Goodbye, Dolly!

Dolly, the cloned sheep, was put to sleep. She lived a short life for a sheep, about half as long as a normal sheep's life.

There's still nothing wrong with cloning a sheep or anything else but a human. Somehow, though, our leaders have decided that it is wrong to clone humans. Not just for reproductive purposes but for any reason, including saving human lives. Make a human clone, the equivalent of a twin, and you are liable for a million dollar fine and a long spell in prison. It would be almost as stupid to use the death penalty.

Yes, it is stupid to twin yourself. It doesn't do anything useful. The twin you create is a completely new individual, at least a decade younger than the original and probably a lot less healthy. He doesn't guarantee your immortality. An army of twins would be very, very expensive and you still have to train each and every one of them individually -- there are no shortcuts. It's stupid but basically harmless.

On the other hand, interrupted clones can be medically useful. They can save lives and they can make lives better, repairing many kinds of damage. The government should be sponsoring such research, not preventing it.

Our leaders have got it ass backwards again.

The labyrinth of Crete, home to the minotaur, half man, half bull (does that sound familiar; lots of men are full of bull), was named after an object called the labyrs, identified as a double headed axe. An axe is a strange object for a culture in which bull dancing played such a prominent part.

Bull dancing was a graceful sport. Is a graceful sport, in those few areas where something like it is still practiced (after what?, 4,000 years?). The dancers were usually young women.

That ancient culture was also known for statues of rather busty bare-breasted young women with small waists, a snake in each hand and a bird on their heads (snake goddesses? priestesses?). Art works associated with these figures showed the labyrs on pedistals, in no way resembling axe handles.

The original idea of the labyrs as axes is losing favor. One alternative suggestion is that they represent butterflies, representative of transformation.

They look like bats to me.

The snake is associated with caves or caverns. Woman is associated with caves. Bats are associated with caves.

If they resided on Crete, why do we call them Minoans? Shouldn't they be Cretans? The name was given from ancient Greek histories. Sir Arthur Evans, the anthropologist who started the excavations on Crete and who named his first site Knossos with more imagination than evidence, discovered examples of Minoan writing (most of which he kept hidden, hoping to be the one to figure out how to translate them, a forlorn hope), a script known as Linear B. When the translation was finally made, it was learned that the ancient Minoans called themselved the Keftiu.

The castle at Knossos was a big structure. It was only four stories high but had well over a thousand rooms built in a complex design around a central courtyard, big enough for bull dancing to be performed. There were ramps, air wells and stairways. Many of the rooms facing the internal courtyard had balconies, as did those with an exterior view.

The tale of Theseus and Ariadne was mostly a fantasy. The labyrinth was too massive for a roll of twine to have been much help. But one part of the tale stands out. When Theseus kills the minotaur with the sword Ariadne provided him and the two of them escape the labyrinth, it collapses around them. The collapse of the labyrinth, the castle of Knossos, may reflect a historic event.

Seventy miles north of Crete was the island of Santorini. Some time about 1500BC-1625BC there was a massive volcanic explosion on Santorini, estimated to have been four to seven times as powerful as that of Krakatoa. The explosion left a hole over 1,000 feet deep where the center of the island had been, blowing material almost as far as Crete itself and swamping Crete with strong earthquakes, tsunamis and clouds of hot ash and gas. It could be this disaster that prompted the tale of the collapse of the laybrinth and the events supposedly leading up to it.

This doesn't necessarily represent my views on the situation but I found it clever. It reminds me of something Mark Russell might have written and sung. Except for the formatting and this sentence, everything was stolen from Tracy Reed.

If You're Happy And You Know It - Bomb Iraq (Found on Freenet) (Sing to the tune of that similar children's song...Sing it loudly, sing it clear!)

If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky, Bomb Iraq.

If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
If we think that someone's dissed us, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections,
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions, Bomb Iraq.

It's pre-emptive non-aggression, bomb Iraq.
To prevent this mass destruction, bomb Iraq.
They've got weapons we can't see,
And that's all the proof we need,
If they're not there, they must be, Bomb Iraq.

If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
If you think Saddam's gone mad,
With the weapons that he had,
And he tried to kill your dad, Bomb Iraq.

If corporate fraud is growin', bomb Iraq.
If your ties to it are showin', bomb Iraq.
If your politics are sleazy,
And hiding that ain't easy,
And your manhood's getting queasy, Bomb Iraq.

Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might knows not our borders, bomb Iraq.
Disagree? We'll call it treason,
Let's make war not love this season,
Even if we have no reason, Bomb Iraq.

Jet Stream

The jet stream determines whether we will get rain or not. If it flows to our south, we will get rain when a low pressure area passes; if it remains north of us, we will remain dry despite any low pressure.

But it seems there can be more than one jet stream, flowing at different altitudes. Things become unpredictable when that happens. Forecasters say conditions are "unsettled".

Sometimes when there is a high pressure condition over a wide area of the Pacific off the coast, the winds create an eddy that causes a localized low pressure area to form and that low pressure area can grow strong enough to generate its own circular jet stream, like a halo. That seems to be enough to allow rain when the low pressure system moves ashore.

We had a good low pressure system pass through here lately and the jet stream was flowing from west to east well south of us, down over Mexico. Then a mild high pressure system started to develop over the ocean, pushing part of the jet stream northwards but leaving the part over us flowing almost directly from north to south. This has brought unsettled conditions where small bursts of heavy rain or hail will hit and then quickly disappear. [Update 2/28/2003: Loren Nancaro, one of the channel 10 weather men, has a name for this condition; he calls it an inside slider.]

The jet stream is a river of rapidly moving air. It is well known to pilots, who avoid it when traveling westward but take advantage of it for a for a free lift in the opposite direction. It is invisible, so finding it depends on data from meteorologists.

The Danger of eProps

One of my favorite shows is Iron Chef, where famous chefs from all over the world come to the kitchen stadium to challenge one of the four specialists defending the honor of the Iron Chefs. The specialties of the appointed defenders are French, Italian, Japanese and Chinese style cooking, but the foods they produce often deviate wildly from what you think of as traditional of those areas.

The foods produced by challenger and defender are scored on a twenty point scale for taste, creativity, use of the theme ingredient, appearance and other factors. The panel of judges usually consists of three or four guests known to be familiar with good foods.

In the cooking world at large, chefs, restaurants and hotels have been rated on a system of stars. Now some magazines, particularly in Europe, have begun rating them on a twenty point numeric scale.

A French chef recently committed suicide with a rifle when a magazine dropped his rating from 19 to 17 and the rumor began to circulate that he was going to lose a star from his rating.

It is said that critics are much like eunuchs in that they may have considerable knowledge of a subject they are totally unable to practice. Listening to their voices is an exercise in futility. Often enough a superior performance will result in a lower rating due to the vindictive nature of these creatures. Their voices, if allowed to be heard, should not be seriously listened to any more than you would listen to the rantings of a drunken madman from the gutter.

But people do listen to madmen.

When commenting on a Weblog entry, we may leave zero, one or two eProps. Some of you may have noticed that I leave only one eProp about 90% of the time, two eProps about 9% of the time and zero eprops the rest of the time, usually the result of forgetting to click one of the other options. Most people simply leave two eProps all of the time. Sometimes I've been asked what you have to do to get two eProps from me.

If you look at a comments page when you first come in, you'll see a list of those who have left comments. There will be a long list of people who've left two eProps followed by a much shorter list of those who've left only one. Often my name is the only one in that shorter list. It stands out.

Why should I join the crowd when I've found such a simple way to stand out?

If I leave a comment at all, it means I've enjoyed reading your remarks. I might enjoy reading what you've written and not leave a comment, but I have a big backlog of messages to take care of and an increasingly limited time in which to do so. Quite frankly, some postings leave me at a loss as to how to respond. If I can't think of something in about half a minute, I go on to the next entry.

If I seem to criticise you, you shouldn't take it too seriously. I mean no harm ... but I have a really nasty sense of humor. It comes with the ability to write horror stories. I think, and express, the unthinkable. Please forgive me if I've burned you. People frequently miss the point of what, to me, is meant as fun.

Actually, you shouldn't take any criticism too seriously. Even words that were obviously meant to hurt should only cause you to feel pity for the person who carries such hatred in their hearts, for hatred will eventually eat them up from the inside out and destroy them. Misunderstandings usually boil down to using words you thought you understood but in mutually incompatible ways; you simply have to work down to the basic level of meaning to determine what was really misunderstood (which may take years).

What could be more unreal than to base your continued existance on a number?

The Illusion of Iraq

"Between the Rivers", Mesopotamia, has suffered a series of invasions and conquests over the past 5,000 years, resulting in a land with a diverse mixture of cultures, languages and religions. From the 16th century until 1917, it was part of the Ottoman Empire. The British occupied the area, which consisted of the three Ottoman villyets, or provinces, of Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the center and Basra, the southern port area.

The British victory over the Turks was accomplished with the aid of King Faisal, son of the Sherif of Mecca, who had taken over Syria. Faisal was helped by Lawrence of Arabia and Gertrude Bell, both pro-Arab and anti-Turk.

The oil-rich northern province was occupied almost exclusively by Kurds. In 1920, President Wilson promised them their independence in the Treaty of Sevres, thereby guaranteeing their cooperation. The British, however, ignored the agreement and combined the three provinces into a single new country, which they called Iraq. They gave the new country to Faisal in 1932.

Saddam Hussein came into power and began his program of uruba or Arabness. Ignoring 7,000 years of history, ignoring the rich diversity of architecture, music, cuisine and rutuals left by the Smerian, Assyrian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Elamite, Urartan, Persian, Byzantine, Mongol, Mamluk and Ottoman conquests, ignoring its eleven living languages, some twice as old as Arabic, Hussein tried to create a country of pure Sunni Moslem Arabs. In the decade starting in 1970 he exiled those who were classified as Persian or Ottoman subjects, replacing them with Arabs imported from Egypt (who he eventually stopped importing because he considered them too lazy and uninterested in his dreams of conquest).

Later he tried to make the Kurds into Arabs, practicing genocide when that didn't work to his satisfaction. His wars and other attempts to control the whole region, all part of the same mad dream, have repeatedly brought his made-up country to the brink of disaster.

The world was divided up in the early twentieth century, frequently along the lines of rivers, ignoring cultures, languages, traditions and religions; ignoring promises, too. Mistakes were made.

We are living with some of those mistakes now, as well as with a madman's illusions and delusions.

Perverse Humor

I'm convinced that the most creative minds in television are being employed to make commercials. The people selecting commercials for the Food Network seem to be just as perverse in their humor as some of those who make the commercials.

We always compare the tastes of new foods to chicken. Iguana tastes like chicken. Dinosaur would probably taste like chicken.

Turn it around.

Picture a posh party. At this party there is a tall Masai warrior in full regalia, complete with the red paints on his head and a spear in the crook of his arm. He has just been handed a plate of what appears to be chicken cacciatore. He looks at it suspiciously. A voice from off screen says, "Try it. It's just chicken." He takes a piece into his mouth, chews briefly, swallows and says something in his native language. The subtitle appears: "It tastes just like mugabwi worms." (It may not have been "mugabwi" but I didn't have much of a chance to memorize it.)

I didn't see it coming.

I appreciate humor like this, gentle twists on our common assumptions. Like in the Babylon 5 series, when G'Kar observes that every species, no matter how alien, produces a food indistinguishable from Swedish meatballs.

And I have absolutely no idea what product was being pushed.

Hell

James recently commented that it was too bad there was no Hell, as the place would be the ideal place to send telemarketers.

Where does hell come from? The concepts of heaven and hell have been around for so long that we take them for granted, as if they have always been part of our belief system. They may be old, but they are distinct from other belief elements, such as one god, angels, a devil, sacrifice, communion / transsubstanciation or baptism / purification. These elements were grafted on one by one so long ago they seem to have been one tale forever.

Before there was a devil, hell was simply the part of the underworld where souls went after life and before their ultimate fate was determined: to be forever lost, to pass on to the fields of peace and joy, or to find the path leading to heaven and a possible return to a new life.

The Abrahamic religions, particularly Christianity, elaborated greatly on hell, especially with the addition of the devil. Milton added much to the tales. Hell became a place of torment for those who had committed sins against the religious organization's rules and heirarchy. The Inquisition added earthly torments to be continued forever after as eternal punishment.

For all of that, hell remains a state of mind.

You punish yourself for what you believe you have done wrong. You suffer in this world in anticipation of suffering following this life.

Telemarketers may not have enough mind for this to work on them.

Manned Spaceflight

Why manned spaceflight? Survival of the species.

We cannot stay confined to Earth, because the risks are too great and we deserve to survive. Our window of opportunity is short. Unmanned spaceflight has its place and we'll continue to deploy communications satellites and other resource-saving tools that way, but the only way we're going to get better at getting people off the planet and back is to practice, learn, and improve.

So why can't we stay confined to Earth? Just look at the trends. In the distant past, a hungry lion could slay a small tribe. In the 1300s, black death could wipe out entire villages. In the last century, a single bomb could destroy a major city. You can see where the curve points. In an era of demented bigots thinking God is commanding them to kill civilians, and with evolution in fields like nanotechnology and germ warfare, the threat can outstrip even the amazing rate of population growth and before long will have the potential to end the life of our entire species. If we can spread to the nearby planets and solar systems, we might be able to outrun the waves of self-destruction so that our brief time here has the potential to mean something in the longer term. If we kill ourselves, we lose. If our population-growth and resource-consumption rates outstrip the supply of materials we need to escape the Earth's gravity, we'll be this millennium's replay of those who felled enough trees on Easter Island that ships could no longer be built. Again we lose.

Do we deserve to survive as a species? To be sure, we've got more than a fair share of hate and bigotry and inequality and suffering, but we've also got love and honor, sacrifice and curiosity, intelligence and honesty, and the sense of wonder and a sense of humor. I say we deserve a shot to see what we'll be when we grow up.

Suppose you don't buy those arguments. You think humanity would just be a boil on the butt of the galaxy. Or you disbelieve the population- growth curves, or, worse yet, you point out that war and starvation have a way of keeping the population in check. Excuse me, but that's a solution? If you're in that camp, at least think about simple quality of life -- as long as life lasts here in this increasingly precarious world.

War after war has been fought over resources. Opinions vary, but I look at population-growth curves and shrinking mineral and natural-gas reserves and I'd be willing to bet the curves will continue to accelerate. Despite those people who say everyone alive could fit into the state of Texas, my idea of living doesn't center on having my own paved two square meters and eating piped-in gruel.

Each new frontier gets more difficult and costly to explore, but each one dramatically broadens our knowledge and expands our resources. Forget about trivialities like Velcro and Tang. This next frontier might unveil new energy sources or merely a continue the growth in the knowledge base that has doubled our lifespan, reduced our work week, allowed us to make significant repairs to our bodies, and created microwave popcorn.

Without exploring our world, a desert tribe might never have known that just over the hill was a lush valley packed with shade, lush plant life, and water. Who knows what lies ahead for us?

Maybe the meek will inherit the Earth. The brave are likely to discover places even more beautiful and exciting. The debt to those explorers and their families is one we'll never be able to repay. The very least we can do is say thank you.

John E. Stith, Copyright 2003, Earth.

This piece may be freely reprinted as long as attribution is maintained.

John E. Stith is a noted science-fiction author and for the last 30 years has held a variety of positions in the Air Force and private industry, including a position at Goddard Spaceflight Center, and he now works on the Wideband Gapfiller Satellite program.

Marimoto

Last night I tuned in for my weekly fix of Iron Chef. Instead, there was a program titled "Marimoto R.A.W." ... after three years as Iron Chef Japanese, Marimoto left the program to open "the best Japanese restaurant in Philadelphia" at an investment cost of $2,300,000. The program documented the life of the restaurant from planning stages through opening day. Who knows? It may still be open.

The one-time Iron Chef wanted a menu with just one item, basically whatever he decided to prepare, the customer having nothing to say about the meal at all. The promoter who was funding the place thought this unwise, that at most four or five people would risk such a blind choice each evening, the rest preferring to select what they would be eating. Both were wrong, of course. While most people preferred to know what they would be eating, about eighty per night wanted to see what the chef could invent for them (at about $85 per meal).

Everything fell behind at the beginning. Construction was slow and the kitchen wasn't ready for action when it should have been, but finding a staff was frustratingly slow, too, requiring that people be brought in from other areas. They nearly had to postpone opening night.

There were training sessions in which everyone tried to learn the names and characteristics of the plates and all of the ingredients in them. Then there was a dress rehersal in which the kitchen crew prepared all of the planned menu for the servers to try, both to make sure they could do it under "battle conditions" and to get the opinions of the servers on the plates being offered. I suspect several items were removed from the menu as a result of criticism received; certainly some were modified.

Hours away from opening, Marimoto used some torn-up bamboo roll-up shades to prepare a sixty foot long sushi roll to be shared among the staff. Shortly before opening they had another ceremony, using wooden hammers to break open a cask of rice wine, which they served up in square wooden cups, for luck.

Opening night apparently went well, the calm in the eating area contrasting well with the frenzy in the kitchen.

It was a fun and informative show, but I think I would have preferred to watch yet another episode of the inventive cooking I'm used to seeing on the Iron Chef.