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n2doc's JournalScience and Censorship: A Duel Lasting Centuries
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: December 26, 2011
“We have consultations, which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not; and take all an oath of secrecy for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret; though some of those we do reveal sometime to the State, and some not.” -Sir Francis Bacon, “New Atlantis”
The specter of censorship loomed over science last week with news that a federal advisory panel had asked two leading journals to withhold details of experiments out of fear that terrorists could use the information to make deadly flu viruses — the first time the government had interceded this way in biomedical research.
But science and secrecy go back centuries, their conflicting agendas often rooted in issues of war and advanced weaponry. Self-censorship — the kind of confidentiality being requested of the two journals, Science and Nature — was even mentioned by Bacon, the 17th-century British philosopher long credited with illuminating the scientific method.
Governments have repeatedly tried to keep scientific information secret in fields as diverse as math and cryptography, physics and nuclear science, optics and biology. Now the call for concealment is falling on one of the hottest of contemporary fields — virology, where researchers are tinkering with the fundamentals of life to better understand whether altered flu germs might set off deadly epidemics.
“It’s a story with mythological resonance,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists and the publisher of Secrecy News, an e-mail newsletter. “It reflects the view that knowledge is power and some kinds of knowledge have destructive power.”
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/science/science-and-censorship-a-duel-lasting-centuries.html
Cursed Glaciers
By David Bressan | December 26, 2011 |
Once, during the long and cold winter nights in the Alps, people gathered around the fireplace to tell each other ancient tales or myths.
Some of these myths explain the origin or deal with the curse of glaciers. Various glaciers are said to be the results of an ancient curse: the Langgletscher in Swiss, the Marmolada in the Dolomites, the Übergossene Alm and the Pasterze in Salzburg, the Vernagt- and Guslarferner in Tirol to mention some.
The details differ but the general structure of the myth is very similar: A long time ago there existed a rich city surrounded by fertile pastures where today is the glacier. Unfortunately the wealth corrupted the inhabitants and they wasted the fortune, one day they decided to use milk and bread to clean the streets of the city. When a beggar asked for a piece of bread the presumptuous inhabitants denied him this humble request. So he cursed the city, dark clouds covered the sky and heavy and persistent snow started falling in the mountains. When the sun reappeared, the city and pastures were gone, lost forever under the glacier.
Some historians suggest that this myth is based on observations of advancing glaciers during the period of the “Little Ice Age“, a period of cooling extending in the Alps from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
more
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/2011/12/26/cursed-glaciers/
The Vernagtferner in 2007. Old myths tell that the glacier covers the ruins of the ancient cities of Onanä and Dananä, cursed long time ago to punish the hubris of the inhabitants.
Why Ron Paul's Racist Newsletters Didn't Hurt Him in Texas
The fact that Texas Rep. Ron Paul once published racist sentiments in his newsletters has been known for quite some time. And yet Paul has managed to keep getting elected in his Houston-area district on the Gulf Coast. A onetime Democratic consultant in Texas, who asked that his name not be used, emails this anecdote from the 1996 general election that returned Paul to Congress after a 12-year hiatus:
At the time I was Lefty Morris' campaign manager, who was the Democrat running against Ron Paul in the general election. Our campaign released the "Ron Paul Political Report" to reporters and later focus grouped some of his writings and affiliations at a restaurant in La Grange, Texas.
At the time, the "Ron Paul Political Report" was listed in an online Neo-Nazi Directory that also included publications by the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Brothers (or something like that).
Of course, we thought we could use this to our advantage. So, in the focus group, we let participants look at the newsletters and told them that Ron Paul's Political Report was listed in the Neo Nazi directory with the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups.
The focus group got really quiet. Then one man pops off, "There's nothing wrong with the Ku Klux Klan."
more
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/why-ron-pauls-racist-newsletters-didnt-hurt-him-in-texas/250427/
Countrywide's Racist Lending Practices Were Fueled by Greed
Reuters
Economic racism is a slippery thing in 2011. It's not out in the open, like a "whites only" sign above a lunch counter. And it's not explicit, like the deed to a house barring its sale to blacks or Jews.
Instead, it's submerged. It lives in patterns of discrimination hidden within reams and reams of hard to analyze data. It's not necessarily driven by animus or hate. Sometimes it's just a product of garden-variety greed.
For proof, direct your attention to the record-setting settlement announced this week between the Justice Department and Bank of America over the mortgage lending practices of Countrywide Financial. The bank agreed to pay $335 million dollars to settle claims that, at the height of housing boom, Countrywide routinely discriminated against blacks and Hispanics by charging them higher interest rates and fees than equally qualified white customers.
The 45-page complaint that accompanies the settlement may be one of the most extensive studies of housing discrimination ever completed in this country. The court papers outline what Justice investigators found when they analyzed 2.5 million mortgages Countrywide issued between 2004 and 2008. Bank of America, which bought the enormous mortgage lender in 2008, has not admitted or denied any of the government's alleged facts.
Here is the ugly story made brief. According to Justice, Countrywide overcharged more than 200,000 black and Hispanic borrowers for their loans. About 10,000 were sold risky subprime mortgages, even though their finances were good enough to qualify for cheaper prime rates. Black customers who obtained their mortgages through a Countrywide-affiliated broker were more than twice as likely to get a subprime loan than similar white borrowers. In some markets, they were as much as eight times more likely.
more
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/countrywides-racist-lending-practices-were-fueled-by-greed/250424/
Climate skeptics in Va. oppose preparations for sea-level rise
Monday, December 19, 2011
By Darryl Fears, The Washington Post
Over his long career as a public planner, Lewis Lawrence grew accustomed to the bland formalities of planning commission meetings in Virginia's Middle Peninsula, where forgetting to cover one's mouth while yawning through a lecture was about as rude as people got.
But lately, the meetings have gotten far more exciting -- in a bad way, said Mr. Lawrence, acting executive director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission. A well-organized and vocal group of residents has taken a keen interest in municipal preparations for sea-level rise caused by climate change, often shouting their opposition, sometimes while planners and politicians are talking.
The residents' opposition has focused on a central point: They don't think climate change is accelerated by human activity, as most climate scientists conclude. When planners proposed to rezone land for use as a dike against rising water, these residents, or "new activists," as Mr. Lawrence calls them, saw a trick to take their property.
"Environmentalists have always had an agenda to put nature above man," said Donna Holt, leader of the Virginia Campaign for Liberty, a tea party affiliate with 7,000 members. "If they can find an end to their means, they don't care how it happens. If they can do it under the guise of global warming and climate change, they will do it."
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11353/1197922-84-0.stm?cmpid=nationworld.xml
Rise of the drone: From Calif. garage to multibillion-dollar defense industry
By Peter Finn, Published: December 23
Lake Forest, Calif. — In 1980, Abraham Karem, an engineer who had emigrated from Israel, retreated into his three-car garage in Hacienda Heights outside Los Angeles and, to the bemusement of his tolerant wife, began to build an aircraft.
The work eventually spilled into the guest room, and when Karem finished more than a year later, he wheeled into his driveway an odd, cigar-shaped craft that was destined to change the way the United States wages war.
The Albatross, as it was called, was transported to the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where it demonstrated the ability to stay aloft safely for up to 56 hours — a very, very long time in what was then the crash-prone world of drones.
Three iterations and more than a decade of development later, Karem’s modest-looking drone became the Predator, the lethal, remotely piloted machine that can circle above the enemy for nearly a day before controllers thousands of miles away in the southwestern United States launch Hellfire missiles toward targets they are watching on video screens.
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/rise-of-the-drone-from-calif-garage-to-multibillion-dollar-defense-industry/2011/12/22/gIQACG8UEP_story.html
Big Space Pic: A Galaxy Blooming with New Stars
The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) has captured the beauty of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 253. The new portrait is probably the most detailed wide-field view of this object and its surroundings ever taken. It demonstrates that the VST, the newest telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory, provides broad views of the sky while also offering impressive image sharpness.
NGC 253 gleams about eleven and a half million light-years away in the southern constellation of Sculptor. It is often just called the Sculptor Galaxy, although other descriptive names include the Silver Coin or Silver Dollar Galaxy. It is easy to get a good look at NGC 253 through binoculars as it is one of the brightest galaxies in the sky after the Milky Way's closest, big galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy.
Astronomers have noted the widespread active star formation in NGC 253 and labelled it a "starburst" galaxy [1]. The many bright clumps dotting the galaxy are stellar nurseries where hot young stars have just ignited. The radiation streaming from these giant blue-white babies makes the surrounding hydrogen gas clouds glow brightly (green in this image).
This nearby spiral galaxy was discovered by the German–British astronomer Caroline Herschel, the sister of the famed astronomer William Herschel, as she searched for comets in 1783. The Herschels would have been delighted by the crisp, richly detailed view of NGC 253 that the VST can provide.
more
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1152/
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