something resembling prosperity, even if it is tourist-infested.

Now the sardines are back. In a story by Emily Saarman in the Santa Cruz Sentinal, she writes that warm ocean currents--perhaps the result of global warming--have brought the return of the sardines. Sardines like warmer water and the bay is warming up. Climate change or natural cycle, no one knows for sure. But canneries are again booming, although none on Cannery Row itself. Too many tourists spending too much money. (By the way, do you know of many places in America that are famous for a book--even one few of the people going there have read?). One Salinas plant is canning 10, 000 tons a year. Alas, Americans no longer eat sardines; most are shipped to Asia. I happen to love them. Vinegar, tomato, onion and sardines on rye. Yum. They are even good for you.

Monterey Bay is not alone. Saarman reports the silvery fish now are far more plentiful all along the west coast from Mexico to Canada.

Three other things that come to mind because of the story. Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, as I told my students, contains probably the greatest first paragraph in American fiction.

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen" and he would have meant the same thing.

Second, the Stanford library has the original, hand-written manuscript of Cannery Row, which Steinbeck wrote with pencil on yellow legal paper. I saw it when I first got there. Steinbeck made very few corrections or modifications to the text. The whole damned thing--first paragraph and all--flew out of the man's head whole. I get so depressed even thinking about it...

And Ricketts? He was a marine biologist and pal of Steinbeck who had a lab on the Row, which is still there. It’s a bar. He’d approve. The lab is the scene for the great frog escape in the book, and Ricketts is the “Doc” in the many Steinbeck works. Steinbeck (once a biology major at Stanford) and Ricketts, took the famous exploration trip through the Gulf of California in Mexico that Steinbeck wrote about in the Log from the Sea of Cortez. Most editions of Cannery Row or the Log print Steinbeck’s eulogy to Ricketts. He was killed by a train crossing a railroad track going for a six-pack of beer. Steinbeck wrote that he was "a great teacher and a great lecher."

My kind of guy.

If you screw things in right you'd be surprised what happens

The stardust of yesterday--NASA got this one right. Stardust, a space capsule that spent the last seven years scooping up comet dust, stuff perhaps older than the solar system, made a safe and gentle landing in the Utah desert Sunday morning. The last time they tried it, the Genesis spacecraft’s parachutes didn’t open because someone put a part in backwards. The Stardust space capsule travelled almost 3 million miles (4.7 million kms). It is the first time since 1973 that anything from space has been brought to Earth. Stardust came screaming through the atmosphere at 28,860 mph (46,440 kms), the fastest any human-made object has ever travelled. The comet probed was Wild 2 and the dust was captured by a tennis-racket shaped space probe with containers like ice cube compartments. The comet dust collected is miniscule, about the tenth of the width of a human hair. The dust should be at least 4.5 million years old, as old or older than the solar system.

I’d bet Lindsay Lohan gets pregnant if I knew who Lindsay Lohan was--Most gamblers are men. They bet on football, baseball, basketball, politics, anything that moves. Women generally are supposed to have more sense. But an online betting company says that might be changing. Women are beginning to bet, but not on whether the Colts will beat the Steelers (they won’t). They bet on celebrities. They actually care about celebrities. According to a press release relayed to me by a splendid reader, SportsInteraction.com, reports there has been a 30 percent increase on female betters and the women say they bet on celebrities so they can have a vested interest in the celebrities’ lives. So much for women being more sensible than men. The web site posts odds on Paris Hilton (the temptation to put something really salacious in parenthesis is almost irresistible), Jessica Simpson (I don’t know who she is either), and Tom Cruise (oh, he’s the Scientologist bouncing on the couch). Online gambling, incidentally, is a $7 billion a year business. [Thank you, Jonathan].

How many Jewish mothers does it take to produce the Ashkenazi population? Four, of course.

You never write, you never visit, you never compliment the soup--Apparently, about half of us can trace our ancestry back to four women. We’ll call them Leah, Rachel, Sarah and Rebecca. I made up the names--sort of--but not the genetics.

Researchers in Israel, using mitochondrial DNA analysis, have found that many of the Ashkenazim, Jews mostly of central and eastern European origin, descended from the four matriarchs. mtDNA [do you capitalize the first letter of a lowercase name when it leads a sentence?] is passed through the female line, mother to daughter. If a woman has no daughter, her mtDNA ends with her. Using DNA analysis, Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and Karl Skorecki of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, traced the ancestry of 3.5 million Ashkenzim back to the four. No one knows when they lived, but it was probably within the last 3,000 years, and no one knows where. They could have been contemporary but maybe not. We don’t know who they are at all, only that they produced a line of females that produced 40% of the 8 million living Ashkenazim, including, for all I know, moi.

They are of Middle-Eastern origin and their descendents were apparently most fruitful and multiplied greatly in the last 1,000 years. Is that cool or what? It’s published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Ashkenazim originated, like all Jews except converts, in what is now Israel and surrounds, and with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the failed rebellion against Rome, spread out to Europe, mostly through Italy. They soon found their homes in places like Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Russia and by World War 2, there were 10 million of us. (After World War 2, there were 4 million of us). Sometime between that diaspora and now (probably earlier than later) the four women began their long line. Ashkenazim represent 8 of the 13 million Jews now alive.

We ought to at least write. And don't forget to compliment the chopped liver.

[Illustration: Mothers of the 12 Tribes, Barbara Mendes, used with the permission of the artist. See www.barbaramendes.org]

How is intelligent design like disco music?--UPDATED

Just when you think you’ve killed it, it comes back--The next case in the battle between the know-nothings and the Constitution moves to a remote town in the Tehachapi mountains of California. The town is Lebec, population 1,285, which is usually not enough people to have lawsuits--it would mean a large part of the town suing the other part. But someone tried to pull a fast one.

The El Tejon Unified School District approved a “philosophy” course on intelligent design. Not science, folks. That would be illegal. On the advice of attorneys, they called it philosophy. It describes all the things supporters of creationism find problematic about evolution and propounds intelligent design. No debate, no discussion. According to the class syllabus: "the class will take a close look at evolution as a theory and will discuss the scientific, biological and biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin's philosophy is not rock solid. The class will discuss intelligent design as an alternative response to evolution. Physical and chemical evidence will be presented suggesting the earth is thousands of years old, not billions." Not quite on the level of a symposium on Kant’s Categoric Imperative is it?

The course will run four weeks and is being taught by a gym teacher who just happens to be the wife of a fundamentalist minister. You will note certain lack of training in science.

Eleven families with kids in Frazier Mountain High School brought the suit. One of the plaintiffs is a geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who said the course conflicts with his belief as a scientist. The plaintiff's point out that with one exception, the course relies exclusively on videos that advocate religious perspectives and present religious theories as scientific ones — and because the teacher has no scientific training, students are not provided with any critical analysis of the presentation."

And you all thought the good Judge Jones in Pennsylvania killed it off. The Discovery Institute, the mother church of intelligent design, says that opponents are trying to censor discussion of the theory. Actually, what opponents would favor is an intelligent discussion of intelligent design.

UPDATE--On Wednesday, Jan. 18, in a federal court settlement, the school board promised to drop the class and never be cute again.

Eine Kleine Wissenschaftmusik

You are going to sterilize that iPod aren’t you?--Doctors tending to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon are using a little of the supernatural to help bring Sharon out of his medically induced coma--Mozart. Sharon, for all his reputation as a paratroop general and the bulldozer of Israeli politics is a pushover for classical music (second only to raising sheep), so the doctors told Sharon’s sons to play his favorite music in the hospital room. Mozart has been going on non-stop. Whether Sharon can actually hear it is not known. He has not reacted, which doesn’t mean much because he doesn’t react much to anything at the moment. I vote that it does, at least in a subconscious way. I hope when--and if--he wakes, they ask him. I’d love to know the answer. When I’m on my death bed I want to go out with Mahler. No point going quietly. The Ninth and the Second please. Mozart would make me cry--unless I’ve been at it for a while.

Which brings us to the science part of this blog--the Mozart skull. First of all, this is the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Happy birthday, Wolfgang even if you are dead. Mozart’s musical genius has been the subject of considerable scientific speculation. The fact he could sit at a desk and have gorgeous, perfect music spew from his brain in unstoppable torrents is one subject. Scientists like Einstein adored his music for its beauty and its fearless symmetry. A lot of people could write great music, but one man so much so fast? How is that possible? In “Amadeus,” the great Peter Shaffer play, the Salieri character blames God for being unfair and dumping so much creativity into one brain, but that’s a supernatural answer, not a scientific one. Another question, which actually is important scientifically, is how could such a prodigious genius come from ordinary parents? (Leonardo is another example, by the way, the bastard son of a peasant girl and an insignificant minor nobleman). You get into genetics and statistics. Whatever. Which brings us to the skull.

Mozart died of something or other at the age of 35 in 1791. Rumors speculate he was murdered (Shaffer playfully sugests it was the jealous Antonio Salieri) but we don’t know. He was dumped in a pauper’s grave in St. Mark’s cemetery in Vienna. (Sometime in 1855, the grave-site was supposedly identified and there is a plaque there now.) In 1801, a gravedigger named Rothmayer, uncovered a skull in the grave which he said was Mozart’s. The skull has been in the possession of the Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg since 1902. Is it Mozart’s? They decided to test it using DNA sampling and brought the U.S. Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab into the picture. If it was Mozart's perhaps there might be a clue in the brain pan to how he did it, or maybe a hint of why he died so young. They took samples from thigh bones of skeletons believed to be Mozart’s maternal grandmother and a niece and tested them against a tooth in the skull. The answer--drumroll...

We still don’t know. The thighbones turned out to be totally unrelated and probably unrelated to Mozart as well. Doesn’t matter. The more important scientific question is how the hell did he do it?

[The skull picture is an AP photo. The portait of Mozart is by Edinger, 1790]

What right does the government have to tell me what to suck--UPDATED.

Hey, that was before the election. Now it’s after the election. Leave that penis alone!--There is no place where the battle between church and state gets nastier than when science and medicine are involved. Remember Ms. Schiavo? A particularly nasty one is going on in New York and the fault is with the politicians. We've reported on it before, but now it is even more interesting. It involves an ancient and widely discredited procedure accompanying the circumcision of Jewish males. The practice is called metzitzah b'peh, and in it, the mohel, the rabbi who performs the circumcision, “cleans” the penis after the slice by sucking on it. [I’m not making this up] It’s an ancient practice, going back to the time before germ theory and antiseptics.

Before we start, I must add that the practice was dropped long ago by most mohels. [mohelim] Liberal jews, which are most of us, likely never heard of such a thing [I hadn't] and are appropriately repelled. We use antiseptics, thank you. Even most Orthodox Jews reject it. It is practice generally restricted to a few Hassidic cults, especially the Satmars, the very extreme right wing of Judaism. You have your right wing nuts; we should have our right wing nuts. It’s only fair. About 4,000 are performed in the city each year, mostly by parents who parked their critical faculties at the synagogue door and forgot to reclaim them.

We move now to New York City, where those cults are alive, well and very noisy. One mohel, Rabbi Yitzchok (Isaac) Fischer, came under the scrutiny of the New York City Department of Health when three children came down with herpes. One of them died. It seemed Rabbi Fischer likely had herpes and passed the viruses onto the children during metzitzah b’peh. The city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden (Jewish), demanded he stop. The small community the mohel served, went ballistic. They insisted the herpes came from the mothers (it didn't, tests showed) but they agreed to keep Fischer from performing more circumcisions. Meanwhile, three more babies were infected, one with brain damage, probably linked to direct sucking. Local rabbis told Fischer to stop using metzitzah b'peh, which they claim, incidentally, is mandated in the Talmud, the rabbinic teachings (written well before Pasteur). Fischer took a blood test but the results have no been made public. Naturally, rumors circulated in the Orthodox community he passed his blood test, but no one outside the community is buying it, including the authorities, who actually know the results.

Now it seems there was a mayoral election coming up, with the incumbent mayor, Michael Bloomberg (Jewish) and he has enjoyed considerable support from the Orthodox community. Bloomberg promised the city would not ban the practice and he would let a rabbinic court decide the issue since Jewish law was involved and it is at least as wise as the laws of the State of New York. Fine, except the court didn’t. In an almost impossible situation, caught between civil law, Jewish law, and some seriously demented proponents who have been known to behave like thugs, the court still has not ruled. One Orthodox expert, a famous bioethicist, denounced the practice and was harassed by advocates.

The election came and went, Bloomberg was reelected and now Frieden has issued an unprecedented warning that practice endangered the lives of Jewish babies, a clear violation of Jewish law [which it is]. And the extremists are in total uproar, claiming the ruling violates the separation of church (or schul) and state [which it doesn't] and accused Bloomberg of reneging on a promise not to obstruct their mohels. They threatened to show up at his inauguration wearing yellow Stars of David, the patch the Nazis made Jews wear, yet another example of Godwin's Law in real life. When that was met with outrage by the rest of the community, they held back. The directive from the health department stands and most Members of the Tribe cringe with embarrassment.

Meanwhile, the city health department, in order to keep track of the problem, is ordering reporting of cases of neonatal herpes.

The point is that if Bloomberg had the courage to tell the thugs to shove in the first place, he wouldn’t be in this jam. But then there was this election.... So babies are endangered. In God’s name, of course. The trick, as Joyce Purnick wrote in the Times, is not to try to finesse your way out of difficult situations, but to do what's right and the hell with it.

And, lest you non-Jews out there cluck at our crazies, did you hear about the three Christian ministers who snuck into the Senate to bless the seats of the hearing where Sam Alito’s confirmation hearings will be held. They applied “holy” oil to help assure his confirmation.

I’m not making up any of this.]
Illustration: The Sacrifice of Isaac, Caravegio, 1602]

I'll have a soyburger, a software patch and medium fries to go--UPDATED

What has volume, mass and specific gravity and absolutely no use?--Obviously, tofu, better described by its real name, soy bean curd. The only good thing to say about tofu is that it is at least smart enough to take on the taste of whatever it is sitting in, having no taste of its own either. It is part of what I call the soy cult, the notion that soy is not only a good substitute for things like milk and beef, but it is actually good for you. Soy is the leading ingredient in ersatz food. Think soyburger.Keeping in mind the motto of this blog (you know, “everything causes whatever in mice..”) I am pleased to report the latest from health medicine: no it’s not good for you. Well, maybe not. Unless ou are a male mouse. According to the latest research, mice carrying a certain mutation for heart disease were made worse by a diet of soy. Much worse. The mice carried the gene for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (enlargement of the heart), the leading cause of the sudden death of athletes, you know, the basketball players who drop dead on the court. It affects one out of 500 people. Female mice were unaffected, but the male mice keeled over dribbling up the backcourt. OK, nevermind.. The research was done at the University of Colorado and published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Which reminds me of the great comment by the comedian Lewis Black, who objects strongly to the presence of soy milk in the dairy section of his supermarket. “You know there is no such thing as soy milk because there are no such things as soy titties.” Not on my plate you don't.

By the way, did you know that tofu shrinks the brain? Really.

[The graphic shows the nutritional value of a soy burger. 500 calories]

Gosh, Mr. Gates, we really appreciate your help but I think we’d rather do it ourselves--Readers of this blog know I tend to like dumping on Microsoft. I do so partly because they are big and it’s fun to pick on the big guys, and partly because, with the exception of marketing and pushing the envelope on anti-trust laws, they are howlingly incompetent. I am not alone. In recent days, yet another major flaw was discovered in their iconic software, this time in Windows Metafile (WMF), the part of the software used to draw graphics. That normally wouldn’t be news but this one is even more serious than usual and Microsoft was very fast in getting out a statement, suggesting they may some day get out a patch, when the time is right. What was news was that some experts are advising everyone to ignore the Microsoft patch when it emerges and to use one already developed by a third party. That hasn’t happened before. They simply no longer trust Microsoft to fix things. They are urging businesses to use a patch developed by a man with the unlikely name of Ilfak Guilfanov, which works and works better than anything likely to fly out of Redmond. The security experts believe Microsoft still doesn’t get it. Duh!

UPDATE: Someone got the message. Microsoft announced today it wouldn' wait to send out the patch but would do so promptly.

Bloviation: The scary attack on the First Amendment

When John Ashcroft has problems you know you’re in trouble--The announcement that the Justice Department has launched an investigation into who leaked the President’s NSA eavesdropping program is really scary. While ostensibly it is designed to unearth who revealed classified information to a New York Times reporter, it has a much more serious intent: to scare reporters out of reporting stories that offend the administration. It is a blatant, thoroughly cynical, and very scary attack on the First Amendment.

Here’s how it works: you are, like James Risen of the Times, contacted by someone who wants to leak classified information about something possibly illegal that the government is doing. If you do print it and there is an investigation into who leaked the information, you are likely to be hauled before a grand jury and asked who the source was. If you refuse--as all honorable journalists must--you are threatened with jail. The number of reporters willing to publish such a story is now reduced to those who are willing to go to jail on the principle, which is not many of us. The administration knows that. There is no federal shield law and the administration is blocking any attempt to pass one.

The legality of the NSA program is at best murky. While the Attorney General and White House are sure the President has such power, that is not obvious to everyone; many experts, including Conservatives, doubt it. According to the Times, at least one high official in Justice refused to sign off on the program because of qualms about its legality, and the White House had to go to the hospital to talk to John Ashcroft, who was recovering from surgery. Even Ashcroft, the Times said, had problems and had to be talked into it. If that dingbat is concerned, shouldn’t we all?

Leaking classified information is a crime and ought to be investigated. One Senator suggested that the person or persons who leaked the information could have had but two motivations, either to actually harm the U.S., or to make public what he or she or they thought was an illegal act by the President, the most likely scenario.

The legislative branch, which is under an unprecedented attack by the executive branch, would be much better off at this juncture, investigating the legality of the President’s order. If it is illegal, it would constitute an impeachable offense (a tad more serious than a blow job in the Oval Office, I think). But then that would require some guts wouldn’t it, and we’re talking about Congress here.

What had been just the most incompetent administration in modern history (hi there, Warren Harding) is now also the most dangerous.

End of bloviation.

[Photo from http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5351]

Icarus in Seoul—when your wings melt

About the only thing left is the dog, right dog? Dog? Get back here!—The disgrace of Hwang Woo Suk is now complete and the story gets sadder. It turns out now, he faked his human stem cell cloning experiments, embarrassing not only himself but his country and two science journals. He could produce no evidence to his university that he did what he said he did. It wasn't a question of exaggerating; he faked it.

His announcements, published in Science and Nature galvanized biology and made him a national hero, bordering on rock star status. His country was so proud of him; Little Korea passes them all. [I'm very fond of Korea and the Koreans. I feel their pain.] But what happens raises some really uncomfortable issues not discussed elsewhere—which is why I blog, I guess.

I've written here before that American science, if not also the American Empire, is in decline, that other countries are now doing serious work that often is ignored by American media. It was the reason part of me wanted to believe him. But while I was reading Hwang's papers and the reaction to his claims I was taken by two things. One, with stem cell research a matter of some controversy here, incredibly, many of us wanted very badly for Hwang's work to be real and true, and perhaps some of the coverage was biased that way. We were cheering him on, in part because many of us believe the field can do good things for people, and partly a reaction to the restrictions on the research forced on us by the morally obtuse—look, even Korea is ahead of us because of the ignorant meddling! The second thing that came to me was the little alarm in the back of my head wondered how a veterinarian in a small Asian country can do this when no one else seems able to. Turns out he couldn't.

I long ago learned to trust that little alarm in the back of my head. All good reporters learn that. I should have paid attention. So should we all. Science journalism does so little real probing. It is hindsight now but the signs of problems were all over the place, including the suspicious similarities in the illustrations of the cell lines. And, I'm sorry to say, the simple unlikelihood he really could have done that. I feel sorry for the Koreans and for Hwang.

Hwang also claimed to have cloned a dog. Whether he did or not remains to be seen. Don't bet on it

[Photo by Reuters]

Scorpio rising

I've had it with these Virgos, man. Give me a Pisces anytime—The Washington Post, in a move I would consider beyond brilliant, has posted on its web site the astrological signs for members of the U.S. Senate and how they voted on the cloture motion for the defense appropriations act, in other words, to block the bill containing drilling in the arctic wildlife preserve, the brainstorm of the idiot from Alaska. We Geminis did not come out as well as I would have hoped, but what can you do. Click on the headline to get the chart, and a bow to the Post for having a sense of humor. And to Carol for passing it on.

The decline of Western Civilization —Part V, or Barbie is toast

First, we’ll put Barbie in a wet t-shirt, then Ken is going to put her over his knees and spank her—The latest from the world of abnormal psychology (in other words, pre-pube girls) comes from a study from the University of Bath in Britain. It seems that many young girls like to mutilate and torture their Barbie dolls. A study of 100 children, aged 7 to 11, came up with a number of girls who got violent with their dolls. They hated the dolls so much they tortured them, removing hair, decapitating them, burning them, and best of all, sticking them in microwaves. Why, you may ask? “When we asked the groups of junior school children about Barbie, the doll provoked rejection, hatred and violence,” said Dr Agnes Nairn from the University of Bath’s School of Management. “The meaning of ‘Barbie’ went beyond an expressed antipathy; actual physical violence and torture towards the doll was repeatedly reported, quite gleefully, across age, school and gender.” One theory is that they have outgrown the dolls and thought it would be cool to terminate them violently. Outgrowing Barbie, apparently is a rite of passage. Mattel, which makes the dolls, said the study was too small to mean anything. It would seem to me, the best thing to do would be to dress them up in something really ugly and play rap music to them for hours at a time. Even those dolls would surrender. How about a double mastectomy?


Well, if we cut Barbie’s hair real short, put her in slacks and a tight bra, we’d have Barbie Dyke—So there is an alternative. Lesbian dolls. If you go to Dykesdolls on the web, here, you will see a splendid line of lesbian action figures. It doesn’t say what the action is but nothing would surprise me. The line includes the butch Bobbie doll, with “denim jeans and boots...all boy on the outside but woman underneath." And there is the Baby Dyke line too. I don’t know what any of this means. A gay Ken would flesh out the picture, don't you think? [With thanks to reader Larry M.]

The Christian War on Christmas

This has nothing to do with science and medicine, the usual fodder for this blog, but I've wanted to say it for years and it's my blog!

There is indeed a “war” against Christmas. By Christians. The evangelicals and the Fox commentators ought to be reminded of the sagacious Pogo, who exclaimed that he had met the enemy and “he is us.” It is the Christians who have become the enemies of Christmas, certainly in the U.S.

I always thought this was a good time of the year not to be a Christian. I don’t have to be offended by what they’ve done to my most important religious holiday. “They” are not Jews or Moslems or secularists. They are Christians.

Some historical background would be useful here. Christmas doesn’t really coincide with the birth of Jesus. If the New Testament is accurate, he was born in the spring. Remember the shepherds and lambs? There are no lambs in December. The holiday in December derived from the pagan worship of the winter solstice. The Yule tree is one of the pagan symbols, which is why the Puritans banned Christmas trees. In fact, they banned Christmas for several generations because for the holiday’s pagan origins.

Christmas itself was not always the major Christian holiday it is now. Easter was more important. It became a big deal during the Victorian era, at least in the English-speaking world. Most of the Christmas carols, which sound so ancient, actually were written in the 19th century. Americans tend to give credit to Clement Moore and his poem about the night before Christmas, written in 1822, which morphed St. Nicolas into Santa Claus, the holiday’s prime icon—a jolly old guy who drove a sleigh of reindeer and dropped down the chimneys of homes—millions of them simultaneously—to bring presents to the families. You see a lot more pictures of Santa than Jesus these days.

But a more likely fashioner of the modern Christmas was Charles Dickens whose A Christmas Carol (1843)—one of several Christmas stories he wrote, created the aesthetics of our current holiday. Think of how many images of Christmas come in Victorian dress. Throw in a little Currier & Ives, and you have our idealized holiday.

There’s nothing wrong with any of that. Indeed, it’s quite lovely, actually, especially the music. But that’s the ideal. It turns out Christmas is nothing like that at all.

It has become a materialistic orgy with the Jesus part just noise.

When I was a kid, the rule was that the Christmas season began the weekend after Thanksgiving. Now the ads and the decorations begin before Halloween and the ads come in torrents. Christmas has become not a religious holiday, but a commercial event, the biggest of the year. For many businesses, your profit comes in November and December or it comes not at all. I stay out of malls in November and December because the goyim are out in droves shopping and dropping credit cards.

What the hell does any of that have to do with the purported birth of the messiah. Ain’t my messiah, but if he is yours, why aren’t you offended? You cannot name a product that doesn’t have a Christmas ad, sometimes invoking the melodies of carols to sell stuff. From celebration of what you believe is the most important event in history we get a holiday of consumption, materialism and bad taste.

It wasn’t the ACLU that did it. We Jews don’t care what you’ve done to your holiday and I doubt many Moslems do either.

Is there a war on Christmas? Yes, and Christmas lost. And Christians did it.

Oh, and Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy New Year. Don't bother me with Kwanza.

And, as my Christmas present to you all, the words of Walt Kelly:

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don't we know archaic barrel
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker 'n' too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloupe, 'lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon,
Willy, folly go through!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarm bung-a-loo!

Dunk us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an' polly voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, woof, woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, goof, goof!

The Kennedy boy is in the soup again—UPDATED

Look, they said it was real kimchi—Don Kennedy is in trouble again and this time it isn’t his fault. Kennedy is editor of Science magazine, about as prestigious a position as you can have in science. He came to the job after screwing up as president of Stanford and has done, by all accounts, a good job as head of America's most prestigious science publication. Now, it appears, he has been the victim of science fraud and he is in the spotlight again.

Background: I was science writer at Stanford when he was president, and I wrote the initial stories that began Stanford’s indirect cost scandal that eventually cost Kennedy his job. In brief, the university was charging everything from light bulbs to yachts and commodes to the government to do research, a practice that made doing research at Stanford so expensive that scientists started losing grants and the faculty was in an uproar. The practice began under Kennedy and when it exploded into the public—thanks to a slightly wacky whistle blower —Kennedy mishandled it. He never got control of the situation so we were getting surprised every day. He also made the mistake of forgetting you hire lawyers to give advice, not make decisions. Nonetheless, he was fired and to some extent, I’m told, he blames me partially. There goes my freelancing opportunities at Science.

Now for the present contretemps. The world has been agog at the exploits of a Korean veterinarian, Hwang Woo Suk, who claimed major advances in stem cell research and cloning. His work was published in Science. Hwang has become a national hero in Korea. In recent weeks, there have been questions about the ethics of his work and veracity of his claims. One colleague, Roh Sung Il, says Hwang faked photos in a claim that he created stem cells from 11 patients for an article in Science (an article I reported on this blog too, by the way). The stress has put Hwang in the hospital and it is apparently going to get worse. Things really fell apart when a coauthor of the Science paper, Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, an accomplished and well-respected researcher, asked Science to take his name off the paper. Schatten was listed last, the place reserved for the most important scientist. Schatten said he now had substantial doubts about the paper’s accuracy,” which is interesting since he signed off on it. Science refused because the paper had not been withdrawn, putting Kennedy on the spot. See Connie Holden's piece in Science here.

Today I got a call from a reporter at the New York Times who heard I had some bumpy experiences with Kennedy and the question was, did I know anything about Kennedy that could let me predict he would get into a jam at Science. The answer was no. I don’t think he did anything wrong. He got an important paper that passed peer review and was coauthored by an established scientist of unquestioned repute. What the hell was he supposed to do with it? Nature also accepted an article from Hwang on cloning a dog and no one has asked if there was anything in that editor’s past that would warn of a problem. The referees on the Science paper asked for additional tests, which may have led to uncovering the problems. If Hwang did fake the research the worst that can be said is that the system worked. He got caught.

UPDATE—A panel at Hwang's university, Seoul National, has concluded that Hwang faked at least nine of the 11 stem cell lines he claimed to have produced and Hwang resigned. His downfall is particularly said because he had become a national hero in Korea, a Korean who was leading the field in science, attaining rock star fame in the country. "I sincerely apologize to the people for creating a shock and disappointment," he said. [AP photo above]

It wasn’t Kennedy’s fault that the stories were published. The papers will undoubtedly be withdrawn.

Virgins in space, Kirk on the web.

What if the tourists come and there is nothing to see?—Richard Branson, the rock ‘n roll entrepreneur is not a man to think small. He has just come to an agreement with the state of New Mexico to build a $225 million spaceport in the desert. What he or anyone else is going to do with a $225 million spaceport doesn’t seem clear. His company, Virgin Galactic, however, now has a waiting list of 38,000 people who have put down deposits on a seat on Virgin Galactic’s space ships, only Virgin Galactic doesn’t have any space ships. One hundred of them laid out $200,000 up front and Branson says they are going to boldly go up in 2008 or 2009. The spaceport, state officials, say will be largely underground near White Sands and Virgin will have a 20-year lease, paying $1 million for the first five years. Branson has a deal with Burt Rutan to build five spacecraft modelled after Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, the first privately manned rocket to reach space last year and the winner of the $10 million Ansari X prize. Meanwhile, Branson has something perhaps more serious in mind. He and a group of American investors are starting up a U.S. airline, Virgin America, to compete with JetBlue and Southwest. It will be based in San Francisco and already has funding and an order for more than 30 Airbus 320s. They will fly before his spaceships will.

Jim, Jim. What the hell are we going to do with all those consonants? —Star Trek fans have a treat in store if they click here. They will go to the most viewed movie in Finland, a full-length movie in Finnish with English subtitles made by students and amateurs that is surprisingly professional. OK, not profession. Not amateurish. OK, not not amateurish but surprisingly decent. Whatever. It’s funny and it's called "Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning," and it has been downloaded more than 3 million times since the beginning of October. That’s more people than those who went to the theatre to see Finland’s most popular movie, “The Unknown Soldier” (or, as you know it better, “Tuntematon Sotilas.”) It’s fun to watch and there is a lesson to the film industry in there somewhere.

Water horrors—collateral damage

Will that be red or white wine with your sludge?—The collateral damage to Hurricane Katrina knows no limits. I know people are homeless and more than 1,000 died, but one must add to the tragedy. The wine cellar at Brennan’s Restaurant, one of the best in the world, is gone. Vinegar. Slurry. Think of 35,000 bottles, including some of the best wines in the world (oh, how about a 1870 Lafite Rothschild?) broiling in the heat of August. When the electricity went out, the wine cellar—two floors of the circa 1795 building—was at the mercy of the heat. The wine was usually kept at 58 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature rose to 120 with the power out, cooking the stuff, or at best making cooking wine out of it. Brennan’s is just one of almost a dozen restaurants owned by the Brennan family, all of which are probably down for months. No more Bananas Foster. (They have branches and I was a denizen of the Houston shop during the space program). All are a major loss, but the wine cellar at the flagship is a serious stuff.

We’re doing swordfish today so you can throw the damned tuna out—No doubt Brennan’s and the other sea food restaurants get their catch as the result of the modern fishing industry, which brings us to more collateral damage. According to a report from U.S. and Canadian scientists, the modern fishing industry is amazingly inefficient and wasteful. They regularly toss out 22% of what they catch in their nets. In an article published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, they say the Gulf of Mexico has the worst fishermen. The problem is that the shrimp nets, which are dragged across the ocean floor, scoop up tons of what is called bycatch, about a billion pounds of it, which is then dumped back into the water. They discard four times as many fish as they keep. In one of the great analogies of the week, one of the scientists said the bycatch would fill every bathtub in a city of 1.5 million people. How he figured that, I don’t know, but it is impressive. Besides noncommercial species (jelly fish, for instance) the bycatch includes whatever the boats were not out to get. The figures are for 2002 and representatives of the fishing industry say they are doing better now, but it’s as good as it’s going to get.

A Titanic struggle on the telephone while debating evolution

No, Muscatine is not a bad Italian wine —The next town you hear from in the great debate over “intelligent design” could be Muscatine, Iowa. According to the Muscatine Journal, the school board of the small, 22.000 population city on the banks of the Mississippi, thinks that students should be aware of ID and plan on taking the matter up at a meeting within the next two years. Ann Hart, vice president of the school board said there was no thought to removing evolution from the curriculum—it is, after all, science—but that “intelligent design should be brought up because a lot of people believe in it, and otherwise, kids aren’t going to understand it as well as they should.” The first point, that a lot of people believe in it, is debatable. The second isn’t. If taught properly—that it is anti-evolution dressed up as a scientific theory—would be a good thing, and last about 10 minutes. “I would hope,” she said, “it wouldn’t become a big issue.” Good luck.

It was said when the great ship went down. Husbands and wives—little children lost their lives—oh it was sad when the great ship went down—In most books as well as the movie, the R.M.S. Titanic hit an iceberg, broke apart and sank. In the movie it looks like everyone had time for high drama, and the designer says it will sink in about an hour. The bottom section of the hull broke free, the bow and stern split, with the bow sinking first and the stern 20 minutes later. Apparently, that isn't so. The stern, as depicted in the film, is where all the survivors fled for temporary safety before it too filled with water and plunged into the frigid water. In the original exploration of the wreck, Robert Ballard never found the bottom section. Now others have and it gives a new picture of what happened that night in 1912— a more merciful death. The stern sank after only five minutes. The bottom part of the hull was found a third of a mile from the stern in two pieces and the researchers were able to use that to create a new scenario. Ballard was unimpressed with the discovery. “They found a fragment. Big deal.” [The thing that bothered me most about the movie is that the water was lethally cold and people who jumped or fell into it would have been dead in a few minutes. In the film, they had time for all kinds of histrionics and adventures, all quite impossible in the wintery North Atlantic. On the other hand, the movie had Kate Winslett and the ship didn’t.] By the way, Canadian researchers report that the wreck will disintegrate by 2028.

Well, your honor, I was multitasking and just didn't see the truck—In the category of what else is new, researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that talking on the telephone is distracting if you are driving. Duh. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology [not on the website yet], came to an obvious conclusion, but the reason why phones and driving are a bad combination is kind of interesting. Research at NASA has shown that there just are limits to multitasking like this, and the reason is an “information bottleneck.” Our tiny brains simply can’t handle all the input. With practice, we can get better, but only just so. We aren't bright enough. Some people are better than others. Young people who play video games are best at it. This fits in with other research that shows that most people on the telephone while driving, drive like old people. They drive and react more slowly. And oh yes, the most common accident is a rear-end collision.

Agencies behaving badly, pewter mugs and splashing Martians

Just take two pills and call me in the morning, presuming you are still alive in the morning—The federal Food and Drug Administration was once the gold standard by which government agencies were judged for efficiency and caution. The lives of millions of Americans depended on it. A new study by Consumer Reports, however, documents just how badly the FDA has fallen. CR has identified 12 relatively common prescription drug types linked to serious side effects—some of them potentially fatal—that were approved by the FDA without proper attention. Many are still being advertised and lack a useful warning. CR identified several reasons for the lapse in effectiveness.

• Rush to approve—the agency had tight deadlines, insufficient data and not enough time to make good decisions. Scientists complain their bosses pressured them into prematurely approving some.
• Lack of power—the FDA, thanks to Congress, lacks the power to compel companies to do proper studies before approval, force doctors to report adverse reactions, or dictate warning labels. It assesses drug side effects after they erupt but then can’t do much about them.
• Hidden risks—some companies withhold information from the FDA that might limit the sales of the drugs.

For a list of the drugs, click here.

When the final storm comes in a pewter mug—Ludwig von Beethoven was an unpleasant fellow. He had no friends. He did not bathe. He had a vile temper–indeed, as he grew older he was more than a little mad. Oh, yes, and he was deaf. He could conduct his Ninth Symphony but he never actually heard the orchestra. One of the great mysteries is why he was the way he was and why he died in misery at the age of 56, depriving the world of about 10 years of, well, Beethoven. Rearchers at Argonne National Laboratory, probably have solved the mystery. Ludwig von died of lead poisoning. They took six hairs, known to be from Beethoven's head and a few pieces of his skull and put it all through the Advanced Photon Source, which shoots particles around a loop at 99.999 percent of the speed of light. The result, Beethoven had 100 times more lead atoms in him than normal. (Incidentally, he had very little mercury in him, which seems to debunk the canard that the great man died of syphilis, which would have been treated with mercury.) The lead might also explain his really bad behavior toward the end. It's not clear if the deafness came from the poisoning. Where did the lead come from? Unknown, but it was common to drink with lead or pewter mugs and Beethoven did like his drink. The skull fragments? They were passed down through the family of an Austrian physician, who apparently coped them from the dead composer. Bad.

I’d like a single-malt scotch and some Martian ice cubes, stir don’t mix—If there is one thing future human visitors to Mars won’t have to worry about, its finding something to drink. While scientists now believe the place was never a water wonderland despite all the evidence it once had surface water, they now think any water on the surface quickly froze or evaporated. But research reported at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco seems to indicate there is lots of water still on the Red Planet, buried in the dirt and gathered around the poles. That raises the possibility that microbes have found a conducive place to live. They won’t make a Spielberg movie out of them, but it’s a start. The ice cap may be as much as a mile thick, something like the ice sheets during the terrestrial Ice Age. The water may even be pure enough to drink, which is more than can be said for water in lots of places on Earth. Much of the research, incidentally, came from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express satellite that began orbiting Mars in 2003.