Guilt

I have added an image to the header bar of this blog, and I suppose I should explain what it is. It's a detail of a beautiful little piece of scrimshaw created by a Swedish artist named Viveca Sahlin, located through the evil power of a Google image search and plucked from the Web, cropped, and altered by Ahab -- thereby straining to near the breaking point the concept of fair use.

I have never met Ms. Sahlin, and have not asked for permission to use this image here. Perhaps, however, my linking to her Web site (especially its "For Sale" page) -- and giving her full credit for a beautiful piece of work -- will cause her to forgive me the infraction. Here's hoping.

"Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago."

Science Friday

At the top of the news this week, of course, the Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and physiology/medicine. The physics prize went to three scientists who comprehensively laid out the theory of "quantum chromodynamics," limning the strong or "color" force that holds quarks together in the atomic nucleus. Two U.S. scientists snagged the physiology/medicine prize for their work on the science of smell -- specifically, their discovery of a family of a thousand genes that engineer a thousand olfactory receptor proteins that, in combination, allow the brain to distinguish 10,000 individual odorant molecules. (Cell, in its 30th Anniversary supplement, posted their original groundbreaking paper, as well a recollection of the work by one of the scientists, Linda Buck.) And in chemistry, the prize went to two Israeli scientists and a U.S. researcher, who together unraveled the mysteries of cellular garbage collection, showing how a molecular "label," the protein ubiquitin, is used inside cells to tag other proteins for breakdown and reuse of their constitutent amino acids. (Interestingly, this is the third straight year that the chemistry prize has recognized biochemical discoveries. Maybe it's time to rename the prize.)

Meanwhile, non-Nobel science marches on. A team of Chinese and American paleontologists, reporting in Nature, have unearthed the oldest known tyrannosaur fossil. The 130 million year old specimen predates those of the best-known tyrannosaur, the celebrated Tyrannosaurus rex, by some 60 to 70 million years -- and is so well preseved that the scientists can discern hairlike "protofeathers" on parts of the jaw and tail. The fossil has been dubbed, rather poetically, Dilong paradoxus -- paradoxical dragon.

New Scientist reports on a company in Mountain View, California, that is developing a new generation of hydrocarbon-membrane fuel cells that, the company hopes, could ultimately allow for economically viable hydrogen cars. Not everyone's convinced of the feasibility of the much touted "hydrogen economy," however; indeed, one British economist is arguing that "converting every vehicle in the United States to hydrogen power would demand so much electricity that the country would need enough wind turbines to cover half of California or 1,000 extra nuclear power stations."

From Science, another demonstration of the potential therapeutic power of embryonic stem cells. Working with a strain of mutant mice that lack working copies of three crucial genes -- and whose offspring, as a result, usually die from major congenital heart defects before birth -- a team of workers from Sloan-Kettering in New York injected the stomachs of female mice with embryonic stem cells before the females conceived any offspring. When the females later conceived, heart defects in their offspring were dramatically reduced, apparently because the stem cells secreted several cardiac-repairing growth factors that circulated through the maternal system to allow "rescue" of the mutant mouse embryos.

A few other tidbits:

--NASA reports that samples from the remains of the Genesis spacecraft -- which was launched in 2001 to sample the solar wind, and which crashed catastrophically to Earth in September when its parachute failed to deploy -- are "looking very, very good."

--A new, nationally representative survey of Americans over fifty suggests that 18 percent of older Americans (one in six) with conditions such as chronic heart disease and depression skip at least some of their prescription medicines because they can't afford the out-of-pocket costs -- and 14 percent do so at least monthly. The study was published in the October 2004 American Journal of Public Health.

--And new research in PLOS Biology uses an unusual line of evidence, the genetic differences between two different species of head lice, to support the notion that the ancestors of modern humans interacted directly -- "through fighting, sharing clothes, or having sex" -- with members of the extinct hominid line Homo erectus.

That's all for now.

Say What?

So this morning's New York Times makes the idiocy official:

Polls suggest that Mr. Kerry may be paying a price for his privacy, with nearly three-quarters of the public wanting a president of "strong religious faith," and a swath of independent voters who identify as religious swaying toward Mr. Bush.

This on a day that Atrios dubs the media's "Catholics hate Kerry day," based on a few items stressing that lifelong Catholic Kerry is having trouble wooing Catholic voters.

What's ironic about this is that only one of the two major-party presidential candidates this year actually is a regular churchgoer. (Hint: It's not who you think. Second hint: It's not Bush.) Indeed, it would appear, sometimes, that Bush -- in addition to spending his Sunday mornings presumably practicing his putting or playing Donkey Kong rather than sitting in a hard old pew listening to boring old sermons -- isn't even terribly au courant on his Bible. Yet he knows how to lard his speech with just enough high-cholesterol godliness to satisfy the yearning of the electorate for cheap spirituality.

This is really, if you think about it, such an easy thing to fake. Indeed, in my darker and more cynical moments (i.e., all the time), I wonder if W's whole religious thing is as fake as everything else about him -- whether being "born again" is just a convenient way to render irrelevant a worthless youth of privilege, drunken debauchery, and duty shirking.

Glimmers of Hope

In the past few days, we've seen a few glimmers of hope regarding how the media are covering this election -- hope, that is, that the media may finally be willing to call the Bushites on some of their lies, and give a clearer picture of the choice four weeks hence. One high-profile example: the 1,000-page-plus report released yesterday on Iraq that appears to pretty much conclude that Iraq had destroyed most of its WMDs in the immediate aftermath of the 1991 war, and that it had not plans to reconstitute its nuclear program. Notwithstanding the Administration's efforts, before the report's release, to spin it as a "yes, but" report that would emphasize the notion that Saddam would have gone back to his evil plotting just as soon as the U.N. sanctions were dropped, most of the press coverage I've seen on this has emphasized the report's blistering bottom line: No WMDs in 2003. No immediate threat. No hint of an active program. No casus belli.

(Of course, there are always exceptions; the Washington Post editorial page apparently views the report as evidence that the Administration has commendably taught us some very forward-looking lessons. And all at so little cost, too. Bravo!)

The tragedy of this for our country, and for the world, is really rather stunning when you think about it. Right now more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers are pinned down in Iraq in a war whose causes were bogus from the beginning (and, as the Times last Sunday suggested, the Administration pretty much knew that). More than a thousand U.S. soldiers and ten thousand Iraqi civilians have died; wartime injuries have inflicted untold additional misery not captured in the mortality figures. The U.S. is held in contempt in much of the civilized and semi-civilized world alike. The country's military resources are spread so thin as to make a coherent response to the threat of international terrorism impossible. And all because of one Administration's lies and skewed vision of the world.

Incredible.

Fortunately, the media seem to be developing some backbone -- better late than never, I suppose. In the aftermath of the Vice Presidential debate, several outlets have catalogued the startling array of whoppers that the aptly named Dick Cheney grunted out in his colloquy with John Edwards. Actually, I really thought this debate had no clear victor: Cheney did, after all, seem to have an answer to most everything -- usually a lie, but few viewers were likely to do the requisite fact-checking; Edwards drove me a bit crazy with his unwillingness to answer the questions of the moderator, and his sometimes rather ham-fisted attempts to strongarm the subject back to the Kerry talking points. But the Democrats seem to be winning the spin war for once, and that's reason to be grateful, notwithstanding my personal response to the VP debate.

And that debate itself will fade into irrelevance after Friday's "town hall" forum (now there's a construct I'm getting sick of). It's hard to say who will do worse in that particular debate -- obviously the scuttlebutt right now is that Kerry is in the stronger position, but the press will no doubt focus on his "wooden" demeanor and not worry too much about what the man is actually saying. And although Bush looked like he was on the ropes following the last one, he has been able to find his Inner Gladhander before when it mattered. So, in a way, I'm even more nervous about the Friday debate than I was about the one last Thursday.

Still: Glimmers of hope. Let's feel good about that, shall we?