Steve Meacham
December 9, 2010
MARK these dates in your calendar right now.
June 6, 2012: Transit of Venus, ideally seen from Sydney between 8.16am and 2.44pm.
July 31, 2018: Favourable opposition of Mars - when the red planet will be just 57.6 million kilometres away from the Sydney Tower, the nearest it has been since 2003.
And of course the big one. July 22, 2028: Total eclipse of the Sun. Nick Lomb says for Sydneysiders, ''this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness a fully eclipsed Sun from their own backyards'' (cloud permitting).
The curator of astronomy at the Sydney Observatory, Lomb has just launched his 2011 Australian Sky Guide - the 21st edition since he wrote the first version in 1990.
However this year is different. The latest edition, ''featuring new, improved sky maps [and] a new dreamtime astronomy story'', is in colour for the first time and in a wider format, Lomb says, ''making it more readable and attractive than it has been''.
Lomb himself has changed orbit this year. He's landed not on Mars but in Melbourne.
Having retired last December from the Sydney Observatory, Lomb now edits the guide from Victoria where his wife has family. Is the heavenly perspective from Melbourne any different? ''No,'' he says. ''It's possibly more cloudy, though Melbourne people would kill me for saying that. And everything takes place 25 minutes later because it is west of Sydney.''
How does his guide change each year? ''The stars remain the same, always appearing on the same day. But the planets are very different,'' Lomb says.
''There's always new information from the satellites going round Jupiter and Saturn. And a new spacecraft has gone past Mercury. In 2011 there will be two eclipses of the moon. Then in 2012 there's going to be a huge event - the Transit of Venus.'' So what is the celestial highlight of the past 21 years, as seen from Sydney Observatory? Three stand out, he says.
''In 1994, the comet called Shoemaker-Levy 9 - the ninth comet discovered by the American astronomers Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker and their colleague David Levy - crashed into the planet Jupiter.''
The crash had been predicted and scientists knew the impact would reveal vital information about the giant planet's make-up, particularly as viewed via the Hubble Space Telescope and the Galileo spacecraft.
''We had observation sessions at Sydney Observatory,'' Lomb says. ''But we didn't know if the effect of the collision was going to be visible. The excitement after the first impact, when we saw this dark blob appear on the planet's surface through the small telescope at the observatory, was amazing.'' Another awe-inspiring memory spread over several days in 2003 ''when the planet Mars was the closest it has been to us for 50,000 years''.
''Again, that created huge excitement and it was a pleasure to watch it with the many thousands of people who came to the observatory at night,'' Lomb says. Finally, he says, no one could forget ''the 2004 transit of Venus, the first time it had been visible since 1882 - so something no living person had ever seen before''. ''We were very fortunate with the weather. It was a beautiful, clear afternoon in Sydney, and we had a great view.''
Thursday, December 9, 2010
'Remarkable' impact of aspirin on cancer: study
Glenda Kwek
December 7, 2010
Australian experts have hailed as "remarkable" and "significant" a study that found taking aspirin daily cuts your risk of getting cancer, but cautioned the drug should not be regarded as a "magic bullet".
The British study, which was published in the medical journal The Lancet, analysed eight trials involving 25,570 patients, and found a daily dose of aspirin of less than 75 milligrams - about a quarter of an aspirin tablet - reduced cancer deaths by an average of 21 per cent during the studies and 34 per cent after five years.
"It's fairly interesting that such a widespread - and these days relatively cheap drug - should have such a measurable impact on deaths from cancer, said Cancer Council of Australia's chief executive Professor Ian Olver.
"So it's a remarkable finding given the fact that it can be easily and cheaply implemented across the population."
The director of St Vincent's Clinical School, Professor Allan Spigelman, called the study "strong and "robust" because of its large sample size and use of multiple trials, and said it built on earlier work about the protective benefits of aspirin on bowel cancer.
He cautioned that the reduced cancer risk should be kept in perspective by looking at the number of deaths prevented.
"If say 100,000 people were to take this low dose aspirin for five years, it would prevent 56 cancer deaths. So that needs to be kept in perspective."
Professor Spigelman said that research on the impact of aspirin on cancer - which has sometimes been called a "wonder drug" because its varied medical uses - had not reached the point where "you might sprinkle in the water like fluorine" as it could cause adverse effects for some patients.
Some side-effects include irritation of the stomach leading to ulcers and internal bleeding.
"It has to be personalised," Professor Olver said. "[The study] hasn't defined which age group is best to take the aspirin nor has it defined how long you have to take the aspirin for.
"And I think the caution is that any individual who wanted to try this should really check with their doctor that they don't have any underlying medical condition or aren't on other medication that is incompatible with aspirin."
But Professor Peter Rothwell of John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, who led the study, said aspirin's risks were beginning to be "drowned out" by its benefits in reducing the risk of cancer and the risk of heart attacks.
"Previous guidelines have rightly cautioned that in healthy middle-aged people the small risk of bleeding on aspirin partly offsets the benefit from prevention of strokes and heart attacks, but the reductions in deaths due to several common cancers will now alter this balance for many people," he said, adding that he started taking aspirin regularly two years ago.
Professor Olver also highlighted a crucial statistic that should not be forgotten in light of such an "interesting and exciting study" - that one-third of cancer deaths could be prevented by lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking, having a healthy diet, exercising, cutting down on alcohol consumption and getting protection from the sun.
- with Reuters
December 7, 2010
Australian experts have hailed as "remarkable" and "significant" a study that found taking aspirin daily cuts your risk of getting cancer, but cautioned the drug should not be regarded as a "magic bullet".
The British study, which was published in the medical journal The Lancet, analysed eight trials involving 25,570 patients, and found a daily dose of aspirin of less than 75 milligrams - about a quarter of an aspirin tablet - reduced cancer deaths by an average of 21 per cent during the studies and 34 per cent after five years.
"It's fairly interesting that such a widespread - and these days relatively cheap drug - should have such a measurable impact on deaths from cancer, said Cancer Council of Australia's chief executive Professor Ian Olver.
"So it's a remarkable finding given the fact that it can be easily and cheaply implemented across the population."
The director of St Vincent's Clinical School, Professor Allan Spigelman, called the study "strong and "robust" because of its large sample size and use of multiple trials, and said it built on earlier work about the protective benefits of aspirin on bowel cancer.
He cautioned that the reduced cancer risk should be kept in perspective by looking at the number of deaths prevented.
"If say 100,000 people were to take this low dose aspirin for five years, it would prevent 56 cancer deaths. So that needs to be kept in perspective."
Professor Spigelman said that research on the impact of aspirin on cancer - which has sometimes been called a "wonder drug" because its varied medical uses - had not reached the point where "you might sprinkle in the water like fluorine" as it could cause adverse effects for some patients.
Some side-effects include irritation of the stomach leading to ulcers and internal bleeding.
"It has to be personalised," Professor Olver said. "[The study] hasn't defined which age group is best to take the aspirin nor has it defined how long you have to take the aspirin for.
"And I think the caution is that any individual who wanted to try this should really check with their doctor that they don't have any underlying medical condition or aren't on other medication that is incompatible with aspirin."
But Professor Peter Rothwell of John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, who led the study, said aspirin's risks were beginning to be "drowned out" by its benefits in reducing the risk of cancer and the risk of heart attacks.
"Previous guidelines have rightly cautioned that in healthy middle-aged people the small risk of bleeding on aspirin partly offsets the benefit from prevention of strokes and heart attacks, but the reductions in deaths due to several common cancers will now alter this balance for many people," he said, adding that he started taking aspirin regularly two years ago.
Professor Olver also highlighted a crucial statistic that should not be forgotten in light of such an "interesting and exciting study" - that one-third of cancer deaths could be prevented by lifestyle changes such as quitting smoking, having a healthy diet, exercising, cutting down on alcohol consumption and getting protection from the sun.
- with Reuters
Not quite Doctor Who, but sonic screwdriver a new twist for science
Richard Gray
December 6, 2010
LONDON: Engineers have developed a device that can move and manipulating objects using only ultrasonic sound waves.
They say the technology could eventually lead to devices that can undo screws, assemble electronics and put together delicate components.
The news will no doubt delight fans of Doctor Who who have dreamed of owning a sonic screwdriver after watching their hero use the tool to get himself out of many sticky situations.
But while the doctor's device can perform a multitude of tasks from cutting, burning, welding, sending signals, controlling the Tardis and healing wounds, the researchers warn their real life sonic screwdriver will have more limited capabilities.
Professor Bruce Drinkwater, an ultrasonics engineer at the University of Bristol, said: "We have developed a device that allows us to use ultrasonic forces to move small objects like biological cells around to sort them or to assemble them.
"We are using quite low forces to do this because we don't want to damage the objects we are moving, but the technology is definitely real and there is potential to turn it into something like Dr Who's sonic screwdriver.
"If we can increase the ultrasonic force and create a rotational force, then we could potentially undo screws. Essentially what you are doing is using the ultrasonic sound wave to twirl the air around to create a miniature tornado."
Professor Drinkwater and his colleagues have created a prototype device, which they have called sonotweezers, that uses ultrasound to move around particular sizes of cells.
Tiny crystals are made to vibrate by passing an electrical current through them, producing an ultrasonic shock wave in the air around them. This shock wave generates a force that can be used to push the cells. The size of the shock wave can be tuned to move cells of different size and so separate diseased cells from healthy ones.
Their device can also be used to separate dangerous material such as anthrax from other powder.
Other researchers are already working on creating rotational motion with ultrasound to be used to assemble delicate electronic components.
Professor Drinkwater said: ''Ultrasonic technology is already making its mark in the medical and manufacturing arenas with some exciting results."
Telegraph, London
December 6, 2010
LONDON: Engineers have developed a device that can move and manipulating objects using only ultrasonic sound waves.
They say the technology could eventually lead to devices that can undo screws, assemble electronics and put together delicate components.
The news will no doubt delight fans of Doctor Who who have dreamed of owning a sonic screwdriver after watching their hero use the tool to get himself out of many sticky situations.
But while the doctor's device can perform a multitude of tasks from cutting, burning, welding, sending signals, controlling the Tardis and healing wounds, the researchers warn their real life sonic screwdriver will have more limited capabilities.
Professor Bruce Drinkwater, an ultrasonics engineer at the University of Bristol, said: "We have developed a device that allows us to use ultrasonic forces to move small objects like biological cells around to sort them or to assemble them.
"We are using quite low forces to do this because we don't want to damage the objects we are moving, but the technology is definitely real and there is potential to turn it into something like Dr Who's sonic screwdriver.
"If we can increase the ultrasonic force and create a rotational force, then we could potentially undo screws. Essentially what you are doing is using the ultrasonic sound wave to twirl the air around to create a miniature tornado."
Professor Drinkwater and his colleagues have created a prototype device, which they have called sonotweezers, that uses ultrasound to move around particular sizes of cells.
Tiny crystals are made to vibrate by passing an electrical current through them, producing an ultrasonic shock wave in the air around them. This shock wave generates a force that can be used to push the cells. The size of the shock wave can be tuned to move cells of different size and so separate diseased cells from healthy ones.
Their device can also be used to separate dangerous material such as anthrax from other powder.
Other researchers are already working on creating rotational motion with ultrasound to be used to assemble delicate electronic components.
Professor Drinkwater said: ''Ultrasonic technology is already making its mark in the medical and manufacturing arenas with some exciting results."
Telegraph, London
Leave your taboos at the gate
Heather Brooke
December 9, 2010
IN WHAT may prove a particularly incendiary cable, US diplomats describe a world of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll behind the official pieties of Saudi Arabian royalty.
Jeddah consulate officials described an underground Halloween party, thrown last year by a member of the royal family, which broke all the country's Islamic taboos.
Liquor and prostitutes were present in abundance behind the heavily guarded villa gates, according to leaked dispatches.
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The party was thrown by a wealthy, unidentified prince from the large Al-Thunayan family.
''Alcohol, though strictly prohibited by Saudi law and custom, was plentiful at the party's well-stocked bar. The hired Filipino bartenders served a cocktail punch using sadiqi, a locally made moonshine,'' the cable said. ''It was also learned through word-of-mouth that a number of the guests were in fact 'working girls', not uncommon for such parties.''
The dispatch from the US partygoers, signed by the consul in Jeddah, Martin Quinn, added: ''Though not witnessed directly at this event, cocaine and hashish use is common in these social circles.''
The underground party scene is ''thriving and throbbing'' thanks to the protection of Saudi royalty, the dispatch said.
But it is only available behind closed doors and for the very rich. More than 150 Saudi men and women, most in their 20s and 30s, were at the party. The patronage of royalty meant the feared religious police kept a distance. Admission was controlled through a strict guest list.
''The scene resembled a nightclub anywhere outside the kingdom: plentiful alcohol, young couples dancing, a DJ at the turntables and everyone in costume.''
The bar featured well-known brands of liquor, the original contents reportedly replaced with sadiqi.
The cable said it was easy for would-be partygoers to find a patron out of more than 10,000 princes in the kingdom.
Guardian News & Media
December 9, 2010
IN WHAT may prove a particularly incendiary cable, US diplomats describe a world of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll behind the official pieties of Saudi Arabian royalty.
Jeddah consulate officials described an underground Halloween party, thrown last year by a member of the royal family, which broke all the country's Islamic taboos.
Liquor and prostitutes were present in abundance behind the heavily guarded villa gates, according to leaked dispatches.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The party was thrown by a wealthy, unidentified prince from the large Al-Thunayan family.
''Alcohol, though strictly prohibited by Saudi law and custom, was plentiful at the party's well-stocked bar. The hired Filipino bartenders served a cocktail punch using sadiqi, a locally made moonshine,'' the cable said. ''It was also learned through word-of-mouth that a number of the guests were in fact 'working girls', not uncommon for such parties.''
The dispatch from the US partygoers, signed by the consul in Jeddah, Martin Quinn, added: ''Though not witnessed directly at this event, cocaine and hashish use is common in these social circles.''
The underground party scene is ''thriving and throbbing'' thanks to the protection of Saudi royalty, the dispatch said.
But it is only available behind closed doors and for the very rich. More than 150 Saudi men and women, most in their 20s and 30s, were at the party. The patronage of royalty meant the feared religious police kept a distance. Admission was controlled through a strict guest list.
''The scene resembled a nightclub anywhere outside the kingdom: plentiful alcohol, young couples dancing, a DJ at the turntables and everyone in costume.''
The bar featured well-known brands of liquor, the original contents reportedly replaced with sadiqi.
The cable said it was easy for would-be partygoers to find a patron out of more than 10,000 princes in the kingdom.
Guardian News & Media
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
PM can't say what law WikiLeaks has broken
December 7, 2010 - 11:28AM
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has again been unable to name any Australian laws broken by the controversial WikiLeaks website or its founder Julian Assange.
Western governments are increasingly calling for Mr Assange to be stopped as WikiLeaks continues to publish more than 250,000 confidential documents from the United States State Department.
But asked directly what Australian laws had been broken by either WikiLeaks or Mr Assange, Ms Gillard said the Australian Federal Police were investigating.
"The foundation stone of it is an illegal act," Ms Gillard told reporters today.
But the "foundation stone" was the leaking of the documents to the website, not the publishing of the cables.
"It would not happen, information would not be on WikiLeaks, if there had not been an illegal act undertaken," Ms Gillard said.
It is widely assumed the man responsible for the leaks is a US soldier who is already in prison for previous leaks.
"It's grossly irresponsible and anybody who looks at the pages of today's newspaper and sees that things like critical infrastructure lists are being put on WikiLeaks ... would understand how grossly irresponsible this is," Ms Gillard said.
A classified cable listing infrastructure critical to the US was published by the site on Monday.
The list included some Australian-based infrastructure including the already widely known undersea telecommunications cable - the Southern Cross Cable.
Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis accused Ms Gillard of being "clumsy" with her language on the issue of illegality.
"As far as I can see, he [Mr Assange] hasn't broken any Australian law," he told Sky News.
"Nor does it appear he has broken any American laws."
Senator Brandis, a Queen's Counsel, called for any debate about the publishing of the cables to have a well-defined understanding of the difference between something which appeared to be morally wrong and an act that was illegal.
"As far as I can see, nothing Mr Assange has done does break the law," he said.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland said yesterday that he believed the release of the cables could threaten the lives of people providing information to intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The federal police were not only looking at whether any Australian law had been breached by Mr Assange, but would help US law enforcement authorities in their investigations, he said.
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said yesterday the government had a responsibility to look after Mr Assange as an Australian citizen.
"He's been convicted of nothing," Mr Brown told reporters in Hobart.
Mr Brown said leaking the information was not a crime.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott told Barrie Cassidy on the ABC's Insiders program on Sunday that if Mr Assange had broken the law he should be prosecuted.
AAP with smh.com.au
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has again been unable to name any Australian laws broken by the controversial WikiLeaks website or its founder Julian Assange.
Western governments are increasingly calling for Mr Assange to be stopped as WikiLeaks continues to publish more than 250,000 confidential documents from the United States State Department.
But asked directly what Australian laws had been broken by either WikiLeaks or Mr Assange, Ms Gillard said the Australian Federal Police were investigating.
"The foundation stone of it is an illegal act," Ms Gillard told reporters today.
But the "foundation stone" was the leaking of the documents to the website, not the publishing of the cables.
"It would not happen, information would not be on WikiLeaks, if there had not been an illegal act undertaken," Ms Gillard said.
It is widely assumed the man responsible for the leaks is a US soldier who is already in prison for previous leaks.
"It's grossly irresponsible and anybody who looks at the pages of today's newspaper and sees that things like critical infrastructure lists are being put on WikiLeaks ... would understand how grossly irresponsible this is," Ms Gillard said.
A classified cable listing infrastructure critical to the US was published by the site on Monday.
The list included some Australian-based infrastructure including the already widely known undersea telecommunications cable - the Southern Cross Cable.
Opposition legal affairs spokesman George Brandis accused Ms Gillard of being "clumsy" with her language on the issue of illegality.
"As far as I can see, he [Mr Assange] hasn't broken any Australian law," he told Sky News.
"Nor does it appear he has broken any American laws."
Senator Brandis, a Queen's Counsel, called for any debate about the publishing of the cables to have a well-defined understanding of the difference between something which appeared to be morally wrong and an act that was illegal.
"As far as I can see, nothing Mr Assange has done does break the law," he said.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland said yesterday that he believed the release of the cables could threaten the lives of people providing information to intelligence and law enforcement officials.
The federal police were not only looking at whether any Australian law had been breached by Mr Assange, but would help US law enforcement authorities in their investigations, he said.
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said yesterday the government had a responsibility to look after Mr Assange as an Australian citizen.
"He's been convicted of nothing," Mr Brown told reporters in Hobart.
Mr Brown said leaking the information was not a crime.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott told Barrie Cassidy on the ABC's Insiders program on Sunday that if Mr Assange had broken the law he should be prosecuted.
AAP with smh.com.au
Brazil angers US and Israel with its pro-Palestine move
Adrian Blomfield
December 7, 2010
JERUSALEM: Brazil has been accused of undermining the Middle East peace process after it formally recognised Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in his last month as Brazil's President, caused anger in Israel and the US by officially acknowledging Palestinian sovereignty over territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
By breaking ranks with his South American allies, Mr Lula da Silva appeared to be consolidating his legacy as the leader that turned Brazil into a major force on the world stage. But the move was denounced by Israel as a unilateral attempt to bypass the peace process that would ''harm trust'' between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships.
US politicians condemned Brazil's ''severely misguided'' and ''regrettable'' decision to recognise a Palestinian state.
Brazil's decision ''is regrettable and will only serve to undermine peace and security in the Middle East,'' said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ms Ros-Lehtinen will chair the panel from January when the new Congress sits. She said ''responsible nations'' should wait until Palestinians return to direct talks with Israel and recognise its ''right to exist as a Jewish state'', before taking such a step.
A Democrat, Eliot Engel, chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing relations with Latin America, condemned Brazil's move.
''Brazil's decision to recognise Palestine is severely misguided and represents a last gasp by a Lula-led foreign policy which was already substantially off track,'' Mr Engel said. ''Brazil is sending a message to the Palestinians that they need not make peace to gain recognition as a sovereign state.''
Mr Lula da Silva's decision, announced in a public letter to Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian counterpart, is the latest evidence of Brazil's growing interest in the politics of the Middle East.
In recent years, Brazil has been involved in unofficial ''back channel'' negotiations between Israel and Syria. In March, Mr Lula da Silva also became the first Brazilian leader officially to visit the Holy Land.
The trip was not without its controversies. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, refused to meet Mr Lula da Silva after he laid a wreath at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's grave and then turned down an invitation to lay a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism.
Mr Lula da Silva's bid to reach out to Iran, which he visited in May after hosting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has also raised concerns in the US and Israel. Brazil and Turkey voted against a UN Security Council resolution in June imposing new sanctions on Iran's nuclear program after the two countries negotiated a deal to swap enriched uranium for fuel to power a reactor for medical isotopes.
Brazil's foreign ministry defended the move to recognise Palestinian sovereignty, saying it still believed a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership was ''essential''.
More than 100 states, mostly from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, have recognised Palestinian statehood, and Brazil becomes the last of the BRIC group of emerging powers - Brazil, Russia, India and China - to do so.
But Israel fears that other South American countries could now follow suit and there was speculation that Peru may do so in the next few days.
Telegraph, London; Bloomberg
December 7, 2010
JERUSALEM: Brazil has been accused of undermining the Middle East peace process after it formally recognised Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in his last month as Brazil's President, caused anger in Israel and the US by officially acknowledging Palestinian sovereignty over territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
By breaking ranks with his South American allies, Mr Lula da Silva appeared to be consolidating his legacy as the leader that turned Brazil into a major force on the world stage. But the move was denounced by Israel as a unilateral attempt to bypass the peace process that would ''harm trust'' between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships.
US politicians condemned Brazil's ''severely misguided'' and ''regrettable'' decision to recognise a Palestinian state.
Brazil's decision ''is regrettable and will only serve to undermine peace and security in the Middle East,'' said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Ms Ros-Lehtinen will chair the panel from January when the new Congress sits. She said ''responsible nations'' should wait until Palestinians return to direct talks with Israel and recognise its ''right to exist as a Jewish state'', before taking such a step.
A Democrat, Eliot Engel, chairman of the House subcommittee overseeing relations with Latin America, condemned Brazil's move.
''Brazil's decision to recognise Palestine is severely misguided and represents a last gasp by a Lula-led foreign policy which was already substantially off track,'' Mr Engel said. ''Brazil is sending a message to the Palestinians that they need not make peace to gain recognition as a sovereign state.''
Mr Lula da Silva's decision, announced in a public letter to Mahmoud Abbas, his Palestinian counterpart, is the latest evidence of Brazil's growing interest in the politics of the Middle East.
In recent years, Brazil has been involved in unofficial ''back channel'' negotiations between Israel and Syria. In March, Mr Lula da Silva also became the first Brazilian leader officially to visit the Holy Land.
The trip was not without its controversies. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, refused to meet Mr Lula da Silva after he laid a wreath at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's grave and then turned down an invitation to lay a wreath at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism.
Mr Lula da Silva's bid to reach out to Iran, which he visited in May after hosting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has also raised concerns in the US and Israel. Brazil and Turkey voted against a UN Security Council resolution in June imposing new sanctions on Iran's nuclear program after the two countries negotiated a deal to swap enriched uranium for fuel to power a reactor for medical isotopes.
Brazil's foreign ministry defended the move to recognise Palestinian sovereignty, saying it still believed a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership was ''essential''.
More than 100 states, mostly from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, have recognised Palestinian statehood, and Brazil becomes the last of the BRIC group of emerging powers - Brazil, Russia, India and China - to do so.
But Israel fears that other South American countries could now follow suit and there was speculation that Peru may do so in the next few days.
Telegraph, London; Bloomberg
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
China preparing for collapse of N. Korea regime, cables say
John Garnaut BEIJING
December 1, 2010
A SERIES of leaked US diplomatic cables is prompting the world to confront the dilemma of which country or army should stabilise North Korea and secure its nuclear facilities in the event of regime collapse.
Beijing sees the isolated nation as a buffer against the US military presence in the region and has declined to engage the US in contingency discussions, Chinese and American analysts have said.
In February, South Korea's then-vice foreign minister, Chun Yong-woo, relayed to US diplomats that China "would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the US in a 'benign alliance'", citing conversations with two senior Chinese officials, according to secret US State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
Mr Chun added a key rider to this formula: ''As long as Korea was not hostile towards China.''
Since then, China has raised its rhetorical and diplomatic support for North Korea despite its neighbour being blamed for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors, and last week's artillery assault that killed four South Koreans.
China's solidarity with Pyongyang has prodded Seoul further into the embrace of the US.
A separate cable from the US embassy in Seoul in January last year says the South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak, asked the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, whether China had any contingency plans for regime collapse.
''Hu apparently pretended not to hear Lee,'' it said.
The vice-dean of Peking University's school of international studies, Jia Qingguo, said the lack of a US-China dialogue was creating ''worrying'' uncertainties. ''Who is going to take control of the situation and what about the nuclear facilities?'' he said.
The cables also reveal senior South Korean officials commenting that the North's economic and political situation is dire. They cited intelligence reports of a bomb scare on a Kim Jong-il train, unrest in the country's north, and the secret defection of high-ranking officials to the South.
Mr Chun, now national security adviser to Mr Lee, was reported to have said the regime would collapse when Mr Kim dies.
Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Peking University, said the regime would not last long and China would inevitably support South Korean-led reunification, partly because it had no choice.
''If China dispatched troops across the Yalu River what would be the result? They will outrage South Koreans, raise unbelievable concerns from Japan, and US-China policy could change very tremendously,'' he said.
''I don't think China has any real intention of falling into a new Cold War; it's totally against China's interests. You can say Beijing foreign policy is not so smart sometimes but it will not always be stupid.''
Cai Jian, a North Korea expert at Fudan University, said China was conducting internal ''response planning'' even if those plans were not being communicated to the US. He said China's ''baseline'' was that there would be no ''hostile regime'' and no US military presence in North Korea.
''If South Korea keeps its pro-US policy then China has to maintain stability through North Korea,'' he said.
The WikiLeaks cables also revealed a Chinese diplomat slamming North Korea's nuclear activities as a ''threat to the whole world's security'' and a senior Russian diplomat deriding North Korea's ballistic missile test as ''a piece of junk that miraculously flew'' and a South Korean minister slamming China's top North Korea negotiator as an old-school communist not up to the job.
with Sanghee Liu
December 1, 2010
A SERIES of leaked US diplomatic cables is prompting the world to confront the dilemma of which country or army should stabilise North Korea and secure its nuclear facilities in the event of regime collapse.
Beijing sees the isolated nation as a buffer against the US military presence in the region and has declined to engage the US in contingency discussions, Chinese and American analysts have said.
In February, South Korea's then-vice foreign minister, Chun Yong-woo, relayed to US diplomats that China "would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the US in a 'benign alliance'", citing conversations with two senior Chinese officials, according to secret US State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
Mr Chun added a key rider to this formula: ''As long as Korea was not hostile towards China.''
Since then, China has raised its rhetorical and diplomatic support for North Korea despite its neighbour being blamed for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors, and last week's artillery assault that killed four South Koreans.
China's solidarity with Pyongyang has prodded Seoul further into the embrace of the US.
A separate cable from the US embassy in Seoul in January last year says the South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak, asked the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, whether China had any contingency plans for regime collapse.
''Hu apparently pretended not to hear Lee,'' it said.
The vice-dean of Peking University's school of international studies, Jia Qingguo, said the lack of a US-China dialogue was creating ''worrying'' uncertainties. ''Who is going to take control of the situation and what about the nuclear facilities?'' he said.
The cables also reveal senior South Korean officials commenting that the North's economic and political situation is dire. They cited intelligence reports of a bomb scare on a Kim Jong-il train, unrest in the country's north, and the secret defection of high-ranking officials to the South.
Mr Chun, now national security adviser to Mr Lee, was reported to have said the regime would collapse when Mr Kim dies.
Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Peking University, said the regime would not last long and China would inevitably support South Korean-led reunification, partly because it had no choice.
''If China dispatched troops across the Yalu River what would be the result? They will outrage South Koreans, raise unbelievable concerns from Japan, and US-China policy could change very tremendously,'' he said.
''I don't think China has any real intention of falling into a new Cold War; it's totally against China's interests. You can say Beijing foreign policy is not so smart sometimes but it will not always be stupid.''
Cai Jian, a North Korea expert at Fudan University, said China was conducting internal ''response planning'' even if those plans were not being communicated to the US. He said China's ''baseline'' was that there would be no ''hostile regime'' and no US military presence in North Korea.
''If South Korea keeps its pro-US policy then China has to maintain stability through North Korea,'' he said.
The WikiLeaks cables also revealed a Chinese diplomat slamming North Korea's nuclear activities as a ''threat to the whole world's security'' and a senior Russian diplomat deriding North Korea's ballistic missile test as ''a piece of junk that miraculously flew'' and a South Korean minister slamming China's top North Korea negotiator as an old-school communist not up to the job.
with Sanghee Liu
Assange could face prosecution and years in jail
Dylan Welch
December 1, 2010
JULIAN ASSANGE could face charges of espionage, and the US Attorney-General has revealed that his government is working hard to bring down the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website.
Sources in Washington have revealed that US investigators are exploring the possibility of charging Mr Assange, the site's editor, and others under the century-old Espionage Act, and that they could face decades in jail.
The US Attorney-General, Eric Holder, would not confirm the Espionage Act was a possible avenue of prosecution, but did say the investigation was being run jointly by the Justice Department and the Pentagon.
''This is not sabre-rattling,'' Mr Holder said. ''To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law … they will be held responsible. They will be held accountable. To the extent there are gaps in our laws, we will move to close those gaps.''
The rhetoric came as Mr Assange held a video conference in London saying the US had become ''a regime that doesn't believe in the freedom of the press and doesn't act like it believes it''.
''[The US] is trying to make it as hard as possible for us to publish responsibly, in the hope that it can get us to not publish anything at all. Because not publishing anything at all would mean not publishing the abuses by [the US].''
Mr Assange's London lawyer responded to Mr Holder's comments, saying attempts to change laws or prosecute her client were outrageous.
''WikiLeaks ought to have the same protection that The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case had and prosecuting WikiLeaks or its editor-in-chief … would be a sad indictment of the tradition of free speech enshrined in the first amendment,'' Jennifer Robinson said.
The Australian government has echoed US outrage at the publication of the embassy cables and has encouraged the US move to prosecute Mr Assange, an Australian citizen.
Yesterday the Australian Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, told ABC radio he was fully supportive of the move to charge those responsible for the leaks.
He also indicated he would like to see Australian media outlets consider abstaining from publishing material if it was considered against the country's interests. ''If [the media] receive representations from national security or law enforcement authorities that material could be prejudicial, they will often refrain from publishing the material. And certainly it may well be that that sort of discussion might need to take place.''
The actions of the US have not discouraged all countries from expressing their support for Mr Assange and WikiLeaks. Ecuador has seemingly opened its arms, and invited it to establish a home base there.
The invitation came through a comment by Ecuador's Deputy Foreign Minister, Kintto Lucas, on a website on Monday. ''We are ready to give him [Mr Assange] residence in Ecuador, with no problems and no conditions. We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the internet but in a variety of public forums.''
Even though it was not Ecuador's policy to involve itself in the affairs of other countries, the worrying nature of the cables - particularly the references to Latin America - had compelled it to offer safe haven, Mr Lucas said.
In an interview in Forbes magazine, Mr Assange indicated that the next target of WikiLeaks would be a big US bank, and said he had tens of thousands of documents that would be published early next year.
The bank leak would ''give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume''.
December 1, 2010
JULIAN ASSANGE could face charges of espionage, and the US Attorney-General has revealed that his government is working hard to bring down the WikiLeaks whistleblowing website.
Sources in Washington have revealed that US investigators are exploring the possibility of charging Mr Assange, the site's editor, and others under the century-old Espionage Act, and that they could face decades in jail.
The US Attorney-General, Eric Holder, would not confirm the Espionage Act was a possible avenue of prosecution, but did say the investigation was being run jointly by the Justice Department and the Pentagon.
''This is not sabre-rattling,'' Mr Holder said. ''To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law … they will be held responsible. They will be held accountable. To the extent there are gaps in our laws, we will move to close those gaps.''
The rhetoric came as Mr Assange held a video conference in London saying the US had become ''a regime that doesn't believe in the freedom of the press and doesn't act like it believes it''.
''[The US] is trying to make it as hard as possible for us to publish responsibly, in the hope that it can get us to not publish anything at all. Because not publishing anything at all would mean not publishing the abuses by [the US].''
Mr Assange's London lawyer responded to Mr Holder's comments, saying attempts to change laws or prosecute her client were outrageous.
''WikiLeaks ought to have the same protection that The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case had and prosecuting WikiLeaks or its editor-in-chief … would be a sad indictment of the tradition of free speech enshrined in the first amendment,'' Jennifer Robinson said.
The Australian government has echoed US outrage at the publication of the embassy cables and has encouraged the US move to prosecute Mr Assange, an Australian citizen.
Yesterday the Australian Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, told ABC radio he was fully supportive of the move to charge those responsible for the leaks.
He also indicated he would like to see Australian media outlets consider abstaining from publishing material if it was considered against the country's interests. ''If [the media] receive representations from national security or law enforcement authorities that material could be prejudicial, they will often refrain from publishing the material. And certainly it may well be that that sort of discussion might need to take place.''
The actions of the US have not discouraged all countries from expressing their support for Mr Assange and WikiLeaks. Ecuador has seemingly opened its arms, and invited it to establish a home base there.
The invitation came through a comment by Ecuador's Deputy Foreign Minister, Kintto Lucas, on a website on Monday. ''We are ready to give him [Mr Assange] residence in Ecuador, with no problems and no conditions. We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the internet but in a variety of public forums.''
Even though it was not Ecuador's policy to involve itself in the affairs of other countries, the worrying nature of the cables - particularly the references to Latin America - had compelled it to offer safe haven, Mr Lucas said.
In an interview in Forbes magazine, Mr Assange indicated that the next target of WikiLeaks would be a big US bank, and said he had tens of thousands of documents that would be published early next year.
The bank leak would ''give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume''.
Interpol issues global arrest warrant for Julian Assange
Glenda Kwek
December 1, 2010 - 11:05AM
Interpol, the international police organisation, have issued a global arrest warrant for WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, as the activist website continued its US diplomatic cables leaks today.
The 39-year-old Australian was added to the organisation's "wanted" list for alleged sex crimes committed in Sweden earlier this year.
He is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion, after an investigation by Swedish prosecutors into his encounters with two women in Sweden in August.
Mr Assange has denied the accusations, with his British lawyer Mark Stephens saying earlier this month that they were "false and without basis".
Ecuador's Deputy Foreign Minister, Kintto Lucas, yesterday offered Mr Assange asylum in his country saying that "we are ready to give him [Mr Assange] residence in Ecuador, with no problems and no conditions".
"We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the internet but in a variety of public forums."
Cable leaks embarrassing the US
The United States has condemned the leaks as a criminal act but has not disputed the authenticity of the published transcripts, which have been chosen for publication by reporters from major world dailies.
The leaks began on Sunday and have already covered several major diplomatic crises, in particular the nuclear stand-off with Iran and allegations of US spying on the UN.
The latest leaks, reported by The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers, focus on Pakistan and reveal US fears about the South Asian country's nuclear arsenal.
They also reveal that Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani mused about forcing out civilian President Asif Ali Zardari.
General Kayani told the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he "might, however reluctantly", pressure Zardari to resign, according to a cable cited by the Times.
French daily Le Monde also reported on a separate group of US cables, in which French President Nicolas Sarkozy was described as "Sarkozy the American".
"Sarkozy is the French politician who most supports the role of the United States in the world," the US embassy in Paris wrote in a 2006 portrait of the right-wing minister shortly before he announced his presidential run.
"His nickname is 'Sarkozy the American' and his affinity for America is authentic and comes from the bottom of his heart," the memo said, predicting an end to the tense relations under the outgoing president, Jacques Chirac.
- with AFP
December 1, 2010 - 11:05AM
Interpol, the international police organisation, have issued a global arrest warrant for WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, as the activist website continued its US diplomatic cables leaks today.
The 39-year-old Australian was added to the organisation's "wanted" list for alleged sex crimes committed in Sweden earlier this year.
He is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion, after an investigation by Swedish prosecutors into his encounters with two women in Sweden in August.
Mr Assange has denied the accusations, with his British lawyer Mark Stephens saying earlier this month that they were "false and without basis".
Ecuador's Deputy Foreign Minister, Kintto Lucas, yesterday offered Mr Assange asylum in his country saying that "we are ready to give him [Mr Assange] residence in Ecuador, with no problems and no conditions".
"We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the internet but in a variety of public forums."
Cable leaks embarrassing the US
The United States has condemned the leaks as a criminal act but has not disputed the authenticity of the published transcripts, which have been chosen for publication by reporters from major world dailies.
The leaks began on Sunday and have already covered several major diplomatic crises, in particular the nuclear stand-off with Iran and allegations of US spying on the UN.
The latest leaks, reported by The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers, focus on Pakistan and reveal US fears about the South Asian country's nuclear arsenal.
They also reveal that Pakistan's army chief General Ashfaq Kayani mused about forcing out civilian President Asif Ali Zardari.
General Kayani told the US ambassador during a March 2009 meeting that he "might, however reluctantly", pressure Zardari to resign, according to a cable cited by the Times.
French daily Le Monde also reported on a separate group of US cables, in which French President Nicolas Sarkozy was described as "Sarkozy the American".
"Sarkozy is the French politician who most supports the role of the United States in the world," the US embassy in Paris wrote in a 2006 portrait of the right-wing minister shortly before he announced his presidential run.
"His nickname is 'Sarkozy the American' and his affinity for America is authentic and comes from the bottom of his heart," the memo said, predicting an end to the tense relations under the outgoing president, Jacques Chirac.
- with AFP
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Astronomers detect oxygen deep in space
November 27, 2010
LONDON: A spacecraft has tasted oxygen in the atmosphere of another world for the first time while flying low over Saturn's icy moon, Rhea.
NASA's Cassini probe scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of the planet's moon while passing overhead at an altitude of 97 kilometres in March.
Until now, wisps of oxygen have been detected on planets and their moons only indirectly, using the Hubble space telescope and other major facilities.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Instruments aboard Cassini revealed an extremely thin oxygen and carbon dioxide atmosphere that is sustained by high-energy particles slamming into the moon's surface and kicking up atoms, molecules and ions.
Astronomers have counted 62 moons orbiting Saturn. At 1500 kilometres wide, Rhea is the second largest and is thought to be made almost entirely of ice.
''This really is the first time that we've seen oxygen directly in the atmosphere of another world,'' said Andrew Coates, at University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory. He is a co-author of the study published in Science.
''Active, complex chemistry involving oxygen may be quite common throughout the solar system and even our universe,'' said Ben Teolis of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, the team leader.
''Such chemistry could be a prerequisite for life. All evidence from Cassini indicates that Rhea is too cold and devoid of the liquid water necessary for life as we know it.''
Rhea's atmosphere makes it unique in the Saturn system. Only Rhea and Titan, the largest Saturnian moon, have enough mass to hold on to an atmosphere with their gravity. Titan, however, has a very thick nitrogen and methane atmosphere, with very little carbon dioxide and oxygen.
Guardian News & Media
LONDON: A spacecraft has tasted oxygen in the atmosphere of another world for the first time while flying low over Saturn's icy moon, Rhea.
NASA's Cassini probe scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of the planet's moon while passing overhead at an altitude of 97 kilometres in March.
Until now, wisps of oxygen have been detected on planets and their moons only indirectly, using the Hubble space telescope and other major facilities.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Instruments aboard Cassini revealed an extremely thin oxygen and carbon dioxide atmosphere that is sustained by high-energy particles slamming into the moon's surface and kicking up atoms, molecules and ions.
Astronomers have counted 62 moons orbiting Saturn. At 1500 kilometres wide, Rhea is the second largest and is thought to be made almost entirely of ice.
''This really is the first time that we've seen oxygen directly in the atmosphere of another world,'' said Andrew Coates, at University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory. He is a co-author of the study published in Science.
''Active, complex chemistry involving oxygen may be quite common throughout the solar system and even our universe,'' said Ben Teolis of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, the team leader.
''Such chemistry could be a prerequisite for life. All evidence from Cassini indicates that Rhea is too cold and devoid of the liquid water necessary for life as we know it.''
Rhea's atmosphere makes it unique in the Saturn system. Only Rhea and Titan, the largest Saturnian moon, have enough mass to hold on to an atmosphere with their gravity. Titan, however, has a very thick nitrogen and methane atmosphere, with very little carbon dioxide and oxygen.
Guardian News & Media
Regrets? They've had a few
November 25, 2010
How does it feel to invent something you later wish you hadn't? Simon Hattenstone talks to the people who know.
The labradoodle
If Wally Conron had known what was going to become of the labradoodle, he wouldn't have bred the dog in the first place. It was 22 years ago and Conron, now 81, was working as the breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia when his boss set him a tough task. A blind woman from Hawaii had written asking if they could provide a guide dog that would not shed hair, because her husband was allergic to it. ''I said, 'Oh yes, this will be a piece of cake. The standard poodle is a working dog, it doesn't shed hair, it'll be great.' I tried 33 in the course of three years and they all failed. They just didn't make a guide dog.''
Conron decided there was one possibility left: take his best labrador bitch and mate it with a standard poodle. They created three cross-breed puppies that needed to be boarded out to be trained and socialised but nobody would take them; everyone wanted a pure-bred. And that's when Conron came up with the name labradoodle. ''I went to our PR team and said, 'Go to the press and tell them we've invented a new dog, the labradoodle.' It was a gimmick and it went worldwide. No one wanted a cross-breed but the following day we had hundreds of calls from people wanting these master dogs.''
The labradoodle proved to be a brilliant dog for the blind and the woman in Hawaii was happy. So what was the problem?
It's how the dog has been used and abused and sold under false pretences, Conron says. ''When the pups were five months old, we sent clippings and saliva to Hawaii to be tested with this woman's husband. Of the three pups, he was not allergic to one of them. In the next litter I had, there were 10 pups but only three had non-allergenic coats. Now, people are breeding these dogs and selling them as non-allergenic and they're not even testing them.
''All these backyard breeders have jumped on the bandwagon and they're crossing any kind of dog with a poodle. They're selling them for more than a pure-bred is worth and they're not going into the backgrounds of the parents of the dogs. There are so many poodle crosses having fits, problems with their eyes, hips and elbows; a lot have epilepsy. There are a few ethical breeders but very, very few.''
Conron says that despite the fact the dogs have helped so many blind people, he regrets creating the first cross-breed. ''I released a Frankenstein. … People say 'aren't you proud of yourself?' and I say, 'not in the slightest. I've done so much harm to pure breeding.'''
The Kalashnikov
General Mikhail Kalashnikov, who was responsible for the AK-47 assault rifle, now the most widely used automatic rifle in the world, says he regrets that terrorists and gangsters use his weapon. ''It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire from my weapon. I created this weapon primarily to safeguard our fatherland,'' the Russian said on the eve of his 90th birthday last year.
C5 electric car
Sir Clive Sinclair remains best known for inventing what is widely regarded as a great British disaster: the C5, a one-seat electronic not-quite-car that has become an iconic image of technological failure. When it arrived on the market in 1985, it looked like nothing we'd seen before - and not necessarily in a good way. ''First of all, it was midwinter and there was snow on the ground,'' Sinclair says. ''And we threw it at the public without them being prepared for it … So it had a shock effect and that was bad news.''
That's not all that went wrong. The British Safety Council claimed it was unsafe. ''Absolute rubbish,'' Sinclair says. In fact, 25 years on, he believes the C5's time has come and he's developing a new prototype to be launched within a year. ''Technology has moved on quite a bit; there are new batteries available and I just rethought the thing. The C5 was OK but I think we can do a better job now.''
Electronic tag system
Professor Bob Gable is ashamed of what has become of the electronic tagging system he devised with his twin brother, Kirkland, in the mid-1960s. Both are professors in psychology, have law degrees and were motivated by hippie idealism. In 1964, tagging was invented as a system of positive reinforcement and the brothers are horrified that it is now used as a tool for punishment.
Bob says their work was influenced by American psychologist B. F. Skinner; Bob was taught by Skinner while Kirkland's adviser was Timothy Leary. ''We wanted to find a way of rewarding juvenile delinquents when they were doing what they were supposed to be doing; that is, going to school or to work or to a drug treatment centre. Just as Skinner rewarded pigeons.''
Over four years, they tagged 20 juvenile delinquents and compared their behaviour with a control group. They were then rewarded for being where they should be with, for example, tickets for a sports game or a free pizza. The results were impressive. ''We reduced the frequency of arrest and time in jail and when a crime did occur, they tended to be more creative and less violent.''
By the late '60s, the brothers had left Harvard and the experiment stopped. But 15 years later, electronic tagging came back - this time without the reward system. Bob says there are those who regard him and his brother as heroes because the tag has kept people out of prison but as far as the Gables are concerned, it's a gross misappropriation of the original concept. ''It's all using punishment.''
Are they disappointed because their tag was born of idealism? ''Yes - and it's not just idealism; it's also scientific fact that rewards and shaping behaviour works and that punishment in the long run is not very beneficial. When kids misbehave, we punish them; when countries misbehave, we bomb them. We just have this idea that we're going to suppress the bad behaviour and we don't take seriously how we ought to reward.''
MDMA
Alexander Shulgin is known as the godfather of ecstasy. He lives with his wife, Ann, in Lafayette, California, and at 85 suffers severe short-term memory loss. Ann acts as a conduit between us - repeating my questions to him and his answers back to me.
Ecstasy was first synthesised in 1912 by the chemical company Merck but Shulgin resynthesised it in 1976 and was the first person to test it on a human: himself. Two years later, he wrote a paper with a colleague about the effect of MDMA, stating that it created ''an easily controlled altered state of consciousness with emotional and sensual overtones … it didn't have the other visual and auditory imaginative things that you often get from psychedelics. It opened up a person, both to other people and inner thoughts.'' He believed that with its unusual combination of effects (intoxication, clarity and loss of inhibition), it could be a useful drug in psychotherapy. And so it was, for a while. But then MDMA became ecstasy, the drug of choice for the rave generation, and in 1986 its use in the treatment of depression was banned by the US Drug Enforcement Agency. In 2000, US customs officials seized nearly 10 million pills.
Shulgin had his first psychedelic experience in 1960 and since then, he estimates, he has had another 4000. Some regard him as a holy man, some as a great scientist, others as a monster. The Daily Mail once ran a story headlined ''Has this man killed 100 British teenagers?''
Today, Shulgin has his doubts about the drug he championed - not because of its efficacy but because he believes people have abused it.
The problem started, he says, when clubbers began popping pills with reckless abandon. And once MDMA was made illegal, there was no way to monitor the quality of the drug. ''It made it impossible for people at raves to know whether they were getting MDMA. We never use the term ecstasy because it is meaningless; some ecstasy capsules have no MDMA in them whatsoever. So the so-called ecstasy has become a real menace.''
Lethal injection
Dr Jay Chapman is sometimes referred to as the father of the lethal injection. ''It was not one of my purposes in life. It was something I was asked to do and I did it on the spur of the moment.''
It was 1977 and double murderer Gary Gilmore had just been executed in Utah. Faced with the option of firing squad or hanging, he had chosen the former but there had been an uproar among campaigners against the death penalty, denouncing the execution as inhumane.
A few days later, Chapman, who was Oklahoma's chief medical examiner, was asked if he had an opinion on how people should be put to death in a more humane fashion. He had strong opinions and suggested that a lethal injection would provide a much more palatable option. Chapman then created the formula - an ultra-short-acting barbiturate in combination with a paralytic agent and potassium chloride - to produce a quick death. Later, he set up a detailed protocol for the state of Oklahoma for the administration of the lethal injection. ''It's the standard protocol for anaesthesia carried to extremes,'' he says.
Why was he so keen on the lethal injection? Simple, he says. There were so many people on death row, living their lives as argument raged about the relative humanity of the means of execution. With a system that was quick, efficient and that involved minimal pain, he said natural justice would be restored and those on death row would die. And that, to Chapman, was what mattered.
Earlier this year, though, he announced that he regretted his role in creating the lethal injection. Has he had a change of heart on capital punishment? Yes, he says - in a way.
He says that as Oklahoma's chief medical examiner, he has witnessed many examples of man's inhumanity to man and he had believed that if the death penalty appeared to be carried out in a more humane fashion then more prisoners on death row would eventually be put to death. ''But there was a moratorium on executions .. They've been languishing there for 20-something years and that doesn't seem reasonable … If the death penalty is going to be assigned, it should be carried out. Justice delayed is justice denied.''
Life imprisonment is costly and pointless, Chapman says. ''There are some people who cannot live in society. And if that's the case, they should be eliminated.''
But the main reason he now has regrets, he says, is that over time, he has become convinced the lethal injection is too humane. ''I'm an eye-for-an-eye person. The lethal injection is too easy for some of them.''
Guardian News & Media
How does it feel to invent something you later wish you hadn't? Simon Hattenstone talks to the people who know.
The labradoodle
If Wally Conron had known what was going to become of the labradoodle, he wouldn't have bred the dog in the first place. It was 22 years ago and Conron, now 81, was working as the breeding manager for the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia when his boss set him a tough task. A blind woman from Hawaii had written asking if they could provide a guide dog that would not shed hair, because her husband was allergic to it. ''I said, 'Oh yes, this will be a piece of cake. The standard poodle is a working dog, it doesn't shed hair, it'll be great.' I tried 33 in the course of three years and they all failed. They just didn't make a guide dog.''
Conron decided there was one possibility left: take his best labrador bitch and mate it with a standard poodle. They created three cross-breed puppies that needed to be boarded out to be trained and socialised but nobody would take them; everyone wanted a pure-bred. And that's when Conron came up with the name labradoodle. ''I went to our PR team and said, 'Go to the press and tell them we've invented a new dog, the labradoodle.' It was a gimmick and it went worldwide. No one wanted a cross-breed but the following day we had hundreds of calls from people wanting these master dogs.''
The labradoodle proved to be a brilliant dog for the blind and the woman in Hawaii was happy. So what was the problem?
It's how the dog has been used and abused and sold under false pretences, Conron says. ''When the pups were five months old, we sent clippings and saliva to Hawaii to be tested with this woman's husband. Of the three pups, he was not allergic to one of them. In the next litter I had, there were 10 pups but only three had non-allergenic coats. Now, people are breeding these dogs and selling them as non-allergenic and they're not even testing them.
''All these backyard breeders have jumped on the bandwagon and they're crossing any kind of dog with a poodle. They're selling them for more than a pure-bred is worth and they're not going into the backgrounds of the parents of the dogs. There are so many poodle crosses having fits, problems with their eyes, hips and elbows; a lot have epilepsy. There are a few ethical breeders but very, very few.''
Conron says that despite the fact the dogs have helped so many blind people, he regrets creating the first cross-breed. ''I released a Frankenstein. … People say 'aren't you proud of yourself?' and I say, 'not in the slightest. I've done so much harm to pure breeding.'''
The Kalashnikov
General Mikhail Kalashnikov, who was responsible for the AK-47 assault rifle, now the most widely used automatic rifle in the world, says he regrets that terrorists and gangsters use his weapon. ''It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire from my weapon. I created this weapon primarily to safeguard our fatherland,'' the Russian said on the eve of his 90th birthday last year.
C5 electric car
Sir Clive Sinclair remains best known for inventing what is widely regarded as a great British disaster: the C5, a one-seat electronic not-quite-car that has become an iconic image of technological failure. When it arrived on the market in 1985, it looked like nothing we'd seen before - and not necessarily in a good way. ''First of all, it was midwinter and there was snow on the ground,'' Sinclair says. ''And we threw it at the public without them being prepared for it … So it had a shock effect and that was bad news.''
That's not all that went wrong. The British Safety Council claimed it was unsafe. ''Absolute rubbish,'' Sinclair says. In fact, 25 years on, he believes the C5's time has come and he's developing a new prototype to be launched within a year. ''Technology has moved on quite a bit; there are new batteries available and I just rethought the thing. The C5 was OK but I think we can do a better job now.''
Electronic tag system
Professor Bob Gable is ashamed of what has become of the electronic tagging system he devised with his twin brother, Kirkland, in the mid-1960s. Both are professors in psychology, have law degrees and were motivated by hippie idealism. In 1964, tagging was invented as a system of positive reinforcement and the brothers are horrified that it is now used as a tool for punishment.
Bob says their work was influenced by American psychologist B. F. Skinner; Bob was taught by Skinner while Kirkland's adviser was Timothy Leary. ''We wanted to find a way of rewarding juvenile delinquents when they were doing what they were supposed to be doing; that is, going to school or to work or to a drug treatment centre. Just as Skinner rewarded pigeons.''
Over four years, they tagged 20 juvenile delinquents and compared their behaviour with a control group. They were then rewarded for being where they should be with, for example, tickets for a sports game or a free pizza. The results were impressive. ''We reduced the frequency of arrest and time in jail and when a crime did occur, they tended to be more creative and less violent.''
By the late '60s, the brothers had left Harvard and the experiment stopped. But 15 years later, electronic tagging came back - this time without the reward system. Bob says there are those who regard him and his brother as heroes because the tag has kept people out of prison but as far as the Gables are concerned, it's a gross misappropriation of the original concept. ''It's all using punishment.''
Are they disappointed because their tag was born of idealism? ''Yes - and it's not just idealism; it's also scientific fact that rewards and shaping behaviour works and that punishment in the long run is not very beneficial. When kids misbehave, we punish them; when countries misbehave, we bomb them. We just have this idea that we're going to suppress the bad behaviour and we don't take seriously how we ought to reward.''
MDMA
Alexander Shulgin is known as the godfather of ecstasy. He lives with his wife, Ann, in Lafayette, California, and at 85 suffers severe short-term memory loss. Ann acts as a conduit between us - repeating my questions to him and his answers back to me.
Ecstasy was first synthesised in 1912 by the chemical company Merck but Shulgin resynthesised it in 1976 and was the first person to test it on a human: himself. Two years later, he wrote a paper with a colleague about the effect of MDMA, stating that it created ''an easily controlled altered state of consciousness with emotional and sensual overtones … it didn't have the other visual and auditory imaginative things that you often get from psychedelics. It opened up a person, both to other people and inner thoughts.'' He believed that with its unusual combination of effects (intoxication, clarity and loss of inhibition), it could be a useful drug in psychotherapy. And so it was, for a while. But then MDMA became ecstasy, the drug of choice for the rave generation, and in 1986 its use in the treatment of depression was banned by the US Drug Enforcement Agency. In 2000, US customs officials seized nearly 10 million pills.
Shulgin had his first psychedelic experience in 1960 and since then, he estimates, he has had another 4000. Some regard him as a holy man, some as a great scientist, others as a monster. The Daily Mail once ran a story headlined ''Has this man killed 100 British teenagers?''
Today, Shulgin has his doubts about the drug he championed - not because of its efficacy but because he believes people have abused it.
The problem started, he says, when clubbers began popping pills with reckless abandon. And once MDMA was made illegal, there was no way to monitor the quality of the drug. ''It made it impossible for people at raves to know whether they were getting MDMA. We never use the term ecstasy because it is meaningless; some ecstasy capsules have no MDMA in them whatsoever. So the so-called ecstasy has become a real menace.''
Lethal injection
Dr Jay Chapman is sometimes referred to as the father of the lethal injection. ''It was not one of my purposes in life. It was something I was asked to do and I did it on the spur of the moment.''
It was 1977 and double murderer Gary Gilmore had just been executed in Utah. Faced with the option of firing squad or hanging, he had chosen the former but there had been an uproar among campaigners against the death penalty, denouncing the execution as inhumane.
A few days later, Chapman, who was Oklahoma's chief medical examiner, was asked if he had an opinion on how people should be put to death in a more humane fashion. He had strong opinions and suggested that a lethal injection would provide a much more palatable option. Chapman then created the formula - an ultra-short-acting barbiturate in combination with a paralytic agent and potassium chloride - to produce a quick death. Later, he set up a detailed protocol for the state of Oklahoma for the administration of the lethal injection. ''It's the standard protocol for anaesthesia carried to extremes,'' he says.
Why was he so keen on the lethal injection? Simple, he says. There were so many people on death row, living their lives as argument raged about the relative humanity of the means of execution. With a system that was quick, efficient and that involved minimal pain, he said natural justice would be restored and those on death row would die. And that, to Chapman, was what mattered.
Earlier this year, though, he announced that he regretted his role in creating the lethal injection. Has he had a change of heart on capital punishment? Yes, he says - in a way.
He says that as Oklahoma's chief medical examiner, he has witnessed many examples of man's inhumanity to man and he had believed that if the death penalty appeared to be carried out in a more humane fashion then more prisoners on death row would eventually be put to death. ''But there was a moratorium on executions .. They've been languishing there for 20-something years and that doesn't seem reasonable … If the death penalty is going to be assigned, it should be carried out. Justice delayed is justice denied.''
Life imprisonment is costly and pointless, Chapman says. ''There are some people who cannot live in society. And if that's the case, they should be eliminated.''
But the main reason he now has regrets, he says, is that over time, he has become convinced the lethal injection is too humane. ''I'm an eye-for-an-eye person. The lethal injection is too easy for some of them.''
Guardian News & Media
Blasts that killed Iran scientist blamed on Israel
November 30, 2010
TEHRAN: Twin bomb blasts in Iran's capital killed a nuclear scientist and wounded another yesterday, state media reported, blaming Israeli agents on motorbikes who attached the bombs to the scientists' cars.
''In a criminal terrorist act, the agents of the Zionist regime attacked two prominent university professors who were on their way to work,'' the website of Iran's state television network reported, referring to Israel.
''Dr Majid Shahriari was killed and his wife was injured. Dr Fereydoon Abbasi and his wife were injured.''
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Fars news agency said the scientists were targeted in two different locations by men on motorcycles who approached their vehicles and attached bombs to their cars.
Dr Shahriari was a member of the nuclear engineering department of Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran, the official IRNA news agency said.
Dr Abbasi held a PhD in nuclear physics and did nuclear research at the Defence Ministry, the website Mashreghnews said.
The website said Dr Abbasi, 52, was ''one of the few specialists who can separate isotopes'' and had been a member of the Revolutionary Guards since 1979.
''These assassinations were not personal,'' the Tehran deputy governor, Safar Ali Baratlu, told ISNA news agency.
The attacks came a day after the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said the US was weighing military options in the face of Tehran's announcement on Saturday that its first nuclear power plant, which was built by Russia in the southern city of Bushehr, had begun operations.
''We've actually been thinking about military options for a significant period of time,'' Admiral Mullen said in an interview broadcast on CNN.
He did not believe ''for a second'' that Iran's nuclear plant was for civilian use, he said.
''In fact, the information and intelligence that I've seen speak very specifically to the contrary. Iran is still very much on a path to be able to develop nuclear weapons, including weaponising them, putting them on a missile and being able to use them.''
The website WikiLeaks released diplomatic cables yesterday that revealed King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had ''repeatedly'' urged the US to take military action against Iran's nuclear program.
Agence France-Presse
TEHRAN: Twin bomb blasts in Iran's capital killed a nuclear scientist and wounded another yesterday, state media reported, blaming Israeli agents on motorbikes who attached the bombs to the scientists' cars.
''In a criminal terrorist act, the agents of the Zionist regime attacked two prominent university professors who were on their way to work,'' the website of Iran's state television network reported, referring to Israel.
''Dr Majid Shahriari was killed and his wife was injured. Dr Fereydoon Abbasi and his wife were injured.''
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Fars news agency said the scientists were targeted in two different locations by men on motorcycles who approached their vehicles and attached bombs to their cars.
Dr Shahriari was a member of the nuclear engineering department of Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran, the official IRNA news agency said.
Dr Abbasi held a PhD in nuclear physics and did nuclear research at the Defence Ministry, the website Mashreghnews said.
The website said Dr Abbasi, 52, was ''one of the few specialists who can separate isotopes'' and had been a member of the Revolutionary Guards since 1979.
''These assassinations were not personal,'' the Tehran deputy governor, Safar Ali Baratlu, told ISNA news agency.
The attacks came a day after the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said the US was weighing military options in the face of Tehran's announcement on Saturday that its first nuclear power plant, which was built by Russia in the southern city of Bushehr, had begun operations.
''We've actually been thinking about military options for a significant period of time,'' Admiral Mullen said in an interview broadcast on CNN.
He did not believe ''for a second'' that Iran's nuclear plant was for civilian use, he said.
''In fact, the information and intelligence that I've seen speak very specifically to the contrary. Iran is still very much on a path to be able to develop nuclear weapons, including weaponising them, putting them on a missile and being able to use them.''
The website WikiLeaks released diplomatic cables yesterday that revealed King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had ''repeatedly'' urged the US to take military action against Iran's nuclear program.
Agence France-Presse
In the future, the only secrets will be spoken ones
Simon Jenkins
November 30, 2010
Is it justified? Should a newspaper disclose virtually all a nation's secret diplomatic communication, illegally downloaded by one of its citizens? The reporting in The Guardian and the Herald of the first of a selection of 250,000 US State Department cables marks a recasting of modern diplomacy. Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim.
Anything said or done in the name of a democracy is, prima facie, of public interest. When that democracy purports to be ''world policeman'' - an assumption that runs ghostlike through these cables - that interest is global. Nonetheless, The Guardian had to consider two things in abetting disclosure, irrespective of what is anyway published by WikiLeaks. It could not be party to putting the lives of individuals or sources at risk, nor reveal material that might compromise military operations or the location of special forces.
In this light, two back-up checks were applied. The US government was told in advance the areas or themes covered, and ''representations'' were invited. These were considered. Details of ''redactions'' were then shared with the other four media recipients of the material and sent to WikiLeaks itself, to establish, albeit voluntarily, some common standard.
The State Department knew of the leak several months ago and had ample time to alert staff in sensitive locations. Nor is the material classified top secret, being at a level that more than 3 million US government employees are cleared to see, and available on the Defence Department's internal Siprnet.
The revelations do not have the startling, cold-blooded immediacy of the WikiLeaks war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, with their astonishing insight into the minds of fighting men seemingly detached from the ethics of war. The disclosures are largely of analysis and high-grade gossip. Insofar as they are sensational, it is in showing the corruption and mendacity of those in power, and the mismatch between what they claim and what they do.
Few will be surprised that Vladimir Putin runs the world's most sensational kleptocracy, that the Saudis wanted the US to bomb Iran, or that Pakistan's ISI is hopelessly involved with Taliban groups of fiendish complexity. We now know that Washington knows too. The full extent of US dealings with Yemen might upset that country's government, but is hardly surprising. If it is true that the Pentagon targeted refugee camps for bombing, it should be of general concern.
The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment. If US spies are breaking United Nations rules by seeking the DNA biometrics of the UN director-general, he is entitled to hear of it.
No harm is done by chatter about President Nicolas Sarkozy's vulgarity and lack of house-training, or about the British royal family.
Some stars shine through the banality such as the heroic envoy in Islamabad, Anne Patterson. She pleads that Washington's whole policy is counterproductive: it ''risks destabilising the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and the military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis without finally achieving the goal''. Nor is any amount of money going to bribe the Taliban to our side. Patterson's cables are like missives from the Titanic as it already heads for the bottom.
The money-wasting is staggering. Aid payments are never followed, never audited, never evaluated. The impression is of the world's superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden. Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the UN, are all perpetually off script. Washington reacts like a wounded bear, its instincts imperial but its power projection unproductive.
America's foreign policy is revealed as a slave to right-wing drift, terrified of a bomb exploding abroad or of a pro-Israeli congressman at home. If the cables tell of the progress to war over Iran or Pakistan or Gaza or Yemen, their revelation might help debate the inanity of policies which, as Patterson says, seem to be leading in just that direction. Perhaps we can now see how catastrophe unfolds when there is time to avert it, rather than having to await a Chilcot report after the event. If that is not in the public's interest, I fail to see what is.
What this saga must do is alter the basis of diplomatic reporting. If WikiLeaks can gain access to secret material, so presumably can a foreign power. Words on paper can be made secure, electronic archives not. The leaks have blown a hole in the framework by which states guard their secrets. The Guardian material must be a breach of the official secrets acts. But coupled with the penetration already allowed under freedom of information, the walls round policy formation and documentation are all but gone. All barriers are permeable. In future the only secrets will be spoken ones. Whether that is a good thing should be a topic for public debate.
Guardian News & Media
November 30, 2010
Is it justified? Should a newspaper disclose virtually all a nation's secret diplomatic communication, illegally downloaded by one of its citizens? The reporting in The Guardian and the Herald of the first of a selection of 250,000 US State Department cables marks a recasting of modern diplomacy. Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing's snake-oil salesmen claim.
Anything said or done in the name of a democracy is, prima facie, of public interest. When that democracy purports to be ''world policeman'' - an assumption that runs ghostlike through these cables - that interest is global. Nonetheless, The Guardian had to consider two things in abetting disclosure, irrespective of what is anyway published by WikiLeaks. It could not be party to putting the lives of individuals or sources at risk, nor reveal material that might compromise military operations or the location of special forces.
In this light, two back-up checks were applied. The US government was told in advance the areas or themes covered, and ''representations'' were invited. These were considered. Details of ''redactions'' were then shared with the other four media recipients of the material and sent to WikiLeaks itself, to establish, albeit voluntarily, some common standard.
The State Department knew of the leak several months ago and had ample time to alert staff in sensitive locations. Nor is the material classified top secret, being at a level that more than 3 million US government employees are cleared to see, and available on the Defence Department's internal Siprnet.
The revelations do not have the startling, cold-blooded immediacy of the WikiLeaks war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan, with their astonishing insight into the minds of fighting men seemingly detached from the ethics of war. The disclosures are largely of analysis and high-grade gossip. Insofar as they are sensational, it is in showing the corruption and mendacity of those in power, and the mismatch between what they claim and what they do.
Few will be surprised that Vladimir Putin runs the world's most sensational kleptocracy, that the Saudis wanted the US to bomb Iran, or that Pakistan's ISI is hopelessly involved with Taliban groups of fiendish complexity. We now know that Washington knows too. The full extent of US dealings with Yemen might upset that country's government, but is hardly surprising. If it is true that the Pentagon targeted refugee camps for bombing, it should be of general concern.
The job of the media is not to protect power from embarrassment. If US spies are breaking United Nations rules by seeking the DNA biometrics of the UN director-general, he is entitled to hear of it.
No harm is done by chatter about President Nicolas Sarkozy's vulgarity and lack of house-training, or about the British royal family.
Some stars shine through the banality such as the heroic envoy in Islamabad, Anne Patterson. She pleads that Washington's whole policy is counterproductive: it ''risks destabilising the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and the military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis without finally achieving the goal''. Nor is any amount of money going to bribe the Taliban to our side. Patterson's cables are like missives from the Titanic as it already heads for the bottom.
The money-wasting is staggering. Aid payments are never followed, never audited, never evaluated. The impression is of the world's superpower roaming helpless in a world in which nobody behaves as bidden. Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the UN, are all perpetually off script. Washington reacts like a wounded bear, its instincts imperial but its power projection unproductive.
America's foreign policy is revealed as a slave to right-wing drift, terrified of a bomb exploding abroad or of a pro-Israeli congressman at home. If the cables tell of the progress to war over Iran or Pakistan or Gaza or Yemen, their revelation might help debate the inanity of policies which, as Patterson says, seem to be leading in just that direction. Perhaps we can now see how catastrophe unfolds when there is time to avert it, rather than having to await a Chilcot report after the event. If that is not in the public's interest, I fail to see what is.
What this saga must do is alter the basis of diplomatic reporting. If WikiLeaks can gain access to secret material, so presumably can a foreign power. Words on paper can be made secure, electronic archives not. The leaks have blown a hole in the framework by which states guard their secrets. The Guardian material must be a breach of the official secrets acts. But coupled with the penetration already allowed under freedom of information, the walls round policy formation and documentation are all but gone. All barriers are permeable. In future the only secrets will be spoken ones. Whether that is a good thing should be a topic for public debate.
Guardian News & Media
Monday, November 29, 2010
Faithless are coarse, uncaring and without purpose, says Cardinal Pell
Jacqueline Maley
November 29, 2010
THE lives of people without faith have ''nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss'', Cardinal George Pell said yesterday at a Mass to install the former Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove as chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.
''A minority of people, usually people without religion, are frightened by the future,'' Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, said during his homily at the St Mary's Cathedral Mass.
''It's almost as though they've … nothing but fear to distract themselves from the fact that without God the universe has no objective purpose or meaning. Nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss.''
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Life without God was ''life without purpose, without constraints'', he said.
Cardinal Pell said education was not enough to create a civilised society, that faith was necessary too. He cited the example of 20th century Germany, which he said was the best educated society in the world when Hitler became leader.
''Australian society will become increasingly coarse and uncaring … if Christian principles are excluded from public discussion.
''The secularists pursuing this aim won't be successful.''
We should not create an ''ideological apartheid'' between faith and reason, Cardinal Pell said.
General Cosgrove was appointed the university's chancellor in May, but yesterday was the official Mass installing him as the institution's figurehead. General Cosgrove is a lifelong Catholic and was educated by the Sisters of Charity and the Christian Brothers at Waverley College.
''It's a role that you would hope would encourage people in the work they do,'' General Cosgrove said of his chancellorship.
''The idea being that you will be a better person, not just in an objective sense but in a moral sense, after you've spent time in the university community.''
General Cosgrove would not be drawn on the Pope's recent comments regarding the use of condoms among male prostitutes infected with HIV.
''When the Pope pronounces we listen extremely carefully,'' he said, but declined to comment further.
He said Australian troops in Afghanistan were doing a ''magnificent job'' in Oruzgan province.
''It would require somebody closer to the day-to-day unfolding of events to tell you about how it's going in wider Afghanistan,'' he said.
November 29, 2010
THE lives of people without faith have ''nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss'', Cardinal George Pell said yesterday at a Mass to install the former Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove as chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.
''A minority of people, usually people without religion, are frightened by the future,'' Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, said during his homily at the St Mary's Cathedral Mass.
''It's almost as though they've … nothing but fear to distract themselves from the fact that without God the universe has no objective purpose or meaning. Nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss.''
Advertisement: Story continues below
Life without God was ''life without purpose, without constraints'', he said.
Cardinal Pell said education was not enough to create a civilised society, that faith was necessary too. He cited the example of 20th century Germany, which he said was the best educated society in the world when Hitler became leader.
''Australian society will become increasingly coarse and uncaring … if Christian principles are excluded from public discussion.
''The secularists pursuing this aim won't be successful.''
We should not create an ''ideological apartheid'' between faith and reason, Cardinal Pell said.
General Cosgrove was appointed the university's chancellor in May, but yesterday was the official Mass installing him as the institution's figurehead. General Cosgrove is a lifelong Catholic and was educated by the Sisters of Charity and the Christian Brothers at Waverley College.
''It's a role that you would hope would encourage people in the work they do,'' General Cosgrove said of his chancellorship.
''The idea being that you will be a better person, not just in an objective sense but in a moral sense, after you've spent time in the university community.''
General Cosgrove would not be drawn on the Pope's recent comments regarding the use of condoms among male prostitutes infected with HIV.
''When the Pope pronounces we listen extremely carefully,'' he said, but declined to comment further.
He said Australian troops in Afghanistan were doing a ''magnificent job'' in Oruzgan province.
''It would require somebody closer to the day-to-day unfolding of events to tell you about how it's going in wider Afghanistan,'' he said.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Sarah Palin confused on Koreas
Thomas Hunter
November 25, 2010 - 3:01PM
Sarah Palin's foreign policy skills have again been questioned after the possible future president of the United States referred to North Korea as "America's ally".
Speaking to Fox News presenter Glenn Beck on his radio show, Mrs Palin said the US should support North Korea in a conflict started on Tuesday when the Kim Jong Il-led nation bombed a small South Korean island without provocation.
A co-host of Beck asked Mrs Palin how she would handle the diplomatic stand-off that had developed since the deadly bombing.
"Obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies. We're bound to by treaty ... " she said.
She was promptly corrected by the interviewer before continuing.
"Eh, yeah," she said. "And we're also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes."
The embarrassing gaffe comes amid a guessing game over whether the former vice-presidential candidate will run for the presidency in 2012.
While the statement appears to have been a slip of the tongue, it does not help Mrs Palin shed a perception of weakness on foreign policy.
It's the same chink in her policy armour that was exploited by comedian Tina Fey during the 2008 presidential election.
Fey's impersonation of Mrs Palin included the famous line: "I can see Russia from my house!"
November 25, 2010 - 3:01PM
Sarah Palin's foreign policy skills have again been questioned after the possible future president of the United States referred to North Korea as "America's ally".
Speaking to Fox News presenter Glenn Beck on his radio show, Mrs Palin said the US should support North Korea in a conflict started on Tuesday when the Kim Jong Il-led nation bombed a small South Korean island without provocation.
A co-host of Beck asked Mrs Palin how she would handle the diplomatic stand-off that had developed since the deadly bombing.
"Obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies. We're bound to by treaty ... " she said.
She was promptly corrected by the interviewer before continuing.
"Eh, yeah," she said. "And we're also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes."
The embarrassing gaffe comes amid a guessing game over whether the former vice-presidential candidate will run for the presidency in 2012.
While the statement appears to have been a slip of the tongue, it does not help Mrs Palin shed a perception of weakness on foreign policy.
It's the same chink in her policy armour that was exploited by comedian Tina Fey during the 2008 presidential election.
Fey's impersonation of Mrs Palin included the famous line: "I can see Russia from my house!"
Monday, November 22, 2010
Cats take a victory lap, licking dogs in the battle of the pets
Nicky Phillips
November 13, 2010
IF YOU'VE ever wondered how cats drink milk without getting a drop on their chin, scientists have found the answer.
Unlike dogs, which scoop up liquid with their tongues, felines use a sophisticated technique that takes advantage of two physical forces.
The findings, which may further divide cat and dog lovers, could also lead to advances in robotics.
When cats lap, they extend their tongue directly down onto the surface of liquid, with the tip curled to form a hook.
Using high-speed cameras, American scientists discovered only the tip of a feline's tongue touches the liquid before it pulls it back into its mouth.
As a cat draws its tongue back a column of liquid forms between it and the surface of the water or milk. The cat can then close its mouth around the column to drink.
A column of liquid forms because it is under the influence of two physical forces: gravity and inertia.
As gravity drags the liquid back towards the bowl, inertia lets it continue moving in the direction it was heading - towards the cat's mouth.
''Ultimately, gravity prevails and the column pinches off,'' said the authors, whose findings are published in the journal Science.
Using mathematical equations the researchers calculated that the amount of liquid a cat captured during each lap depended on the size and speed of its tongue.
Domestic cats average about four laps a second while big cats, which also use the sophisticated technique, drink more slowly.
The lead author, Jeffrey Aristoff, a mathematician, said cats appeared to choose the speed in order to maximise the amount of liquid ingested per lap.
''This suggests cats are smarter than many people think, at least when it comes to hydrodynamics,'' Dr Aristoff, of Princeton University, said.
The research team studied videos of domestic moggies, including one of the researcher's pets, big cats from Boston zoos, and online videos of cats lapping.
The subtle use of the tongue was remarkable given its lack of skeletal support, the authors said.
''The functional diversity and high compliance of [this] structure continues to inspire the design of soft robots,'' they said.
November 13, 2010
IF YOU'VE ever wondered how cats drink milk without getting a drop on their chin, scientists have found the answer.
Unlike dogs, which scoop up liquid with their tongues, felines use a sophisticated technique that takes advantage of two physical forces.
The findings, which may further divide cat and dog lovers, could also lead to advances in robotics.
When cats lap, they extend their tongue directly down onto the surface of liquid, with the tip curled to form a hook.
Using high-speed cameras, American scientists discovered only the tip of a feline's tongue touches the liquid before it pulls it back into its mouth.
As a cat draws its tongue back a column of liquid forms between it and the surface of the water or milk. The cat can then close its mouth around the column to drink.
A column of liquid forms because it is under the influence of two physical forces: gravity and inertia.
As gravity drags the liquid back towards the bowl, inertia lets it continue moving in the direction it was heading - towards the cat's mouth.
''Ultimately, gravity prevails and the column pinches off,'' said the authors, whose findings are published in the journal Science.
Using mathematical equations the researchers calculated that the amount of liquid a cat captured during each lap depended on the size and speed of its tongue.
Domestic cats average about four laps a second while big cats, which also use the sophisticated technique, drink more slowly.
The lead author, Jeffrey Aristoff, a mathematician, said cats appeared to choose the speed in order to maximise the amount of liquid ingested per lap.
''This suggests cats are smarter than many people think, at least when it comes to hydrodynamics,'' Dr Aristoff, of Princeton University, said.
The research team studied videos of domestic moggies, including one of the researcher's pets, big cats from Boston zoos, and online videos of cats lapping.
The subtle use of the tongue was remarkable given its lack of skeletal support, the authors said.
''The functional diversity and high compliance of [this] structure continues to inspire the design of soft robots,'' they said.
Alcohol more dangerous than crack cocaine and heroin: study
Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine - when the ripple effect on society is taken into consideration, a new British study has found.
British experts said alcohol was most destructive because it was so widely used and had devastating consequences not only for drinkers but for those around them.
The study evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they were to the individuals who took them and to society as a whole.
Researchers analysed how addictive a drug was and how it harmed the human body, in addition to other criteria such as environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as healthcare, social services and prison.
Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals.
When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.
The study was paid for by Britain's Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and was published online today in the medical journal The Lancet.
"Just think about what happens [with alcohol] at every football game," said Wim van den Brink, a professor of psychiatry and addiction at the University of Amsterdam. He was not linked to the study but co-authored a commentary in The Lancet.
When drunk in excess, alcohol damaged nearly all organ systems. It was also connected to higher death rates and was involved in a greater percentage of crime than most other drugs, including heroin.
But experts said it would be impractical and incorrect to outlaw alcohol.
"We cannot return to the days of prohibition," said Leslie King, an adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and one of the study's authors. "Alcohol is too embedded in our culture and it won't go away."
Mr King said countries should target problem drinkers, not the vast majority of people who indulge in a drink or two. He said governments should consider more education programs and raising the price of alcohol so it wasn't as widely available.
Experts said the study should prompt countries to reconsider how they classified drugs. For example, last year in Britain, the government increased its penalties for the possession of marijuana. One of its senior advisers, David Nutt - the lead author on the Lancet study - was fired after he criticised the British decision.
"What governments decide is illegal is not always based on science," said Professor van den Brink. He said considerations about revenue and taxation, such as those garnered from the alcohol and tobacco industries, might influence decisions about which substances to regulate or outlaw.
"Drugs that are legal cause at least as much damage, if not more, than drugs that are illicit," he said.
AP
British experts said alcohol was most destructive because it was so widely used and had devastating consequences not only for drinkers but for those around them.
The study evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they were to the individuals who took them and to society as a whole.
Researchers analysed how addictive a drug was and how it harmed the human body, in addition to other criteria such as environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as healthcare, social services and prison.
Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine, or crystal meth, were the most lethal to individuals.
When considering their wider social effects, alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the deadliest. But overall, alcohol outranked all other substances, followed by heroin and crack cocaine. Marijuana, ecstasy and LSD scored far lower.
The study was paid for by Britain's Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and was published online today in the medical journal The Lancet.
"Just think about what happens [with alcohol] at every football game," said Wim van den Brink, a professor of psychiatry and addiction at the University of Amsterdam. He was not linked to the study but co-authored a commentary in The Lancet.
When drunk in excess, alcohol damaged nearly all organ systems. It was also connected to higher death rates and was involved in a greater percentage of crime than most other drugs, including heroin.
But experts said it would be impractical and incorrect to outlaw alcohol.
"We cannot return to the days of prohibition," said Leslie King, an adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and one of the study's authors. "Alcohol is too embedded in our culture and it won't go away."
Mr King said countries should target problem drinkers, not the vast majority of people who indulge in a drink or two. He said governments should consider more education programs and raising the price of alcohol so it wasn't as widely available.
Experts said the study should prompt countries to reconsider how they classified drugs. For example, last year in Britain, the government increased its penalties for the possession of marijuana. One of its senior advisers, David Nutt - the lead author on the Lancet study - was fired after he criticised the British decision.
"What governments decide is illegal is not always based on science," said Professor van den Brink. He said considerations about revenue and taxation, such as those garnered from the alcohol and tobacco industries, might influence decisions about which substances to regulate or outlaw.
"Drugs that are legal cause at least as much damage, if not more, than drugs that are illicit," he said.
AP
Free AK-47 with every truck: US car dealer
A US car dealership is trying to drum up business by offering an unusual perk for potential used-truck buyers: a free AK-47 assault rifle.
General sales manager Nick Ginetta says that since the promotion was announced in the Florida town of Sanford on Veterans Day (November 11), business has more than doubled at Nations Trucks.
Customers would have to pass a background check before using the $US400 ($405) gun-shop voucher.
They also have the option of using the money towards other firearms, or they can request a cheque for that amount instead.
The dealership has fielded some complaints about the deal, which Ginetta acknowledges is controversial.
But he adds: "My buyer is absolutely a gun owner, no question."
The promotion is scheduled to run until the end of November.
AP
General sales manager Nick Ginetta says that since the promotion was announced in the Florida town of Sanford on Veterans Day (November 11), business has more than doubled at Nations Trucks.
Customers would have to pass a background check before using the $US400 ($405) gun-shop voucher.
They also have the option of using the money towards other firearms, or they can request a cheque for that amount instead.
The dealership has fielded some complaints about the deal, which Ginetta acknowledges is controversial.
But he adds: "My buyer is absolutely a gun owner, no question."
The promotion is scheduled to run until the end of November.
AP
Asylum seekers are put in no man's land
Yuko Narushima IMMIGRATION CORRESPONDENT
November 22, 2010
SUMATHI RAHAVAN never predicted the Kafkaesque situation that awaited her young family when she boarded the Australian Customs boat Oceanic Viking last year.
The Sri Lankan has given birth as an immigration detainee, been branded a national security risk by ASIO and now faces 24-hour surveillance with three guards watching over her family, which is being held in detention indefinitely.
Her husband, Yogachandran Rahavan, also declared a national security threat by the spy agency, has given an exclusive interview to the Herald from inside Villawood detention centre.
In an hour-long conversation, he described the family's mental anguish and the serious consideration the couple were giving to adopting out their older children. ''We'd like to live in Australia. We are totally upset. We didn't think this situation would happen to us,'' he said.
The saga began when Mrs Rahavan decided to join her husband in Australia, bundling their daughter Atputha, 6, and son Abinayan, 3, on to what was to become the most politically charged boatload of asylum seekers under the Rudd government.
In its haste to end a diplomatic stand-off with Indonesia, the Australian government offered all refugees on Oceanic Viking a special resettlement deal.
As refugees, the government cannot return the Rahavans to possible danger in Sri Lanka. But because ASIO assesses them a security risk, the family cannot be settled in Australia.
''We faced a physical problem in Sri Lanka but we are here facing a mental problem,'' Mr Rahavan said.
The reasons ASIO has for its suspicions may never be revealed. The agency's decisions in immigration matters are not reviewable.
Mr Rahavan adamantly denied he was involved with the Tamil Tigers separatist group and said he did not know why he could be considered a risk. ''Sumathi worked in the Tamil Eelam court as clerical staff,'' he said.
He said he had owned a poultry business in Kilinochchi, a Tiger-held area during the long civil war, before the family was displaced to Manik Farm, an internment camp in central Sri Lanka.
''People used to disappear from the camps, particularly young people and businessmen,'' he said.
The family became spooked and fled when two men began asking for him, Mr Rahavan said. So began a journey that spanned Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and now Australia.
At Villawood, the Rahavans are watched 24 hours a day. Emails are blocked and phone calls must go through immigration staff who type in ''approved'' numbers and confirm who is on the line before passing the phone over.
''There's all the time - 24/7 - two officers inside the house,'' Mr Rahavan said. ''There is a Serco vehicle and officer, who watches us 24/7 through the windows.''
Some family members are authorised to visit and others not.
The family was transferred to the mainland because of inadequate medical services for detainees to give birth on Christmas Island.
Yesterday the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, was awaiting medical advice before making a decision on their return.
''We are waiting on medical clearance for the baby to be fit to travel back to Christmas Island. Once this is completed, there are no medical impediments to their return,'' a spokesman for the minister said.
Mr Rahavan said his wife's health was deteriorating. She was rising at midnight and crying inconsolably, fretting over the welfare of her children.
''We spent a half life in Sri Lanka, wasted,'' Mr Rahavan said.
The couple did not want their children's lives wasted on their account. ''They are in limbo. They suffer because of their parents,'' he said.
Mr Bowen said he accepted ASIO's checks but could not discuss the contents of national security assessments.
The president of the Law Council of Australia, Glenn Ferguson, said ASIO checks in immigration cases were immune from scrutiny.
''ASIO has a non-reviewable power of veto over who may come to mainland Australia and they exercise this veto in an environment of complete secrecy,'' he said. ''These people are left in a no man's land.''
Discussions with other countries regarding possible resettlement options were continuing, Mr Bowen said.
November 22, 2010
SUMATHI RAHAVAN never predicted the Kafkaesque situation that awaited her young family when she boarded the Australian Customs boat Oceanic Viking last year.
The Sri Lankan has given birth as an immigration detainee, been branded a national security risk by ASIO and now faces 24-hour surveillance with three guards watching over her family, which is being held in detention indefinitely.
Her husband, Yogachandran Rahavan, also declared a national security threat by the spy agency, has given an exclusive interview to the Herald from inside Villawood detention centre.
In an hour-long conversation, he described the family's mental anguish and the serious consideration the couple were giving to adopting out their older children. ''We'd like to live in Australia. We are totally upset. We didn't think this situation would happen to us,'' he said.
The saga began when Mrs Rahavan decided to join her husband in Australia, bundling their daughter Atputha, 6, and son Abinayan, 3, on to what was to become the most politically charged boatload of asylum seekers under the Rudd government.
In its haste to end a diplomatic stand-off with Indonesia, the Australian government offered all refugees on Oceanic Viking a special resettlement deal.
As refugees, the government cannot return the Rahavans to possible danger in Sri Lanka. But because ASIO assesses them a security risk, the family cannot be settled in Australia.
''We faced a physical problem in Sri Lanka but we are here facing a mental problem,'' Mr Rahavan said.
The reasons ASIO has for its suspicions may never be revealed. The agency's decisions in immigration matters are not reviewable.
Mr Rahavan adamantly denied he was involved with the Tamil Tigers separatist group and said he did not know why he could be considered a risk. ''Sumathi worked in the Tamil Eelam court as clerical staff,'' he said.
He said he had owned a poultry business in Kilinochchi, a Tiger-held area during the long civil war, before the family was displaced to Manik Farm, an internment camp in central Sri Lanka.
''People used to disappear from the camps, particularly young people and businessmen,'' he said.
The family became spooked and fled when two men began asking for him, Mr Rahavan said. So began a journey that spanned Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and now Australia.
At Villawood, the Rahavans are watched 24 hours a day. Emails are blocked and phone calls must go through immigration staff who type in ''approved'' numbers and confirm who is on the line before passing the phone over.
''There's all the time - 24/7 - two officers inside the house,'' Mr Rahavan said. ''There is a Serco vehicle and officer, who watches us 24/7 through the windows.''
Some family members are authorised to visit and others not.
The family was transferred to the mainland because of inadequate medical services for detainees to give birth on Christmas Island.
Yesterday the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, was awaiting medical advice before making a decision on their return.
''We are waiting on medical clearance for the baby to be fit to travel back to Christmas Island. Once this is completed, there are no medical impediments to their return,'' a spokesman for the minister said.
Mr Rahavan said his wife's health was deteriorating. She was rising at midnight and crying inconsolably, fretting over the welfare of her children.
''We spent a half life in Sri Lanka, wasted,'' Mr Rahavan said.
The couple did not want their children's lives wasted on their account. ''They are in limbo. They suffer because of their parents,'' he said.
Mr Bowen said he accepted ASIO's checks but could not discuss the contents of national security assessments.
The president of the Law Council of Australia, Glenn Ferguson, said ASIO checks in immigration cases were immune from scrutiny.
''ASIO has a non-reviewable power of veto over who may come to mainland Australia and they exercise this veto in an environment of complete secrecy,'' he said. ''These people are left in a no man's land.''
Discussions with other countries regarding possible resettlement options were continuing, Mr Bowen said.
Security firm accused of vice
Dylan Welch NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT
November 22, 2010
AN Australian-owned security company has been accused by a powerful US Senate committee of a shocking litany of abuses in Afghanistan, including theft and corruption.
Compass Integrated Security Solutions, owned by the son of a well-known Australian cricketer, has been accused of undermining the international effort in the country while earning millions in war dollars.
The accusations are found in the October report by the US Senate's committee on armed services into private security contractors in Afghanistan.
The behaviour of the company, which has held contracts with the Australian Department of Defence, was another example of the lack of regulation of private military companies, said a Liberal senator, Russell Trood.
''These contractors are a phenomenon which has grown exponentially over the last decade and has become such a widespread practice that our procedures of oversight haven't really caught up,'' Senator Trood said.
The company is owned by Peter McCosker, the son of the cricketer Rick McCosker.
Compass, based in Dubai, has been in operation for five years and employs more than 2300 security guards in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
Like many other private military and security companies, it has an opaque structure and is also known as Compass Security, Compass Service Solutions and Compass Ltd Iraq.
One of its big contracts was with Supreme Group, a food and fuel supplier to the international forces in Afghanistan.
The US report, which found numerous security companies were acting ''against US and Afghan government interests'' and identified ''dangerous deficiencies'' in their performance, said Compass had contracted several senior Afghan officials.
Among them was General X, the Afghan National Police district commander and General Y, an Afghan National Air Force commander.
''The contract stated that the men supplied by General [X] would be 'fully trained, serving or ex-members of the Afghan National Police Force … or the Afghan National Army,'' the report said. That contract was terminated in 2008 but the contract with General Y was still in effect last June
The committee found Compass's guards sometimes did not turn up to convoys they were meant to protect. In one case ''the guards who did show up allegedly robbed a service station along the convoy route''.
In June last year Compass hired 40 guards and gave them no training before sending them on a convoy. That convoy became involved in a firefight with more than 100 insurgents and was able to proceed only once rescued by international forces.
The report described problems such as inadequate leadership, an insufficient number of weapons and ammunition, unserviceable weapons and equipment, and unmanned security posts.
Mr McCosker and his Washington lawyer would not comment.
dwelch@fairfax.com.au
November 22, 2010
AN Australian-owned security company has been accused by a powerful US Senate committee of a shocking litany of abuses in Afghanistan, including theft and corruption.
Compass Integrated Security Solutions, owned by the son of a well-known Australian cricketer, has been accused of undermining the international effort in the country while earning millions in war dollars.
The accusations are found in the October report by the US Senate's committee on armed services into private security contractors in Afghanistan.
The behaviour of the company, which has held contracts with the Australian Department of Defence, was another example of the lack of regulation of private military companies, said a Liberal senator, Russell Trood.
''These contractors are a phenomenon which has grown exponentially over the last decade and has become such a widespread practice that our procedures of oversight haven't really caught up,'' Senator Trood said.
The company is owned by Peter McCosker, the son of the cricketer Rick McCosker.
Compass, based in Dubai, has been in operation for five years and employs more than 2300 security guards in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
Like many other private military and security companies, it has an opaque structure and is also known as Compass Security, Compass Service Solutions and Compass Ltd Iraq.
One of its big contracts was with Supreme Group, a food and fuel supplier to the international forces in Afghanistan.
The US report, which found numerous security companies were acting ''against US and Afghan government interests'' and identified ''dangerous deficiencies'' in their performance, said Compass had contracted several senior Afghan officials.
Among them was General X, the Afghan National Police district commander and General Y, an Afghan National Air Force commander.
''The contract stated that the men supplied by General [X] would be 'fully trained, serving or ex-members of the Afghan National Police Force … or the Afghan National Army,'' the report said. That contract was terminated in 2008 but the contract with General Y was still in effect last June
The committee found Compass's guards sometimes did not turn up to convoys they were meant to protect. In one case ''the guards who did show up allegedly robbed a service station along the convoy route''.
In June last year Compass hired 40 guards and gave them no training before sending them on a convoy. That convoy became involved in a firefight with more than 100 insurgents and was able to proceed only once rescued by international forces.
The report described problems such as inadequate leadership, an insufficient number of weapons and ammunition, unserviceable weapons and equipment, and unmanned security posts.
Mr McCosker and his Washington lawyer would not comment.
dwelch@fairfax.com.au
Ethics right, refusal wrong for state schools
Sean Nicholls STATE POLITICAL EDITOR
November 22, 2010
PARENTS will have the right to ethics classes as an alternative to scripture in their child's school even if the principal and the majority of the school community opposes them.
The state cabinet is expected to approve the introduction of ethics classes to primary schools today after a successful trial this year. They will begin as early as term one next year.
While the classes will be voluntary for schools, the Herald has confirmed that parents who want their children to attend the classes will be able to appeal to the Education Department if the principal opposes them.
As long as the St James Ethics Centre, which will run the classes, is able to provide volunteers and there is a reasonable number of children to attend them, the department will ensure they are offered.
Students in years 5 and 6 are likely to be the first to be offered the classes, because they are the years in which the trial was run. Eventually classes will be offered in years K-6.
The Minister for Education, Verity Firth, will take the proposal to cabinet having received 745 submissions in response to an independent report on the trial that was published last month.
Of the submissions, only 15 were against the introduction of ethics classes. However, many of those in support came via a form letter organised by the lobby group parents4ethics.
The submissions, which Ms Firth invited after publishing the report, reflect a broad range of attitudes from many parts of the state.
''I'm originally from Europe, and ethics classes are the norm there - even in such strongly Catholic areas as Bavaria,'' wrote a correspondent from Coogee. ''All I can say is that NSW is about 30 years behind the rest of the Western world on this issue, which is nothing short of a disgrace.''
Some submissions were political, reflecting Ms Firth's struggle to retain her seat of Balmain against the Greens at next year's election.
''If you introduce this, Verity, then I will ask my parents and friends to retain you at March as [Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell] may oppose a wonderful course like this,'' wrote a correspondent from Balmain East.
A Baulkham Hills parent, whose child participated in the trial, said: ''The majority of parents, ethics teachers and children at our school found the ethics classes an enriching complement to the many good SRE [Special Religious Education] classes on offer''.
However, many of those opposed were concerned about ethics competing with scripture classes.
''Ethics is already taught in other forums in state primary education and should not be allowed to attract students away from meaningful faith-based studies,'' wrote one.
Another, from North Curl Curl, argued for comparative religious studies classes instead: ''I would prefer teaching about all world religions than 'ethics'. Surely this would encourage greater understanding of other cultures and beliefs as well as Christianity?''
The government does not need to legislate to introduce the classes but will change the policy of the Education Department, which rules out ethics classes as an alternative to religious education.
A spokesman for Mr O'Farrell said the Coalition had yet to determine its position on ethics classes.
November 22, 2010
PARENTS will have the right to ethics classes as an alternative to scripture in their child's school even if the principal and the majority of the school community opposes them.
The state cabinet is expected to approve the introduction of ethics classes to primary schools today after a successful trial this year. They will begin as early as term one next year.
While the classes will be voluntary for schools, the Herald has confirmed that parents who want their children to attend the classes will be able to appeal to the Education Department if the principal opposes them.
As long as the St James Ethics Centre, which will run the classes, is able to provide volunteers and there is a reasonable number of children to attend them, the department will ensure they are offered.
Students in years 5 and 6 are likely to be the first to be offered the classes, because they are the years in which the trial was run. Eventually classes will be offered in years K-6.
The Minister for Education, Verity Firth, will take the proposal to cabinet having received 745 submissions in response to an independent report on the trial that was published last month.
Of the submissions, only 15 were against the introduction of ethics classes. However, many of those in support came via a form letter organised by the lobby group parents4ethics.
The submissions, which Ms Firth invited after publishing the report, reflect a broad range of attitudes from many parts of the state.
''I'm originally from Europe, and ethics classes are the norm there - even in such strongly Catholic areas as Bavaria,'' wrote a correspondent from Coogee. ''All I can say is that NSW is about 30 years behind the rest of the Western world on this issue, which is nothing short of a disgrace.''
Some submissions were political, reflecting Ms Firth's struggle to retain her seat of Balmain against the Greens at next year's election.
''If you introduce this, Verity, then I will ask my parents and friends to retain you at March as [Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell] may oppose a wonderful course like this,'' wrote a correspondent from Balmain East.
A Baulkham Hills parent, whose child participated in the trial, said: ''The majority of parents, ethics teachers and children at our school found the ethics classes an enriching complement to the many good SRE [Special Religious Education] classes on offer''.
However, many of those opposed were concerned about ethics competing with scripture classes.
''Ethics is already taught in other forums in state primary education and should not be allowed to attract students away from meaningful faith-based studies,'' wrote one.
Another, from North Curl Curl, argued for comparative religious studies classes instead: ''I would prefer teaching about all world religions than 'ethics'. Surely this would encourage greater understanding of other cultures and beliefs as well as Christianity?''
The government does not need to legislate to introduce the classes but will change the policy of the Education Department, which rules out ethics classes as an alternative to religious education.
A spokesman for Mr O'Farrell said the Coalition had yet to determine its position on ethics classes.
Tasteless or brilliant? Iceberg water might be both
November 22, 2010 - 10:46AM
Sometime in the next two weeks, a converted fishing boat called the Sikuk is due to sail from St John's, in Canada's Newfoundland province, bound for a fjord in Greenland and a rendezvous with an iceberg.
Where most vessels give icebergs a wide berth, the Sikuk intends to sidle up close and - using a giant mechanical claw - begin ripping 680-kilogram bites of ice from floating bergs and depositing them in tanks below deck.
The product of this bizarre harvest is destined to become something called Glace Rare Iceberg Water, and it represents the latest turn in the lifelong obsession of a native Newfoundlander named Ron Stamp. Where others saw hazards to navigation, Stamp has long seen icebergs as objects of wonder and - eventually - as the key to his fortune.
Advertisement: Story continues below
As a child growing up on the coast of Newfoundland, Stamp says, he was fascinated by the giant blocks of ice floating in the North Atlantic. Then, as a relatively young man, he began to see them as sources of potential profit. And for most of the last 20 years, he has worked to make that vision come true - with varying degrees of success.
Stamp tried iceberg vodka; it had only limited success. The same with iceberg beer.
So now he's trying gourmet water - at $US10 a bottle. Or more.
Why would anyone pay the price of a decent bottle of wine to guzzle melted iceberg? Stamp admits it's a bit of a mystery, but he thinks it will work.
"It is so tasteless that it actually creates a taste. The tastelessness is its own taste," he said. "It's like drinking air."
So-called gourmet bottled waters make up less than 5 per cent of the $US10.6-billion US bottled water market. It's a crowded space, filled with names such as Etrusca, Lelu, Vytautas, Vidago, Karoo and Tasmanian Rain.
There also are at least three other similarly priced, though less ambitiously marketed, iceberg waters, as well as entrants such as Bling H20, which offers east Tennessee spring water in a Swarovski crystal-encrusted bottle for $US50.
"Water is not water any more. Water is the new wine," said Michael Mascha, a one-time food anthropologist, who runs the finewaters.com website and holds tastings to evangelise for greater epicurean regard for water.
Water from different places on the globe has unique tastes, Mascha said, because of differences in mineral content, bubble size, pH levels and hardness or softness. Iceberg water is unique in that it comes from snow that fell perhaps 12,000 years ago - millennia before the Industrial Age filled the atmosphere with impurities.
Mascha characterised iceberg water as "very neutral, very soft ... perfect for very subtle foods like sushi and sashimi".
"It is one of the next great things that we will have as a high-end product, with a tremendous story to tell," he predicted.
Mascha keeps a stash of Iluliaq brand iceberg water from Greenland in his refrigerator.
"It's for a nice meal ... if you want to impress someone. It's an aspirational product, like a nice bottle of wine, a nice bottle of Champagne," he said.
Stamp, 56, who lives in St John's, said he became serious about making money from icebergs in the early 1990s, about the time the collapse of the cod fishery put an end to his career as a seafood broker.
Icebergs, he realised, were an almost limitless resource.
And, he said, "from a marketing and sales perspective, it attracts a horrifying amount of attention. If I sold Ron's Spring Water, nobody would ask me a second question".
A decade ago, Stamp tried selling an iceberg water named Borealis in plastic bottles. But the packaging defined Borealis as a mass-market item, and Stamp couldn't sell it at a competitive price. "I'd have to own 10 ships to harvest enough ice," he said.
Starting last year, he began decanting his water into glass bottles and gave it the French name for "ice".
"It has a certain appeal," Stamp said. "'Iceberg' is too masculine a sound. This is water your wife's going to bug you to get because it matches the dishes."
To enter the US market, Glace needed - and late last month won - approval from the Food and Drug Administration. But even in that, it was a special case: Although FDA labeling rules spoke to artesian water, groundwater, mineral water, sparkling bottled water, spring water and well water, as well as purified water produced by distillation, deionization or reverse osmosis, they didn't address iceberg water.
Stamp declined to disclose Glace sales figures, but he said he and his partners spent $US4.5 million to modify the Sikuk to collect ice instead of herring and mackerel.
Stamp hopes the Sikuk eventually will make 10 harvesting trips a year. But for now, plans call for the ship and its eight-man crew to make the 21-day round trip to Greenland or, in warmer weather, shorter forays into Iceberg Alley off the coast of Newfoundland, as demand requires.
After the ice is crushed and melted, the Sikuk ferries 550,000 litres of water to St John's for shipment to a bottling plant in Montreal via container vessel.
Not everyone is taken with the concept of iceberg water.
"This sounds like an incredibly bad idea just in terms of resource use. We have tap water. We have rain. Why do we have to send a ship out to Greenland? Maybe the water will be 10 per cent cleaner. But what about all the carbon dioxide created?" said Renee Sharp, director of the California office of the Environmental Working Group.
Stamp says he's sensitive to Glace's carbon footprint. Its bottles are recyclable and the Sikuk's retrofit included governors on its engines to cut horsepower and a switch to more efficient fuel.
Besides, Stamp said: "Of all the products that are shipped, water is the lifeblood of the planet. Why pick on water? What about sneakers, or toys, or fertiliser?"
MCT
Sometime in the next two weeks, a converted fishing boat called the Sikuk is due to sail from St John's, in Canada's Newfoundland province, bound for a fjord in Greenland and a rendezvous with an iceberg.
Where most vessels give icebergs a wide berth, the Sikuk intends to sidle up close and - using a giant mechanical claw - begin ripping 680-kilogram bites of ice from floating bergs and depositing them in tanks below deck.
The product of this bizarre harvest is destined to become something called Glace Rare Iceberg Water, and it represents the latest turn in the lifelong obsession of a native Newfoundlander named Ron Stamp. Where others saw hazards to navigation, Stamp has long seen icebergs as objects of wonder and - eventually - as the key to his fortune.
Advertisement: Story continues below
As a child growing up on the coast of Newfoundland, Stamp says, he was fascinated by the giant blocks of ice floating in the North Atlantic. Then, as a relatively young man, he began to see them as sources of potential profit. And for most of the last 20 years, he has worked to make that vision come true - with varying degrees of success.
Stamp tried iceberg vodka; it had only limited success. The same with iceberg beer.
So now he's trying gourmet water - at $US10 a bottle. Or more.
Why would anyone pay the price of a decent bottle of wine to guzzle melted iceberg? Stamp admits it's a bit of a mystery, but he thinks it will work.
"It is so tasteless that it actually creates a taste. The tastelessness is its own taste," he said. "It's like drinking air."
So-called gourmet bottled waters make up less than 5 per cent of the $US10.6-billion US bottled water market. It's a crowded space, filled with names such as Etrusca, Lelu, Vytautas, Vidago, Karoo and Tasmanian Rain.
There also are at least three other similarly priced, though less ambitiously marketed, iceberg waters, as well as entrants such as Bling H20, which offers east Tennessee spring water in a Swarovski crystal-encrusted bottle for $US50.
"Water is not water any more. Water is the new wine," said Michael Mascha, a one-time food anthropologist, who runs the finewaters.com website and holds tastings to evangelise for greater epicurean regard for water.
Water from different places on the globe has unique tastes, Mascha said, because of differences in mineral content, bubble size, pH levels and hardness or softness. Iceberg water is unique in that it comes from snow that fell perhaps 12,000 years ago - millennia before the Industrial Age filled the atmosphere with impurities.
Mascha characterised iceberg water as "very neutral, very soft ... perfect for very subtle foods like sushi and sashimi".
"It is one of the next great things that we will have as a high-end product, with a tremendous story to tell," he predicted.
Mascha keeps a stash of Iluliaq brand iceberg water from Greenland in his refrigerator.
"It's for a nice meal ... if you want to impress someone. It's an aspirational product, like a nice bottle of wine, a nice bottle of Champagne," he said.
Stamp, 56, who lives in St John's, said he became serious about making money from icebergs in the early 1990s, about the time the collapse of the cod fishery put an end to his career as a seafood broker.
Icebergs, he realised, were an almost limitless resource.
And, he said, "from a marketing and sales perspective, it attracts a horrifying amount of attention. If I sold Ron's Spring Water, nobody would ask me a second question".
A decade ago, Stamp tried selling an iceberg water named Borealis in plastic bottles. But the packaging defined Borealis as a mass-market item, and Stamp couldn't sell it at a competitive price. "I'd have to own 10 ships to harvest enough ice," he said.
Starting last year, he began decanting his water into glass bottles and gave it the French name for "ice".
"It has a certain appeal," Stamp said. "'Iceberg' is too masculine a sound. This is water your wife's going to bug you to get because it matches the dishes."
To enter the US market, Glace needed - and late last month won - approval from the Food and Drug Administration. But even in that, it was a special case: Although FDA labeling rules spoke to artesian water, groundwater, mineral water, sparkling bottled water, spring water and well water, as well as purified water produced by distillation, deionization or reverse osmosis, they didn't address iceberg water.
Stamp declined to disclose Glace sales figures, but he said he and his partners spent $US4.5 million to modify the Sikuk to collect ice instead of herring and mackerel.
Stamp hopes the Sikuk eventually will make 10 harvesting trips a year. But for now, plans call for the ship and its eight-man crew to make the 21-day round trip to Greenland or, in warmer weather, shorter forays into Iceberg Alley off the coast of Newfoundland, as demand requires.
After the ice is crushed and melted, the Sikuk ferries 550,000 litres of water to St John's for shipment to a bottling plant in Montreal via container vessel.
Not everyone is taken with the concept of iceberg water.
"This sounds like an incredibly bad idea just in terms of resource use. We have tap water. We have rain. Why do we have to send a ship out to Greenland? Maybe the water will be 10 per cent cleaner. But what about all the carbon dioxide created?" said Renee Sharp, director of the California office of the Environmental Working Group.
Stamp says he's sensitive to Glace's carbon footprint. Its bottles are recyclable and the Sikuk's retrofit included governors on its engines to cut horsepower and a switch to more efficient fuel.
Besides, Stamp said: "Of all the products that are shipped, water is the lifeblood of the planet. Why pick on water? What about sneakers, or toys, or fertiliser?"
MCT
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Wall of steel closes in on Nobel hero's wife
October 13, 2010
BEIJING: Liu Xia, the wife of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, has been asked by her husband to accept the award in Oslo on his behalf.
In her first interviews since Liu was awarded the prize on Friday, Ms Liu said prison authorities had started providing her husband with better food while she faces restrictions on whom she can meet. She must be accompanied by a police escort whenever she leaves her home.
In an interview with The Times Ms Liu said her husband had not the slightest expectation the Chinese authorities would allow him out of prison to collect the award. ''I can't get out of the door of my own apartment, let alone the door of the country,'' she told The Times.
China has blocked Western officials from meeting with Ms Liu, interrupted her phone communication and kept her under effective house arrest, acting on its fury over the award.
China said yesterday awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu would not influence the country's political system. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, said: ''Some politicians from other countries are trying to use this opportunity to attack China.''
The comments came as Liu's lawyers said they were considering asking for a retrial of the jailed dissident. ''If some people try to change China's political system in this way and try to stop the Chinese people from moving forward, that is a big mistake,'' Mr Ma said.
As China retaliated, United Nations analysts and human rights campaigners called on Beijing to free Liu from prison.
He was permitted a brief, tearful meeting in prison with his wife on Sunday and dedicated the award to the ''lost souls'' of the 1989 military crackdown on student demonstrators.
The Australian Parliament will next week vote on a motion calling for Liu's release, in a move that could further anger Beijing.
The ALP chairman of the foreign affairs parliamentary subcommittee, Michael Danby, said he would put forward a resolution calling for Liu's release and repeal of his 11-year sentence.
''The proposed resolution … will call for the release of Mr Liu Xiaobo to receive his Nobel Peace Prize,'' Mr Danby said. ''We think he should be released altogether.''
The resolution will call on Parliament to congratulate Liu for winning the prize and for his ''long and non-violent struggle'' for fundamental rights in China.
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse
BEIJING: Liu Xia, the wife of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, has been asked by her husband to accept the award in Oslo on his behalf.
In her first interviews since Liu was awarded the prize on Friday, Ms Liu said prison authorities had started providing her husband with better food while she faces restrictions on whom she can meet. She must be accompanied by a police escort whenever she leaves her home.
In an interview with The Times Ms Liu said her husband had not the slightest expectation the Chinese authorities would allow him out of prison to collect the award. ''I can't get out of the door of my own apartment, let alone the door of the country,'' she told The Times.
China has blocked Western officials from meeting with Ms Liu, interrupted her phone communication and kept her under effective house arrest, acting on its fury over the award.
China said yesterday awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu would not influence the country's political system. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu, said: ''Some politicians from other countries are trying to use this opportunity to attack China.''
The comments came as Liu's lawyers said they were considering asking for a retrial of the jailed dissident. ''If some people try to change China's political system in this way and try to stop the Chinese people from moving forward, that is a big mistake,'' Mr Ma said.
As China retaliated, United Nations analysts and human rights campaigners called on Beijing to free Liu from prison.
He was permitted a brief, tearful meeting in prison with his wife on Sunday and dedicated the award to the ''lost souls'' of the 1989 military crackdown on student demonstrators.
The Australian Parliament will next week vote on a motion calling for Liu's release, in a move that could further anger Beijing.
The ALP chairman of the foreign affairs parliamentary subcommittee, Michael Danby, said he would put forward a resolution calling for Liu's release and repeal of his 11-year sentence.
''The proposed resolution … will call for the release of Mr Liu Xiaobo to receive his Nobel Peace Prize,'' Mr Danby said. ''We think he should be released altogether.''
The resolution will call on Parliament to congratulate Liu for winning the prize and for his ''long and non-violent struggle'' for fundamental rights in China.
Associated Press, Agence France-Presse
The Lord works in multiple ways for mine survivors
Rory Carroll
October 13, 2010
SAN JOSE MINE: It is the race within the race. While rescuers inch towards the trapped miners, the first of whom are due to be freed about 2pm Sydney time today, rival churches tussle over the miracle in the making.
Evangelical, Adventist and Catholic clerics are vying to stamp their own particular faith on a surge in religious fervour as the drama nears a climax in Chile's Atacama desert.
The three Christian denominations have each claimed credit for what they say is divine intervention in the survival - and imminent rescue - of the 33 men who have spent 68 days underground.
Rescuers test a capsule similiar to the one that will be used to liberate the trapped miners.
''God has spoken to me clearly and guided my hand each step of the rescue,'' Carlos Parra Diaz, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, said.
''He wanted the miners to be rescued, and I am his instrument.''
Metres from where he spoke, Caspar Quintana, the Catholic bishop of Copiapo, prepared an altar to celebrate an outdoor mass for a small congregation of miners' relatives and a phalanx of TV cameras. ''God has heard our prayers,'' he said. ''I have received encouragement from all over the world. Let us give thanks.''
Relatives of a trapped miner, Carlos and Tabita Galleguillos, wait for news from the mine.
A litte further up the hill of Camp Hope, the improvised settlement of miners' families, rescuers, government officials and media, an evangelical preacher, Javier Soto, wandered from family to family with a guitar and songs of praise. ''He listens to the music,'' the pastor said, gesturing to the sky.
Each church has reported a rise in religious faith in Chile and beyond, with candlelit vigils and online communities following preparations to extract the miners one by one in a capsule.
But the Seventh Day Adventist, Diaz, has had some victories. He mobilised colleagues to find miniature Bibles to fit into the ''pigeon'' tubes that deliver supplies to the men. ''I do macro work. I am pastor to all.'' The other churches, he said, did ''micro'' work.
Guardian News & Media
October 13, 2010
SAN JOSE MINE: It is the race within the race. While rescuers inch towards the trapped miners, the first of whom are due to be freed about 2pm Sydney time today, rival churches tussle over the miracle in the making.
Evangelical, Adventist and Catholic clerics are vying to stamp their own particular faith on a surge in religious fervour as the drama nears a climax in Chile's Atacama desert.
The three Christian denominations have each claimed credit for what they say is divine intervention in the survival - and imminent rescue - of the 33 men who have spent 68 days underground.
Rescuers test a capsule similiar to the one that will be used to liberate the trapped miners.
''God has spoken to me clearly and guided my hand each step of the rescue,'' Carlos Parra Diaz, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, said.
''He wanted the miners to be rescued, and I am his instrument.''
Metres from where he spoke, Caspar Quintana, the Catholic bishop of Copiapo, prepared an altar to celebrate an outdoor mass for a small congregation of miners' relatives and a phalanx of TV cameras. ''God has heard our prayers,'' he said. ''I have received encouragement from all over the world. Let us give thanks.''
Relatives of a trapped miner, Carlos and Tabita Galleguillos, wait for news from the mine.
A litte further up the hill of Camp Hope, the improvised settlement of miners' families, rescuers, government officials and media, an evangelical preacher, Javier Soto, wandered from family to family with a guitar and songs of praise. ''He listens to the music,'' the pastor said, gesturing to the sky.
Each church has reported a rise in religious faith in Chile and beyond, with candlelit vigils and online communities following preparations to extract the miners one by one in a capsule.
But the Seventh Day Adventist, Diaz, has had some victories. He mobilised colleagues to find miniature Bibles to fit into the ''pigeon'' tubes that deliver supplies to the men. ''I do macro work. I am pastor to all.'' The other churches, he said, did ''micro'' work.
Guardian News & Media
Evolutionary scientists ask what comes next: the lizard or the egg?
Deborah Smith SCIENCE EDITOR
October 9, 2010
SYDNEYSIDERS need look no further than under a pot plant or rock in their backyard to see evolution in action.
The little three-toed skinks that are likely to dart out are at a halfway stage in their transformation from egg-layers to lizards that give birth to live young.
Their relatives in the north of the state, in the colder highlands west of Coffs Harbour, have already made the change, and deliver live babies.
The Sydney skinks still lay eggs, in the old fashioned way. But they retain the eggs longer than normal inside their bodies by reducing the thickness of the shells so the embryos can obtain more nutrients to survive, new research shows.
Michael Thompson, a zoologist at the University of Sydney, said it was extremely rare to catch evolution occurring midway during the process. ''This is an absolutely fascinating lizard.''
The skinks, Saiphos equalis, are very common in Sydney, but may not be spotted often because they are nocturnal.
Only two other species in the world, also lizards, are known to have members with different methods of reproduction.
The study comparing the eggshell thickness of the Sydney and northern NSW skinks was carried out by a team led by James Stewart of East Tennessee State University and including Professor Thompson, and is published in the Journal of Morphology.
Live birth has evolved many times in different species, including in our ancestors, and the unusual Sydney reptiles can throw light on aspects of this process, as well as on cancer, Professor Thompson said.
A member of the Sydney team, Bridget Murphy, has found the skinks that give birth to live young have a very powerful form of a protein that encourages the growth of blood vessels to the embryo.
The protein has only been found elsewhere in pre-cancerous human cells. Tumours require big blood supplies, and it may be that the evolution of live birth led to an increased risk of cancer, Ms Murphy said.
Research on the protein could lead to new ideas about how to treat cancer, promote wound healing or the regeneration of blood vessels in heart patients.
Live birth in reptiles is more common in colder climates, because it is safer for the young to remain inside the body rather than be exposed to the weather.
The Sydney researchers now plan to study a third population of the skinks that live on the coast in northern NSW.
October 9, 2010
SYDNEYSIDERS need look no further than under a pot plant or rock in their backyard to see evolution in action.
The little three-toed skinks that are likely to dart out are at a halfway stage in their transformation from egg-layers to lizards that give birth to live young.
Their relatives in the north of the state, in the colder highlands west of Coffs Harbour, have already made the change, and deliver live babies.
The Sydney skinks still lay eggs, in the old fashioned way. But they retain the eggs longer than normal inside their bodies by reducing the thickness of the shells so the embryos can obtain more nutrients to survive, new research shows.
Michael Thompson, a zoologist at the University of Sydney, said it was extremely rare to catch evolution occurring midway during the process. ''This is an absolutely fascinating lizard.''
The skinks, Saiphos equalis, are very common in Sydney, but may not be spotted often because they are nocturnal.
Only two other species in the world, also lizards, are known to have members with different methods of reproduction.
The study comparing the eggshell thickness of the Sydney and northern NSW skinks was carried out by a team led by James Stewart of East Tennessee State University and including Professor Thompson, and is published in the Journal of Morphology.
Live birth has evolved many times in different species, including in our ancestors, and the unusual Sydney reptiles can throw light on aspects of this process, as well as on cancer, Professor Thompson said.
A member of the Sydney team, Bridget Murphy, has found the skinks that give birth to live young have a very powerful form of a protein that encourages the growth of blood vessels to the embryo.
The protein has only been found elsewhere in pre-cancerous human cells. Tumours require big blood supplies, and it may be that the evolution of live birth led to an increased risk of cancer, Ms Murphy said.
Research on the protein could lead to new ideas about how to treat cancer, promote wound healing or the regeneration of blood vessels in heart patients.
Live birth in reptiles is more common in colder climates, because it is safer for the young to remain inside the body rather than be exposed to the weather.
The Sydney researchers now plan to study a third population of the skinks that live on the coast in northern NSW.
Hezbollah to welcome Iran leader to Lebanon
ASON KOUTSOUKIS
October 13, 2010
BEIRUT: THE Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, can expect a rapturous welcome when he arrives in Lebanon today for a two-day visit that will underscore Iran's broadening regional influence and aggravate tensions with Israel.
Tens of thousands of Lebanese loyal to Hezbollah are expected to gather along the airport highway to welcome Mr Ahmadinejad as he makes his way to central Beirut, where he will be formally received by the President, Michel Suleiman.
Over the past 10 days Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamist political and paramilitary organisation, has erected hundreds of billboards along the highway bearing Mr Ahmadinejad's portrait and carrying a message of welcome in both Arabic and Farsi.
After signing a series of trade and economic agreements with Lebanese leaders, led by the Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, and laying a commemorative wreath in Martyrs Square in Beirut, Mr Ahmadinejad is scheduled to appear at a rally this evening in the Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut before an anticipated crowd of up to 100,000 people.
Despite statements to the contrary, Hezbollah's elusive secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah - who has been seen in public only twice in the past two years - is expected to appear on stage with Mr Ahmadinejad.
Hezbollah's deputy leader, Naim Qassem, declared yesterday that Mr Ahmadinejad's arrival in Beirut would herald a new era of Lebanese sovereignty.
''It is an expression of friendship and support to Lebanon as a resistance army, its people and institutions,'' Mr Qassem said.
''The visit came upon the invitation of President Michel Suleiman, which means Lebanon wants Ahmadinejad to visit in order to strengthen ties with the Iranian republic.
''We want to tell the whole world that we're proud of our friendships and ties with resisting countries.''
Tomorrow Mr Ahmadinejad will visit Shiite strongholds in the south of the country. He will inspect several villages destroyed during Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel.
Speculation is rife that Mr Ahmadinejad will also travel to the locked ''Fatima Gate'', the symbolic border crossing to Israel that is the site of regular anti-Israel protests and stone throwing from Lebanon to Israel.
Mr Ahmadinejad will attend a number of ceremonies in his honour just a few kilometres from the border that are intended to celebrate Hezbollah's ''victories against the Israeli enemy''.
In a speech at the weekend, Mr Nasrallah said he wanted to formally thank Iran for helping to rebuild Beirut's southern suburbs and funding the postwar reconstruction in south Lebanon. ''Where did this money come from? From donations? No, frankly from Iran,'' he said.
Hezbollah officials estimate they have spent up to $1 billion in aid from Iran on rebuilding areas destroyed in the 2006 war.
Mr Nasrallah also boasted Hezbollah had rebuilt its military arsenal and stockpiled up to 40,000 rockets in anticipation of any future conflict with Israel - a figure that neither US nor Israeli officials dispute.
October 13, 2010
BEIRUT: THE Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, can expect a rapturous welcome when he arrives in Lebanon today for a two-day visit that will underscore Iran's broadening regional influence and aggravate tensions with Israel.
Tens of thousands of Lebanese loyal to Hezbollah are expected to gather along the airport highway to welcome Mr Ahmadinejad as he makes his way to central Beirut, where he will be formally received by the President, Michel Suleiman.
Over the past 10 days Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamist political and paramilitary organisation, has erected hundreds of billboards along the highway bearing Mr Ahmadinejad's portrait and carrying a message of welcome in both Arabic and Farsi.
After signing a series of trade and economic agreements with Lebanese leaders, led by the Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, and laying a commemorative wreath in Martyrs Square in Beirut, Mr Ahmadinejad is scheduled to appear at a rally this evening in the Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut before an anticipated crowd of up to 100,000 people.
Despite statements to the contrary, Hezbollah's elusive secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah - who has been seen in public only twice in the past two years - is expected to appear on stage with Mr Ahmadinejad.
Hezbollah's deputy leader, Naim Qassem, declared yesterday that Mr Ahmadinejad's arrival in Beirut would herald a new era of Lebanese sovereignty.
''It is an expression of friendship and support to Lebanon as a resistance army, its people and institutions,'' Mr Qassem said.
''The visit came upon the invitation of President Michel Suleiman, which means Lebanon wants Ahmadinejad to visit in order to strengthen ties with the Iranian republic.
''We want to tell the whole world that we're proud of our friendships and ties with resisting countries.''
Tomorrow Mr Ahmadinejad will visit Shiite strongholds in the south of the country. He will inspect several villages destroyed during Hezbollah's 2006 war with Israel.
Speculation is rife that Mr Ahmadinejad will also travel to the locked ''Fatima Gate'', the symbolic border crossing to Israel that is the site of regular anti-Israel protests and stone throwing from Lebanon to Israel.
Mr Ahmadinejad will attend a number of ceremonies in his honour just a few kilometres from the border that are intended to celebrate Hezbollah's ''victories against the Israeli enemy''.
In a speech at the weekend, Mr Nasrallah said he wanted to formally thank Iran for helping to rebuild Beirut's southern suburbs and funding the postwar reconstruction in south Lebanon. ''Where did this money come from? From donations? No, frankly from Iran,'' he said.
Hezbollah officials estimate they have spent up to $1 billion in aid from Iran on rebuilding areas destroyed in the 2006 war.
Mr Nasrallah also boasted Hezbollah had rebuilt its military arsenal and stockpiled up to 40,000 rockets in anticipation of any future conflict with Israel - a figure that neither US nor Israeli officials dispute.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Beijing cracks down on peace prize celebrations
Jonathan Watts
October 12, 2010
BEIJING: More than 30 Chinese intellectuals have been detained, warned or placed under house arrest in a crackdown to stifle any celebration of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the imprisoned democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo.
Among those facing restrictions are the laureate's wife, Liu Xia, who was reported missing after she visited her husband in Jinzhou prison on Sunday.
Yesterday Ms Liu tweeted that she had visited her husband and found he was told on Saturday that he had won the award. She told reporters he cried and dedicated his prize to the ''dead spirits of Tiananmen''. She is now under house arrest.
''The reaction of the authorities is predictable and stupid. They have tried to block the flow of information on the internet, detain people and cut telephone communications,'' said Zhang Yu, the head of the writers in prison committee at the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, in Stockholm.
The Nobel Peace Prize committee announced in Norway on Friday that this year's winner was Liu, a former literature professor who co-drafted the Charter 08 campaign for increased political liberties in China.
The US President, Barack Obama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of South Africa, and a former Czech president, Vaclav Havel, were among the world leaders who commended the decision, but the Chinese government has responded with fury.
The foreign ministry summoned the Norwegian ambassador and declared the decision a ''blasphemy'' and an insult to the Chinese people. Censors cut foreign broadcasts and police have been mobilised to choke any sign of domestic support for Liu.
About 20 of those affected were at a celebration party in Beijing on Friday night that was broken up by police. Three are now under eight days' administrative detention for ''disturbing social order''. The others are under house arrest or heightened surveillance.
''There are two police outside my apartment building. I can't go out,'' Liu Jingsheng, a recipient of the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, said. ''This kind of thing happens from time to time in Beijing during the People's Congress and other politically sensitive periods, but it is tougher now.''
A lawyer, Teng Biao, said police prevented him from meeting journalists and warned him not to talk about the award or attend a celebration banquet.
The Independent Chinese PEN Centre, of which Liu was a member, appears to have been targeted. The group's deputy secretary-general, Jiang Bo, is one of at least 10 members who have been warned. Two are under house arrest and one, Zhao Changqing, has been detained for eight days.
Supporters hope Ms Liu will collect the prize on behalf of her husband at the ceremony in Europe later this year. If she was then denied re-entry to China, they say this might set the stage for authorities to release her husband from jail so he could join her overseas.
The scenario seems optimistic given the Chinese government's recent unwillingness to release political prisoners. But the award has inspired hope.
Guardian News & Media; Telegraph, London
October 12, 2010
BEIJING: More than 30 Chinese intellectuals have been detained, warned or placed under house arrest in a crackdown to stifle any celebration of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the imprisoned democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo.
Among those facing restrictions are the laureate's wife, Liu Xia, who was reported missing after she visited her husband in Jinzhou prison on Sunday.
Yesterday Ms Liu tweeted that she had visited her husband and found he was told on Saturday that he had won the award. She told reporters he cried and dedicated his prize to the ''dead spirits of Tiananmen''. She is now under house arrest.
''The reaction of the authorities is predictable and stupid. They have tried to block the flow of information on the internet, detain people and cut telephone communications,'' said Zhang Yu, the head of the writers in prison committee at the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, in Stockholm.
The Nobel Peace Prize committee announced in Norway on Friday that this year's winner was Liu, a former literature professor who co-drafted the Charter 08 campaign for increased political liberties in China.
The US President, Barack Obama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of South Africa, and a former Czech president, Vaclav Havel, were among the world leaders who commended the decision, but the Chinese government has responded with fury.
The foreign ministry summoned the Norwegian ambassador and declared the decision a ''blasphemy'' and an insult to the Chinese people. Censors cut foreign broadcasts and police have been mobilised to choke any sign of domestic support for Liu.
About 20 of those affected were at a celebration party in Beijing on Friday night that was broken up by police. Three are now under eight days' administrative detention for ''disturbing social order''. The others are under house arrest or heightened surveillance.
''There are two police outside my apartment building. I can't go out,'' Liu Jingsheng, a recipient of the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, said. ''This kind of thing happens from time to time in Beijing during the People's Congress and other politically sensitive periods, but it is tougher now.''
A lawyer, Teng Biao, said police prevented him from meeting journalists and warned him not to talk about the award or attend a celebration banquet.
The Independent Chinese PEN Centre, of which Liu was a member, appears to have been targeted. The group's deputy secretary-general, Jiang Bo, is one of at least 10 members who have been warned. Two are under house arrest and one, Zhao Changqing, has been detained for eight days.
Supporters hope Ms Liu will collect the prize on behalf of her husband at the ceremony in Europe later this year. If she was then denied re-entry to China, they say this might set the stage for authorities to release her husband from jail so he could join her overseas.
The scenario seems optimistic given the Chinese government's recent unwillingness to release political prisoners. But the award has inspired hope.
Guardian News & Media; Telegraph, London
Afghans wonder why opium crackdown has not worked
Dan Oakes DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT
October 12, 2010
MORE than half the fields in the area surrounding the main Australian base in Afghanistan are growing opium poppies, as coalition forces struggle to wean locals off the lucrative crop.
Afghans have apparently questioned why troops and police have failed to crack down on the semi-open sale of the poppies, according to a non-governmental organisation.
Allied forces in Oruzgan province have had some success in convincing locals to grow wheat, fruit and saffron, but opium poppies are still the province's biggest cash crop.
The Liaison Office says in its report: ''Locals find it hard to comprehend why military forces or Afghan National Police have not intervened into poppy cultivation on sale so close to the district centre of Tarin Kowt, and blame it on corruption.
''There are indeed allegations that several pro-government strongmen, and not just the insurgency, are involved in the drug trade.
''Furthermore, the fact that there are semi-open poppy bazaars in both Deh Rawud and Tarin Kowt adds to the perception of impunity.''
The report says that as long as opium fetches higher prices than other crops, it will be difficult to stamp it out. But locals in Tarin Kowt have said that more farmers would be growing opium if the coalition forces had not provided them with alternative crops.
Locals have also said the recent floods in wheat-producing areas of Pakistan represent an opportunity to steer farmers towards other crops, as the world price of wheat will undoubtedly rise.
The report was more optimistic about the general economic conditions in the three of Oruzgan's seven provinces controlled by the coalition forces. It points to the growth of the number of businesses in Tarin Kowt bazaar from 900 to 2000 within the past four years covered in the report, which analyses the period of Dutch control of the province.
There has also been a doubling in the number of media outlets in the province, with five radio stations, a TV station and two combined TV and radio stations broadcasting, and every district is connected to a mobile phone network.
October 12, 2010
MORE than half the fields in the area surrounding the main Australian base in Afghanistan are growing opium poppies, as coalition forces struggle to wean locals off the lucrative crop.
Afghans have apparently questioned why troops and police have failed to crack down on the semi-open sale of the poppies, according to a non-governmental organisation.
Allied forces in Oruzgan province have had some success in convincing locals to grow wheat, fruit and saffron, but opium poppies are still the province's biggest cash crop.
The Liaison Office says in its report: ''Locals find it hard to comprehend why military forces or Afghan National Police have not intervened into poppy cultivation on sale so close to the district centre of Tarin Kowt, and blame it on corruption.
''There are indeed allegations that several pro-government strongmen, and not just the insurgency, are involved in the drug trade.
''Furthermore, the fact that there are semi-open poppy bazaars in both Deh Rawud and Tarin Kowt adds to the perception of impunity.''
The report says that as long as opium fetches higher prices than other crops, it will be difficult to stamp it out. But locals in Tarin Kowt have said that more farmers would be growing opium if the coalition forces had not provided them with alternative crops.
Locals have also said the recent floods in wheat-producing areas of Pakistan represent an opportunity to steer farmers towards other crops, as the world price of wheat will undoubtedly rise.
The report was more optimistic about the general economic conditions in the three of Oruzgan's seven provinces controlled by the coalition forces. It points to the growth of the number of businesses in Tarin Kowt bazaar from 900 to 2000 within the past four years covered in the report, which analyses the period of Dutch control of the province.
There has also been a doubling in the number of media outlets in the province, with five radio stations, a TV station and two combined TV and radio stations broadcasting, and every district is connected to a mobile phone network.
MacKillop cancer prayers 'betray a false thinking'
Amy Corderoy
October 12, 2010
THE celebration of Mary MacKillop's miracle cancer cures is a worrying example of the lack of scientific literacy in the community, says an expert in evidence-based medicine.
The question is not whether the NSW mother Kathleen Evans recovered from her cancer after praying to MacKillop but how many others prayed and did not go into remission, said Chris Del Mar, a professor of primary care research at Bond University.
Professor Del Mar said popular acceptance of MacKillop's miracle was part of a wider problem of people not understanding scientific and mathematical methods, exemplified by newspapers printing horoscopes and people using alternative medicines that had little evidentiary support.
"These things betray a false thinking that is not limited to Mary MacKillop or religion," Professor Del Mar said.
Research had also shown people were more likely to take notice of things which supported their beliefs.
"We are very good at making positive associations in our brains," he said.
"If a black cat walks in front of you, you think it is going to be unlucky or lucky depending which way your superstition runs. Then when something unlucky or lucky happens you will attribute it to that cat".
An associate professor at the University of Sydney medical school and a medical oncologist for 15 years, Nicholas Wilcken, said he had four patients who had defied his expectations in the past 10 years.
Two had gone into remission and two had lived far longer than expected.
"Personally … I don't think it is terribly helpful to say that it is because someone prayed to a God who said 'well normally I would make one thing happen but now I will make something else happen'," he said.
Putting too much emphasis on religion and positive thinking could make patients feel continued sickness was their fault. But all patients needed hope, and that often came from religion.
"The problem is when it becomes completely unrealistic when people who … have a short time to live are not doing things they need to do," he said.
The chief executive of the Cancer Council, Ian Olver, said the jury was still out on whether praying helped with cancer.
"But there are a myriad of anecdotal reports of praying helping,'' he said.
Professor Olver said spiritual well-being was an important predictor of quality of life.
"My own view is that prayer as an adjunct to conventional medical treatments is fine," he said.
October 12, 2010
THE celebration of Mary MacKillop's miracle cancer cures is a worrying example of the lack of scientific literacy in the community, says an expert in evidence-based medicine.
The question is not whether the NSW mother Kathleen Evans recovered from her cancer after praying to MacKillop but how many others prayed and did not go into remission, said Chris Del Mar, a professor of primary care research at Bond University.
Professor Del Mar said popular acceptance of MacKillop's miracle was part of a wider problem of people not understanding scientific and mathematical methods, exemplified by newspapers printing horoscopes and people using alternative medicines that had little evidentiary support.
"These things betray a false thinking that is not limited to Mary MacKillop or religion," Professor Del Mar said.
Research had also shown people were more likely to take notice of things which supported their beliefs.
"We are very good at making positive associations in our brains," he said.
"If a black cat walks in front of you, you think it is going to be unlucky or lucky depending which way your superstition runs. Then when something unlucky or lucky happens you will attribute it to that cat".
An associate professor at the University of Sydney medical school and a medical oncologist for 15 years, Nicholas Wilcken, said he had four patients who had defied his expectations in the past 10 years.
Two had gone into remission and two had lived far longer than expected.
"Personally … I don't think it is terribly helpful to say that it is because someone prayed to a God who said 'well normally I would make one thing happen but now I will make something else happen'," he said.
Putting too much emphasis on religion and positive thinking could make patients feel continued sickness was their fault. But all patients needed hope, and that often came from religion.
"The problem is when it becomes completely unrealistic when people who … have a short time to live are not doing things they need to do," he said.
The chief executive of the Cancer Council, Ian Olver, said the jury was still out on whether praying helped with cancer.
"But there are a myriad of anecdotal reports of praying helping,'' he said.
Professor Olver said spiritual well-being was an important predictor of quality of life.
"My own view is that prayer as an adjunct to conventional medical treatments is fine," he said.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Obesity problem is bigger than we think, despite GDP benefits
October 6, 2010
I have bad news and good about the O-word. Although there has been a suggestion in some quarters that the media got over-excited about the ''obesity epidemic'', a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - unlikely to be a purveyor of faddish enthusiasms - has confirmed the seriousness of the problem.
The report says obesity is worsening throughout the developed world and becoming the top public health concern. One in two people is now overweight or obese in almost half the developed countries. In some, two out of three people will be in trouble within 10 years.
In Australia, 61 per cent of adults are overweight or obese, making us almost as fat as the Americans. In 20 years, our overweight rate has risen faster than in any other developed country. It is projected to rise another 15 per cent in the next 10 years.
And the good news? It's saving taxpayers money.
Although healthcare spending for obese people is at least 25 per cent higher than for someone of normal weight, and increases rapidly as people get fatter, severely obese people are likely to die eight to 10 years earlier, so their shorter lives mean they incur lower healthcare costs over their lifetime. It's even greater than the saving on smokers.
If you don't like that, try this. As measured by gross domestic product, obesity is a win-win-win situation. The more you eat the more you add to GDP and the profits of businesses. If the messages of advertising and marketing make you self-conscious about your overweight, everything you spend on fancy diets, gym subscriptions etc adds to GDP.
And then when you damage your health, everything you, the government and your health fund spend on trying to keep you going adds to GDP. Even when you die prematurely that won't count as a negative against GDP, although the absence of your continued consumption will be missed.
Get the feeling there's something amiss?
Two of our greatest campaigners on obesity are Garry Egger, the professor of lifestyle medicine at Southern Cross University and the founder of GutBusters, and Boyd Swinburn, professor of population health at Deakin University.
They've written a book, Planet Obesity, which takes a rather different tack. Since obesity is endemic, it can't be dismissed as the product of gluttony and sloth on the part of a few individuals.
Obesity has been rising since the 1980s. Before then it was rare. Clearly, it's a product of our modern lifestyle, of the way we organise our society.
We're getting fatter for a host of interacting reasons. According to the OECD report, the supply and availability of food altered remarkably in the second half of the 20th century, brought about by big changes in food production technologies and an increasing and increasingly sophisticated use of promotion and persuasion.
The price of calories fell dramatically and convenience foods became available virtually everywhere, while the time available for traditional meal preparation from raw ingredients shrank as a result of changing working and living conditions.
''Decreased physical activity at work, increased participation of women in the labour force, increasing levels of stress and job insecurity, longer working hours for some jobs, are all factors that, directly or indirectly, contribute to the lifestyle changes which caused the obesity epidemic,'' the report says.
See what this is saying? The rise in obesity is a product of the success of capitalism and the technological advance it fosters and exploits.
So far, those who haven't tried to blame the problem on the weakness of individuals have treated it as an unfortunate byproduct of modern life, needing to be remedied in some way so we can carry on as usual.
Egger and Swinburn see it very differently, not as a disease but as a signal. ''It's the canary in the coalmine, which should alert us to bigger structural problems in society,'' they say.
Obesity and the health problems it often brings - type 2 diabetes, heart disease - are part of a rise in chronic conditions, including respiratory disease and many forms of cancer, that could eventually end our ever-increasing longevity, or at least make our longer lives far less pleasant.
People in developed countries have been getting taller and heavier since 1800. For almost all that time, our weight gain has made us healthier but in recent decades it's greatly accelerated and is now making us unhealthy.
So what's the signal Egger and Swinburn say the obesity epidemic is sending us? That we've passed the ''sweet spot'' - the point where everything's fine, the point of equilibrium, as an economist would say.
Until fairly recently, economic growth was making us unambiguously better off. Making us more secure, more prosperous and, because of scientific advances, improving our health. But now we've overshot the sweet spot and continued economic growth is starting to worsen our health.
It's a similar story with global warming. Economic growth and rising affluence - much of it based on the burning of fossil fuels - was fine as long as the world's sinks could absorb all the extra carbon dioxide we were pumping into the atmosphere.
But now we've passed that point, partly because we've been cutting down and clearing forests and other sinks, greenhouse gases have built up and are adversely affecting the climate. Should we fail to reverse this trend, much worse lies in store.
Egger and Swinburn say the trouble with humans is their tendency to overshoot by trying to maximise, rather than optimise, good things such as economic growth and plentiful food.
So the question is how long it will take us to recognise the signal that famine has turned to feast and too much feasting is bad for us. But however long it takes us, our trusty GDP meter will continue assuring us we're doing fine.
Ross Gittins is Sydney Morning Herald economics editor.
I have bad news and good about the O-word. Although there has been a suggestion in some quarters that the media got over-excited about the ''obesity epidemic'', a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - unlikely to be a purveyor of faddish enthusiasms - has confirmed the seriousness of the problem.
The report says obesity is worsening throughout the developed world and becoming the top public health concern. One in two people is now overweight or obese in almost half the developed countries. In some, two out of three people will be in trouble within 10 years.
In Australia, 61 per cent of adults are overweight or obese, making us almost as fat as the Americans. In 20 years, our overweight rate has risen faster than in any other developed country. It is projected to rise another 15 per cent in the next 10 years.
And the good news? It's saving taxpayers money.
Although healthcare spending for obese people is at least 25 per cent higher than for someone of normal weight, and increases rapidly as people get fatter, severely obese people are likely to die eight to 10 years earlier, so their shorter lives mean they incur lower healthcare costs over their lifetime. It's even greater than the saving on smokers.
If you don't like that, try this. As measured by gross domestic product, obesity is a win-win-win situation. The more you eat the more you add to GDP and the profits of businesses. If the messages of advertising and marketing make you self-conscious about your overweight, everything you spend on fancy diets, gym subscriptions etc adds to GDP.
And then when you damage your health, everything you, the government and your health fund spend on trying to keep you going adds to GDP. Even when you die prematurely that won't count as a negative against GDP, although the absence of your continued consumption will be missed.
Get the feeling there's something amiss?
Two of our greatest campaigners on obesity are Garry Egger, the professor of lifestyle medicine at Southern Cross University and the founder of GutBusters, and Boyd Swinburn, professor of population health at Deakin University.
They've written a book, Planet Obesity, which takes a rather different tack. Since obesity is endemic, it can't be dismissed as the product of gluttony and sloth on the part of a few individuals.
Obesity has been rising since the 1980s. Before then it was rare. Clearly, it's a product of our modern lifestyle, of the way we organise our society.
We're getting fatter for a host of interacting reasons. According to the OECD report, the supply and availability of food altered remarkably in the second half of the 20th century, brought about by big changes in food production technologies and an increasing and increasingly sophisticated use of promotion and persuasion.
The price of calories fell dramatically and convenience foods became available virtually everywhere, while the time available for traditional meal preparation from raw ingredients shrank as a result of changing working and living conditions.
''Decreased physical activity at work, increased participation of women in the labour force, increasing levels of stress and job insecurity, longer working hours for some jobs, are all factors that, directly or indirectly, contribute to the lifestyle changes which caused the obesity epidemic,'' the report says.
See what this is saying? The rise in obesity is a product of the success of capitalism and the technological advance it fosters and exploits.
So far, those who haven't tried to blame the problem on the weakness of individuals have treated it as an unfortunate byproduct of modern life, needing to be remedied in some way so we can carry on as usual.
Egger and Swinburn see it very differently, not as a disease but as a signal. ''It's the canary in the coalmine, which should alert us to bigger structural problems in society,'' they say.
Obesity and the health problems it often brings - type 2 diabetes, heart disease - are part of a rise in chronic conditions, including respiratory disease and many forms of cancer, that could eventually end our ever-increasing longevity, or at least make our longer lives far less pleasant.
People in developed countries have been getting taller and heavier since 1800. For almost all that time, our weight gain has made us healthier but in recent decades it's greatly accelerated and is now making us unhealthy.
So what's the signal Egger and Swinburn say the obesity epidemic is sending us? That we've passed the ''sweet spot'' - the point where everything's fine, the point of equilibrium, as an economist would say.
Until fairly recently, economic growth was making us unambiguously better off. Making us more secure, more prosperous and, because of scientific advances, improving our health. But now we've overshot the sweet spot and continued economic growth is starting to worsen our health.
It's a similar story with global warming. Economic growth and rising affluence - much of it based on the burning of fossil fuels - was fine as long as the world's sinks could absorb all the extra carbon dioxide we were pumping into the atmosphere.
But now we've passed that point, partly because we've been cutting down and clearing forests and other sinks, greenhouse gases have built up and are adversely affecting the climate. Should we fail to reverse this trend, much worse lies in store.
Egger and Swinburn say the trouble with humans is their tendency to overshoot by trying to maximise, rather than optimise, good things such as economic growth and plentiful food.
So the question is how long it will take us to recognise the signal that famine has turned to feast and too much feasting is bad for us. But however long it takes us, our trusty GDP meter will continue assuring us we're doing fine.
Ross Gittins is Sydney Morning Herald economics editor.
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