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19. februar 2007
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Erik Stokstad writes a worrying article about the rising acidity of the oceans. At least it would be worrying if his Science Mag (of all places!) article didn't blow its credibility completely by starting off by repeating a long-disproved urban legend.
Drop a tooth in a can of carbonated soda, and it will dissolve. That's because the carbon dioxide that makes the beverage bubbly also makes it acidic. The same thing is happening with the world's oceans as they take up CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels.
Snopes debunked the soda tooth myth years ago. Mythbusters busted it in its first season, when it dealt with a number of Coca-Cola myths.
You may argue that the article doesn't really repeat the myth because it doesn't explicitly say a tooth will dissolve in a single night. Sooner or later, soda will dissolve a tooth. Sooner or later, pure water will dissolve a tooth. This is an obvious reference to the common urban legend, from a source which should have known better.
Link via Fark.
9:12:16 PM 
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There is not enough evidence to conclude that organic food production is more environmentally friendly, a study finds.
Organic food may be no better for the environment than conventional produce and in some cases is contributing more to global warming than intensive agriculture, according to a government report.
The first comprehensive study of the environmental impact of food production found there was "insufficient evidence" to say organic produce has fewer ecological side-effects than other farming methods.
The 200-page document will reignite the debate surrounding Britain's £1.6bn organic food industry which experienced a 30 per cent growth in sales last year.
David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, drew a furious response from growers last month when he suggested organic food was a "lifestyle choice" with no conclusive evidence it was nutritionally superior.
Sir David King, the Government's chief scientist, also told The Independent he agreed that organic food was no safer than chemically-treated food.
However, since organic food (a serious misnomer if there ever was one) is often produced with a bit more care than industrialised agriculture does, it may well taste better. That would be all I care about.
I am more worried about the toxicity of various "natural" substances than the pesticides that attack them. There is a reason the increase in industrialised agriculture has contributed to the massive improvement in public health and life expectancy all over the world. The irrational fear of "artificial" chemicals is a major contributor to the success of the organic food industry, but it is not based on scientific fact.
8:56:31 PM
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One of the primary objectives in the war on terror was refusing safe havens to al-Qaeda and other Salafist organisations. With the establishment of a de facto independent Talibanistan in North Waziristan in Pakistan, the hydra is given time to regrow, regroup and prepare for new attacks anywhere in the world.
Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.
American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.
The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.
American analysts said recent intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with Al Qaeda. They receive guidance from their commanders and Mr. Zawahri, the analysts said. Mr. bin Laden, who has long played less of an operational role, appears to have little direct involvement.
Officials said the training camps had yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. But groups of 10 to 20 men are being trained at the camps, the officials said, and the Qaeda infrastructure in the region is gradually becoming more mature.
This was an inevitable outcome of Pakistan dropping out of the war on terror. Pakistan is a nuclear armed power, and the imperative objective is to preventing the entire country from falling into extremist hands. Apparently, General Musharraf forms the thin blue line between a fragile internal truce and total disaster, thus the west cannot weaken or damage him, which any aggressive outside action in North Waziristan would do. This is a lose-lose situation, and it's darned difficult to assign blame and come up with a good idea about what should have been handled differently on the subcontinent.
Today, a horrible terrorist attack on a Pakistani-Indian train brings home the gravity of the situation.
Two bombs exploded on a train headed from India to Pakistan, sparking a fire that swept through two coaches and killed 66 people in an attack that officials said Monday was aimed at undermining the peace process between the rivals.
Witnesses described a scene of horror as panic-stricken passengers were trapped in one of the burning cars even after the train stopped, just before midnight Sunday in a rural area in northern India. The screams of the victims filled the night, then were drowned out by the roar of the flames.
Most of the dead were Pakistani, said Railway Minister Laloo Prasad. Dozens were injured.
Authorities searching undamaged train cars said they found two suitcases packed with crude, unexploded bombs and bottles of gasoline, apparently similar to the devices that had exploded.
At this time, at least India and Pakistan don't blame each other, but everybody knows which country has the most serious problem.
Update: Daveed Gartenstein-Ross points out that while al-Qaeda may well be below its previous capabilities for attacking the west, its training for war in Afghanistan is another matter.
I spoke with a senior military intelligence officer about the Times article. He reports that the Times's description that camps in Pakistan have "yet to reach the size and level of sophistication of the Qaeda camps established in Afghanistan under Taliban rule" and its mention of "groups of 10 to 20 men" being trained is only a partial picture of the training camps in Pakistan. The Times article focuses on al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, camps where militants receive the kind of training that could enable them to carry out terrorist attacks in the West. But there are also larger military training camps -- the kind that are used to train Taliban fighters to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, or to train Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, or other Kashmiri separatist groups. The training required to carry out a terrorist attack in the West is different than what is needed to fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir.
Today the Taliban launched its "heaviest attack" on a Canadian convoy in Kandahar. One civilian and one Afghan police officer were killed. With these extremists receiving extensive training in its safe haven in Pakistan, the situation will get worse. And the NATO so-called allies, including Norway, are fiddling...
3:44:52 PM
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The painful and centuries long development that lead to the unique constitution of classical Athens has given us a lot of great stories, art and literature, and also quite a bit of our modern political vocabulary.
Greece was blessed with two massively powerful and glorious bronze age civilisations, the Minoans on Crete, and the Mycenaean civilisation, the age where Homer's epics are placed. For reasons that aren't entirely clear, the rich Mycenaean culture collapsed, the great arts and the entire knowledge of writing disappeared, cities like Athens became small villages or hilltop fortifications at best, and the population dwindled drastically. What followed is known as Greece's "dark ages," more because archaeological evidence from this period is sparse than it actually being a dark and gloomy period for its inhabitants.
The Greeks, however, fought their way back to the top for the second time, and so did Athens. From the 8th century the city was again a force to be reckoned with, it gradually increased its domain over Attica, and along with other Greek cities it used its surplus population to colonise areas as far away as Sicily. But Athens was, like the other city states, continuously plagued by internal strife.
The original rulers were kings being in charge of the aristocracy, a self-designation by the ruling "aristos", that term literally meaning rule by "the best" or "best fit." An increasingly prosperous group of non-aristocrats in Athens wasn't convinced these people lived up to their self-designation, and the unrest made at times the city incapable of ruling itself.
 A word that found its origin in this troubled time is anarchy. The top magistrates of pre-classical era Athens were called archons, from a word meaning ruler. A period where the infighting between the powerful families stalemated the government completely, and where no rulers could be elected, was called anarchy, from the prefix an- (without) and archos.
The famed lawmaker Solon (picture) was elected archon eponymous for a year (594/3 B.C), and accomplished more in that period than most elected officials manage to do in a lifetime. Wisely, however, Solon chose to leave his city for ten years after his term, and the infighting continued. Yet, later Athenians did much to credit Solon with the city's remarkably stable government in the later classical era.
But Athens was not out of the woods after these reforms. At one time, an ambitious aristocrat named Peisistratus seized power by force of arms, and established himself as a tyrant. Now that sounds like an amazingly honest self-designation, until we realise that the Greek word "tyrant" simply refers to someone who has overthrown the ruling order and established himself as the supreme ruler. The term didn't carry any ethical condemnation, but the way in which it has evolved of course tells us quite a bit about how most tyrants actually behaved. Athenian history has however been quite kind to Peisistratus, less so to his descendants, as he did much to establish Athenian greatness and made the city government, navy and armed forces effective organisations.
After the last dictators were overthrown, Athens established democracy, "rule by the common people." It is true that the term "demos" was understood already then in opposition to the aristocracy, ie it meant the commoners, but the people who now ruled were still a minority of the population. The city's large population of slaves, women and foreign-born residents had no say. Ownership of land and being male was a prerequisite for any power, and the wealth still dictated what offices an Athenian could hold, implemented according to Solon's still at the time radical laws.
It is interesting to note that democracy was, then as now, no check on stupid policies. The famed opposition to democracy among Plato and Aristotle owes much to them having witnessed Athenian democracy in action, where effective demagogues (leaders of the people) continuously convinced the voters to make disastrous decisions. One famous example was in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) between Sparta and Athens, when Alcibiades talked the Athenians into launching a huge military expedition to Sicily to attack Spartan ally Syracuse and conquer the island. The attack was a total, unmitigated disaster, and this did much to ensure Athenian defeat at the hands of Sparta in the larger war.
Links: Earlier articles on Greek and Latin history and how old terms are still in use today, often with very different meanings.
12:05:00 AM
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© Copyright 2007 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.03.2007; 06:11:38.
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