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 Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Paperback
By California Dreamer Joan Didion
| Quote: | | Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with onself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards - the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others - who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O'Hara, is something people with courage can do without. (On Self-Respect at p. 143) |
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| Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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Canada.com
Corporate Media Scion
B.C. probes odds-defying luck of lottery retailers
By Chad Skelton
May 30/07
| Quote: | The B.C. government has launched an audit of the lottery system in response to Tuesday's report from the province's ombudsman which found the system open to abuse by unscrupulous retailers.
"The ombudsman's report is a start, but by no means an end," said Solicitor-General John Les. "The bigger question of how and why B.C.'s retail lottery system was left vulnerable to potential fraud remains and that question is what the audit is intended to answer."
B.C. Ombudsman Kim Carter launched her investigation in December after the Vancouver Sun reported lottery retailers were winning major prizes at several times the rate of the general public. According to internal lottery documents obtained by the Sun, over the past six years, those who sell lottery tickets have won 4.4 per cent of all lottery prizes over $10,000 - a rate anywhere from three to six times their share of the population. The figures, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, raised fears that retailers may be stealing customers' winning tickets.
Immediately following the revelations, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation said that it had confidence in its lotteries and believed the high rate of retailer wins was simply due to retailers playing more often. However, Carter's report found several gaps in BCLC's security system.
B.C.'s experience is mirrored elsewhere in Canada. (emphasis added)
In March, Ontario's ombudsman Andre Marin released a report into retailer wins in that province. It estimated retailers had made tens of millions of dollars in suspicious lottery claims and that Ontario lottery officials had for years ignored evidence of retailer fraud.
And in Nova Scotia, Atlantic Lottery Corp. announced in the spring that retailers who sell lottery tickets win big prizes 10 times more often than probability can explain.
The provincial government is investigating. |
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| Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:24 pm Post subject: |
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The Cure at Troy
A version of Sophocles's Philoctetes
Paperback
By Seamus Heaney
| Quote: | Neoptolemus: What are the orders?
Odysseus: You are going to have to work out some way
Of deceiving Philoctetes with a story.
He'll ask who you are and where you're from
And you'll say, Achilles' son, which will be true.
And that you're on your voyage back from Troy,
Heading home in a rage against the Greeks.
...Without you, Troy cannot be taken.
We need you.
To commandeer the bow from Philoctetes.
And always remember this:
you are the only one
That can approach him. You weren't sworn in
On the first expedition, you didn't sail
Under oath to anybody. Your slate is clean.
But if I was challenged, I could not deny
Any of that. And if he recognized me
And had his bow with him, I would be dead.
And you'd be dead for associating with me.
So the trick you're going to have to turn is this:
Sweet talk him and relieve him
Of a bow and arrows that are actually miraculous.
But, of course, son, I know what you are like.
I know this goes against the grain
And you hate it. You're a very honest lad,
But all the same: even you must enjoy
Coming out on top.
Do it my way, this once.
All right, you'll be ashamed
but that won't last.
And once you're over it, you'll have the rest of your life
To be good and true and incorruptible.
Neoptolemus: I hate hearing you say this
and hate more
The thought of having to do it.
It goes against
All I was ever brought up to believe.
It's really low behavior.
Why could we not
Go at him, man to man? If he's so badly lamed
He'd never be a match for two of us.
We're Greeks, so, all right, we do our duty.
I don't think I could bear being called a traitor.
But in all honesty I have to say
I'd rather fail and keep my self-respect
Than win by cheating.
(-- pgs. 6-9) |
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| Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:00 am Post subject: |
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Titian
Paperback
Edited by Cecilia Gibellini
| Quote: | The Flaying of Marsyas
The famous Flaying of Marsyas, conserved in the gallery of the Archbishop's Palace in Kromeriz, is one of the greatest masterpieces of Titian's late style. The artist painted it towards the end of his life, between 1570 and 1576, with the large areas of almost incandescent color that were typical of his late work.
It depicts the Phrygian satyr Marysas flayed alive by Apollo after the god had been defeated by Marsyas in a musical contest in which he had played the lyre and the satyr played the flute. The tragic scene of the punishment also features a young man playing the lyre, interpreted by some as a second figure of Apollo and by others as Olympus. X-ray examinations have revealed that Titian had originally painted a lyre-bearer in this position, which was later replaced - perhaps by one of his pupils - with the definitive figure. On the right sits the sad and thoughtful figure of King Midas with his ass's ears, the symbol of the punishment inflicted on him by Apollo, whom he had offended by choosing Pan as the winner in a previous musical contest.
...A self-portrait of Titian has been identified in the face of the king who could turn all that he touched into gold, but who belonged to the defeated civilization: like the mythological figure, the artist had also been granted the gift of turning any material into gold by means of his brush. The melancholy air of Titian-Midas seems to indicate his awareness that the gift is transitory and irrelevant in the face of the violence and tragic, inevitable progression of the history of mankind. (-- pgs. 160-161) |
More about Marsyas and Apollo's loaded dice:
| Quote: | | In the contest between Apollo and Marsyas, the terms stated that the winner could treat the defeated party any way he wanted. Since the contest was judged by the Muses, Marsyas naturally lost and was flayed alive in a cave near Celaenae for his hubris to challenge a god. Apollo then nailed Marsyas' skin to a tree, near Lake Aulocrene (Karakuyu Gölü). His brothers, nymphs, gods and goddesses mourned his death and their tears turned into the river Marsyas (in west-central Turkey, which joins the Menderes river (Meander) near Celaenae), according to the book Metamorphoses by Ovid. (From Wikipedia) |
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 3:42 pm Post subject: |
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Cup of Gold
A Life of Sir Henry Morgan,
Buccaneer, with
Occasional Reference to History
Paperback
By John Steinbeck
| Quote: | | "Have you considered these ancient wars?" Henry asked. "I have been reading of Alexander and Xenophon and Caesar in their wars. And the thought is on me that battle and tactics - that is, successful tactics - are nothing more than a glorified trickery. The force is necessary, and the arms, of course; but the war is really won by the man who sits back, like one cheating at cards, and confounds the enemy with his trickery. Have you considered that, sir? Any one who can guess the minds of ordinary generals, as I can guess the minds of slaves, can win battles. Such a man would have only to shun what was expected of him. Isn't that the secret of tactics, sir?" (From Chapter Two at p. 69) |
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| Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | CNN.com
Web News
Injured Iraq war vets sue VA over delays
By Associated Press
July 23/07
| Quote: | Frustrated by delays in health care, a coalition of injured Iraq war veterans is accusing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment.
The class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad change in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on several fronts -- from providing prompt disability benefits, to adding staff to reduce wait times for medical care to boosting services for post-traumatic stress disorder. The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying out benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges. (emphasis added)
... The lawsuit comes amid intense political and public scrutiny of the VA and Pentagon following reports of shoddy outpatient care of injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and elsewhere
"Unless systemic and drastic measures are instituted immediately, the costs to these veterans, their families, and our nation will be incalculable, including broken families, a new generation of unemployed and homeless veterans, increases in drug abuse and alcoholism, and crushing burdens on the health care delivery system," the complaint states. It asks that a federal court order the VA to make immediate improvements that would speed disability payments, ensure fairness in awards and provide more complete access to mental health care.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in San Francisco issued a strong rebuke of the VA in ordering the agency to pay retroactive benefits to Vietnam War veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange and contracted a form of leukemia. "The performance of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs has contributed substantially to our sense of national shame," the opinion from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals read.
Nicholson abruptly announced last week he would step down by October 1 to return to the private sector. He has repeatedly defended the agency during his 21/2-year tenure while acknowledging there was room for improvement.
More recently, following high-profile suicide incidents in which families of veterans say the VA did not provide adequate care, Nicholson pledged to add mental health services and hire more suicide-prevention coordinators. Some veterans say those measures aren't enough. In the lawsuit, they note that government investigators warned as early as 2002 that the VA needed to fix its backlogged claims system and make other changes. Yet, the lawsuit says, Nicholson and other officials still insisted on a budget in 2005 that fell $1 billion short, and they made "a mockery of the rule of law" by awarding senior officials $3.8 million in bonuses despite their role in the budget foul-up.
Today, the VA's backlog of disability payments is now between 400,000 and 600,000, with delays of up to 177 days to process an initial claim and an average of 657 days to process an appeal. Several congressional committees and a presidential commission are now studying ways to improve care.
... The veterans groups involved in the lawsuit are Veterans for Common Sense in Washington, D.C., which claims 11,500 members, and Veterans United for Truth, based in Santa Barbara, California, with 500 members.
. (emphasis added) |
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Now, compare U.S. treatment of vets above with the British response:
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Bryn Parry
Cartoonist turned war heroes' champion
Nov. 29/07
| Quote: | Bryn Parry is best known as the creator of Mrs Aga, Wocker Cocker and other cuddly countryside caricatures that adorn aprons, mugs and mouse mats. But he hasn't picked up a paintbrush since July, when his life was turned upside down by Help for Heroes, the charity he founded with his wife, Emma. In eight dizzying weeks, they have raised £1 million twards a swimming pool and gym at Headley Court, Surrey, the services' rehabilitation centre. The Big Battlefield Bike Ride is over-subscribed, footballer Ronaldo and Jeremy Clarkson sport Help for Heroes wristbands, and The Sun, businesses and the public have weighed in, as has COUNTRY LIFE. Plans include the Great British Hero Ride from Blackheath to the Cenotaph on June 1, and even a national pub quiz.
... 'In between squirting Champagne at the (Macmillan Cancer cycling fundraiser) finish, Emma suggested: "Why don't we do something ourselves, for the wounded?" The trigger was a visit to Selly Oak Hospital, and a ward with 40 young soldiers lying on top of their sheets, their stumps and shrapnel wounds exposed.
'I defy anyone not to have been moved. The men were so determined and modest. They have been in a place where want to kill them in a war of which everyone disapproves. The least we can do is look after them when they come home.'
The Parrys' only son, Tom, 22, passes out of Sandhurst next summer. His mother dreads it, 'but it's in his genes.' Bryn Parry's father, a colonel in the Gurkhas, was killed on exercise in Germany. Bryn joined the Green Jackets, with the idea of being a war artist - 'in the style of Terence Cuneo.' He caricatured fellow soldiers, selling the results for a fiver, and produced the regiment's Christmas card, turning 50 into limited edition prints. (-- p. 80) |
PokerPulse would be pleased to post links to similar campaigns on behalf of soldiers. Please send any we've missed to legal@pokerpulse.com.
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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Vanity Fair
Magazine Subscription
MacArthur's Grand Delusion
In 1950, General Douglas MacArthur was hell-bent
on chasing the retreating North Koreans to the Chinese
border. Nothing would stop him - not orders from
Washington, not intelligence reports that Mao's troops
were building up in the area. Which is how hundreds of
Americans got slaughtered at Unsan, one of the worst
defeats of the Korean War. In an excerpt from his new,
and *final, book, David Halberstam weaves the tale
of hubris, deception, and death.
October, 2007
| Quote: | ... In the internal staff struggles over the future of Japanese democracy, (Charles A.) Willoughby (MacArthur's principal intelligence man) was an unusually passionate player, trying to rid headquarters of the New Deal liberals whom he tended to see as fellow travelers or Communists. He was also always on the alert for any journalistic transgression against either the occupation or MacArthur personally. "Willoughby was absolutely convinced that because I was doing a good deal of original reporting on those divisions, reporting what neither he nor MacArthur liked, that I was a Communist," said Joseph Fromm, of U.S. News and World Report. "I remember one day he called me for a special one-on-one meeting, and it was a truly crazed scene. All he wanted to do was talk about Lenin and Marx, man-to-man, like we both knew what the game was, he the anti-Communist and the man of the law and me, in his mind, the Communist and thus the outlaw, and we would be equals in this sparring, sophisticates about it, men of the world, but in the end his view of Communism would trump mine." Years later, Fromm got hold of his security file through the Freedom of Information Act. What stunned him was the amount of garbage in it about him, all of it collected by Willoughby and his people in the G-2 section, reams and reams of it, much of it incredibly inaccurate, "the kind of thing that could ruin a person's career if it was taken seriously.
... the key to the importance of Willoughby was not his own self-evident inadequacies; it was that he represented the deepest kind of psychological weakness in the talented, flawed man he served - the need to have someone who agreed with him at all times and flattered him constantly. "MacArthur did not want the Chinese to enter the war in Korea. Anything MacArthur wanted, Willoughby produced intelligence for...In this case Willoughby falsified the intelligence reports...He should have gone to jail," said Lieutenant Colonel John Chiles, 10th Corpos G-3, or chief of operations. (-- p. 371) |
| Quote: | | ... Willoughby did all he could to minimize the overwhelming evidence that the Chinese had been the ones who struck the ROKs and the Eighth Cavalry near Unsan. A good many men who fought there came to believe that his refusal to act quickly on the evidence presented by the first captured Chinese prisoners and his unwillingness to add a serious note of caution to his intelligence briefings were directly responsible for the devastation inflicted on not just the Cav at Unsan but upon the Eighth Army soon after for the loss of so many buddies, and, in some cases, for their own long tours in Chinese and Korean prisons. To them, what he represented came perilously close to evil, someone who blustered about the dangers of Communism and the Chinese, but then ended up making their work easier by setting the U.N. forces up for that great ambush. He was, thought Bill Train, a bright, young, low-level G-3 (or operations) staff officer who fought against Willoughby's certitudes in those critical weeks, "a four-flusher - someone who made it seem like he knew what he was doing - but in the end what he produced was absolutely worthless; there was nothing there at all. Nothing. He got everything wrong! Everything! What he was doing in those days was fighting against the truth, trying to keep it from going from lower levels to higher ones, where it would have to be acted on." (-- p. 372) |
| Quote: | *The Coldest Winter:
America and the Korean War
Hardcover
By David Halberstam
How we'll miss this excellent journalist, who was killed April 23/07 in the Bay Area. More on the fatal car crash here. |
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| Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2007 11:11 am Post subject: |
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The Last Generation
How Nature Will Take Her
Revenge for Climate Change
Hardcover
By Fred Pearce
| Quote: | All the world's governments are committed to preventing 'dangerous' climate change. They made that pledge at the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The signatories included the US and Australia, which both refused to ratify the subsequent Kyoto Protocol and its national targets for emissions reductions. But what constitutes dangerous climate change? And how, in practice, can we prevent it?
For some people dangerous climate change is already a reality. Many devastated by recent hurricanes, floods and droughts believe they are victims. Such claims are usually impossible to prove. But that doesn't mean that our weather is not changing, says Myles Allen of Oxford University. In essence, climate change is already loading the dice in favour of weird and dangerous weather. 'The danger zone is not something we are going to reach in the middle of this entury. We are in it now,' he says. The 35,000 Europeans who died in the heatwave in 2003 were victims of an event that would almost certainly not have happened without the insidious increase in background temperatures that turned a warm summer into a killer. (From Appendix, The Trillion-Tonne Challenge at p. 297) |
More global warming gambles according to Gambling Scientists.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2007 1:38 pm Post subject: |
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Beyond the Outer Shores
The Untold Story of Ed Ricketts, the
pioneering ecologist who inspired John
Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell
Hardcover
By non-'Billy Frostback Eric Enno Tamm
| Quote: | Having depleted the ocean, we are now trying to domesticate it by "farming" fish. The U.S. government is even proposing new legislation to privatize the ocean within the two-hundred-mile Exclusive Economic Zone by promoting fish farnming in much the same way that pioneers settled the West. In the words of one newspaper reporter, who obtained a draft of the proposed legislation, "Look out at the boundless ocean, and envision a new Iowa - homesteaded by fish farm colonies... with row upon row of undersea cages roiling with swimming livestock."
Today, the outer shores of the North Pacific represent a tragic microcosm of the world at large. In British Columbia, pristine inlets are being turned into the aquatic equivalent of industrial feedlots with thousands of fish crammed into tiny floating pens. The fish are particularly susceptible to disease and sea lice infestation, are fed pellets and dyes to color their flesh, and contain a level of toxic PCBs seven times higher than in wild salmon. Production from this type of industrial salmon farming soared from 15,500 tonnes in 1990 to 89,000 tonnes in 2002, while wild salmon catches plummeted.
What remains of the wild fisheries, including groundfish, black cod and halibut, among others, are being privatized. The fish in the ocean are being divvied up into individual quotas owned by corporations and so-called "arm chair" fishermen who trade and lease their quotas for profit. Tenant fishermen, not unlike the tenant farmers depicted in The Grapes of Wrath, often pay usurious "rents" equivalent to 70 percent of the revenue from their catches to the quota owners. Poorer rural and aboriginal fishermen have been pushed off the sea, as quota holdings are consolidated in the hands of a rich few. Of the 1,006 quota licences in B.C., for example, only thirteen are owned by people living on the outer shores of Vancouver Island.
A billionaire businessman, Jimmy Pattison, now owns more fishing licences than all these communities combined .
... Are we slaves to a great industrial machine, or "monster" as Steinbeck called it, or are we a species living in mutual dependence with our natural environment? It seems we have failed to heed the one biological truth so evident in the various writings of Ricketts, Steinbeck and Campbell: humans, like other animals, live in communities. Our traditional knowledge, connection to place, dependence on clean air and water, and intergenerational bonds are part of a lifecycle that has allowed us to thrive in nature and persevere despite history's travails. Destroy this organic entity or try to replace it with the harsh mathematics of a corporate ledger or sever a community's connection to the land and sea, and you'll ultimately destroy what makes us human. We will become the brutal machines we have created. (From Epilogue, pgs-. 313-314)) |
Stain Upon the Sea
West Coast Salmon Farming
Paperback
By S. Hume
Foreward by David Suzuki
EurekAlert!
Press Release
Fish farms drive wild salmon populations toward extinction
Experts raise serious concerns about the expansion of industrial fish farming
Contact: Matt Wright
Dec. 13/07
| Quote: | A study appearing in the Dec. 14th issue of the journal Science shows, for the first time, that parasitic sea lice infestations caused by salmon farms are driving nearby populations of wild salmon toward extinction. The results show that the affected pink salmon populations have been rapidly declining for four years.The scientists expect a 99% collapse in another four years, or two salmon generations, if the infestations continue. (see summary and links below)
“The impact is so severe that the viability of the wild salmon populations is threatened,” says lead author Martin Krkosek, a fisheries ecologist from the University of Alberta. Krkosek and his co-authors calculate that sea lice have killed more than 80% of the annual pink salmon returns to British Columbia’s Broughton Archipelago. “If nothing changes, we are going to lose these fish.”
Previous peer-reviewed papers by Krkosek and others showed that sea lice from fish farms can infect and kill juvenile wild salmon. This, however, is the first study to examine the population-level effects on the wild salmon stocks.
“It shows there is a real danger to wild populations from the impact of farms,” says Ray Hilborn, a fisheries biologist from the University of Washington who was not involved in the study. “The data for individual populations are highly variable. But there is so much of it, it is pretty persuasive that salmon populations affected by farms are rapidly declining.” According to experts, the study also raises serious concerns about large-scale proposals for net pen aquaculture of other species and the potential for pathogen transfer to wild populations.
“This paper is really about a lot more than salmon,” says Hilborn. “It is about the impacts of net pen aquaculture on wild fish. This is the first study where we can evaluate these interactions and it certainly raises serious concerns about proposed aquaculture for other species such as cod, halibut and sablefish.”
The data are from the Broughton Archipelago, a group of islands and channels about 260 miles northwest of Vancouver that is environmentally, culturally, and economically dependent on wild salmon. To pinpoint the effect of salmon farms, the study used a large dataset collected by the Canadian federal government’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Fisheries and Ocean Canada) that estimates how many adult salmon return from the ocean to British Columbia’s rivers each year. Extending back to 1970, the data covers 14 populations of pink salmon (Onchorhynchus gorbuscha) that have been exposed to salmon farms, and 128 populations that have not.
Sea lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) are naturally occurring parasites of wild salmon that latch onto the fishes’ skin in the open ocean. The lice are transmitted by a tiny free-swimming larval stage. Open-net salmon farms are a haven for these parasites, which feed on the fishes’ skin and muscle tissue. Adult salmon can survive a small number of lice, but juveniles headed from the river to the sea are very small, thin-skinned, and vulnerable. In the Broughton Archipelago, the juvenile salmon must run an 80-kilometer gauntlet of fish farms before they reach the open ocean.
“Salmon farming breaks a natural law,” says co-author Alexandra Morton, director of the Salmon Coast Field Station, located in the Broughton. “In the natural system, the youngest salmon are not exposed to sea lice because the adult salmon that carry the parasite are offshore. But fish farms cause a deadly collision between the vulnerable young salmon and sea lice. They are not equipped to survive this, and they don’t.”
Salmon bring nutrients from the open ocean back to the coastal ecosystem. Killer whales, bears, wolves, birds, and even trees depend on pink salmon. “If you lose wild salmon there’s a lot you are going to lose with them – including other industries such as fishing and tourism,” says Krkosek.
“An important finding of this paper is that the impact of the sea lice is so large that it exceeds that of the commercial fishery that used to exist here,” says Jennifer Ford, a co-author and fisheries scientist. “Since the infestations began, the fishery has been closed and the salmon stocks have continued declining.” (emphasis added)
“In the Broughton there are just too many farmed fish in the water. If there were only one salmon farm this problem probably wouldn’t exist,” Krkosek says.
“Over the years the number of farmed fish has increased,” says Morton. “There used to be only a few farms, each holding about 125,000 fish. But now we have over 20 farms, some holding 1.3 million fish. The farmed fish are providing a habitat for lice that wasn’t there before.”
The researchers observed that when farms on a primary migration route were temporarily shut down, or fallowed, sea lice numbers dropped and salmon populations increased. “Even though they have complicated migration patterns they all have one thing in common – overall, the populations that are declining are the ones that are going past the farms,” says Mark Lewis, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Alberta.
“There are two solutions that may work – closed containment, and moving farms away from rivers,” says Lewis. Closed containment means moving the salmon to pens that are completely sealed off from the surrounding environment in contrast to the open-net pens currently in use. In a May 16, 2007 provincial government report, the B.C. Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture recommended a move towards closed containment within 5 years.
“If industry says it’s too expensive to move the fish farms or contain them, they are actually saying the natural system must continue to pay the price,” says Daniel Pauly, Director of the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre, who was not involved with the study. “They are, as economists would say, externalizing the costs of fish farming on the wild salmon and the public.”
Morton, who has been studying the impacts of aquaculture for 20 years, says that, “Wild salmon are enormously important to the ecosystem, economies, and culture. Now it is clear they are disappearing in place of an industry. People need to know this and make a decision what they want: industry-produced salmon or wild salmon.” |
| Quote: | Science:
14 December 2007
Vol. 318. no. 5857, p. 1711
DOI: 10.1126/science.318.5857.1711
| Quote: | Rather than benefiting wild fish, industrial aquaculture may contribute to declines in ocean fisheries and ecosystems. Farm salmon are commonly infected with salmon lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis), which are native ectoparasitic copepods. We show that recurrent louse infestations of wild juvenile pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), all associated with salmon farms, have depressed wild pink salmon populations and placed them on a trajectory toward rapid local extinction. The louse-induced mortality of pink salmon is commonly over 80% and exceeds previous fishing mortality. If outbreaks continue, then local extinction is certain, and a 99% collapse in pink salmon population abundance is expected in four salmon generations. These results suggest that salmon farms can cause parasite outbreaks that erode the capacity of a coastal ecosystem to support wild salmon populations.
1 Centre for Mathematical Biology, Department of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
2 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
3 Biology Department, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
4 Salmon Coast Field Station, Simoom Sound, BC, Canada.
* Deceased.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mkrkosek@ualberta.ca |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject: |
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Passionate Minds
The great love affair of the Englightenment, featuring the scientist Émilie du Châtelet, the poet Voltaire, sword fights, book burnings, assorted kings, seditious verse, and the birth of the modern world
Hardcover
By David Bodanis
| Quote: | She (Émilie) and the great writer Voltaire were lovers for nearly a decade, though they certainly took their time settling down, having to delay for frantic gallopings across France, sword fights in front of besieged German fortresses, a wild affair (hers) with a gallant pirate's son, and a deadly burning of books (his) by the public executioner at the base of the grand stairwell of the Palais de Justice in Paris. There was also rigging the French national lottery to guarantee a multimillion-franc payout, and investing in North African grain futures with the proceeds.
... When they ran out of money, Emilie would sometimes resort to the gambling tables at Versailles - since she was so much quicker than anyone else at mathematics, she could often be counted on to win. Voltaire wrote proudly that "the court ladies, playing cards with her in the company of the queen, were far from suspecting that they were sitting next to Newton's commentator."
Voltaire wasn't much of a scientist, but Emilie was a skilled theoretician. Once, working secretly at night at the chateau over a single intense summer month, hush ing the servants not to spoil the surprise for Voltaire, she came up with insights on the nature of light that set the stage for the future discovery of photography, as well as of infrared radiation. Her later work was even more fundamental, for she played a key role in transforming Newton's thought for the modern era. The research she did on what later became termed the conservation of energy was crucial here, and the "squared" in Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 (squared) came, in fact, directly from her work. (From the Preface, pgs. 1-2) |
| Quote: | ... Emilie was desperate to learn more - this was what she yearned for - but although she would no doubt drag Louis Nicolas into nodding agreement when she shared some of these new ideas with him visits, she couldn't get him to give her extra funds to buy more books. His lowered income didn't allow it.
There was one alternative. Emilie was bright enough at mathematics to teach herself analytic geometry. Shouldn't she be able to count the cards at the gaming tables quickly enough to give her a chance to win in gambling? (Gambling was popular, and well-bred young women were often exposed to it enough to pick up the rudiments.) If she did develop that skill, then with the money she might gain...
"My daughter is mad," Louis-Nicolas soon wrote. "Last week she won more than two thousand gold louis at the card tables, and ... spent ... half on new books." ... "I argued with her in vain, yet she would not understand that no great lord will marry a woman who is seen reading every day." (From Emilie, pgs. 25-26) |
| Quote: | ... The city government had recently defaulted on its municipal bonds, which meant that there were a lot of wealthy individuals who owned valueless bonds. If the government left it at that, thos individuals whould be very wary of ever investing in future bond issues. To show good faith - and make up for some of the investors' losses - the city government now decided to offer a lottery, to which only owners of those now valueless bonds could apply. Since the angry bondholders wouldn't participate in an ordinary lottery (having been so misled before), the government decided to go further and add substantial extra funds to the total lottery amount. The government felt this was safe, since it expected only a few holders of the original bonds to invest, despite the sweetener of the increased payment per ticket.
What it didn't reckon with was Voltaire's ingenuity, aided by his new friend the mathematician La Condamine. Voltaire had been audacious and creative in leterature. Now he applied the same skills to finance. What if someone went around and bought all the valueless bonds that were in default? It was easy enough, for the owners of the bonds were still so upset at having lost all their money in the city's original default that they didn't really believe the promises the city gave that there would be extra money in the lottery.
In fact, though, these bonds weren't quite valueless, for Voltaire - and La Condamine, and a very few others he brought into his syndicate - weren't blinded by that recent experience of financial loss, and so understood that the bonds were "tickets" they could use to enter the city's lottery. And since the city genuinely had added extra funds to sweeten the lottery... (From Exile and Return, pgs. 59-60) |
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack
Hardcover
By deceased Frostback literary noise,
Robertson Davies
| Quote: | | PRECOCITY AT CARDS / Became involved in a game of Old Maid this afternoon, at the house of a friend who had preserved a wonderful set of cards, designed in the days of the Comic Valentine, and in the same convention of drawing. The characters were superb. Grocer Smallpound was there, and Harry Holdwire (who was talking on a telephone of the early, wall instrument type). Fred Freversmoke wore a high collar anda derby hat, and was right out of the period when the smoking of cigarettes was a sign of a dashing character. Arthur Argumuch was obviously a lawyer, and Flossie Flirtsome carried me back to a day when a generalized amplitude of figure was a mark of beauty. Nora Newtogs was dressed in the height of fashion probably by Miss Botchie Misfit, a dressmaker whose teeth, rather surprisingly, were marked "False" in large clear letters. Some children were playing, and I was astonished at their precocious gift for cards. One of them had so accurately memorized the creases and distinctive marks in the back of the Old Maid card that was always able to avoid drawing it. That child will go far, but I hate to think where. (-- p. 60) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 12:51 pm Post subject: |
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London
The Biography
Hardcover
By Peter Ackroyd
| Quote: | The first evidence of gambling in London can be adduced from the Roman period, with the excavation of dice carved out of bone or jet. The unexpected turns of life, as then experienced, are also revealed in the elaborate equipment of a fortune-teller found beneath Newgate Street. In the early medieval period Hazard was played in taverns and other low houses, together with another dice game known as Tables. In medieval brothels, too, gambling and drinking were part of the service. Quarrels over a game were sometimes fatal and, after one round of Tables, 'the loser fatally stabbed the winner on the way home'. There was plentiful scope for fraud, also, and there are reports of the gaming was everywhere. An excavation in Duke's Palace revealed 'a piece of medieval roof-tile shaped into a gaming counter', according to a report in The London Archaelogist, and as early as the thirteenth century, there were rules in Westminster for the punishment of any schoolboy found with dice in his possession. A stroke of the rod was delivered for every 'pip' on the dice.
Playing cards were imported into London in the fifteenth century, and their use became so widespread that in 1495 Henry VII 'forbad their use to servants and apprentices except during the Christmas holidays.' Stow records that 'From All hallows Eve to the day following Candlemas-day there was, among other sports, playing at cards, for counters, nails and points, in every house'. They were found in every tavern, too: packs of cards had the names of various inns imprinted upon them. Their merits were widely advertised. 'Spanish cards lately brought from Vig. Being pleasant to the eye by their curious colours and quite different from ours may be had at 1/- [one shilling] a pack at Mrs Baldwin's in Warwick Lane.' The business in cards became so mid-seventeenth century an annual income of five thousand pounds which meant that 'some 4.8 million packs of cards' must have been traded.
Fulham earned a reputation as early as the sixteenth century for its dubious traffic in dice and counters; it is evoked by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where
For gourd and fullam holds
And 'high' and 'low' beguile the rich and poor.
A fullam in this context was a loaded die...
... Gaming was declared illegal but, despite nightly raids upon certain selected hells in the city, it continued to flourish. There was always 'assembled a mixed crowd of gentlemen, merchants, tradesmen, clerks and sharpers of all degrees and conditions', ready to play at Hazard, Faro, Basset, Roly-poly and a score of other games involving dice and cards. Into these hells came the puffs, the flashers, the squibs, the dunners, the flash captains with a regiment of spies, porters and runners to give notice of approaching constables. At Almacks, a famous gaming club in Pall Mall, the players 'turned their coats inside out for luck'; they put on wristbands of leather to protect their lace ruffles and wore straw hats to guard their eyes fro the light and to prevent their hair from tumbling. Sometimes, too, they put on 'masks to conceal their emotions'. At Brooks's, the twenty-first rule stated that there whould be 'No gaming in the eating room, except tossing up for reckonings, on penalty of paying the whole bill of the members present'. There were othedr less agreeable occasions for a wager, as recorded in London Souvenirs. A prospective player once dropped down dead at the door of White's; ;the club immediately made bets whether he was dead or only in a fit; and when they were going to bleed him the wagerers for his death interposed, saying it would affect the fairness of the bet'.
... The traditions of public gaming were continued into the nineteenth century by such places as the Royal Saloon in Piccadilly, the Castle in Holborn, Tom Cribb's Saloon in Panton Street, the Finish in James Street, and Brydges Street Saloon in Covent Garden otherwise known as 'The Hall of Infamy' or Old Mother Damnable's'. On the other side of London, in the East End, there were gambling rooms and gambling clubs, to such an extent that one minister working among the poor of the area informed Charles Booth that 'gambling presses drink hard as the greatest evil of the day... all gamble more than they drink'. The street urchins gambled with farthings or buttons, in a card game known as Darbs, and betting on boxing or horse-racing was carried on through the agency of tobacconists, publicans, newsvendors and Booth's survey of the East End, 'Women as well as men...men and boys tumble out in their eagerness to read the latest 'speshul" and mark the winner.'
And then there was the lottery. It was first established in London in 1569... (From Chapter 42, A Turn of the Dice, at pgs. 381-385) |
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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In Dubious Battle
Paperback
By John Steinbeck
| Quote: | They trudged slowly along, beside the column of marching men. "Mac, who in hell are these vigilantes, anyway? What kind of guys are they?"
"Why, they're the dirtiest guys in any town. They're the same ones that burned the houses of old German people during the war. They're the same ones that lynch Negroes. They like to be cruel. They like to hurt people, and they always give it a nice name, patriotism or protecting the constitution. But they're just the old nigger torturers working. The owners use 'em, tell 'em we have to protect the people against reds. Y'see that lets 'em burn houses and torture and beat people with no danger. And that's all they want to do, anyway. They've got no guts; they'll only shoot from cover, or gang a man when they're ten to one. I guess they're about the worst scum in the world." His eyes sought the body of Joy, in the truck. He said, "During the war there was a little fat German tailor in my town, and a bunch of these patriotic bastards, about fifty of 'em, started his house on fire, and beat him to a pulp. They're great guys, these vigilantes. Not long ago they shot racer bullets through a kerosene tank and started a fire in a bunk house. They didn't even have the guts to do it with a match."
The column marched on through the country, raising a great dust. The men were coming slowly out of their dream. They talked together in low voices. Their feet scuffed heavily against the ground. "Poor Joy," Jim said. "He was a good little fellow. He'd been beaten so much. He reminded me of my old man, always mad."
Mac reproved him. "Don't feel sorry for Joy. If he could know what he did, he'd be cocky. Joy always wanted to lead people, and now he's going to do it, even if he's in a box."
"How about these scabs, Mac? We got a bunch of them with us."
"Sure, a bunch came over, but a lot of 'em beat it. Some of our guys beat it, too. We got just about the same number we started with. Didn't you see 'em crawling under the cars and running away?" Mac said, "Look at these guys. They're waking up. It's just as though they got a shot of gas for awhile. That's the most dangerous kind of men."
"The cops knew it, too," said Jim.
"Damn right they did. When a mob don't make a noise, when it just comes on with dead-pans, that's the time for a cop to get out of the way."
They were nearing the Anderson place. Jim asked, "What do we do now, Mac?"
"Well, we hold the funeral, and we start picketing. It'll settle down now. They'll run in scabs with trucks."
"You still think we'll get beat, Mac?"
"I don't know. They got this valley organized. God, how they've got it organized. It's not so hard to do when a few men control everything, land, courts, banks. They can cut off loans, and they can railroad a man to jail, and they can always bribe plenty." (-- pgs. 130-132) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 10:11 am Post subject: |
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Vanity Fair
Magazine Subscription
Editor's Letter
The Measure of the Man (or Woman)
By Graydon Carter
February, 2007
| Quote: | I have always thought you could take the measure of a man by his sports manners - that is to say, the way in which he conducts himself on the playing field, or even over a game of chess or cards. Former president Bill Clinton was famous for taking a mulligan, or an extra try, on almost every shot, then playing the ball that had landed in the better spot. He essentially plays a two-man, two-ball "scramble" - but solo. A former employer of mine ensured that he won in tennis against family and underlings by always calling line shots in his own favor. And so it is with our current president, who will scratch, claw, kick, scream, move the goalposts - pretty much do anything to effect a win. He is a sore winner. And a horrible loser. (emphasis added)
...When Barbara Bush took her 13-year-old son and his best friend, Doug Hannah, to play golf at her Houston club, George would start cursing if he didn't tee off well. His mother would tell him to quit it. By the third or fourth hole he would be yelling "Fuck this" until he had ensured that his mother would send him to the car.
"It fit his needs," says Hannah. "He couldn't lose."
Once, after his mother banished him from the golf course, she turned to Hannah and declared, "That boy is going to have optical rectosis." What did that mean? "She said, 'A shitty outlook on life.'"
Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off...It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that."...
Another fast friend, Roland Betts, acknowledges that it is the same in tennis. In November 1992, Bush and Betts were in Santa Fe to host a dinner party, but they had just enough time for one set of doubles. The former Yale classmates were on opposite side of the net. "There was only one problem - my side won the first set," recalls Betts. "OK, then we're going two out of three," Bush decreed. Bush's side takes the next set. But Betts's side is winning the third set when it starts to snow. Hard, fat flakes. The catering truck pulls up. But Bush won't let anybody quit. "He's pissed. George runs his mouth constantly," says Betts indulgently. "He's making fun of your last shot, mocking you, needling you, goading you - he never shuts up!" They continued to play tennis through a driving snowstorm.
It is something of an in-joke with Bush's friends and family. "In reality we all know who won, but George wants to go further to see what happens," says an old family friend, venture capitalist and former MGM chairman Louis "Bo" Polk Jr. "George would say, 'Play that one over,' or 'I wasn't quite ready.' The overtimes are what's fun, so you make your own. When you that extra mile or tyhat extra point...you go to a whole new point...you go to a whole new level."
Inasmuch as I'm writing this the week before Christmas, any sort of prediction is a dicey proposition, but *my guess is that Bush will double-down on Iraq. He has lost, but his past would indicate that he will figure that he can just keep the game going a little longer. (Excerpts refer to Gail Sheehy's article, The Accidental Candidate, in the magazine's October, 2000 issue, at p. 52) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:11 am Post subject: |
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Harper's
Magazine Subscription
Vote Machine
How Republicans hacked the Justice Department
By Scott Horton
March, 2008
| Quote: | ... It is increasingly clear that Republicans have come to understand the Justice Department not as "the very foundation for a free society," or even as a spoils system for issues-oriented voters, but rather as a machine that utilizes "evasion, cover-up, stonewalling, and duplicity," among other techniques, to achieve the far more fundamental goal of taking and maintaining power.
... During the years of the Clinton Administration, for example, relentless "investigations," demanded by Republicans on Capitol Hill, created a series of trumped-up "-gates" - Cattlegate, Filegate, Travelgate - and Kenneth Starr, in his rambling examination of Bill Clinton's sex life, explored techniques that would inform dozens of political prosecutions under Bush. These efforts culminated not in Clinton's impeachment but rather in the 2000 election itself. On Election Day, the American people chose Al Gore over George Bush by a margin of 540, 000 votes, but in the end only the votes of the Supreme Court mattered. With the help of five out of seven Republican-appointed justices, Bush entered the White House, and it became clear that political power could be gained through the mechanics of the justice system itself.
The Republican project of the past seven years has been to build on that success, to transform the legal apparatus of the United States into an instrument of partisan force.
... Subverting an entire legal apparatus requires great effort. Laws must be circumvented, civil servants thwarted, and opposing politicans intimidated into silence. With an election redecided in the courts, though, the Bush team was quick to lock in its gains. (emphasis added)
... The Bush Justice Department labored to get around these laws (laws precluding partisan appointments in the public service) in various ways. ... the hiring shifted from the Ivies to avowedly conservative schools. Regent University Law School, founded by Pat Robertson in 1986, (ranks among the bottom tier of law schools) claims to have placed more than 150 of its graduates in positions with the Bush Administration.
... By 2006, ... career civil servants were being replaced with hacks who would put loyalty to Bush well above the traditional functions of the Justice Department.
... One of the ways the department would accomplish this (helping Republicans win elections) was by restaffing the branch primarily responsible for making sure Americans are allowed access to the ballot box - the Civil Rights Division - so that ti would work actively to prevent minorities from voting. (emphasis added)
... The former political director of the Texas Republican Party, Royal Masset, actually told the Houston Chronicle in 2007 that it is an "article of religious faith that voter fraud is causing us to lose elections," but then acknowledged that such faith was unfounded. What he did believe ... was that "requiring photo IDs could cause enough of a drop-off in legitimate Democratic voting to add 3 percent jto the Republican vote."
... The American system of democracy has many defenses, and the Bush Administration overcame each of them in turn. It was not enough simply to control the bureaucracy. High officials as well had to understand that their function was not to enforce the law but rather to express the will of the president. The next step, then would be to discipline the U.S. attorneys.
... They are appointed by the president and by tradition serve a minimum of four years. This tradition was upended when Attorney General Gonzales, on Bush's authority, sacked seven U.S. attorneys on Dec. 7/06. No explanation was given at first, and the manoeuver itself was made possible only by an obscure provision in the 2005 reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.
... Had (Albuquerque U.S. Attorney David) Iglesias indicted the Democrat (Patricia A. Madrid), he would have violated ethical obligations as a prosecutor and committed a felony. Instead, he held rigorously to the rules, which forbid a U.S. attorney from manipulating prosecutions in order to attempt to affect election contests. But in the Bush Administration, putting fidelity to the law ahead of the G.O.P.'s election efforts was a career-ending move.
... The other U.S. attorneys fired in December have similar stories to tell. ... Two of them - Milwaukee's Steve Biskupic and Dunnica Lampton of Jackson, Mississippi - brought politically charged corruption indictments involving Democrats during an election cycle, clearly with the intention of directly influencing the elections for the benefit the G.O.P. ... Both Biskupic and Lampton received a reprieve - they could continue serving as U.S. attorneys - thereby reminding us that it is not the terminated U.S. attorneys who should be a subject of concern as much as it is those who were kept on.
... The current situation is not unprecedented. The bitter partisan rivalries of the 1790s saw the machinery of justice put to merciless use. The Federalists felt that all levers of government could legitimately be used to advance and secure the political interests of their party. At a time when there was no real war, the Federalists fomented a public climate of wartime crisis. Their party pushed for military engagement of the side of Britain and against France and insinuated that Democratic-Republicans (as the Democrats were then known) were disloyal and possibly even treasonous on account of their well-known sympathy for French revolutionaries. At the same time, Federalists worked to incite fear of immigrants, particularly the Irish, whom they tarred as alcoholic revolutionaries. Under President John Adams, the Federalists assumed sweeping powers to lock up and deport immigrants, but perhaps their most significant attempt to turn the legal system to political advantage was the passage of the Alien and Sedition Act.
... History may view the Bush Administration's transformation of the Justice Department as an aberration the voters will set right at the next election. There is an equally good chance, however, that Bush has reverted to the historical norm, that government of the people, by the people, for the people is the exception.
... The next president can learn much, in any case, from how the Democratic-Republicans made robust use of executive power to right the wrongs they felt had been done to them. They quite reasonably had no confidence that the judiciary would undo on appeal the injustices perpetrated against Demorcatic-Republican leaders by Federalist prosecutors and trial judges. After all, most of the appellate judges were themselves still Federalists as well. So the two dozen Democratic Republican leaders who had been jailed or convicted received pardons. Congress voted many of them apologies and compensation for their mistreatment. Federal prosecutors and judges who had participated in the excesses were investigated, and most prosecutors were replaced.
... Bush's assumption of presidential authority includes assertions of exutive power at least as expansive as those put forward in the Polk, Lincoln, and Nixon presidencies. Of the three, Lincoln alone could convincingly claim as justification an existential threat against the country. Bush attempts to copy Lincoln's claim, but his efforts are unconvincing.
... As long as this new democracy prevails, little will matter beyond the will of the president. (-- pgs. 37-46) |
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