The Man in the Mirror -

http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/06/the-man-in-the-mirror.html

By James Howard Kunstler
on June 29, 2009 6:01 AM

As America entered the horse latitudes of summer, befogged in a muffling stillness on deceptively calm seas, we were distracted for a while by visions of a pale death angel moonwalking across the deck of collective consciousness. Eerie parallels resound between the sordid demise of pop singer Michael Jackson and the fate of the nation.

Like the United States, Michael Jackson was spectacularly bankrupt, reportedly in the range of $800-million, which is rather a lot for an individual. Had he lived on a few more years, he might have qualified for his own TARP program -- another piece of expensive dead-weight down in the economy's bilges -- since it is our established policy now to throw immense sums of so-called "money" at gigantic failing enterprises (while millions of ordinary citizens wash overboard, without so much as a life-preserver). Anyway, Michael Jackson was on the receiving end of one huge bank loan after another long after his pattern of profligacy was set and obvious. They threw money at him for the same reason that the federal government throws money at entities like CitiBank: the desperate hope that some miracle will allow debt servicing to resume. Michael could burn through $50-million in half a year. It didn't seem to affect his credibility as a borrower. When his heart stopped last week, he was living in a Hollywood mansion that rented for several hundred thousand dollars a month. You wonder how the landlord cashed those checks.
Like the USA, Michael Jackson was a has-been. He hadn't recorded a song worth listening to in over two decades. He had done almost nothing but spin his wheels, hop around the globe from one place to another at enormous expense, and make himself available for award ceremonies to stoke his ego (and give advertisers a reason to promote some televised award show). He existed strictly on image, an anorectic figure nourished by moonbeams of attention, famous for saying that he loved his worshippers when the truth was he merely sucked the life out of them. In his last years, he even looked a bit like Nosferatu, the personification of the un-dead, and his fascination with ghouls was the basis for his biggest hit way back in the last century. A zombie nation deserves a zombie mascot.

He was a poseur, vamping in weird military outfits as though he were a five-star general in the Honduran army, or a character from a melodrama by the reprobate Jean Genet. He once materialized during halftime at the Superbowl in a shower of sparks, thrilling the multitudes while grabbing and stroking his sex organs, as though that was a heroic activity -- and indeed the nation seemed to emulate him as its culture became dedicated more and more to acting out masturbation fantasies. America was a fat man jerking off on the sofa watching a vampire of no particular sex vogue deliriously on the boob tube.

More than once the authorities tried to pin charges of child molestation on him for suspicious activities at his boy-trap, Neverland Ranch, with its carnival rides, private zoo, video game galleries, and inexhaustible supplies of sugary treats. The first time he settled with the alleged victim's family for $22-million. They just walked away with the loot and happily shut up. The second time, he moonwalked out of a court-of-law while weeks later jurors mysteriously went on TV to say, well, they did kind of think after-the-fact that he really did those things he was accused of, but, you know.... The defendant himself behaved as though his trial were a TV celebrity challenge show on another planet, arriving on one occasion twenty minutes late in pajamas with some lame excuse about a backache. He spent the last years of his life wandering a few steps ahead of his creditors, gulling concert promoters into "comeback" schemes (with walking-around money up front), and with three bought-and-paid-for children, obviously not his own, for consolation.

When he dropped dead last week, the nation's morbidly maudlin response suggested a cover story for the relief of being rid of him and all the embarrassment he provoked. One CNN reporter called him a genius the equal of Mozart. That's a little like calling Rachel Maddow the reincarnation of Eleanor Roosevelt. A nation addicted to lying to itself tells itself fairy tales instead of facing a pathology report. Yet, like Michael Jackson, the undertone of horror story still pulses darkly in the background. The little boy who grew up to be the simulation of a girl was really a werewolf. The nation that defeated manifest evil in World War Two woke up one day years later to find itself stripped of its manhood, mentally enslaved to cheap entertainments, and hostage to its own grandiosity. Maybe in grieving so exorbitantly over this freak America is grieving for itself. All the loose talk about "love" from the media and the fans gives off the odor of self-love. America is "the man in the mirror," the gigantic, floundering Narcissus, sailing into the stormy seas of history.

Argentine glacier advances despite global warming

Global warming? What global warming?

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By JEANNETTE NEUMANN, Associated Press Writer Jeannette Neumann, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 38 mins ago

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier is one of only a few ice fields worldwide that have withstood rising global temperatures.

Nourished by Andean snowmelt, the glacier constantly grows even as it spawns icebergs the size of apartment buildings into a frigid lake, maintaining a nearly perfect equilibrium since measurements began more than a century ago.

"We're not sure why this happens," said Andres Rivera, a glacialist with the Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia, Chile. "But not all glaciers respond equally to climate change."

Viewed at a safe distance on cruise boats or the wooden observation deck just beyond the glacier's leading edge, Perito Moreno's jagged surface radiates a brilliant white in the strong Patagonian sun. Submerged sections glow deep blue.

And when the wind blows in a cloud cover, the 3-mile-wide (5 kilometer) glacier seems to glow from within as the surrounding mountains and water turn a meditative gray.

Every few years, Perito Moreno expands enough to touch a point of land across Lake Argentina, cutting the nation's largest freshwater lake in half and forming an ice dam as it presses against the shore.

The water on one side of the dam surges against the glacier, up to 200 feet (60 meters) above lake level, until it breaks the ice wall with a thunderous crash, drowning the applause of hundreds of tourists.

"It's like a massive building falling all of the sudden," said park ranger Javier D'Angelo, who experienced the rupture in 2008 and 1998.

The rupture is a reminder that while Perito Moreno appears to be a vast, 19-mile-long (30 kilometer) frozen river, it's a dynamic icescape that moves and cracks unexpectedly.

"The glacier has a lot of life," said Luli Gavina, who leads mini-treks across the glacier's snow fields.

Are You Suffering From Affluenza?

By Alexander Green

In his 1997 film Affluenza, producer John de Graaf claims there is a virus loose in society that threatens our wallets, our friendships, our families, our communities and our environment.

Each year it costs us hundreds of billions of dollars, wastes our precious time, ruins our health and adversely affects our quality of life.

What is affluenza, exactly?

De Graaf defines it as “a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.”

He argues that too many of us are working ourselves to death to accumulate an endless array of goods and services we don’t really need.

This creates stress. Stress, in turn, creates health problems, including headaches, stomachaches, ulcers, depression, even heart attacks.

Medical research shows that people in industrial nations lose more years from disability and premature death due to stress-related illnesses than other ailments.

Affluenza drives up health care costs, tears at the fabric of families, and shortens our stay on the right side of the daisies.

Before you mistake me for the national scold, however, let me make a couple of confessions.

First off, I’m a libertarian. I realize that personal consumption – roughly two-thirds of all economic

activity – drives the economy. Moreover, if someone really wants to devote his life to accumulating

more, more, more, that’s his right.

As John Maynard Keynes put it, “It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow citizens.”

(Personally, though, I’ve never met anyone who obtained lasting satisfaction with a Visa or MasterCard.)

Secondly, I’m not immune to the occasional bout of affluenza myself.

I rarely pass a bookstore or record shop, for example, without poking my head inside. And whenever I leave Barnes & Noble, the clerk at the register always asks the same thing:

“Would you like us to double-bag that for you?”

We all have to consume to survive, of course. But Madison Avenue is right there beside us, aiding us, abetting us... giving us a not-so-subtle push.

Marketers want to convince us that our lives would be so much better if we would only just drive this car, drink this light beer, use this antiwrinkle cream or fly these friendly skies.

Every day we are bombarded: billboards, Internet banners, TV and radio commercials, newspaper and magazine ads. Go to a busy public beach and single-engine planes criss-cross the sky trailing banners, “Joe’s Crab Shack: All You Can Eat $17.99” or “2-for-1 Drinks All Day at Bennigan’s.”

Advertisers are getting more sophisticated, too. The new science of neuromarketing is designed to help retailers unlock the subconscious thoughts, feelings and desires that drive our purchasing decisions.

Marketers now strive to create products that actually stimulate the production of dopamine.

Today psychologists routinely talk about “retail therapy,” where consumers shop just to get a shortterm

high to ward off boredom or the blues.

How do we resist?

First by recognizing our limits, both financial and material. After all, it doesn’t really take a lot of money to meet our needs.

Many of the other things we covet don’t hold our attention long. Recognize that and you may conclude that they aren’t worth the time and trouble it takes to acquire them.

As the philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, “The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness ... He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

A well-lived life cannot just be about competing against others for resources. He who dies with the most toys doesn’t win.

As Laurence G. Boldt writes in “The Tao of Abundance”:

“The psychology of plenty differs fundamentally from the psychology of scarcity. If I view my life as a struggle to sustain my existence in an unfriendly world, then intimidation, competitiveness, and greed make sense. If I view life itself as a gift, attitudes of praise, thanksgiving and responsibility naturally follow.”

It’s only human to want to better our material conditions, of course. But the relentless quest for more often undermines our quality of life. Successful lives are built not bought. And an overconsumptive

lifestyle only limits our choices.

As Russell said, “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”

Curing affluenza means dropping the chains of mindless consumption. It means recognizing that lives based on having are less free than those based on doing or being. Wise men and women have known this for millennia.

In 400 B.C., the Greek philosopher Diogenes taught that no man needed much – and that we shouldn’t complain of material loss. When he went to Athens with a slave named Manes, Manes ran off. Diogenes shrugged off his ill fortune saying, “If Manes can live without Diogenes, why not Diogenes without Manes?”

In “It’s All in Your Head,” Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine relate another story about the

famous ascetic:

“Diogenes is sitting on the side of the road eating his simple meal of porridge. A court philosopher sees him and comes over to chat. ‘You know, Diogenes, if you learned to play up to the king like the rest of us, you wouldn’t have to live on porridge.’ Diogenes doesn’t even glance up from his bowl; he just says, ‘If you learned to live on porridge, you wouldn’t have to play up to the king.’”

Reasonable, affordable consumption means less struggle, less debt, less hassles, less stress. It also grants us more time – and with it the opportunity for new experiences, better relationships

and greater personal freedom.

As Oscar Wilde said, “The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man

is.”

What Matters Most

by Alexander Green

Thanksgiving, Anne, a family friend, looked and sounded great.

Today she is dying of cancer. In the last few weeks she has lost her eyesight. Half her face is paralyzed. And she has refused more chemo, describing the results of last week’s MRI as “just horrible.”

When I walked into Hallmark, I told the clerk I was looking for a special kind of card.

“It’s for someone who isn’t well,” I said. “And she knows she isn’t going to get better.”

The clerk nodded, said she knew just what I needed and led me to a special section with headings like “Hope,” “Strength,” and “Serious Illness.”

Standing there reading the messages in those cards, thinking of all the grief-stricken people out there selecting them – or (worse) receiving them – is enough to make you want to sob.

I finally settled on, “May you gather strength from the love of those around you,” scrawled a note about how I’d love to stop in if she felt like visitors, and dropped it in the mailbox.

When he began teaching at Cornell, the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov said he knew just two things: One, life is beautiful, and two, life is sad. The reason life is sad, he said, is because it’s going to end.

Yet death, our most unwelcome visitor, can also do us a favor. It can remind us, the mourners, what’s most important.

As Jack Kerouac observed, “Pondering on death, with or without wine – brings enlightenment.”

Too many of us spend our days moving with the hustling crowd, mindlessly doing more or less what everyone else is doing, acting like we have all the time in the world. That is, until we get a wake-up call and learn that someone close to us has had a bad accident or is suddenly very ill.

Increased awareness of our own mortality needn’t lead to fear and anxiety, however. We can use it as an opportunity to answer the question posed by poet Mary Oliver, “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Do you know? Or are you so consumed with projects, deadlines and responsibilities that you haven’t given it much thought lately?

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. And this realization is a good thing.

Viewed from the prospect of eternity, we are really no more durable than the mayfly. Many spend their time just as frivolously. Others are bored. As author Susan Ertz quipped, Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

Greek mythology, on the other hand, gives us the story of Tithonus, a Trojan who was granted immortality by the gods but grew to hate his life.

Whatever path he chose, he could always take it later. Whatever options he faced, ultimately he could have them all. Time became meaningless, oppressive even. He lost his ardor for life. In the end, he petitions Zeus to release him from eternity. He begs for mortality so that, once again, his choices might matter.

Each of us has been granted an incomparable gift, a brief stay on this little blue ball. How will you spend it? To what end will you use it?

These are the most important questions we can ask ourselves. And the answers can be read in the way we live our lives.

“Death is not the greatest loss,” Norman Cousins warned. “The greatest loss is what dies
inside us while we live.”

Doctors generally observe that terminal patients who have truly lived their lives – who
have strived and loved and taken risks – generally have an easier time with their dying.

Patients in nursing homes routinely express more regret for the chances they never took than the ones that worked out poorly.

Singer Bono, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and granted numerous awards for his
activism for world poverty, said in a recent interview, “I’m tired of dreaming. I’m into doing at
the moment.”

He is someone who has chosen to live life on his own terms and in service to the values that
matter to him most. It is unlikely that you or I will ever accomplish as much. But that’s okay.

For most of us, born without the immense talents of a da Vinci or Beethoven or Lincoln, the
true measure of our lives is not what we achieve – and certainly not what we accumulate – but rather who we are, the number of people we touch, and what is grieved in our absence.

As the novelist E.M. Forster observed, “Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves
him.”

Robot scientists can think for themselves

Looks like Isaac Asimov is a true visionary.


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By Ben Hirschler Ben Hirschler – Thu Apr 2, 2:30 pm ET

LONDON (Reuters) – Watch out scientists -- you may be replaced by a robot.

Two teams of researchers said on Thursday they had created machines that could reason, formulate theories and discover scientific knowledge on their own, marking a major advance in the field of artificial intelligence.

Such robo-scientists could be put to work unraveling complex biological systems, designing new drugs, modeling the world's climate or understanding the cosmos.

For the moment, though, they are performing more humble tasks.

At Aberystwyth University in Wales, Ross King and colleagues have created a robot called Adam that can not only carry out experiments on yeast metabolism but also reason about the results and plan the next experiment.

It is the world's first example of a machine that has made an independent scientific discovery -- in this case, new facts about the genetic make-up of baker's yeast.

"On its own it can think of hypotheses and then do the experiments, and we've checked that it's got the results correct," King said in an interview.

"People have been working on this since the 1960s. When we first sent robots to Mars, they really dreamt of the robots doing their own experiments on Mars. After 40 or 50 years, we've now got the capability to do that."

Their next robot, Eve, will have much more brain power and will be put to work searching for new medicines.

King hopes the application of intelligent robotic thinking to the process of sifting tens of thousands of compounds for potential new drugs will be particularly valuable in the hunt for treatments for neglected tropical diseases like malaria.

King published his findings in the journal Science, alongside a second paper from Hod Lipson and Michael Schmidt of Cornell University in New York, who have developed a computer program capable of working out the fundamental physical laws behind a swinging double pendulum.

Just by crunching the numbers -- and without any prior instruction in physics -- the Cornell machine was able to decipher Isaac Newton's laws of motion and other properties.

Lipson does not think robots will make scientists obsolete any day soon, but believes they could take over much of the routine work in research laboratories.

"One of the biggest problems in science today is finding the underlying principles in areas where there are lots and lots of data," he told reporters in a conference call. "This can help in accelerating the rate at which we can discover scientific principles behind the data."

(Additional reporting by Stuart McDill; editing by Maggie Fox and Tim Pearce)

Gene-engineered viruses build a better battery

Green energy is the way to go, this should be the next internet. Not NanoTech.

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor - Thu Apr 2, 2009 4:25PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

Researchers who have trained a tiny virus to do their bidding said on Thursday they made it build a more efficient and powerful lithium battery.

They changed two genes in the virus, called M13, and got it to do two things: build a shell made out of a compound called iron phosphate, and then attach to a carbon nanotube to make a powerful and tiny electrode.

Such an electrode could conceivably make more powerful memory devices such as MP3 players or cellular telephones, and are far more environmentally friendly than current battery technologies, said Angela Belcher, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology materials scientist who led the research.

"It has some of the same capacity and energy power performance as the best commercially available state-of-the-art batteries," Belcher said in a telephone interview.

"We could run an iPod on it for about three times as long as current iPod batteries. If we really scale it, it would be used in a car," she added. Such scaling is not even close, Belcher cautioned.

The technology is inherently green because it involves a live virus. "We are having organisms make the materials for us," Belcher said. "We are confined to temperatures and solvents -- water -- that organisms can live in. It's a clean technology. We can't do anything that kills our organisms."

Reporting in the journal Science, Belcher's team said their genetically engineered viruses were designed to grow shells of amorphous iron phosphate.

The material is generally not a good conductor, but makes a useful battery material when patterned at the nanoscale -- a microscopic molecular scale.

Lithium batteries are powerful and light, but they do not release their electrons very quickly. The virus-made material did, however. This translates into more battery power.

"My students hate it when I say we sit back and let them (the viruses) do the work. We put a lot of work in too," Belcher said.

"But once you have the right genetic sequence and have the right proteins then you just put them in solution with water and ions and they template the battery in the same way an abalone templates a shell. They build little shells around themselves."

The team is already working on a second-generation battery using materials with higher voltage and electrical capacity, such as manganese phosphate and nickel phosphate, said Belcher. This new technology could go into commercial production, she said.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

Dinosaur find raises debate on feather evolution

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter, Ap Science Writer Wed Mar 18, 6:15 pm ET

NEW YORK – A small dinosaur that once roamed northeastern China was covered with a stiff, hairlike fuzz, a discovery that suggests feathers began to evolve much earlier than many researchers believe — maybe even in the earliest dinosaurs. Scientists had previously identified feathers and so-called "dinofuzz" in theropods, two-legged meat-eaters that are widely considered the ancestors of birds.

But the Chinese creature is only distantly related to theropods, and the hollow filaments of its fuzz may be primitive feathers, say the scientists who report the find in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Dinosaurs split into two branches early on, more than 235 million years ago. Theropods belong to one branch, and the Chinese creature is a primitive member of the other branch. Maybe both branches inherited primitive feathers from common ancestors before or at the split — in other words, the first dinosaurs, the researchers suggest.

Some other experts said they're not ready to buy that argument.

No fossils from the first dinosaurs are known, while the fossil record for feathers goes back about 150 million years.

The dinosaur find is reported by scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, both in Beijing, and elsewhere.

The creature lived sometime between 144 million and 99 million years ago. It walked on two legs and had a long tail. The discovered specimen — apparently not an adult — measured only about 28 inches long overall. It's not clear what the creature ate with its fang-like teeth.

The study authors named the creature Tianyulong confuciusi. The name comes from the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in Shangdong Province, which houses the specimen, and the philosopher Confucius.

Tianyulong's remains, laid out on the surface of a stone slab, show three patches of hair-like fuzz. The filaments were generally about 1.5 inches long, but those on the tail were a bit more than 2 inches long.

While the study authors argue that primitive feathers may have been found in the earliest dinosaurs, they suggest that some later species lost them during evolution.

In a Nature commentary, Lawrence Witmer of the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine said it's not yet certain whether Tianyulong's filaments are part of the evolution of feathers.

"Perhaps the only clear conclusion that can be drawn ... is that little Tianyulong has made an already confusing picture of feather origins even fuzzier," Witmer wrote.

Mark Norell, a prominent dinosaur researcher at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said he'd already believed that the first dinosaurs had primitive feathers. He believes most dinosaurs had something related to feathers, but that lack of preservation has hidden that in the fossil record.

But Luis Chiappe, director of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, who has written about the origin of feathers, said he doubts that feathers evolved outside of theropods and birds. Interpreting Tianyulon's filaments as early feathers is questionable because of their appearance, he said.

Moreover, Chiappe said, given the apparent lack of feathers in many dinosaur species, "I don't see any reason why you're going to conclude that feathers must have originated before the origin of dinosaurs or (at) about the same time."

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On the Net:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Italy dig unearths female 'vampire' in Venice

By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer Ariel David, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 13, 4:34 pm ET

ROME – An archaeological dig near Venice has unearthed the 16th-century remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws — evidence, experts say, that she was believed to be a vampire.

The unusual burial is thought to be the result of an ancient vampire-slaying ritual. It suggests the legend of the mythical bloodsucking creatures was tied to medieval ignorance of how diseases spread and what happens to bodies after death, experts said.

The well-preserved skeleton was found in 2006 on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other corpses buried in a mass grave during an epidemic of plague that hit Venice in 1576.

"Vampires don't exist, but studies show people at the time believed they did," said Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at Florence University who studied the case over the last two years. "For the first time we have found evidence of an exorcism against a vampire."

Medieval texts show the belief in vampires was fueled by the disturbing appearance of decomposing bodies, Borrini told The Associated Press by telephone.

During epidemics, mass graves were often reopened to bury fresh corpses and diggers would chance upon older bodies that were bloated, with blood seeping out of their mouth and with an inexplicable hole in the shroud used to cover their face.

"These characteristics are all tied to the decomposition of bodies," Borrini said. "But they saw a fat, dead person, full of blood and with a hole in the shroud, so they would say: 'This guy is alive, he's drinking blood and eating his shroud.'"

Modern forensic science shows the bloating is caused by a buildup of gases, while fluid seeping from the mouth is pushed up by decomposing organs, Borrini said. The shroud would have been consumed by bacteria found in the mouth area, he said.

At the time however, what passed for scientific texts taught that "shroud-eaters" were vampires who fed on the cloth and cast a spell that would spread the plague in order to increase their ranks.

To kill the undead creatures, the stake-in-the-heart method popularized by later literature was not enough: A stone or brick had to be forced into the vampire's mouth so that it would starve to death, Borrini said.

That's what is believed to have happened to the woman found on the Lazzaretto island, which was used as a quarantine zone by Venice. Aged around 60, she died of the plague during the epidemic that also claimed the life of the painter Titian.

Much later, someone jammed the brick into her mouth when the grave was reopened. Borrini said that marks and breaks left by blunt instruments on several among more than 100 skeletons found by the archaeologists show that the grave was reused in a later epidemic.

Such a reconstruction of events is plausible, as is the link to the superstitions about "shroud-eaters," said Piero Mannucci, the vice president of the Italian Society of Anthropology and Ethnology.

"Maybe a priest or a gravedigger put the brick in her mouth, which is what was normally done in such cases," Mannucci said.

The anthropologist, who did not take part in Borrini's research, said that at a time when bacteria were unknown, such superstitions were a way for the terrified population to explain the waves of plague epidemics that killed millions during the Middle Ages. Jews were also often accused of spreading the disease.

Borrini said the discovery shows that vampires in popular culture were originally quite different from the elegant, aristocratic blood-drinker depicted in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel "Dracula" and in countless Hollywood revisitations.

"The real vampire of tradition was different," he said. "It was just a decomposing body."

NASA telescope will hunt for Earth-like planets

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer Marcia Dunn, Ap Aerospace Writer Thu Mar 5, 4:45 pm ET

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA will soon be on the lookout for possible Earths in one faraway corner of the galaxy. A planet-hunting spacecraft, named Kepler after the German 17th -century astrophysicist, is scheduled to rocket away from Cape Canaveral late Friday night. Excellent launch weather is forecast.

The telescope will spend 3 1/2 years staring at roughly 100,000 stars, measuring their brightness and any winks in the light that might signify orbiting planets.

"We certainly won't find E.T., but we might find E.T.'s home by looking at all of these stars," Bill Boruki, Kepler's principal scientist, said Thursday.

Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for science, said Kepler is not just another science mission.

"It very possibly could tell us that Earths are very, very common, that we have lots of neighbors out there, or it could tell us that Earths are really, really, really rare," Weiler said at a press conference.

"Perhaps we're the only Earth. I think that would be a very bad answer because I, for one, don't want to live in an empty universe where we're the best there is. That's a scary thought to many of us."

Kepler will be scouting for Earth-size planets circling stars in the so-called habitable or Goldilocks zone. That's where planets are neither too close nor too far from their star, and where conditions could be ripe for liquid water on the surface. "Planets that are not too hot, not too cold, but just right," according to Boruki.

Once launched, Kepler will trail the Earth in an orbit around the sun. It will peer continuously at a large patch of sky near the Cygnus and Lyra constellations, looking for any winks against the brightness of the stars that could indicate passing planets.

The stars to be observed by Kepler are between 600 and 3,000 light years away.

Project manager Jim Fanson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said the level of precision needed to measure those winks is incredibly high.

"It's akin to measuring a flea as it creeps across the headlight of an automobile at night," Fanson said.

Over the past decade and a half, more than 300 planets have been found to be orbiting stars outside our solar system. But these are largely gas giants like Jupiter. Kepler is designed to zero in on smaller, rocky, Earth-like planets.

Scientists stress that Kepler — 15 feet high and 9 feet in diameter — will not be looking for life but rather potentially habitable planets. The mission costs $600 million, from start to finish.

The launch comes on the heels of a failed flight of a NASA science satellite from California, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, just over a week ago. It used a different rocket than the one for Kepler; nonetheless, engineers pored over every single detail to find any similarities and delayed Kepler's launch by one day.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090305/ap_on_sc/planet_hunter

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On the Net:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Indonesia's psychedelic fish named a new species

By ROBIN McDOWELL, Associated Press Writer Robin Mcdowell, Associated Press Writer Sat Feb 28, 10:10 am ET

JAKARTA, Indonesia – A funky, psychedelic fish that bounces on the ocean floor like a rubber ball has been classified as a new species, a scientific journal reported. The frogfish — which has a swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes that extend from its aqua eyes to its tail — was initially discovered by scuba diving instructors working for a tour operator a year ago in shallow waters off Ambon island in eastern Indonesia.

The operator contacted Ted Pietsch, lead author of a paper published in this month's edition of Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, who submitted DNA work identifying it as a new species.

The fish — which the University of Washington professor has named "psychedelica" — is a member of the antennariid genus, Histiophryne, and like other frogfish, has fins on both sides of its body that have evolved to be leg-like.

But it has several behavioral traits not previously known to the others, Pietsch wrote.

Each time the fish strike the seabed, for instance, they push off with their fins and expel water from tiny gill openings to jet themselves forward. That, and an off-centered tail, causes them to bounce around in a bizarre, chaotic manner.

Mark Erdman, a senior adviser to the Conservation International's marine program, said Thursday it was an exciting discovery.

"I think people thought frogfishes were relatively well known and to get a new one like this is really quiet spectacular. ... It's a stunning animal," he said, adding that the fish's stripes were probably intended to mimic coral.

"It also speaks to the tremendous diversity in this region and to fact that there are still a lot of unknowns here — in Indonesia and in the Coral Triangle in general."

The fish, which has a gelatinous fist-sized body covered with thick folds of skin that protect it from sharp-edged corals, also has a flat face with eyes directed forward, like humans, and a huge, yawning mouth.

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On the Net:

University of Washington: http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID47496

Ancient fossil find: This snake could eat a cow!

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter, Ap Science Writer Wed Feb 4, 6:29 pm ET

NEW YORK – Never mind the 40-foot snake that menaced Jennifer Lopez in the 1997 movie "Anaconda." Not even Hollywood could match a new discovery from the ancient world. Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 to 45 feet long, reaching more than 2,500 pounds.

"This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus," enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was familiar with the find.

"It could easily eat something the size of a cow. A human would just be toast immediately."

"If it tried to enter my office to eat me, it would have a hard time squeezing through the door," reckoned paleontologist Jason Head of the University of Toronto Missisauga.

Actually, the beast probably munched on ancient relatives of crocodiles in its rainforest home some 58 million to 60 million years ago, he said.

Head is senior author of a report on the find in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

(The same issue carries another significant report from the distant past. Scientists said they'd found the oldest known evidence of animal life, remnants of steroids produced by sponges more than 635 million years ago in Oman.)

The discoverers of the snake named it Titanoboa cerrejonensis ("ty-TAN-o-BO-ah sare-ah-HONE-en-siss"). That means "titanic boa from Cerrejon," the region where it was found.

While related to modern boa constrictors, it behaved more like an anaconda and spent almost all its time in the water, Head said. It could slither on land as well as swim.

Conrad, who wasn't involved in the discovery, called the find "just unbelievable.... It mocks your preconceptions about how big a snake can get."

Titanoboa breaks the record for snake length by about 11 feet, surpassing a creature that lived about 40 million years ago in Egypt, Head said. Among living snake species, the record holder is an individual python measured at about 30 feet long, which is some 12 to 15 feet shorter than typical Titanoboas, said study co-author Jonathan Bloch.

The beast was revealed in early 2007 at the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville. Bones collected at a huge open-pit coal mine in Colombia were being unpacked, said Bloch, the museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology.

Graduate students unwrapping the fossils "realized they were looking at the bones of a snake. Not only a snake, but a really big snake."

So they quickly consulted the skeleton of a 17-foot anaconda for comparison. A backbone from that creature is about the size of a silver dollar, Bloch said, while a backbone from Titanoboa is "the size of a large Florida grapefruit."

So far the scientists have found about 180 fossils of backbone and ribs that came from about two dozen individual snakes, and now they hope to go back to Colombia to find parts of the skull, Bloch said.

Titanoboa's size gives clues about its environment. A snake's size is related to how warm its environment is. The fossils suggest equatorial temperatures in its day were significantly warmer than they are now, during a time when the world as a whole was warmer. So equatorial temperatures apparently rose along with the global levels, in contrast to the competing hypothesis that they would not go up much, Head noted.

"It's a leap" to apply the conditions of the past to modern climate change, Head said. But given that, the finding still has "some potentially scary implications for what we're doing to the climate today," he said.

The finding suggest the equatorial regions will warm up along with the planet, he said.

"We won't have giant snakes, however, because we are removing most of their habitats by development and deforestation" in equatorial regions, he said.

___

On the Net:

Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature

Boy born with 24 fingers and toes

BBC NEWS

A baby boy has been born in California with 24 perfectly formed fingers and toes - six on each hand and foot.

Being born with additional digits - or being a "polydactyl" - is not wholly uncommon, but it is unusual to see the condition on every extremity.

The Bay Area hospital said staff did not notice the extra digits on ultrasound scans - and did not even spot it when Kamani Hubbard was born.

It was his father, Kris, who realised his son had some unusual features.

Polydactylism is genetic and the father said there was a family history of the condition. However he added his son's case was unique.

"Some family members have had six fingers, not completely developed. But not the toes."

A paediatrician at St Luke's hospital, Dr Michael Treece, said: "It's merely an interesting and beautiful variation rather than a worrisome thing.

"Imagine what sort of a pianist a 12-fingered person would be. Imagine what sort of flamenco guitarist. Think of their typing skills."

Others have pointed out that his family may have some difficulty establishing what the extra pig does in the famous 'This Little Piggy' refrain.

Famous polydactyls have reputedly included the English music hall entertainer Little Tich and Anne Boleyn - although the latter is still disputed by historians.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/7870769.stm

Published: 2009/02/05 08:11:47 GMT

© BBC MMIX

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Euthanasia

It is a tough decision, but my personal view is that we should have the right to end it all or live till the last day.

If god forbids, then god is evil to let his "beloved" children suffer before joining him in heaven, wherever that place is.

Yes, no one understands god, who does? it is always about him, he giveth and he taketh, no question allowed, just prostrate & kowtow.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suicide on TV condemned in Britain

By GREGORY KATZ, Associated Press Writer Gregory Katz, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 11, 2:08 am ET

LONDON – The scene is difficult to watch, even for viewers inured to the subject of dying by a steady diet of violent Hollywood and television fare. Craig Ewert, a former computer scientist from Chicago, is shown lying in bed with his wife at his side while he takes barbiturates. He asks for a glass of apple juice to mask the bad taste and help him swallow. Then he uses his teeth to turn off his ventilator — and dies on camera.

Britain's obsession with reality television reached new heights — or depths — Wednesday night with the broadcast of the assisted suicide of the 59-year-old terminally ill American at a Swiss clinic.

Showing the final moment of death had long been a final taboo, even for no-holds-barred British TV, where sex and violence are common, and the broadcast unleashed debate on an issue that strongly divides public opinion.

Photographs of Ewert's final moments dominated Britain's newspaper front pages Wednesday — "SUICIDE TV" screamed one tabloid — and prompted a debate in Parliament, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown was quizzed about the propriety of the decision to air the program.
Before he died, Ewert said taking his own life would mean less suffering for himself and his family.

"If I go through with it, I die as I must at some point," he says in the documentary, which chronicles his 2006 decision to take his own life after being diagnosed with degenerative motor neuron disease.

"If I don't go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer, and to inflict suffering on my family, and then die."

Care Not Killing, an anti-euthanasia group aligned with the Catholic Church and other religious organizations in Britain, denounced the broadcast as "a cynical attempt to boost television ratings" and persuade Parliament to legalize assisted suicide.

"There is a growing appetite from the British public for increasingly bizarre reality shows," said the group's director, Peter Saunders. "We'd see it as a new milestone. It glorifies assisted dying when there is a very active campaign by the pro-suicide lobby to get the issue back into Parliament."

Mary Ewert wrote in the British press Wednesday that her husband had been enthusiastic about having his final moments televised.

"He was keen to have it shown because when death is hidden and private, people don't face their fears about it," she said, adding that he wanted viewers to understand that assisted suicide allowed him to die comfortably rather than enduring a long, drawn out and painful demise.

The documentary by Oscar-winning director John Zaritsky has previously been shown on Canadian and Swiss TV and at numerous film festivals, where it provoked little controversy. But it struck a raw nerve in Britain, where the divisive debate over assisted suicide remains unresolved.

Zaritsky said it would have been "less than honest" to make the film without showing the actual suicide because it would have left viewers wondering if the death was unpleasant, cruel, or carried out against Ewert's will.

"By putting it out there, and putting it out there in its entirety, people can judge for themselves," he said, adding that the documentary gives viewers an insight into how assisted suicide would work if it is legalized in more places.

Originally called "The Suicide Tourist," the film was renamed "Right to Die?" for its British broadcast on Sky TV's Real Lives digital channel, which draws far fewer viewers than the network's myriad news, sports or movie shows. Still, it generated enormous publicity, with clips shown throughout the day on Sky News and rival channels.

The televised suicide in Britain follows a well-publicized case in Florida, where a teenager killed himself on camera last month and broadcast the chilling images live on an Internet site.

Ewert, who was living in Britain when he became ill, went abroad to end his life because assisted suicide is illegal in Britain.

In the film, he says he wanted to take action before the disease, which destroys cells that control essential muscle activity such as speaking, walking, breathing and swallowing, left him completely incapacitated.

The documentary shows Ewert and his wife going about their daily routine: Mary cleans her husband's teeth, bathes, shaves and feeds him as he bows his head.

Speaking in a reedy voice and breathing deeply from plastic tubes attached to his nose, Ewert said he felt like "empty shell."

He said some people might say: "No, suicide is wrong, God has forbidden it. Fine, but you know what? This ventilator is God."

Before the pair leave for Switzerland, he is wheeled through a local park.
"I see the plants, and they're dying, and I'm dying too," he muses. "They'll be coming back next spring — I'm unlikely to."

"I think I can take my bow, and say: Thanks, it's been fun."

In an emotional message to his adult son and daughter, who appear in the program, Ewert asked for understanding.

"I would hope that this is not a cause of major distress to those who love me," he said, using a voice-activated computer to speak. "This is a journey I must make."

At the same time, he acknowledged, "My dear sweet wife will have the greatest loss, as we have been together for 37 years in the greatest intimacy."

The program shows Ewert being interviewed by Dr. Hans-Jurg Schweizer in Zurich, Switzerland. Schweizer, who is responsible for filling out the lethal prescriptions, gives his approval and wishes him a "happy journey."

Later, Ewert is set up on a small yellow bed in a nondescript room; as the technicians get ready, his wife says her goodbyes.

"Have a safe journey," she says, tearing up. "See you sometime."

Ewert chokes down the lethal cocktail, slurping apple juice through a pink straw to blot out the taste as the ninth movement of Beethoven's symphony plays in the background. His wife holds his hand as he begins dying.

Dignitas, a well-known assisted suicide group in Switzerland, where suicide is legal in some circumstances, aided Ewert.

The group's founder Ludwig A. Minelli said the presence of cameras and filmmakers did not in any way influence Ewert's decision.

"Ewert, because of his illness and his declared intent right from the start to shorten his own suffering, never once considered the possibility of abandoning his assisted suicide," said Minelli.

The case came up during the prime minister's question time Wednesday when legislator Phil Willis, who represents Ewert's district, complained that the film promoted a crime.

He asked Brown if the prime minister believed the show was "in the public interest" or simply a case of "distasteful voyeurism."

Brown did not venture an opinion, saying only that the government's "television watchdogs" will scrutinize the show after it is broadcast.

Public opinion polls suggest that 80 percent of Britons believe the law should be changed to allow a doctor to end a patient's life in a case like Ewert's, but opposition from influential religious groups remains strong and the anti-suicide law remains in place.

___
Associated Press Writers Frank Jordans in Geneva and Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Gremlins are real!

Tiny, long-lost primate rediscovered in Indonesia


By Will Dunham Will Dunham Tue Nov 18, 6:32 pm ET


WASHINGTON (Reuters) – On a misty mountaintop on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists for the first time in more than eight decades have observed a living pygmy tarsier, one of the planet's smallest and rarest primates.


Over a two-month period, the scientists used nets to trap three furry, mouse-sized pygmy tarsiers -- two males and one female -- on Mt. Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park in central Sulawesi, the researchers said on Tuesday.


They spotted a fourth one that got away.


The tarsiers, which some scientists believed were extinct, may not have been overly thrilled to be found. One of them chomped Sharon Gursky-Doyen, a Texas A&M University professor of anthropology who took part in the expedition.


"I'm the only person in the world to ever be bitten by a pygmy tarsier," Gursky-Doyen said in a telephone interview.


"My assistant was trying to hold him still while I was attaching a radio collar around its neck. It's very hard to hold them because they can turn their heads around 180 degrees. As I'm trying to close the radio collar, he turned his head and nipped my finger. And I yanked it and I was bleeding."


The collars were being attached so the tarsiers' movements could be tracked.


Tarsiers are unusual primates -- the mammalian group that includes lemurs, monkeys, apes and people. The handful of tarsier species live on various Asian islands.


As their name indicates, pygmy tarsiers are small -- weighing about 2 ounces (50 grammes). They have large eyes and large ears, and they have been described as looking a bit like one of the creatures in the 1984 Hollywood movie "Gremlins."


They are nocturnal insectivores and are unusual among primates in that they have claws rather than finger nails.


They had not been seen alive by scientists since 1921. In 2000, Indonesian scientists who were trapping rats in the Sulawesi highlands accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier.


"Until that time, everyone really didn't believe that they existed because people had been going out looking for them for decades and nobody had seen them or heard them," Gursky-Doyen said.


Her group observed the first live pygmy tarsier in August at an elevation of about 6,900 feet.
"Everything was covered in moss and the clouds are right at the top of that mountain. It's always very, very foggy, very, very dense. It's cold up there. When you're one degree from the equator, you expect to be hot. You don't expect to be shivering most of the time. That's what we were doing," she said.


(Editing by Sandra Maler)

"Jurassic Park" author Michael Crichton dies at 66

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081105/ts_nm/us_crichton_8

By Dan Whitcomb Dan Whitcomb 2 hrs 42 mins ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Best-selling U.S. author Michael Crichton, who wrote such novels as "The Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park" and created the popular TV drama "ER," has died unexpectedly of cancer at age 66, his family said on Wednesday.

Crichton, a medical doctor turned novelist and filmmaker whose books have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles after what his family described as a "courageous and private battle against cancer."

"Michael's talent out-scaled even his own dinosaurs of 'Jurassic Park,'" filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who directed the blockbuster movie version of that novel and its sequel, "The Lost World," said in a statement. "He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the Earth."

Spielberg added: "Michael was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels. There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place."

The family statement, which was released through a publicist, called Crichton's death "unexpected" but released few other details about his passing and requested privacy.

Born in Chicago on October 23, 1942, Crichton wrote his first novels while attending Harvard Medical School. He was awarded his medical degree in 1969, the same year his first major best seller, "The Andromeda Strain," was published.


KILLER ORGANISMS, ROBOT GUNSLINGERS

A global warming skeptic, he stirred controversy with his 2004 best-seller on the subject, "State of Fear," in which the main villains are eco-terrorists.

Most of his work reflected his medical training, including "The Andromeda Strain," a techno-thriller about scientists battling a space-borne killer microorganism.

"Andromeda" also was the first novel by Crichton to be made into a Hollywood film. He followed that success with "The Terminal Man," "The Great Train Robbery" and "Congo."

He wrote and directed the 1973 film "Westworld," starring Yul Brynner as a robot gunslinger run amok in a futuristic theme park. It was the first major Hollywood film to use computer digitized images and spawned a short-lived TV series.

But Crichton remains best known for "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World," which became two of the top-grossing films of the 1990s. He co-wrote the screenplay for "Jurassic Park" and for the 1996 tornado thriller "Twister."

Also during the 1990s he published such popular novels as "Rising Sun," "Disclosure," and "Timeline." He followed in this decade with "Prey," "State of Fear" and "Next."

His 1976 novel "Eaters of the Dead" was made into the 1999 film "The 13th Warrior."
Crichton won a number of writing and film awards and an Emmy for his work on "ER," the popular and long-running NBC television hospital drama currently in its final season.

"While the world knew him as a great storyteller that challenged our preconceived notions about the world around us -- and entertained us all while doing so -- his wife Sherri, daughter Taylor, family and friends knew Michael Crichton as a devoted husband, loving father and generous friend who inspired each of us to strive to see the wonders of our world through new eyes," his family said in the statement.

"He did this with a wry sense of humor that those who were privileged to know him personally will never forget."

(Editing by Sandra Maler)