And now what! We just had a civilian tourist!! Are we all able to grasp the significance of that word? Just as you or I fork out money (granted, not $20 million) to travel to another nation, or another state, or even to a nearby city, this guy buys a round-trip ticket to a spot 230 miles "out there." And, like any other tourist, he sits by the window, enjoys the view, snaps photos, and eats when meal time rolls around. Then he comes back and says it was "terrific" as if he had just toured one of the national parks. How commonplace can you get? But of course the time and effort contributed by our scientists (both basic and applied) toward making this all happen were not commonplace.

What is the role of science in a Democracy? Is it any different from the role of science in non-democratic nations? Alexis deTocqueville said 170 years ago that "it is not true to assert that men living in democratic times are indifferent to science. Only it must be acknowledged that they cultivate them after their own fashion, and bring to the task their own peculiar qualifications and deficiencies." What is our fashion? Just how do citizens in a democracy go about exploring space, exploring the mind, exploring the body, exploring the environment, exploring the stars, exploring the oceans, exploring the icecaps, exploring the volcanic depths? Is there any difference between the way we apply the scientific method and the way it is done in non-democratic nations? What are our qualifications? What are our deficiencies as regards science?

For those who do not have deTocqueville's book, we have a series of four quotations above which will be periodically changed. Your usual stimulating comments would be much appreciated.

BE SURE TO CLICK ONTO THE "SUBSCRIBE" BUTTON BELOW!

Robby

Robby

England had her civil wars long ago, but they were wars never-the-less. As for her treatment of subjects in Africa and India, a bit of reading should set one straight on that score. As for how she treated American colonists, it was more than "taxation without representation"! How about being forced to quarter troops in civilian homes, taking whatever they wanted without payment or recourse for the citizen, and generally extremely shabby treatment? the British were not above using torture at this time.

Now for an update on our own democracy - it seems the type of guns the FBI used at Waco were not tested, only a different kind. And the longer time goes by without proper tests, the less chance to prove what was claimed about the FBI shooting there. Coverup, anyone?

We thrill to the picture of the capsule being launched from Cape Kennedy and eliminate from our mind the hundreds of mathematicians, physicists, etc. who spend thousands of hours calculating equations which show us which planet is going to be where when which capsule arrives at a given point.

And so the lights on the roof of the giant Sears Tower have gone dark at night. So has the distinctive crown of light atop the John Hancock Center, the gracefully muscular skyscraper on Michigan Avenue, Chicago's Champs-Elysees. And such prominent architectural icons as the ornate Wrigley Building and the gothic Tribune Tower have dimmed their lights, too.

The point is to attrct less attention at night -- not from people, but from birds -- from the song sparrow to the hermit thrush to the Baltimore oriole. Birds migrating from the south in the Spring and from the north in the Fall are attracted by the lights of buildings, apparently confusing a light bulb with the stars that they navigate by. And too often, ornithologists say, the birds smash into the windows and wind up dead or seriously injured.

Anyone here interested in the Science of Ornothology?

Thank you, Eloise, for sharing that quote of deT's from your French version (which when you get down to it, is more accurate than our English translation.) Do the rest of you here agree with deT that "those interested in engineering sciences are growing in number?" Do you also agree that "in Democracies, the working class takes part in public affairs?"

Robby

So am I. I have his book constantly before me (the English version indicated above) and no matter what is happening day to day in America and other Democracies, he observed the same thing 170 years ago and was able to get to the core of our thinking.

Yes, the nation has changed but have people changed?

The research also found that women remain happier than men today, but that the gap has narrowed as -- and perhaps because -- women have entered the work force in larger numbers. In fact, men are about as happy today as they were in the early 1970's. Nerly all of the decline since then is among women.

Robby

Robby

Robby

Betty:--I know what velcro is and the ways in which we use it now, but what was its origin?

Carolyn:--Concerning ths cost of sending up the shuttles vs hungry people, hasn't it always been that way throughout history? How many people could have been fed with the money that Queen Isabella gave Columbus? Isn't science a cost vs benefit exercise? The companies of the Old World were looking for spices. As a result the New World was found.

Robby

1951: George de Mestral applies to the Swiss government for a patent for his hook and loop fastener.

"To me the key sentence there is "He wondered why the burrs stuck."

WHY? WHY? WHY? The eternal question of the child. Could we all be scientists if we allowed our inner child to remain? Do we allow our adulthood to become the corpse of a child? Doesn't Democracy allow us the freedom to think and to wonder and to do something about it? Is Science something far removed from our everyday lives or is it closer to each of us than we realize?

Robby

I know you were, Cathy, and I am asking others here to put their Scientific thinking caps on - either regarding your idea or other ideas.

Robby

The space agency announced last October a revised program for Mars exploration that officials characterized as more flexible, responsive and resilient than previous approaches. The plan includes six flights over the next seven years but stretches out the timetable for later flights to incorporate new technolgies, more deailed investigation of the planet and possible joint ventures with France and Italy.

Any comments?

In 2005, A Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, modeled on the successful Mars Global Surveyor which is still orbting and mapping the planet.

In 2007, a "smart" landing craft outfitted with a precision guidance and navigation system and hazard-avoidance systems for improving the chances of landing in the right place and in one piece. In the same year, NASA plans to launch the first Scout mission, a low-budget scientific craft that could, for example, deploy instrument-bearing balloons or a small airplane.

In 2009, NASA may team up with the Italian Space Agency to use ground-penetrating radar for prospecting for water from orbit.

NASA officials are also discussing with the Italian Space Agency the possibility of a joint mission in 2007 to place a satellite in orbit around Mars to relay the increasingly heavy communications load from spacecaft there. In October, France's Research Ministry signed a "statement of intent" with NASA to collaborate on small landers. The flights are being planned to search for the most likely places where water may exist or had been present in the past - places, that is, where life may have emerged. NASA emphasized that there were no plans for manned missions.

It is obvious from these plans that we are speaking not only of activity by Americans but of a scientific collaboration of various Democracies around the world.

Any comments by others here?

We are all entitled to our beliefs but stating the same belief over and over again could be considered proselytizing.

Robby

A most important point, Mal. We tend to think only in terms of what the layperson calls "rocket science." The average person, leading his "average" life is constantly being affected by the findings in space laboratories.

In addition to "indoor" laboratories, we should consider what is being found and learned "outdoors." Scientists have been studying a potato-sized meteorite found in Antarctica in 1996. They say that they found chemical traces that could have been left by tiny bacteria that either hitched a ride on the meteorite, or had once lived in it before it was knocked off Mars. They believe it is a chunk of Mars rock that fell to Earth 13,000 years ago, that it was knocked off Mars about 16 million years ago by an asteroid, and that it stayed cool enough to sustain life. Other studies have suggested that rocks can make it from Mars to Earth in a year, and that some living organisms can live in space for several years.

Possible? Not possible?

He and others have created a contest -- a robot firefighting competition, open to designers of all ages. Robots would search for a fire, and the one that was first to find and extinguish the flames would win. Now there is an annual Trinity College contest. The robots are not yet ready to put out a typical household fire soon after it starts, but they are much closer to that goal.

In the contest, the goal is to extinguish a candle flame. The professor says that the robots are faster and more agile each year. The first year, it took them about five minutes to find the fire. At the recent contest, some of the robots did the job within 10 seconds under far more complicated conditions. The problms that the robots must solve have steadily increase, substituting tiles, carpeting and rubber mats, for instance, for the smoothe floor that was once the standard.

The robot has a plan of the house. It first needs to figure out where it is and in what direction it needs to go. Then it has to seek the fire, looking in each room as it goes. The robots function autonomously, controlled by a computer, not a person.

See any connection here between Science and your home?

Robby

To help guide pilots more effectively, Greatland Laser, based in Anchorage, is developing a laser device that enhances the painted lines pilots see as they taxi. Most airports mark runways and taxiways with red, green or yellow painted lines and often with incandescent lights that are flush with the markings.

Most fliers are familiar with the stop-and-go traffic of airport taxiways and the frustration that can set in while the plane waits in line to take off. While the wait can be tedious for passengers, it is a time when the pilot has to be alert and pay careful attention to the various pavement markings and lights that lead to the runway. The instances when pilots miss the hold lines that keep them from entering active runways are being reported more frequently as airports become more crowded, aviation experts say.

The device can emit red, green or yellow lines, which are the colors used to mark things like hold lines and stop bars, analogous to yield signs and stop signs for car traffic. The president of Grantland Laser said the lack of lighting at many of Alaska's airports had inspired him to design the system. "There were times," he said, "when I'd have to rely on someone going out to the runway and igniting a coffee can stuffed with toilet paper and diesel fuel 40 minutes before my approach."

Anyone here with similar memories of frustration?

Veteran controllers who were hired before 1972 face no legal limit on how long they can work. They can stay on the intense and demanding job as long as their desire remains. But this group of controllers is rapidly aging. Many of the older controllers at the Washington Air Traffic Control Center wear bifocals.

Said the president of their union: "This is a young man's game." For younger controllers, it is a young person's game by law. Congress changed the rules in 1972 to require controllers hired to retire at 56. The union estimates that half of the nation's controllers will be gone within nine years. Retirements should peak in 2006 or 2007 but sooner in the busiest places, such as the Washington center, where more senior people tend to work, and where it takes longest to train a new controller, about three to five years.

Science has taught us much about air flight. Are we applying what we know to make it safe?

Africa's plight is gaining increased attention. Africans did not start dying of the disease yesterday. Public Health officials have been warning of a third-world AIDs holocaust for at least a decade. Today, the World Health Organization estimates that 25 million Africans are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, but only about 10,000 are getting the drugs that could save lives.

In March members of ACT Up, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, staged a "die-in" outside the headquarters of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in Washington. The rallying cry was: "MEDICATION FOR EVERY NATION!" Drug makers are caught in a squeeze play, hemmed in on one side by moral outrage over the plight of Africans dying for lack of medications readily available in the United States, and on the other by an intense pharaceutical pricing debate here at home.

Said the vice-president of AARP: "It may be very dramtic in Africa, but it is really a very similar situation on a day-to-day basis to seniors in this country who do not have drug coverage." Elderly people must sometimes choose between buying pills and food and often go to Mexico or Canada to buy cheaper drugs.

These issues are now playing out on the global stage. In South Africa, protests have erupted over a lawsuit brought by 39 drug companies seeking to black the country from buying inexpensive generic AIDS drugs. Pharmaceutical giants have been left scrambling for some kind of redemption.

SCIENCE is now very much in the forefront. The world is the scene of a pandemic. Further research is needed. Money is needed to conduct the research. Where is the source of the money? Where should it be spent? Who comes first?

Small manufacturers in places like India, South Korea and China use the Internet, faxes and phones to find buyers for their medicines. They produce either the active ingredients in AIDS drugs or package the ingredients into finished drugs themselves and sell lifesaving medicines for a fraction of the brand-name price.

Are scientific companies helping the population in one way and holding them back in another?

But some of the biggest foreign manufactuers -- including ACIC and Cipla -- have factories that meet standards set by the F.D.A. because they sell their active drug ingredients to companies producing generic and even brand-name medicines for Americans.

Physicians are constantly making decisions as to whether they should prescribe the brand name or the generic name. (That is, if they can prescribe the generic -- depends on the patent). The generic is cheaper and the physician might prescribe that to help the patient financially. Or he/she might prescribe the brand name because he/she believes there is a difference or because of an affinity (not affiliation) with the drug company.

A "generic" is not a "fake" medicine. It is the chemical name for the same medicine. For example, Wellbutrin is bupropion. Zyban is also bupropion.

And we might ask ourselves an ethical question. If we are dealing with a South African child who is HIV-positive and we have a choice between giving a foreign-made medicine which is not quite that pure versus giving no medicine at all, what do we do?

Robby

Born in 1989, he was said to be the country's "longest-surviving AIDS baby" at age 7. A year later, his white foster mother, Gail Johnson, fought a public battle to have him admitted to her local public school despite opposition from other parents. This led to a national policy banning discrimination against infected children.

The boy came to real prominence a year ago for his speech at the 13th International AIDs conference in Durban. He described how his mother gave him up "because she was very scared that the community she lived in would find out that both she and he were infected.

In the middle of his 10-minute address he said: "We are all human beings. We are normal. We have hands, we have feet, we can welk, we can talk, we have needs just like everyone else. I just wish that the government can start giving AZT to pregnant H.I.V. mothers to help stop the virus being passed on to their babies." These words stung President Thabo Mbeki who walked out of the forum while Nkosi was delivering the speech.

We are discussing Science and Democracy. South Africa is a Democracy.

Robby

AIDS since then has killed more than 438,000 Americans and nearly 22 million people worldwide since that report in 1981. In America, the disease control agency estimates, as many as 900,000 people are infected with H.I.V. Of these, 320,000 have developed AIDS, which occurs when the virus debilitates the immune system enough to make patients vulnerable to a range of other infections. Each year, federal health officials say, another 40,000 Americans become infected with H.I.V. Globally, the figure was 5.3 million last year.

Are the numbers so big that we become numb to them and no longer pay attention? Are we doing too little to help the scientists who can help us?

deTocqueville says:--"Their exclusively commercial habits have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects." (P160, Taste for Science.) Are we, as Americans, saying in our "taste for science," that giving care to the minorities is not "practical?"

First come the protease inhibitors, 10 giant capsules. These are the drugs that revolutionized AIDS therapy. Cmbined with other anti viral medicines in so-called drug cocktails, they suppress the virus that causes the disease, and have brought countless people back from the brink of death.

Next come more antiviral pills and antibiotics to stave off infections.

Then there is a tiny rose-colored tablet, to ward off thrush -- a green tablet for iron -- a yellow one for folic acid -- and an orange-coated aspirin, to guard against heart attack.

All this involves a systematic rhythm -- two pills, a sip of juice, a nibble of toast, two more pills. Then comes the tingling and numbness crawling across the lips. Then comes the diarrhea which might cause spending at least an hour in the bathroom.

All this is in America where the medicine is available. People elsewhere in the world are dying for lack of these medicines. In this country, those life-prolonging medicines have helped push the disease out of the public consciousness, even as the H.I.V. (human immunodeficiency virus which causes AIDS) spreads alarmingly in the poorest neighborhoods.

Poverty and lack of education go together with AIDS.

AIDS altered people's sex lives and changed the discussions parents have with their children about sex. New topics arose in literature and theater. Patient advocates assumed greater responsibilities. Advocates for AIDS patients pushed the government to approve new medicines faster.

AIDS ushered in a SCIENTIFIC research effort without parallel. While there have been notable failures -- there is still no vaccine -- the successes in therapy stand as a powerful reminder, according to the top AIDS expert at the National Institutes of Health, of "what can happen when one puts a lot of resources into a public health calamity."

But what the disease has changed most is the lives of the people who live with it. Once a sure path to the cemetery, infection with H.I.V. is today as manageable for some people as diabetes. Yet the disease still carries a social stigma so strong that sometimes the biggest burden of having H.I.V. is keeping it a secret.

America (and the world) will never again be the same.

Robby

1 - The inner-city epidemic
2 - The rural epidemic
3 - The epidemic among women
4 - The epidemic among intravenous drug users
5 - The epidemic among gay men
6 - The epidemic among blacks
7 - The epidemic among non-Hispanic whites, and
8 - The epidemic among Hispanics>

She adds, however, that the most powerful determinant of how an H.I.V. patient fares is not race or gender or sexual orientation but CLASS. In that respect, there are just two AIDS epidemics - the one among people who, by virtue of their education and income, lead stable lives and the one among people who do not.

As we continue to discuss "Science and Democracy" and look at the scientific aspects of this plague, it is interesting to note the comments of Dr. David Satcher, Surgeon General of the United States. He sees America as a mirror of what has happened globally, that is, that the disease has settled in the most vulnerable communities. He also sees the discovery that AZT can practically eliminate mother-to-infant transmission of the virus as the "most dramatic progress and significant progress" so far. Looking forward, he is pinning his hopes on a vaccine, although he said it is unlikely that scientists will develop one within the next five years -- and, even if developed, it will take decades to erdicate H.I.V.

Not since the Black Death killed one-third of Europe's population in the 14th century, Dr. Satcher said, has there been an infectious-disease outbreak as devastating as H.I.V. Yet at the same time, America's sense of urgency about AIDS is waning. While a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Americans view AIDS as the world's most pressing health issue, in the United States the disease has slipped into second place, behind cancer, as a concern.

In examining America's "taste for science," does deTocqueville have it exactly right in his comment (above) which begins with "Their exclusively...?"

Robby

Robby

In what way, however, do you see Science "failing?"

1 - It changed the speed at which social services move
2 - It changed the people with whom politicians curried favor.
3 - It made patients with all types of critical illnesses press their doctors harder for information
4 - It took health workers out of their offices and into neighborhoods.
5 - It changed the following industries:

a - Insurance
b - Fashion
c - Philanthropic
d - Health care
e - Real estate
f - Music
g - Managed care
h - Internet

AIDS has reached into almost every segment of society in different ways. It is both a disease and a social problem.

Have any of you folks seen changes in your areas created by the existence of AIDS?

Amazing how we human beings all come together when we are all facing the same danger.

Many new agents are now under development to fight cancer. This new generation of cancer fighters will be the long-awaited payoff from decades of research into the molecular biology of cancer. Unlike chemotherapy and radiation, blunderbuss weapons that attack healthy as well as cancerous cells and can cause severe side effects, the new agents are designed to kill cancer cells alone. In principle, they should eliminate malignancies more effectively while being far gentler on the patient.

Progress in developing the new agents has been slow and generally unspectacular. Researchers and drug companies have put enormous effort into developing drugs against some obvious targets in cancer cells but so far without much success.

A leading cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins says: "We are at a critical huncture where so much has been learned and there is a lot of optimism that new kinds of therapies will be developepd. I share that optimism, but realistically it is not going to be simple."

Anyone here with personal or family contact with cancer who would like to share thoughts?

Robby

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued two assessments of the research into global warming in 1990 and 1995. This panel operates under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program. Last November negotiators from most of the world's nations gathered in The Hague to work out details of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty intended to cut releases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The 1997 treaty has been signed by more than 150 countries but has not yet been ratified by any industrialized country.

The results of these meetings are that greenhouse gases produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels are altering the atmosphere in ways that affect earth's climate and it is likely that they have "contributed substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years." Many panel members said that the summary represents the closest thing to a consensus possible in science.

We are a Democracy. We, the people, make the decisions. What should we be deciding in this area?

Robby

Agree? Disagree?

As we continue to discuss Science and Democracy, one of the current concerns is Global Warming. One of the most striking findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that the average global temperature over the next 100 years could be 11 degrees Fahrenheit higher from what it was in 1990. By comparison, average temperatures are only 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer now than they were at the end of the last Ice Age.

The worsening of the picture, according to the panel, is due to a projected cleansing of the atmosphere in coming decades of other emissions from fuel burning that have a cooling influence on climate -- specifically the veil of tiny particles of sulfates from unfiltered burning of coal and oil that contribute to smog and acid rain.

Through a decade of scientific and political debate over global warming, the opponent always was industry, particularly oil and coal companies threatened by anything that might bring about an early end to the carbon age.

But we are a Democracy, are we not? Aren't industries entitled to the benefits of a Democracy?

Robby

This article contains another viewpoint on global warming not usually presented to the public.

Robby

Agree? Disagree?

As we continue to examine Science within Democracy and, while we are examining diseases, looking at the pharmaceutical industries, are they the Artistocracy of our Democracy?

According to Ol Imp, "everybody needs somebody to look down on" and that "Democracy as conceived in ideal form has never existed."

As the price of medications arises and as many people in need are not finding these medications even available, are the aristocratic pharmaceutical corporations looking down on us?

At Kyoto, a central issue was whether developing countries would be required to chip in on emissions cuts. But that issue quickly slid to the back burner in favor of the sharp dispute between the United States and the European Union, where the Green Party holds substantial sway.

The United States initially sought to get halfway to its emissions-cutting target by using its vast forests as a carbon dioxide "sink." The European Union objected, saying it was a back-door way for the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases to reduce its target.

Is the European Union ahead of America is taking action toward protecting our planet?

The United States, by far the biggest producer of the greenhouse gases that are believed to be a big part of the warming problem, has a special obligation to see that the diplomacy continues. The Kyoto agreement committed the industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 5.2 percent. The dominant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, caused by the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil in power plants and vehicles.

In principle, the agreement allowed nations to meet their targets in several ways. They could make "real" reductions in fossil fuel use, for example by investing heavily in cleaner fuels and cleaner plants. They could earn credits by investing in clean-air projects in other countries, or by buying those credits on the open market from other countries that had already met their targets. They could also claim credit for the so-called carbon "sinks" -- forests that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

Do you folks see any of this happening? Is SCIENCE moving forward in the Democracies?

Under this plan, the U.S. Forest Service will ban road building in 58.9 million acres of federal forest without roads, including 9.3 million acres in the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. While the vast majority of roadless forests are in the West, the plan affects part of federal forests in 38 states, including Florida's Apalachicola National Forest, Virginia's George Washington National Forest, New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest, Idaho's Bitteroot range and Alaska's Tongass, viewed by environmentalists as North America's rain forest.

I live right near the George Washington National Forest which is perhaps small compared to some of the Western forests, but it is beautiful. Does anyone else here feel a closeness to any of these forests, even if you don't live near them?

You are so correct and any reputable scientist will tell you that you are correct. Good scientists almost never use the term "proof." They come up with expressions such as "it appears that," or "evidence points toward" or "there is a high probability that." The media may change the wordings from what the scientists originally said or people may read the scientific conclusion and interpret it the way they want to interpret it.

Thank you for emphasizing this point as we continue our subtopic of Science and Democracy.

Robby

Robby

Robby

BTW, deTocqueville was born into aristocracy. Here in America anyone could become a member of the "industrial aristocracy" if they were astute enough. It wasn't an accident of birth, as in Europe.

Robby

Environmentalists have hailed this Act as rivaling only the steps taken by Theodore Roosevelt in laying the foundation for today's national forest system. The director of the Heritage Forests Campaign says:--"This is a great moment in history, and it is smething for which our children will express gratitude."

Under the proposed plan, about 2.65 million cubic yards of river bottom mud, containing an estimated 100,000 pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCB's, would be dredgd from the river in various so-called pollution hot spots along a 40-mile stretch from the Troy dam to the Thompson Island pool, about 35 miles north of Albany. The dredged material would be sent to existing licensed landfill disposal sites.

As we examine the physical health of our planet and taking action to improve it, are we going about it the right way?

Robby

Robby

Diesel soot, which has been associated with increased asthma, bronchitis and heart disease, as well as possibly cancer, has been of special concern to health specialists. A recent study at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found a link betweeen exposure to microscopic soot and death rates in 20 large cities.

The American Petroleum Institute cited a study which said the new sulfur requirements would boost diesel prices by at least 15 cents a gallon and cause "a significant risk of fuel shortages" by 2007.

Let us assume, for discussion's sake, that science did a good job in both cases and was comparatively accurate. Which result is of the greatest importance to the average citizen? deTocqueville said a full 170 years ago:--"The Americans were naturally inclined to require nothing of science but its special applications to the useful arts and the means of rendering life comfortable." (P159, Taste for Science.)

Was "comfort" the most important factor in the life of an American shortly after we declared independence and is "comfort" still our greatest desire? Is that the goal of Democracy?

Robby

Robby

Funny, but the European "man on the street" protests that we will not be a party to the Kyoto agreement, but the only European country to sign that agreement so far has been Romainia! As it was, the vote of the U.S. senate regarding Kyoto was 95 to 0. It seems both major parties were against participating in the treaty. Oh well, it seems we can do nothing right as far as they are concerned.

The Animal Health Institute, a trade group in Washington that represents 31 makers of veterinary drugs, has disputed the findings, which are 40 percent higher than industry estimates.

Government scientists say that, regardless of who is right, the conflicting figures highlight a werious problem -- the glaring lack of reliable information about the amounts and types of antibiotics used in lifestock in different parts of the country.

What have you been eating lately?

People all over the world like their comforts and would like to make money. So how is Democracy any different from any of the other non-democratic nations whose citizens have the same goals?

There is already widespread concern in the medical community about the prescription of unnecessary antibiotics for human use, but that problem is exacerbated by the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in agriculture. The practice of giving animals antibiotics is largely unnecessary, as farmers in Sweden, where giving important human antibiotics to farm animals is illegal, have proved.

The public also has an interest in the quality of information concerning antibiotic usage. What did you have for supper?

A lengthy and detailed report based on three years of work by five national laboratories said that a program emphasizing research and incentives to adopt new technologies could reduce the growth in electricity demand by 20 percent to 47 percent. That would be the equivalent of between 265 and 610 big 300-megawatt power plants.

Should the three-year-long research by five national laboratories be ignored?

At Fort Polk, an Army base in Louisiana, electricity use during peak hours fell by 43 percent after base managers installed fluorescent lights, low-flow shower heads, new attic insulation and new home heating and cooling systems.

Most of the savings came from installing geothermal heat pumps. an efficient home heating and cooling system that circulates fluids through underground coils but otherwise uses conventional technologies. Hundreds of homes on the base were equipped with the systems, generating immediate cost savings for electricity and totally eliminating the homes' use of natural gas for water heating.

A study prepared by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory last year contended that striving to make such savings often made sound economic sense. In this Democracy of ours are we using the knowledge that Science is giving us?

As we look at the current lack of progress in solving our energy problem, is deTocqueville right on the mark?

Robby

The 240-foot windmills will straddle the state line, in Walla Walla County, Wash., and Umatilla County, Oregon.

Is science moving us in the correct direction here?

Interesting that more and more of you in this forum are adopting deTocqueville's term "aristocracy" and applying it to the controlling interests in a Democracy.

Everyone, aristocracy and not, use energy. How do you folks suggest that the power (double meaning) be taken away from the aristocracy? Or do we just light the candles and be philosophical?

I made no suggestion at all nor do I in most of my postings. I ask open questions for participants to answer openly according to their opinions. If you inferred a suggestion, that is your inference and does not mean I implied it.

Robby

And while we're talking about energy (or the lack thereof), in the same city were many lavoirs which appeared like small swimming pools where the women took their clothes and washed them by hand. A woman I knew operated a "laundry boat." This was a more "modern" method of washing clothes and customers paid her for soap and other materials and for the use of this boat. Its deck was near the level of the water and on the edges of the boat were metal hooks where the clothes were twisted for wringing. In the morning, she would push the boat out into the center of the small river and anchor in the middle where the water was cleaner. The customers would then get on their knees and wash their clothes in this much cleaner water, then wring them out on special hooks before drying.

This primitive method of washing clothes was not due to the war. It existed before the war started. I'm talking about the 1940's.

Now what was this complaint you have about your washing machine or your lack of electric energy?

Sorry you weren't with us, Ol Imp, when our subtopic was Justice and Democracy but if you click onto the Part V link above, you can see our many comments.

Fuel cells are one of the cleanest and most efficient technologies for producing electricity. They turn oxygen and hydrogen into electricity in the presence of electrolytes, charged particles in colution. Fuel cells emit negligible amounts of pollutants. They work somewhat like battries, in that both use electrolytes and electrodes to conduct current, but the cells use a constant source of fuel (usually natural gas for the hydrogen and air for the oxygen) so they don't lose their charge as batteries do.

Says a spokesman for the New York Power Authority:--"In this age of rolling blackouts, fuel cells are seen as a reliable source of backup power. The end user has the generator capacity right at their doorstep, so there's no relying on transmission and distribution lines."

So there's fuel cells and windmills. As we examine Science and Democracy, where are we headed?

Robby

The Legoland California Amusement Park in Carlsbad, near San Diego, has an arrangement with its utility, the San Diego Gas and Electric Company, to keep the lights on but the park is prepared in the event of a loss. The contingency plan consists of keeping open the 3 rides, of the the 20 total, that are not powered by elecricity. Barbecues would be rolled out to cook food, and the park's boulevards would be flooded with performers, including singers, dancers, jugglers and musicians who will entertain until the power comes back on.

Many tourist attractions, including Disneyland in Anaheim, are already prepared becaue they upgraded their systems in 1999, fearing a Year 2000 disaster that would threaten the power grid. Said their director of communications:--"A lot of these things were already tested and documented. We are skilled at emergency evacuations. Energy is only one part of that."

Is this the answer for us everyday citizen -- like the Boy Scout, to BE PREPARED?

Robby

The Legoland California Amusement Park in Carlsbad, near San Diego, has an arrangement with its utility, the San Diego Gas and Electric Company, to keep the lights on but the park is prepared in the event of a loss. The contingency plan consists of keeping open the 3 rides, of the the 20 total, that are not powered by elecricity. Barbecues would be rolled out to cook food, and the park's boulevards would be flooded with performers, including singers, dancers, jugglers and musicians who will entertain until the power comes back on.

Many tourist attractions, including Disneyland in Anaheim, are already prepared becaue they upgraded their systems in 1999, fearing a Year 2000 disaster that would threaten the power grid. Said their director of communications:--"A lot of these things were already tested and documented. We are skilled at emergency evacuations. Energy is only one part of that."

Is this the answer for us everyday citizen -- like the Boy Scout, to BE PREPARED?

Robby

May I tell a story. Many many years ago a group of 10,000 people decided to demonstrate the power of the people united. They gathered out on the desert and the plan was for each person to shout as the leader dropped his hand. The tremendous power of 10,000 people shouting at one time would rise to the heavens.

Everyone was excited. They spoke among themselves and discussed how loud the shout would be. And now the moment had come. They all watched the leader. He dropped his hand.

And everyone listened. And the silence was deafening.

Robby

Eloise tells us that "Alexis de Tocqueville knew about human behaviour like no other man or woman I ever had the privilege to read. He understood how human beings tick, whether they be in the Aristocracy or in a Democracy, and any 'cracy' in between."

deTocqueville said:--"The Americans were naturally inclined to require nothing of science but its special applications to the useful arts and the means of rendering life comfortable." (P159, Taste for Science.)

All fits together, doesn't it?

As we approach greater energy conservation, on what basis do we set our priorities? The city of Palo Alto has agreed not to cut off power to Roche Pharmaceuticals as long as the company reduces energy consumption by 15 percent within 30 minutes of an announced Stage 3 alert. An exemption was granted for the Bay Area Rapid Transit Districct which runs 95 miles of commuter train service in the San Francisco metropolitan area. Pacific Bell Park, home of the San Francisco Giants has asked for an exemption.

These are priorities which must be set within the community. How about within your own home? Do you treasure light or do you want your computer shut down? Which has priority -- your washing machine or your microwave? Which is more important to you -- your television or your air conditioning?

Nuclear reactors are now so desirable that when old ones go on sale, bidding wars have broken out. Some regions of the country are short of electric power and the price of natural gas, the most popular fuel for new power plants, has doubled. Windmills look promising but still produce only a tiny amount of power. Solar power is even less significant.

There is expected to be strong support for new reactor construction. There are problems, for example -- this country has still not decided what to do with reactor waste Industry executives say that the first new order for a reactor, if it comes, is likely to be at a site where other plants are already operating and the neighbors are used to a nuclear installation.

The co-esistence of Science and Democracy brings up interesting questions. Take one for example. Any objection to a nuclear plant being in your neighborhood?

I live in an apartment addition in my daughter's house. This house is in a neighborhood of houses ranging in price from $250,000 to a bit more than three quarters of a million dollars.

It is just south of a rich town where there are similar and more expensive neighborhoods. It is also located within twenty miles of the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant. I lived within twenty miles of a nuclear power plant before I moved to North Carolina from Florida, too.

A dump for low level radioactive waste has been proposed on the Chatham County-Wake County border. This house is very close to the Chatham County line. There is a furor against this among some people in this area. What is low level radioactive waste? What is high level radioactive waste? Where does the high level radioactive waste go to be dumped? For some information about low level radioactive waste, please click the link below.

Radioactive waste

Nuclear waste is a more pressing problem than when the first plants were built. California, for example, has made it illegal to begin new reactors until the waste problem is solved. In every state, that will be an argument.

In response, some companies have announced plans to build coal-burning plants, but these require costly pollution controls, and even then, they will emit sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which cause acid rain and smog. The plants also produce carbon dioxide, which may eventually be regulated as a contributor to global climate change.

Are we perhaps saying that it is impossible to create electricity without polluting our planet in one way or another?

Elizabeth Teissier is well known in France as the weekly horoscope columnist for a popular television guide, the author of a half-dozen books on astrology, and the astrologer to the French president Francois Mitterrand.

A Ph.D. candidate in sociology, she spent almost 10 years completing a 900-page thesis on astrology and in April received a passing grade at the Sorbonne for her efforts. An account of her thesis defense ran on the front page of Le Monde, France's most important daily newspaper. The article set off a storm of protest.

More than 400 sociologists have signed a petition asking the president of the Sorbonne to make an independent evaluation of the case. And the French Association of Scientific Information has assigned a group of scientists and social scientists to review the thesis.

Is Astrology a part of your life? Is it a Science?

Robby

No.

There is no doubt that man is polluting earth, but how many are really willing to give up all their power-consuming conveniences? And how is one to get 6 billion other people to give up what gains in comfort they may have made? The problem seems insurmountable.

BUT the pace of change measured now goes beyond anything in recent centures. Says this scientist: "There may be a natural part of it, but there's something else being superimposed on top of it. And it matches so many other lines of evidence of warming. Whether you're talking about bore-hole temperatures, shrinking Arctic sea ice, or glaciers, they're telling the same story."

Some changes underway are:--

1 - Gaps in sea ice at the North Pole
2 - Shifts in animal populations
3 - Retreat of mountain glaciers
a - The icecap atop Mount Kilimanjaro, which for thousands of years has floated like a cool beacon over the shimmering plain of Tanzania, is retreating at such a pace that it will disappear in less than 15 years. Measurements indicate one spot which lost a yard of thickness in one year The mountain has lost 82 percent of its icecap since it was first surveyed in 1912.
b - Similar trends on ice-capped peaks from Peru to Tibet - from Montana to Mount Everest to the Swiss Alps. It is estimated that in the Alps, glaciers will in 25 years have lost 90 percent of the volume of ice that was there a century ago.
c - The melting is quickest in and near the tropics - some ancient glaciers in the Andes (like Kilimanjaro) are melting fastest of all. The Peruvian glacier, Qori Kalis, pulled back 508 feet in the last two years, 33 times faster that the rate in the first measurement period from 1963 to 1978.

In the short run, hydroelectric dams and reservoirs downstream will be flush with water but in the long run the source will run dry. The whole world is cashing in on a bank account that was built up over thousands of years but isn't being replenished. Once that is gone, communities will have to turn to oil or coal for power, adding even more greenhouse gases to the air.

Four-inch-thick ice cylinders from bore holes are being stored in a deep-frozen archive at Ohio State. Said this scientist: "In a matter of years, anyone wanting to study the glaciers of Africa or Peru will probably have to travel to Columbus, Ohio, to do so."

Is this all garbage? Should we ignore what scientists are telling us?

Robby

Carbon Dioxide is the gas that gives soda its fizz and in small amounts is harmless. Should we ignore it as we examine global warming?

Robby

Some of the past postings here have given feelings of surrender. Anybody here with a slingshot or know where one can be obtained?

Robby

The key word is "can" as opposed to "will." Is it too late? Are we in the Democracies too spoiled? Are we just playing a word game here? Are we willing to give up long-term goals for short-term gratifications?

The upwind industries have consistently argued that they are not at fault for pollution in distant states. Businesses and state officials in the upwind states had argued that the E.P.A. could not directly regulate the factories and that it should leave the work to the states. Last month an appeals court in Washington mostly upheld a crackdown by the E.P.A. on pollution from 392 Midwestern and Southern factories and power plants. The court agreed with the E.P.A. that the upwind states "contribute significantly."

Is this fair?

Robby

The placebo effect -- which is supposed to account for the fact that about a third of patients get better when given a dummy pill or a sham treatment -- has been cited in textbooks and journal articles for decades. Some scientists focus their careers on exploring how it works, looking for changes in the immune system or in hormones that allow the mind to affect the body.

Two Danish researchers, publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine, happened to notice that the placebo effect had a sort of hearsay quality in medical papers. They found layer after layer of cross-references in scientific publications. Finally, they found the source:--a 1955 paper, "The Powerful Placebo," by an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Using a method of analysis that would not be accepted today, the anesthesiologist chose the subset of patients who improved with a placebo, and disregarded those who got worse. He concluded tht about a third of patients get better simply from taking a dummy pill. Said one of the Danish scientists: "He came up with the magical 35 percent figure that has entered plcebo mythology."

The two scientists revisited the phenomenon, using more up-to-date research methods. When they analyzed the data, they concluded that patients given nothing improved just as much as those given placebos. Their conclusion is that the placebo effect is nothing more than a medical legend.

Comments?

Tapeworm and botulism have been all but eradicated in this country, and new technologies from freeze-drying to irradiation have been developed to make food safer. But because of changing eating habits and more choices of foods, Americans may be more likely to get sick from what they eat today than they were a half century ago.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the frequency of serious gastrointestinal illness, a common gauge of food poisoning, is 34 percent above what it was in 1948. Every year, the agency says, 5,000 deaths, 325,000 hospitalizations and 76 million illnesses are caused by food poisoning.

Why, in an age of technologies that protect food, is food poisoning at least as common as it was a half-century ago? For one thing, people are eating more fresh fruits and vegetables without cooking them, increasing the chance of infection through bacteria or viruses. For another, people are eating more precooked foods, like seafood salads and deli meats, which are more dangerous than traditional sit-down means served right off the stove or out of the oven.

Have your eating habits changed? Do you eat the same foods and in the same manner as a few decades ago?

The amount of contaminated food that reaches store shelves only to be recalled for posing health risks has reached its highest level in more than a decade. Amid the proliferation of foods, the F.D.A.'s resources to scrutinize them have scarcely changed, often making consumers the first to test a product's safety. A healthy person can withstand most infections, but older people have weaker immune systems and the population is aging, leading many scientists to worry that more Americans are becoming more susceptible to food-borne illness.

Our primary topic in this discussion group is the examination of deTocqueville's comments about America and a comparison with the America and other Democracies we see today. A couple of months ago we covered the sub-topic of Religion and Democracy. Now we are concentrating on SCIENCE.

Robby

The F.D.A. has less than a tenth of the inspectors of the Department of Agriculture, which regulates the meat and poultry industry. So while U.S.D.A. inspectors examine meat before it gets to grocery freezers, the F.D.A. must increasingly rely on the companies it regulates to keep their factories clean and their products safe.

Said the deputy inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the F.D.A.: "If the inspection process worked really well, there would be fewer recalls. That's why you do inspections -- to PREVENT any contamination from occurring in the first place. The core mission of the agency, which has been to inspect food and ensure its safety, has eroded."

So where do we, the consumer, stand?

Questions such as these are worthy of being asked but belong in one of the many many excellent discussion groups in Senior Net which center around religion. If you will examine the Senior Net index, you will see that each discussion group has its own specific theme and SN participants usually make a concerted effort to stick to the theme in order to promote conhesiveness and so as not to lose other participants who are there because of their interest in that theme.

For almost a year now the participants in this forum have made it clear that their interest lies in the various sub-topics such as those listed in the Heading above and which are derived from the book by Alexis deTocqueville. Whenever I make this point, I am almost always backed up by numerous participants. SN members are encouraged to discuss their beliefs in the Old Testament, the New Testament and other religious topics either by personal email (just click onto the person's name) or by logging on the the Religion and Spirituality discussion groups.

Your assistance in keeping this long-running discussion group on theme would be much appreciated. Our current sub-topic is SCIENCE and its place in Democracies.

Robby

That is an attack against 99% of the participants here and has no place in this discussion group. It is not for any of us to make outright remarks about what 99% of the participants in this forum can or cannot discern if, indeed, we had any way of knowing.

Those who wish to continue in this forum are encouraged to refrain from remarks about other participants and, if they wish to remain, to stick to addressing the issues.

Robby

For months, F.D.A. officials have watched with concern as food companies have peppered their products with ingredients that were once found only in herbal medicines sold in health food stores. This is the first time that the agency has directly challenged the practice of adding relatively common herbs like echinacea and ginkgo to food that now appears on grocery store shelves across the nation.

How do you folks feel about such additives?

A good point, Eloise - something that perhaps the corporations do not want most of us to know.

Robby

The Senate Agriculture Committee is focusing on claims that whistle-blowers are treated harshly. Records show that the inspection service recently tried to fire one inspector whose uncover work in the 1980's led to the convictions of five meat inspectors and three plant managers on corruption.

Do you feel comfortable about what you are eating?

An investigation of dozens of food companies by the Food and Drug Administration has found that in spite of strict labeling laws, as many as 25 percent of manufacturers fail to list common ingredients that can cause potentially fatal allergic reactions.The mislabeling poses a threat to the roughly seven million Americans who suffer from food allergies and who rely on a product's packaging to keep them safe.

In recent years, there has been a sharp increse in the amount of food recalled from store shelves for containing allergy-provoking ingredients like peanuts and eggs that were not listed on the product's label. The agency examined 85 companies of all sizes that were likely to use common allergy triggers in abundance -- cookie makers, candy companies and ice cream manufacturers. Its report found that a quarter of the companies made products with raw ingredients like nuts, but omitted them from the labels describing the food.

Any allergies in your life or the life of your family or friends?

The F.D.A. report does not discuss the prevalence of food allerges, but every year 30,000 people are rushed to emergency rooms because of them, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Many of these illnesses occur at restaurants or in homes, and are not necessarily the fault of a food manufacturer. Some schools have removed peanut butter from their cafeterias and several airlines have taken steps to accommodate passengers who have food allergies, including banning peanuts as the traditional after-takfoff snack.

An excellent point, Carolyn. Because a physician prescribes a particular medication does not mean that you are not allergic to it. Anyone else here allergic to particular medications?

As far as food is concerned, after suffering an allergic reaction, consumers can be treated with a shot of epinephrine, and they are often encouraged to carry the drug with them. But there is no medical treatment to prevent allergic reactions to food from occurring. Even patients who receive epinephrine may need additional treatment, so clear and accurate labels may be the only thing standing between a susceptible consumer and a trip to the hospital.

A related issue -- the language used. The F.D.A. calls upon food companies to list allergens by their "common English" names. Even when they do appear on labels, many ordinary allergens are referred to by their formal names, like "casein" for "milk" or "albumin" for eggs. Said the founder of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network: "To the lay person, these terms are Greek. The labels are written for scientists, not for consumers."

Robby

.When one speaks of National Parks, ordinarily one thinks of forests and fresh water streams. But the Amereican Association for the Advancement of Science is urging creation of a network of marine parks where all sea animals and plants would be protected. Just as national parks provide safe haven for threatened animals on land, marine parks could be the salvation for vanishing ocean life. A worldwide network of no-fishing zones may be the last, best hope of replenishing the Earth's depleted stocks of fish and other marine species. Said an Oregon State University marine scientist: "The oceans are more vulnerable than we realize. We know now that the present methods are inadequate to protect the oceans." Some symptoms of fundamental changes in ocean life are dying coal reefs and toxic algal blooms.

Another unusual effort is the Prairie Passage, a newly designated national highway corridor more than 2,000 miles long, from Texas to Minnesota. The project is an effort by six states and the Federal Highway Administration to preserve, restore and publicize and celebrate the tallgrass prairie, which has all but disappeared. It is part of a larger effort by federal highway officials to comply with a law, passed in 1987 at the urging of Lady Bird Johnson, which directs that a small part of all landscape money for federally financed projects be spent on native wildflowers.

Many Kansas towns and counties have long tried to make the prairie a tourist attraction, for example the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, 10,894 acres of prairie. The sea of grass in the Flint Hills was a real sea millions of years ago, and rocks from the ocean floor now lie close to the surface, making these hills impossible to plow.

Scientists and historians are hopeful that there will be more visitors at the prairie preserves. History lives in this landscape. Wagon ruts on the Santa Fe Trail, which intersects the passage, are still visible.

Your thoughts on these two endeavors?

Robby

Cheyenne Bottoms, an elliptical basin lowland comprising some 41,000 acres seven miles north of Great Bend, is the largest marsh in the interior of the United States. The Kansas Department of Wildlife and parks operates approximately half as a wildlife management area. The Nature Conservancy has, piecemeal, acquired an additional 7,300 acres, most abutting Cheyenne Botoms, that it has been restoring to native prairie and grassland.

Quivira National Wildlife Refuge is south and slightly east of Cheyenne Bottoms in Stafford County, a half-hour drive away. Congress created it in May 1955 at the urging of ornithologists eager to protect migratory birds. It encompasses about 22,135 acres, has 25 miles of dikes, 15 miles of canals and nearly 6,000 acres of managed wetlands.

Said Sebastian Patti, a state judge in Illinois: "Individually they are nationally important - collectively they have worldwide importance. They are especially important in the context of the percentage of individuals of certain species passing through. These wetlands are irreplaceable and magnificent."

Do you believe we are applying our scientific knowledge to the benefit of our planet?

Please click the link below to read a summary of the status of U.S. Wetlands by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
US Wetlands Status

The preservation efforts in Stuyvesant, about 20 miles south of Albany, have attracted attention at a time when farmland is fast disappearing around the nation. From 1992 to 1997, more than six million acres of farmland was developed for residential, commercial and industrial uses, according to the most recent figures from the United States Department of Agriculture.

The idea of buying development rights on farmland is simple. The land is appraised for what it would be worth on the open market, and then for what it would be worth if it could be used only for farming. The farmer is paid the difference and a conservation easement, which restricts or prohibits future development on the property, is granted.

Experience has shown that farms have a better chance of surviving when surrounded by other farms. There needs to be a "critical mass of agriculture" where the agricultural economy is still intact and where the farmers are still a real presence. Scenic Hudson found in the community of Stuyvesant a traditional farming community that had grown wary of developers and homeowners who complain about the noisy, slow-moving farm machinery in the early morning. Said one farmer: "They move up here because they want to live in the country but they don't like the smell of manure in their yards."

What is the health of farm land in your area?

Why are the heirs doing this? Is the answer simply an economic one, or are there other reasons?

This discussion group has been in existence for almost one year. In just that one period of time while we have been talking, thousands upon thousands of rural acres have become suburbs. We are watching the Face of America changing before our very eyes.

Robby

Time and time again this lobby, which became known as the American Chemistry Council, confronted the environmental age, both in the legislatures and in the court of public opinion. Now, in Year 2001, the industry's practices are facing unusual and unwanted exposure. Its documents are being published by environmental advocates on the Web.

What has been happening in recent times? Love Canal. Bhopal. There are state ballot initiatives unfriendly to the industry and legislation tightening regulations on toxic wastes.

In 1986 an industry association official told the group's board that it is "perceived as the No. 1 environmental risk to society."

In this forum we are currently discussing the application of SCIENCE within DEMOCRACY. In the freedom that Democracy provides, is SCIENCE for us or against us? deTocquevill tells us in the Heading above "I have sought to discover the evils and the advantages which democracy brings."

Robby

Robby

Could we take Mahlia's wise remark and expand the term "community" to mean the nation? (Perhaps you meant it that way, Mahlia.) As we examine where SCIENCE is or is not helping us -- be it in the area of our external enviroment or the interior of our bodies, do we need, as Mahlia states, to "monitor ourselves a bit more?"

Is that not what Democracy is? The people ruling? Ruling not only what others are doing to us but what we are doing to ourselves? Is this the meaning of Pogo's remark that "we have met the enemy and he is us?" Are we perhaps tending to look for scapegoats as deterioration occurs rather than looking in the mirror?

stilt sandpapers -- white-rumped sandpipers -- Hudsonian godwits -- white pelicans -- Franklin's gulls -- Wilson's phalaropes -- long-legged black-necked stilts -- American avocets -- Clark's, Western, eared and pied-billed grebes -- rails -- coots -- herons -- ibis -- Northern shoveler ducks -- blue-winged teal -- Swainson's hawks -- peregrine falcons -- terns -- yellow-headed blackbirds -- whooping cranes (listed as endangered) -- sandhill cranes --

Just pause a bit and envisage this in your mind. All these birds with all their variety in the very same marsh at the very same time. Think of the color and size. Rare sandpipers in their bright breeding plumage of red, orange, black and white -- Clouds of white pelicans in the sky, with 9-foot wingspans and averaging more than 16 pounds --

Think of where they were before they arrived at the center of Kansas. Franklin's gulls returning by the tens of thousands to the northern prairies after wintering off the west coast of South America. Sandpipers that winter in Tierra del Fuego at the very southern tip of South America near Antarctica. They then leave to breed in Siberia. And they are small enough to be held in the hand. And those are the birds which are headed north. Sandhill cranes and whooping cranes stop over on their way south.

Said one ornothologist:--"Anywhere from half the population to estimates of 95 percent of the population of these species may be using these wetlands, occasionally at the same time.

I don't know about you but the shivers go down my back as I see this picture in my mind. Bird lovers from all over the world come to see this amazing sight. The nearest ocean is well over a thousand miles away but attracting the birds is a naturally occurring but carefully managed inland sea, set in a flat landscape surrounded by hundreds of miles of lush grass and farmland.

There are many threats, chief among them habitat destruction, loss of necessary places to feed, and rest. Protection of such important stopover points is crucial to many species' survival.

"(CNN) Besides painting American sunsets red when they cross over the Atlantic, colossal Saharan dust storms bring loads of potentially dangerous microorganisms to the New World, according to scientists.



"Loads of bacteria and fungi, some of which could cause disease and respiratory problems, hitch rides on dust storm plumes from Northern Africa that blow westward for thousands of miles, according to researchers.



"As the dust grains and their tiny stowaways settle down in the Western Atlantic, they could pose health risks to people in Florida and the Caribbean, according to scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA."

Science has evolved and it remains to be seen who is going to profit from its rapid progress, us or the Aristocracy. The signs indicate that we are getting more comfortable, but we are slowly losing our freedom.

as deT says above, "The Americans were naturally inclined ..."

The foresight that deTocqueville had was absolutely astounding!!

Many cities and towns are encouraging people to lose the Kentucky bluegrass, offering cash rebates to people who replace their lawns with rock gardens, perennial beds, a tangle of ivy, cactuses or other kinds of less water-gluttonous plantings. Scientists at the national Gardening Association, a nonprofit group, say as much as 10 percent of all yards may be dominated by something other than grass. It requires overcoming huge psychological barriers for homeowners to dig up their turf and park the lawnmower. But once the deed has been done, people say a liberating feeling takes hold.

Is this helping our environment?

This is as true of mental health as it is with physical health. Behind every psychiatrist and clinical psychologist are researchers who examine mentally ill patients carefully and come up with conclusions that move the health practitioner that much more forward. As is true with all aspects of SCIENCE, the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know. In the area of mental health, this is true of what are ordinarily called "mood disorders", such as depression and bi-polar disorder. These disorders are often ignored by the general public until the headlines blare out such events as the one that came out of Houston today telling of a mother who drowned her five children, ranging from age 6 months to 7 years. All appearances are that she is suffering from post-partum depression, commonly called post-partum "blues" and commonly ignored.

Researchers have not been ignoring that disorder, however, and it is hoped that this sick woman will receive proper care and treatment based upon the latest information gained in laboratories.

Most of the medications, such as Prozac and Xanax, are excellent medications. The key word is not "what" but "how." How are they used? It has often been said, and bears repetition, that medicine is an art not a science. I spoke earlier about the scientists who are behind the practitioner. A physician is required to make his (generic) best judgment based on his knowledge of the medication, knowledge of the patient, plus other variables. The skilled physician decides what he believes is the best medication for that particular disorder and decides upon the best dosage. He also decides the medication based upon other medications that the patient is taking so as to avoid drug interaction. Then he waits and watches.

Many of the problems arise from what in the medical world is called "non-compliance." This means that the patient did not take the medication or took it differently from the way prescribed. It is the patient's responsibility to let the physician know what reactions are taking place so changes can be made, if necessary.

I don't know your particular situation, Dapphne, but combinations of drugs being used simultaneously are not necessarily bad and are often the proper thing to do. It depends on so many factors.

Robby

One theory is that symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder may subside under the influence of psilocybin, a hallucinogen derived from mushrooms. Dying patients given LSD have reported less pain and less fear and peyote (derived from cactus) has reportedly helped alcoholics stay sober.

The Heffter Research Institute is financing clinical trials with LSD, psilocybin and other hallucinogens to treat phobias, depression, obsessive compulsive disorders and substance abuse.

Any reactions to this branch of science?

Medications now exist that didn't exist 10, or even 5, years ago. Tremendous strides are being made in the mental health area.

Any proposal to study the medical use of a hallucinogen must meet the same rigorous medical, scientific, and ethical standards used to evaluate any other unapproved drug. Furthermore, because hallucinogens are controlled substances, the investigator needs a license from the Drug Enforcement Agency to use such a substance in a clinical trial.

LSD was first used by psychiatrists and then found widespread recreational use in the 1960's and 70's. Modern science has embraced drugs that affect the same brain molecules that are affected by hallucinogens. Tools for studying the brain's neurochemistry and response to drugs are far more advanced than they were in the 1960's and 70's.

The major problem in the mental health arena is the stigma attached to such illnesses by a segment of the public and the inability of some people to separate scientific/medical use from "recreational" use.

An interesting article appeared in this month's Journal of Sex Research.

Should I stop here? Oh, you want me to go on? Well, all right, if you are telling me you are truly interested in Science.

The lead researcher from State University of New York at Stony Brook gathered information from over 3,000 Americans ages 18 to 59 and from over 4,000 French adults in the same age range. They compared sexual behavior on each side of the Atlantic. Said the researcher:--"Our image of the French is that they are very sexy and erotic and that men have mistresses and everybody understands that and it's OK.

Though a few intriguing differences were found between the two cultures, in most areas of sexuality the distinctions were negligible. Overall, according to the conclusion, adults in France and in the U.S. ae remarkably alike in their sexual behavior. Similar patterns of sexual conduct over the life course were found from young adulthood to late middle age.

Monogamy proved to be the rule in both countries, with more than 90 percent of the men and women who lived together in couples reporting only one sexual partner in the last year. For those not living in coupled relationships, the French, if anything, seemed more disposed to monogamy than the Americans. And while no differences were detected in the length of marriages in the two nations, once entered into monogamous relationship, the French men and women were likely to stay in them longer than their American counterparts. Also, the idea of a stable monogamous relationship between two people who were not living together was more established in France than in the United States.

In contrast, according to the conclusion, single Americans "are more frequently without any partner or with quite a lot." It also reported that the Americans surveyed reported more sexual partners over the course of a lifetime than did their French counterparts.

Your reactions, please?

The largest differences in sexuality between the two countries appeared among those participants who were not living as a couple, and between women. Young French women who were not cohabiting, for example, were more likely to report hveing no sexual partner within the last year, and those who did have sexual contact were less likely than young American women to report multiple partners. The patterns of partner selection appears to be different in France, with young French women having a slower and more stable pattern of partner selection than women in the U.S.

Discrepancies were even more striking for older women. While in each culture the frequency of sexual activity declined with age, American women over 50 were far more likely to be sexually inactive than French women of similar age. Seventy-eight of the American women over 50 and not living in a couple reported having had no sexual partner within the last year, compared with 52 percent of the French women in the same group.

Said the researcher:--"French women continue to have sex later in life than Americans." He suggested that, in part, this might be because French men continue to see French women as sexually attractive even as they age, in contrast to American men, who tend to pair sexiness with youth. He added:--"And French women continue to see themselves as sexually attractive."

A 675-page report, "Women and Smoking," issued in May is the first report on the subject since 1980. The Surgeon General warned that tobacco-related diseases are still a majuor cause of illness and death among women and he called for stronger measures nationwide to discourage women and girls from smoking and to curb tobacco industry advertising and promotion.

The report says that 165,000 women died prematurely in 1997 from smoking-related diseases, chiefly cancers, heart and lung disease and strokes. The average loss of life was 14 years. And the women most likely to suffer the consequenes were those with the least education. Women with less than a high school education were three times as likely to begin smoking as women who went to college. Less educated women were also less likely to quit.

At the present time women statistically live longer than men. Is this about to change?

Robby

Smoking also raises the risk of cancer of the bladder, kidney, pancreas and oropharynx. It is associated with an increased risk of cervical cancer as well.

Smoking plays a major role in heart disease and stroke, the leading causes of death in women. It also leads to about 90 percent of the deaths from chronic lung diseases like emphysema, which kill 56,000 women a year.

The most worrisome figures, the report says, are the percentages of girls who smoke. In the Year 2000, 30 percent of high school seniors said they had smoked within the last month, and 20 percent said they smoked every day.

The report harshly criticizes efforts by the tobacco industry to market cigarettes to women that link smoking with women's autonomy, career success, professional sports, the arts and, most recently, programs to stop domestic violence against women.

Robby

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

-Aristotle

Call me dumb, but I'm having trouble figuring out what all this women-men talk has to do with science. I was also thinking that life is what you make it, gender roles or no gender roles.

I received a silly questionnaire in the mail the other day, and on it was the question, "If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?" My answer was "web page builder and writer, but that's what I do right now."

Without any intention of doing so, I've been accused of bragging in the past, but on the eve of my 73 rd birthday, which is due not far from now, I can truthfully say my time is spent positively in a way I like. I publish three beautiful electronic literary magazines which give me not only the satisfaction of seeing what I do on the web, but of serving writers whose work might not otherwise be published. That makes me feel good as a person, not just as a woman. In the past four weeks I have also written 19 1/2 chapters of the ninth novel I've written in the past
4 1/2 years. The tenth (the first one) was written some 14 years before now. That's fun, too.

I enjoy my life, and I anjoy what I do, even though I sometimes think it would be nice to sell a book or get paid for the hours I spend building web pages in my html program, so I'd be a little more up with today's economy. The work I do is my choice, and it is time I spend not stewing about how I am treated as a woman and trouble I've had, because what I do could be well be considered a man's job, and I've never felt that either men or women had it exactly easy.

There's a price to pay for being a content person, albeit a woman. I never watch television or go out to lunch or to a movie, never take a vacation or even a day off, usually. My entertainment at this moment is pushing myself in a wheelchair through the supermarket to grocery shop and coming into SeniorNet for amusement and edification.

In the past eight months, I've recently been able to drive myself alone and independently to the store two times, since I finally have less pain and disability from injuries I suffered in a fall laet October. The effects of those injuries, pain included, did not keep me from doing what I consider my work, my amusement and my joy.

What I am today at this venerable age is not too different from what I've always been, and I must admit I've received acknowledgment, sometimes praise, and respect from both men and women most of my life for what I do and what I am. I've also been disliked by some because of what I am and what I do. That's life, and I accept that aspect of it.

It's a pull yourself up with your bootstraps story, my life is. It never was easy or as capable as most of yours. A tough and continual fight it's been from start until now, and to tell you the truth, I have no complaints, not even about a husband I once had who probably would not give me the right time of day if I should ever see him now.

Long ago I examined my weaknesses (lots and lots of physical ones, believe me) and faults (lots of those, too) as well as what I ideally wanted out of life and decided the best of it was and is right here with and in me.

The quote of Aristotle I posted earlier today means something to me. Now if only I could include in my striving for a "habit of excellence" the elimination of cigarette smoking about which Robby posted some scientific evidence this morning that doesn't please me too much, I'd consider that thus far in my life it's been a job quite well done and a rocky road well-travelled.

Thanks for your forbearance. My little sermon about attitude is now over and done.

Mal, not ever self-satisfied and complacent, but happy to be me.

 
REFINEMENTS OF LOVE  by Sarah Booth Conroy 

                and 

THE FIVE OF HEARTS  by  Patricia  O'Toole 

 

Both of these are books about Henry Adams and his wife.

Robby

In Canada, health officials say that by the end of July, marijuana growers will be able to apply for licenses to produce small amounts of marijuana for people with terminal illnesses or chronic diseases to ease their pain. Over the last few years, more than 250 Canadians have received government permission to smoke marijuana for medical purposes, and many more will qualify for the exemptions when the new regulations take effect, but until then they must either grow the marijuana or buy it illegally.

Health officials say that although there is no scientific proof that marijuana has medicinal properties, testimony from people who have used it to overcome the nausea associated with chemotherapy or to help with their glaucoma and other diseases has been so convincing that the government has decided to make it leal under certain circumstances.

Should the United States take the same steps?

For 20 years starting in 1975, the percentage of Canadians who favored legalizing marijuana ranged from 24 to 31%. But since 1995, acceptance has broadened substantially. A recent survey showed that 47 percent of Canadians agreed that marijuana should be legalized, a sharp increase over the number five years ago.

There was a time in this country when the only way one could get beer or any other alcoholic beverage was via a boot legger or make their own. Now that it is legal to buy and drink it we don't have to worry about the smugglers and bootleggers. I have heard that moonshine is still made in parts of this country. Here in south Florida the law is constantly on the lookout for marijuana, as well as, other drugs beimg smuggled in or grown. I am amazed at the ingenuity of those who grow the stuff. I have also heard that in this country people can't legally grow hemp which is related to marijuana but is useful for clothing and rope.

"Hemp was originally made illegal not because it was some harmful drug. In fact, until recently, the public was totally unaware of the real reasons. Before 1883, nearly ninety percent of the world’s paper supply was manufactured of hemp based fiber. In the early 1930’s, the US Department of Agriculture proposed making paper from hemp based fiber, but production had to be put on hold until someone invented a machine that would separate hemp pulp from the fiber cheaply. During this time, Dupont Chemicals, Hearst Paper and Timber, and a number of other large companies developed a way to make whiter paper out of trees (Miller, 1996). In 1936, a very short time after tree paper patents had gone through, and production had started, the hemp “decorticating” machine was invented. This machine created a way to separate the hurds from the rest of the marijuana plant very cheaply.

"The tree paper companies invested huge sums of money into making cannabis-hemp illegal, so that they wouldn’t lose money. This was the first 'Reefer Madness Movement'. The only part of this whole occurrence that the public knew about, until lately, was the 'killer weed with roots in hell', and similar ads. (Pluff, 1996)"

Until recently, approaches toward the medical use of marijuana were similar in both the United States and Canada. But in May the United States Supreme Court upheld a federal law banning the distribution of marijuana for medical purposes, overriding laws in several states that legalized medical marijuana.

Lee says:--"All Heroin addicts started with pot." I am sorry, Lee, but that is not so. I have worked with numerous heroin addicts who had never touched pot. You say that "the user becomes very, very drunk." It depends upon your definition of "drunk" and your definition of "very very." I have seen patients who were more incapacitated by beer than by marijuana. It is true that marijuana affects, for example, the memory as well as affecting space perception, etc. As for their mind becoming "mush", my experience with substance abusers (I work both with inpatients in a psychiatric institute and outpatients in my office) indicates that alcohol is by far the greater threat to the entire community, whether it be on the road or in the home. I have seen scores of patients whose brains became "mush" (organic brain damage) solely from a lifetime of beer (no other type of alcohol and no marijuana or other drug). Far more domestic violence stems from alcohol than marijuana.

Yes, as you say, "our nation is a nation of laws," but our discussion here at the present time relates to our attitude toward whether the law should be changed, especially when thinking of the medicinal aspects of marijuana.

As for the effects of pot, I worked with kids in a vocational setting, 7 hours a day. It became fairly easy to identify the pot smokers, as they, for the most part, were not very productive students. Many admitted to smoking while waiting for the school bus in the morning, and as soon as they got off it at night. It is not always easy to spot one under the influence of marijuana, especially when one is occupied with 19 other students. Alcohol consumption was much harder to conceal. I worry what will be the result of legalizing marijuana when it becomes so readily available to students.

The bill would allow seriously ill Nevadans to have up to seven marijuana plants for personal use. In addition, a person with an ounce or less of marijuana could be charted with a misdemeanor and fined up to $600. A second or third offense would carry a higher fine and placement in a treatment or rehabilitation program. The Senate amended the bill to add felony charges for a fourth or subsequent possession charge.

Under current Nevada law, possession of any amount of marijuana can result in felony charges leading to prison terms of one to four years.

For example, did you know that the bark has evolved into a complicated means of communication between dogs and, potentially, between dogs and people? According to a group of animal behaviorists in Germany, dogs almost always bark for a reason, even if that reason isn't apparent to humans. They say that dogs ae virtuoso barkers, capable of flights of sonic fancy.

Dog barks can be noisy, harmonic or a combination of the two. The wolf's bark is short, low-pitched and gruff, often described as "noisy" because it lacks harmonic or tonal qualities identified with more musical vocalizations.

Does your dog talk to you?

The results graphically portray how different barks express different emotions, including loneliness, fear, distress, stress and pleasure, as well as a need for care among puppies -- and serve to alert other dogs, people or animals to changing external circumstances. Said an ethologist at the Uniersity of Colorado who studies cognition in animals:--"This work on barking is extremely careful and extremely important because it calls attention to the complex social life of dogs that we have barely begun to comprehend."

"Noisy barks" relate to defensive and offensive threats, social insecurity, and physical distress. "Harmonic barks" are used as a signal for social play, in active and passive submission to another dog or person and when making social contact. The researcher recorded mixed play barking among German shephereds, poodles and Weimaraners that had noisy and harmonic components and a "noisy play bark" among American Staffordshire terriers and bull terriers that indicated a turn on the part of the dogs from play to more aggressive behavior.

Like many canine vocalizations, these barks are often associated with physical cues, like a wrinkling of the brow, staring, raised hackles, pinned back ears, an upright or lowered tail and other submissive or threatening postures.

What is your pet telling you these days?

Any scientist reading these two comments would immediately note that what you call an "impasse" is not an impasse. What you have done is what a scientist calls the "mistake of extrapolation." The fact that the dogs I have owned have been brown does not mean that ALL dogs are brown. Your term "all" did not take into consideration that there are heroin addiccts with which you have not had contact who did not begin with marijuana.

I submit respectfully to you, Lee, that for you to compare your experiences with others is to fall into the danger of extrapolation -- or perhaps the opposite, of believing that others have not had your experiences. I stated earlier that I would just briefly get into the topic of substance abuse because that is my field but I will not take the time of all others here to state my experiences. Suffice it to say that I have seen DWI's on the street beyond count because that is part of my training, that I have administered sobriety tests and urine exams, that I have lost count of the squad cars I have ridden in on Friday and Saturday nights, that I have interviewed those arrested later in emergency rooms, that I have appraised their blood tests, that I have spoken with them the following morning after they had a night in jail, that I have attended hundreds of Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and that I have testified in court. Being a psychologist specializing in substance abuse requires much hands on work, in addition to psychotherapy in my office or in the hospital.

You are correct in that "there are many kinds of professionals that can draw upon their experiences and expertise." Each area of expertise tells part of the story but not the whole story. I guess each of us here is acquainted with the allegory of the various blind men examining the same elephant.

I will now revert to being a facilitator.

Robby

Anyone here having had personal experiences with animals?

Research indicates that a well-trained dog and accomplished handler can achieve an accuracy rate of about 95 percent, significantly better than any machine. A professor of mechanical engineering at Penn State says his research suggests that when a dog inhales, the alar fold, a bulbous obstruction just inside its nostrisls, opens to allow air to flow clearly through the upper part of the nose across the mucus-covered scent receptors. When air is exhaled, the alar fold closes off the top part and directs air down and out through the slits at the side of the dog's nose. The process creates a kind of suction that helps the dog inhale even more odor-laced air while also stirring up particles that might help deliver ore scent.

Is this "living machine" a part of your life?

Robby

The Department of Agriculture has a Beagle Brigade. They are given a 10-week training course learning how to detect and notify people of the foods from abroad that can unloose disease, pests and blights, threatening agriculture and health. About 65 agricultural canine teams are at work at airports, postal depots and border crossings, with their number to double next year.

The July issue of The WREX Pages is now on the World Wide Web. Be sure to read "Hooray for the Fifth of July" by Dr. Robert Bancker Iadeluca, an interesting look at some national holidays. There are Fourth of July essays by other SeniorNet people you probably know like Patrick Bruyere, whose tribute to a World War II soldier is well worth reading. There are many more Independence Day stories and others, too, which will entertain and amuse you. "Five Generations of Adventurous Women" by Eloïse de Pelteau is illustrated by pastel portraits she painted of her mother and daughter. Each page is illustrated with original artwork and classical fine art, as well as some other amusing art and music. I know you will enjoy the July issue of The WREX Pages.

Marilyn Freeman, Editor and Publisher of
The WREX Pages
http://www.seniornet.org/gallery/wrex/pages.htm

Robby

I think we're on a roll here!!

Robby

It is my understanding that, if you wish, non-taxable contributions can be made to the Martex Zoo.

Luckily for the moose, they don't stay wet behind the ears for long. They found that moose learn to be wary of new predators within a generation. Moose that were accustomed to predators displayed far more vigilance than those that were not. Naive moose, in fact, often did not resp;ond at all to the sounds or smells, while predator-accustomed animals often showed classic signs of preparing for a fight, by retracting their ears and raising the fur on the backs of their necks.

The biologists said this research was important in that it is the first to look at reintroduction programs from the standpoint of prey.

From the Badlands of the Dakotas to the tallgreass fields of Oklahoma, there is a restoration of lost landscape. The frontier, as it was called when it was assumed that the land would soon be spotted with town and farms, is actually larger than it has been since the early 20th century. There are now more bison on the Plains than at any time since the late 1870's.

And, by the way, how did you do on the other 17 holes?

Robby

Robby

I agree wholeheartedly! I can't keep thinking of myself when my dog and cat keep my mind elsewhere.

Robby

OK - non-pet owners!! Are you sick of this yet??!!

Robby

It is North America's largest rodent as well as being a ntional symbol, and has also become a major pest. After a brush with extinction at the hands of trappers a century ago, the North American beaver population has exploded, to an estimated 20 million. In Manitoba, the population has grown from a few colonies in the 1930's to one million today, or almost one beaver for each human. By building dams, the industrious animals flood farm fields and golf courses, block streets and railroads and drop 30-foot trees on power lines and weekend cottages.

However, beaver images have graced Canadian stamps and coins. Beaver images helped sell war bonds in World War I and, in the 1930's, served as the first charismatic emblem for the nation's new conservation movement. Today, Canada's leading history magazine, edited in Winnipeg, is called The Beaver. In Canada, the youngest boys in the Scouting movement are called Beavers.

Any beavers in your neck of the woods?

Even wildlife biologists show little sympathy for the beavers. Said Canada's leading polar bear expert:--"They are just chewing the heck out of our countryside. The fur market is not there anymore. So the beavers are just everywhere.

The Wildlife Service warns:--"At bay, beavers stand their ground and protect themselves. They face the aggressor, rear up on their hind legs, and loudly hiss or growl, before lunging forward to deliver extremely damaging bites." A recent newspaper headline about two Newfoundland dogs cornered and bitten by a beaver 60 miles nortyh of Winnipeg said: "Crazed Beaver Terrifies Farm Pets." Other headlines included; "Busy Beaver's Gnawing Knocks Out Electricity, " "Beavers out of Control" and "Manitoba Towns Increase Beaver Bounty."

In the 1600's French trappers roamed deep into Canada's interior, knowing that one adult beaver skin could yield enough fur for 18 hats in fashion-crazy Paris and London. Canadians like to joke tht their country is the only one in the world that owes its existence to a rodent.

How is YOUR animal doing, MaryPage?

Robby

I love your description of this discussion group.

Robby

The price of horse meat is going up with the beef scare in Europe. Each horse can cost $500 and more to save from destruction. Because of the foundation, a nonprofit organization running on donations, about 700 thoroughbreds are currently surviving into senior years and second careers as pleasure horses and companions for the disabled. With prison farms in Kentucky, New York, Maryland, and Florida, the foundation is growing, taking in about 10 endangered horses a month while five leave in adoptions. In Kentucky inmates care for the 70 horses lazing in the freedom of 160 acres of bluegrass pasture.

Typically, if a thoroughbred is no longer earning his keep, he is sold to the horse-meat speculators who roam the back-stable areas of racetracks.

Comments?

He used to roost on my roof, and left his calling card there. He even tried to roost on the railing outside the door, but I put a stop to that. He was very alert, and if he spotted a dog would immediately turn and rapidly sneak away. He wasn't afraid of cats, though, and would stand up to any that dared come near. He also had a propensity to forecasting snow. Some times he would roost on the porch, and invariably there would be snow on the ground the next morning.

Why he adopted us, we never found out. There are other wild turkeys in the vicinity, but he never tried to join them. One of my last memories of him is seeing him (in the rear-view mirror) following the car down our long driveway, and then running after us on the road. He finally took to flying, but gave up when he couldn't catch us. He met his end when a truck with some teenagers swerved to hit him deliberately. (A neighbor witnessed this.) I thought this might happen, as he often walked down to and across the road.

There had been an early theory that the deaths resulted from a toxin in the grass but this is being discounted. Scientists are now shifting their focus to the Eastern tent caterpillar. Said one researcher:--"There is a close correlation between the presence of tent caterpillars and cherry trees and the incidence of problems." Black or wild cherry trees, the caterpillar's habitat and food of choice, can produce cyanide-like compounds that can turn into poison in the caterpillar's gut.

Robby

Are bees a part of your life? How about honey?

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, evidence of the foot-in-mouth virus in wildlife populations would prompt the same federal response as an infected cattle herd -- "diagnosis, quarantine, depopulation, disposal and enforcement." That is, killing and burying or burning innumerable wild animals.

In a nation with a strong attachment to its wildlife, enshrined in everything from national parks to the Endangered Species Act, federal officials are trying to figure out how to protect the wildlife, perhaps with an early quarantine of some of the 100 million acres of wilderness. They want to make sure the disease doesn't spread to, say, the wild bison that are considered part of the country's cultural heritage. There are many unknowns about American wildlife. Creative strategies are needed to protect and quarantine bison, deer, elk, wild boars, and long-horned antelope before they become victims of the disease or to control the birds and rodents that could be its most elisive carriers.

What thoughts do you have on this?

I believe that homeostasis (balance through feedback) takes place "automatically" in nature -- that when there are too many of a particular specie, nature does its own weeding. It sounds cruel (nature is often cruel from our small point of view) but I believe that AIDS is part of the weeding out process of the "excess" of humans. We save a few people here and a few people there and nature wipes out millions in a short period of time. At the time of the Black Plague, Europe was becoming overcrowded until the emigration started toward the Western Hempisphere.

Robby

Are Science, Medicine, and Democratic Processes bad in themselves? Was deTocqueville on the mark in his quote (above) beginning with "It is not true...?"

Says the director of the Audubon Society's Cape May Bird Observatory at the Jersey Shore:--"People shy away from the label bird watcher. The answer is always, 'Oh, no, I'm not really a birder.' People have gone out of their way to buy a device that will give them intimacy with birds, but they're not bird watchers."

However, the evidence of birding's popularity is mounting, with two major new field guides vying for the lucrative market. Have you looked recently in the "bird" section of your favorite supermarket?

Robby

For example, people are genetically predisposed to certain physical diseases and/or mental disorders. This means that while none of us can predict our futures, we can see the odds of certain things coming true. And insurance companies can see this too.

With the draft sequence of the human genome available, the process of finding specific genes that can be linked to human disese is expected to accelerate dramatically. The resulting number of genetic tests available to doctors and their patients in the coming years is likely to explode. Experts remain worried that the usefulness of new tests could be undermined if patients don't have the confidence that their genetic information is private and cannot be used against them by employers or insurance companies.

Who is in charge here? Do we own our own selves?

Here is where environment seems to come into the picture. If I spend untold hours year after year out on the beach, I may develop skin cancer but others who do not have the predisposition might spend the same time under the sun and never develop it. It's a gamble, isn't it? And that's the game the health and life insurance companies are playing. If they have information about my genes, they just might not want to give me a policy if my work is outside under the sun or if I live near a factory with toxic fumes.

There is such a thing as "late onset diabetes." If those folks were in my family, I would suggest to them that they exercise regularly and keep their weight down.

Robby

Robby

Robby

The Committee has embarked on a new round of discussions, looking into how the government should go about informing healthcare providers and consumers about the uses -- and potential pitfalls -- of tests designed to alert people that they are at a potentially increased risk of developing diseases. One of the primary concerns is how to design information packets that help physicians decide who should be offered genetic testing, and how results should be interpreted.

The issue is a complex one. The results of a genetic test can rarely offer a definite prediction of disease risk. For most illnesses, not everyone who tests positive for a particular mene mutation goes on to develop disease. The Committee is also concerned that the government's healthcare reimbursement policies will damage widespread access of genetic testing to low-income people. Medicare and Medicaid currently do not pay for most forms of genetic screening.

The issue stems from the recent finding, made possible by the decoding of several bacterial genomes, that many genes in different species of bacteria are so similar that they appear to have been exchanged directly, perhaps in some act of engulfment or infection.

This source of genes is called horizontal or lateral transfer to distinguish it from vertical descent, or inheritance from a common ancestor, which is the usual reason for different species to possess similar genes.

Humans have about a thousand genes similar to those of bacteria, presumably because the genes are so vital that their DNA structure has remained much the same over millions of years of descent from a common ancestor.

Robby

Many lawyers say the old policy still makes sense, because once paternity has been assigned, either as part of a divorce order or in a separate paternity proceeding, courts should not revisit the question. Furthermore, they say, there is something unseemly about men trying to get out of supporting children who have loved and depended on them.

But lawyers representing the "deceived" men see it differently. The unseemly thing, they say, is forcing men to assume financial responsibility for children they were duped into believing were their own, children another man should be supporting.

Science, in this field, is becoming increasingly accurate -- but should it be ignored?

How do you suggest that "we" pay for this, Eloise? For centuries, courts have presumed that all children born within marrige are fathered by the husband. Because courts cold not prove paternity, the thinking went, excluding any evidence of infidelity was the best way to protect children from the stigma of illegitimacy, men from the shame of cuckoldry, and society from marital disruption.

There are real concerns about letting biology trump all. The state may want to make sure that if they take one dad off the hook, they will have another one paying. The underlying question is:--what establishes a parental relationship?

But if I understand you correctly (and I realize I am oversimplifying your comments), the emotional relationship is the deciding factor. If a father and his supposed children spend the years loving each other, then he should continue supporting them financially "in return for" (a very crass phrase) the love they each exchanged. If he wishes, when they are 18, they can be told the truth but the love would probably continue.

So how does Science rule over human emotions?

Robby

The problem of understanding your approach is mine but are you saying that Science should be "believed" but that the emotions should be the deciding factor?

Robby

Isn't it ironic that morality may be made stronger through Science?

Many of the cases follow similar patterns. Often a man gets genetic testing when his ex-wife limits his contact with the child or when he begins to wonder why the child does not resemble him. In other cases, testing is prompted by relatives' hints that he is not the father.

The question of how long a man has to disavow paternity -- or whether he can ever introduce genetic evidence of nonpaternity -- differs from state to state. Some states will hear such evidence only within two years of a child's birth. Others allow as much as five years. Last fall, Ohio enacted a law exempting men from child support if genetic testing shows that they are not the father. Similar legislation has been introduced in New Jersey. In Maryland, in a group of cases involving unmarried men who had previously acknwledged paternity, the state's highest court ruled last year tht there was no time limit on the right to use genetic testing to prove nonpaternity.

Biologists learned that those blackbirds fluttering around their mates weren't displaying loyal devotion at all -- they were guarding their untrustworthy partnrs from the attentions of other males. Among reed bunting couples, for example, they found that 55 percent of chicks are not sired by the father of record, and the same turned out to be true in every group of creatures studied.

Genetic counselors, who often stumble across cases of discrepant paternity, believe some 10 percent of American children may be born this way.

Reminds one of the old saw: "Mother's baby, father's maybe." What new intriguing bit of information will the Science of Genetics show us in the upcoming years?

According to Flannery, what we now call America is a 65-million-year evolutionary work in progress, with a single recurrent theme -- the frontier.

American history didn't begin at Jamestown, or with Columbus, he says, or with the rise of the Sioux and Iroquois nations. It didn't begin 13,000 years ago when Asiatic migrants crossed the Bering land bridge into a hemisphere which did not at that time appear to have humans.

Ecological history is a growing field and Flannery has been described as the "Tocqueville of American bio-geography." He points out that not just for five centuries but for at least 57 million years, North America has been a land of fresh opportunities for immigrants,both human and other species, who have reshaped the place as much as it has reshaped them.

Invasion and establishment happened in waves, largely dependent on the transitory arrangement of continents as they drifted around after the breakup of the ancient megacontinent Pangaca, and on fluctuations in global climate. During various ice ages ocean water was sucked into icecaps and glaciers, thereby exposing land bridges between North America and other land masses -- mainly Asia and South America, occasionally even Europe -- which beckoned invitingly to spill over fauna and flora from those other regions.

Here we are in the Year 2001 talking about global warming, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, El Nino and La Nina, glacial changes, hurricanes, and all the other cataclysmic events while observing them from our puny human point of view.

We ask the question in the Heading above; "What is America?" Is it possible that the land that DeSoto and Lewis and Clark and others found had more of an effect on us than we have had on it? What made the America that we now see? What made the Democracy that we now have? Yes, it grew in the minds of humans but were such ideas able to grow in a field already fertile for such growth?

Are we able in this forum to look at America in a bio-geographical way? What is America?

Robby

It's more than speculation. It comes from their anecdotal experience. It is not, however, from scientific research. Note the word "believe."

Robby

Robby

Robby

Robby

Recently here in south Florida some murders committed in both Dade and Broward counties quite along time ago. A man confessed to them and was confined to prison. Recently they were able to perform DNA tests on the Broward county murders. They didn't match. It was decided that this man didn't do the ones in Dade county either.

Robby

My question is, what givers an artist the right to impose her/his views on the public, regardless of what others think? Why do some think they can improve on nature? Granted, there are many cases where something can be improved, but why are some so insensitive to those who enjoy what already exists?

Something to keep in mind as we cover this topic of Art.

As Eloise said, we have to "see," not just "look." I had not until this point considered checkered fields of crops as "art."

Ordinarily backwoods banjo pickers sing about love, death, Mom and God. But it is no longer backwoods. Large numbers of people are listening to Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, John Hartford, Ralph Stanley and the Cox Family. There seems to be a resurgence of bluegrass. Some folks call that "boundaryless music."

Are you a fan of that type of music or are you one of those who "can't stand it." Is it ART?

Robby

Could we then say that there is no such thing as "not liking art?" That everyone (without exception) likes one form of art or another?

The way the table is set, the way the desks are arranged in the office, the color and shapes of the clouds passing by, the food packages. As you say, Mal, we are SURROUNDED BY ART!!!.

Speaking of art, what do you think of my regular signature which Jane DeNeve helped me to create?

Here in this forum we have gotten to know each other very well -- our beliefs, our tendencies, our concerns, our fears, our pleasures, the items upon which we agree or disagree -- and now -- based upon your theory, Mary -- through the method of discussing art, we may get to know each other even better.

Robby

Robby

You'll probably jump all over me for this, but I must admit that I am very tired of the nationalistic holidays in the United States when patriotism and flag-waving are drummed into and foisted on me and us. Robby listed these holidays well in his essay which is running concurrently in The WREX Pages and Sonata right at this moment.

Let's see. There's flag-waving on Arbor Day in April, flag-waving on Loyalty Day and Memorial Day in May, on Flag Day in June and Independence Day in July. That's a lot of inflicted patriotism in the short space of four months, I'd say, and by the time the Fourth of July rolls around, I've had it.

You know, I'm as strongly an American as anyone else in the United States, despite the many, many improvements I believe should be made in this country, but I don't need to wave the flag or have it waved for me to prove to myself or anybody else that I am an American . . . . by accident. It was only fate that gave me this nationality, after all. I myself had nothing to do with it.

More and more I consider myself a citizen of the world first and an American second.

I stated many reasons earlier why I enjoy living in this country when I posted about American arts, and there are more than those. Regardless, I'm going to quote from Robby's essay right now and say, "Hooray for the Fifth of July!"

Mal

Flag waving is not foisted on anyone. If you prefer not to display a flag, no one will care. It is your right not to, and no one can take that away. I am proud to be an American, even though it is an accident of birth. If I had the choice (which we all do), I could leave for another country, but my preference is to stay here. I have been to a few other countries, and most of them were much more nationalistic than the U.S.

All things considered, seeing the flag displayed a few times is a small price to pay for the priviege of living in this beautiful country. (And one doesn't even have to look!)

Her latest edition gives many different approaches to Independence Day and the Flag and I am sure she would appreciate your appraisals.

Robby

Something clearly changed at the beginning of the 20th century. Before that, Europeans tended to look at America not as a source of entertainment or enlightenment but as a vast, untamed wilderness whose inhabitants lacked all sense of manners.

A professor of humanities at Drexel University in Philadelphia shows that the development of the silent film "sustained the American myth and sold it to the world." Though many distinguished silent films were made in Europe, by 1918, 80 percent of the world's films were made in Hollywood, the firt sign of American cultural dominance.

The importance of American influence was obvious. In 1920, one French critic wrote:--"The Americans are primitive and at the same time barbarous, which accounts for the strength and vitality they they infuse into their cinema."

The "art" we exported told the story of who we thought we were.

Again, our thanks to Eloise, who is reading "Democracy in America" in its original French and helping us toward an accurate understanding as we see America through Alexis deTocqueville's eyes. And through Eloise, we see some of deT's comments about another form of art not yet mentioned here -- poetry.

Eloise quotes deT: "Poetry, in my eyes, is the search and the painting of an ideal. Thus poetry's goal will not be to represent truth but to embellish it and to offer a superior image to the spirit."

I know from comments made in other forums that we have many lovers of poetry here. Is poetry a part of your life? Were you "forced" to read poetry in your school years or did you love it? What kind of poetry did you like or dislike? Have you ever written any poetry of your own?

Excuse me while I go get something to eat.

Robby

Robby

Robby

Robby

"Bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells."

Anyone else here beside Mal who feels that compulsion?

Robby

I just LOVE what Poe did with words!!!

"And the silken sad uncertain rustling of the purple curtains"

Can't you just hear the rustle as you read that out loud? Do that. Read it OUT LOUD slowly to yourself. As Mal said, don't get me started!!

Robby

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

I think that I shall never see
A study like geometry
It is so awful hard to do
You end the day just feeling blue
But if you think that this is bad
The teacher makes you twice as mad
With all her polygrams and stuff
That make you cry - "I've had enough"
Now all you freshmen, I advise
Just leave this class alone, despise
Her tricky quadrilaterals
And save yourself a lot of spills

And you thought, MaryPage, I spent my school time studying? A boy with cheek doesn't do that!!

I can't believe that has been lingering in some corner of my brain for 65 years!!

Robby

Any agreement with Martex that there is no relationship between the similar poems we read as children and the unifying process in a democracy?

Robby

So please continue to share those thoughts with us. All of us together are what has made this forum so successful for almost a year.

Robby

Besides, wasn't it pointed out in an earlier posting that people in ART often feel a compulsion?

Robby

Robby

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

How old were you when poetry first entered your life?

Robby

I like very much your description "that poetry was the music of artists who did not play a musical instrument.

Robby

 

What a wonderful bird is the pelican 
His beak can hold more than his belly can! 

As the winner of the Poetry Reading Contest at Haverhill High School in 1946, I would like to invite you to visit the m.e.stubbs poetry journal. Among the poets in the journal now is Elisha Porat, winner of the Prime Minister's Prize for Literature in 1996 in Israel. Mr. Porat lives in a kibbutz in Israel and very kindly allows me to publish his poetry. SeniorNet poets appearing here are R.J.McCusker and John T. Baker and others whose names you may recognize. Please click the link below.

m.e.stubbs poetry journal
The m.e.stubbs poetry journal was named for a little girl named Marilyn Edna Stubbs who loved to read everything she could get her hands on, including poetry. That is the name I was given when I was boen, a name which was changed to McKay when I was adopted at the age of 14, two years after my mother died.

It is said that our family is descended from the artist, George Stubbs, a reknowned British painter of animals, especially horses. We also are directly descended from William Stubbs of Maine, a painter of seascapes. You see, it's all in the genes. My sister in Maine is a fine artist. My Massachusetts sister does wonderful crafts. All four of us, including my New Hampshire brother are quite musically inclined.

This last link will be of special interest to you. With it you will access a poem called "Identity Crisis" written by Dr. Robert Bancker Iadeluca. This poem is especially appropriate at Independence Day.

Please click the link below.

Poetry by Dr. Robert Bancker Iadeluca
Mal

When I was in high school we had a book for English class called "Prose and Poetry." I still remember; it had a blue cover. We all called it "Frozen Poetry." We knew what was Prose because it was in the Prose Section and Poetry was in the Poetry Section.

Will someone help me? How do we know which is which?

When in the Course of Human Events

We hold these Truths to be self-evident

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes

Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies

Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions

We mutually pledge to each others our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.

But what about all these stories in the magazines on the newsstand? They're short stories. Are they art? Is everything that is written art? How do we differentiate? Much of what we create in America is sent all over the world. As they read our magazines, do they see that as an example of American art?

Robby