Global Dimming... Holy Smokes, Batman We're In Trouble
Forget Kyoto and the debate about whether Global Warming is true or not or whether it is observable. Check this out.

NARRATOR: Burning fuel doesn't just produce the invisible greenhouse gases which cause global warming. It also produces visible pollution, tiny airborne particles of soot and other pollutants. These produce the haze which shrouds our cities. So Ramanathan wondered: Could this pollution be causing Global Dimming? The Maldives were the perfect place to find out. The Maldives seem unpolluted, but in fact the northern islands sit in a stream of dirty air descending from India. Only the southern tip of the long island chain enjoys clean air coming all the way from Antarctica. So by comparing the northern islands with the southern ones, Ramanathan and his colleagues would be able to see exactly what difference the pollution made to the atmosphere and the sunlight.

Project INDOEX, as it was called, was a huge multinational effort. For four years every possible technique was used to sample and monitor the atmosphere over the Maldives. INDOEX cost twenty-five million dollars, but it produced results - and they surprised everyone.

PROF VEERABHADRAN RAMANATHAN: The stunning part of the experiment was this pollutant layer which was three kilometre thick, cut down the sunlight reaching the ocean by more than 10%.

NARRATOR: A 10% fall in sunlight meant that particle pollution was having a far bigger effect than anyone had thought possible.

PROF VEERABHADRAN RAMANATHAN: Our models led us to believe the human impact on the dimming was close to half to one per cent. So what we discovered was tenfold.

NARRATOR: INDOEX showed that the pollution particles were blocking some sunlight themselves; but far more significant was what they were doing to the clouds. They were turning them into giant mirrors. Clouds are made of droplets of water. These only form when water vapour in the atmosphere starts to condense on the surface of naturally occurring airborne particles, typically pollen or sea salt. As they grow, the water droplets eventually become so heavy they fall as rain. But Ramanathan found that polluted air contained far more particles than the unpolluted air, particles of ash, soot and sulphur dioxide.

So while Global Warming has been proceeding at a runaway pace, the co-produced Dimming effect has been cancelling out this runaway effect which is why people have been finding it hard to measure the rate of the warming effect. It's extraordinary.

Imagine a guy with a decade long alcohol-abuse problem that makes him a little lethargic at work. He's in denial about it. You fight him all the way to get him to the doctor, who starts treating him, only to uncover the man has been hiding a wild cocaine habit for 15 years that would make anybody else a total maniac, except the alcohol has been keeping him relatively sedate. That is kind of like what the relationship between Global Warming and Global Dimming has been.

'Global Dimming', is now the other climate issue that the world is yet to tackle properly. In fact, until two years ago, nobody was really talking about beyond the circle of climatologists.

NARRATOR: This is the real sting in the tail. Solve the problem of Global Dimming and the world could get considerably hotter. And this is not just theory, it may already be happening. In Western Europe the steps we have taken to cut air pollution have started to bear fruit in a noticeable improvement in air quality and even a slight reduction in Global Dimming over the last few years. Yet at the same time, after decades in which they held steady, European temperatures have started rapidly to rise culminating in the savage summer of 2003. Forest fires devastated Portugal. Glaciers melted in the Alps. And in France people died by the thousand. Could this be the penalty of reducing Global Dimming without tackling the root cause of global warming?

DR BEATE LIEPERT: We thought we live in a global warming world, um but this is actually er not right. We lived in a global warming plus a Global Dimming world, and now we are taking out Global Dimming. So we end up with the global warming world, which will be much worse than we thought it will be, much hotter.

Here's a page of links. Do check it out carefully. We could be in for a heck of a lot of trouble, a Whole World of trouble.

- Art Neuro

More On The Politics Baseball Conspiracy Mixed Salad
Pleiades keeps sending in these interesting articles and they do make me smile, so here's another little gem. The CIA and the (hated) Red Sox might be in bed together. Again, this is from Rense.com, so you have to take it with a table-load of table salt, but it's fun anyway.

Somehow, the Boston Red Sox and their management became reputedly an adjunct of the American CIA. And that this began quite some years ago. So it should not surprise wide-awake folks that a jet belonging to a partner of the ball playing team arranged with the CIA to use his jet to transport so-called "terrorist suspect" prisoners in U.S. custody to overseas destinations where torture of prisoners is NOT illegal, according to local customs, practices, and usages, and by local laws there, if any. The torture, by the way, resulted in almost no useful data.

The American CIA apparently arranged with the Red Sox management to have several dozen espionage operatives posing as being with the Red Sox office people. Such as purported consultants on sports activities, concession questions, sale of beverage matters, such as Coca-Cola, and similar harmless-sounding positions. Like a similar situation at now more fully-scandalized Enron, the management offices were places for "spooks" to hang their hat.

Now that's hilarious. Not only are the Red Sox helping the CIA move torturers around in the guise of team officials, they're somehow tied up with Enron. And Larry Lucchino has the gall to call the Yankees the Evil Empire! LOL! There ought to be an inquiry in to CIA tampering of last year's ALCS; clearly the Red Sox beat the Yankees with the help of the CIA and crooks from Enron and the Whitehouse... :)

Mind Virus
Here's yet another funny one from Pleiades, but it's still worth a quick scan. Memes.

A fascinating footnote to the horrors of the German experience with Nazism happened in 1969 when Ron Jones, a teacher in Palo Alto, exposed a high school history class to an intensive, five-day experience with the ideas that made up the Nazi meme. The experience of that week was originally published as "Take as Directed" in the CoEvolution Quarterly (CQ #9, p.152), and a few years ago was made into a TV movie, The Wave. Over four days, Jones introduced and drilled his students in concepts of Strength through Discipline, Community, Action, and Pride.(The fifth day was devoted to showing them how easily they had started to slip into the abyss.) The enthusiasm which most of the class adopted the memes and spread them to their friends, swelling a 40 student class to 200 in five days, made it one of the most frightening events the teacher had ever experienced. Given the track record of the Nazi meme, the mini-social movement his experiment set off is no more surprising in retrospect than the medical effects would have been if the teacher had sprayed smallpox virus on the class.

An empirical characteristic of large, long-lived religious movements or related social movements (at least in the West) is a scripture or body of written material. This may function to standardize the meme involved or at least slow its evolution as the number of people infected with it grows. From Scientology right back to the Hindu Vedas, I can think of no counterexamples. Social movements involving more than a few thousand people or lasting more than a few years may have been rare before writing came along.

I have noticed several features of social movements derived from dangerous memes. One is self-isolation of the infected group, or at least of new recruits, from the rest of society. This need not be an "intelligent" action taken by the "leaders". There may be no more thought involved than the evolution of white moths into dark ones in grimy industrial England. The "fanatic cult" memes which incorporate isolation are the ones we observe; those which do not incorporate isolation are like the light moths, gone and not observable.

Don't forget to wear your blue sunglasses lest your get infected.

- Art Neuro

Baseball And The Politics Of Despondency
Longtime reader Pleiades sent in this article today as a bit of a reference. There are references to a conspiracy by the government to fake the attck on the WTC and all that which I still find a little far-fetched.
There's also a swing at the music biz too:

What I want to say is this? (sic)

WHERE'S THE FUCKING SONG, ASSHOLE?!

And I'd like to address that question to every musicianin America, in the world. I'd especially like to ask it of so-called legendary icons like Bruce Springsteen and Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan (you nihilistic twit!) and Eric Clapton (you simpering wimp!), Eminem (don't fall for that Democratic crap) and Doctor Dre (abandon your mansion and step up now!).

The whole music scene, and all the retards who think they're cool by following it, are nothing but robotic moral cowards who have abdicated their responsibility to the world. Who will have the courage to step forward, like all these brave folks in the 9/11 skeptics movement have done?

I'm not an 9/11 sceptic so this strikes me as a bit paranoid.
If I took that line, the next thing you know, I might hole up in the mountain with too much booze and guns and shoot my brains out like the good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson. However, the right hook across some of those musical sacred cows is pretty funny. Eric Clapton has now been reduced to a Simpering Wimp from Blues Guitar God. O how the mighty have fallen. :)
And you know what? The question's got to be asked, what kind of populace makes Brittney Spears a star?

Here's the interesting bit:

And when you try to escape into the pleasing triviality of sports, and confront the reality that baseball's two greatest sluggers have both cheated to achieve their accomplishments, you should get some depressing inkling that the whole enterprise is a lie meant to distract you from the even more unpleasant fact that your government, through its controlled media apparatus, has stolen your life, fed you with falsehoods, and deliberately murdered your children with poisoned food, toxic drugs, and phony wars.

So, I think it's time you checked the scoreboard, and find out what the score really is. America is dead, and the international bankers are getting ready to pick its carcass. Anybody still walking around is now a willing zombie waving that flag of mass murder and injustice, the Stars and Stripes.

But hey, it's the perfect cloth to drape over your coffin, although no photographs will be allowed. And hey, what's that sound, everybody look what's going round ... due to the condition of both the corpse and the culture, why, that sound is the out-of-control ticking of a Geiger counter, which may be the real song about Fallujah that nobody apparently has the guts to write.

It's too hard to write a song about Fallujah; what does it rhyme with? :)

Space Shuttle Discovery Update
The seemingly never ending gruelling task of putting together another shuttle mission goes on.
It's hardly the stuff of dreams.

Discovery's STS-114 spaceflight is expected to be NASA's first shuttle mission since the loss of seven astronauts aboard the Columbia orbiter on Feb. 1, 2003. That shuttle broke apart during reentry after sustaining critical damage to its left wing during launch. The STS-114 flight is aimed at demonstrating new safety tools and methods developed over the last two years, as well as delivering fresh cargo to the International Space Station.

Part of the work remaining for Discovery's flight includes the installation of a new digital camera to the orbiter's underside. Wiring for the camera, which replaces an older film-based system, is already in place though the actual imager will be installed once the orbiter is inside the VAB, NASA officials said.

Like its film-based predecessor, the digital camera will snap images of Discovery's external tank as it separates from the shuttle in orbit. It is expected to yield high resolution images that will be transmitted directly to mission control from space. During previous flights, mission managers had to wait until a shuttle landed to obtain the film negatives and observe the separation event.

Stilson said that, while rolling Discovery over to the 52-story VAB for integration is a major step toward returning the shuttle fleet to flight status, the orbiter is also coming out of a maintenance period that included some 267 modifications, of which about 20 were return-to-flight related. It's one thing to be excited for return-to-flight, she added. In the OPF, we have different milestones, including the first time we powered the orbiter up after having powered down for a year.

That last line sounds incredibly ominous.
Also, it's nice to know NASA is at least moving away from film into the realm of digital video. They'll prbably get a Apple Mac G5 with Final Cut Pro HD anytime soon now. :)

- Art Neuro

By Request...
A long-time reader had this to pass along. I might have posted this up previously, in which case I'm sorry for the repetition.

The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's a** came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

Now the twist to the story..............
There's an interesting extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's behind!

I've read this before and wondered about its verasity, but it is an interesting tale (pardon the pun) of sorts.

Interesting Commentary On The Remilitarisation Of Japan
Another Long-time reader sent in a link for this article regarding the rise of Mainland China as a superpower. It's written by one Chalmers Johnson who amongst other things is the president of the Japan Policy Research Institute, a non-profit research and public affairs organization devoted to public education concerning Japan and international relations in the Pacific. A famous man in certain circles.

In it was this bit that caught my attention:

Japan Rearms

Since the end of World War II, and particularly since gaining its independence in 1952, Japan has subscribed to a pacifist foreign policy. It has resolutely refused to maintain offensive military forces or to become part of America's global military system. Japan did not, for example, participate in the 1991 war against Iraq, nor has it joined collective security agreements in which it would have to match the military contributions of its partners. Since the signing in 1952 of the Japan-United States Security Treaty, the country has officially been defended from so-called external threats by U.S. forces located on some 91 bases on the Japanese mainland and the island of Okinawa. The U.S. Seventh Fleet even has its home port at the old Japanese naval base of Yokosuka. Japan not only subsidizes these bases but subscribes to the
public fiction that the American forces are present only for its defense. In fact, Japan has no control over how and where the U.S. employs its land, sea, and air forces based on Japanese territory, and the Japanese and American governments have until quite recently finessed the issue simply by never discussing it.

Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the United States has repeatedly pressured Japan to revise article nine of its Constitution (renouncing the use of force except as a matter of self-defense) and become what American officials call a "normal nation." For example, on August 13, 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated baldly in Tokyo that if Japan ever hoped to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council it would first have to get rid of its pacifist Constitution. Japan's claim to Security Council seat is based on the fact that, although its share of global GDP is only 14%, it pays 20% of the total U.N. budget. Powell's remark was blatant interference in Japan's internal affairs, but it merely echoed many messages delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the leader of a reactionary clique in Washington that has worked for years to remilitarize Japan and so enlarge a major new market for American arms. Its members include Torkel Patterson, Robin Sakoda, David Asher, and James Kelly at State; Michael Green on the National Security Council's staff; and numerous uniformed military officers at the Pentagon and at the headquarters of the Pacific Command at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

America's intention is to turn Japan into what Washington neo-conservatives like to call the "Britain of the Far East" -- and then use it as a proxy in checkmating North Korea and balancing China. On October 11, 2000, Michael Green, then a member of Armitage Associates, wrote, "We see the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain as a model for the [U.S.-Japan] alliance." Japan has so far not resisted this American pressure since it complements a renewed nationalism among Japanese voters and a fear that a burgeoning capitalist China threatens Japan's established position as the leading economic power in East Asia. Japanese officials also claim that the country feels threatened by North Korea's developing nuclear and missile programs, although they know that the North Korean stand-off could be resolved virtually overnight -- if the Bush administration would cease trying to overthrow the Pyongyang regime and instead deliver on American trade promises (in return for North Korea's agreement to give up its nuclear weapons program).

Instead, on February 25, 2005, the State Department announced that "the U.S. will refuse North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's demand for a guarantee of 'no hostile intent' to get Pyongyang back into negotiations over its nuclear weapons programs." And on March 7, Bush nominated John Bolton to be American ambassador to the United Nations even though North Korea has refused to negotiate with him because of his insulting remarks about the country.

Japan's remilitarization worries a segment of the Japanese public and is opposed throughout East Asia by all the nations Japan victimized during World War II, including China, both Koreas, and even Australia. As a result, the Japanese government has launched a stealth program of incremental rearmament. Since 1992, it has enacted 21 major pieces of security-related legislation, 9 in 2004 alone. These began with the International Peace Cooperation Law of 1992, which for the first time authorized Japan to send troops to participate in U.N. peacekeeping operations.

Remilitarization has since taken many forms, including expanding military budgets, legitimizing and legalizing the sending of military forces abroad, a commitment to join the American missile defense ("Star Wars") program -- something the Canadians refused to do in February 2005 -- and a growing acceptance of military solutions to international problems. This gradual process was greatly accelerated in 2001 by the simultaneous coming to power of President George Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Koizumi made his first visit to the United States in July of that year and, in May of 2003, received the ultimate imprimatur, an invitation to Bush's "ranch" in Crawford, Texas. Shortly thereafter, Koizumi agreed to send a contingent of 550 troops to Iraq for a year, extended their stay for another year in 2004, and on October 14, 2004, personally endorsed George Bush's reelection.

Whoa. There's more, but take a breather because there are a few things a bit amiss here that clearly Chalmers Johnson has avoided mentioning.
There was a time when Japan was 'Britain of The Far East'. It was even an Ally in WWI. Japanese ships escorted the ANZAC troops to Egypt. They fought the Germans in the Pacific and TiengTsin. As late as 1925, Japan was 'Britain of The Far East'.
Then of course the Great Depression and WWII happened. :)

The significant pressure on Japan to rearm has been going on since thre 1980s when Ronald Reagan and Yasuhiro Nakasone were serving long terms in office in both countries. It didn't start in the 1990s. Former PM Nakasone used to visit the Yasukuni shrine and predictably it caused a lot of bellyaching from Communist China through the 1980s. Declaring Japan as the unsinkable aircraft carrier for the USA (coming from a former Logistics Officer in the Imperial Japanese Navy) didn't help much either. The point is, the US pressure to get Japan to rearm is not a new issue.

In fact it goes back to the very idealism (and I'm being polite here) of the 'Peace Constitution' devised and vetted by General Headquarters run by General Douglas MacArthur back in the post-WWII occupation days. The feeling went that the Japanese were so damn horrible an enemy, in order not to ever fight them again, they should remove the military option from the Japanese 'forever'. Now, the Prime Minister of Japan at the time was ex-Foreign Affairs Ministry veteran Shigeru Yoshida, who brazenly declared, "What we lost in the war, we'll bring back at the negotiating table." The way PM Yoshida had it figured, if MacArthur wanted to be stupid enough to make Japan swallow (and uphold) a 'Peace Constitution' on some psuedo-moral grounds, then the pseudo-morality led to a 'moral responsibility' for the USA to protect Japan as its ward.
As in:
USA: "You shall never punch your neighbour again"
Japan: "But what happens if we get picked on by bullies"
USA: "Then, we shall protect you."
Japan: "You sure now?"
USA: "Absolutely."
Japan: "Word of Honour?"
USA: "We are Americans. We stand by our word. We are not treacherous like you Japanese."
Japan: "Okay. We're holding you to it. Just sign here..."

Thus 'moral' responsibility gave rise to the Security Treaty between the two nations. It was a case where Yoshida was quite willing to rid Japan of having a glorious military if it meant saving money. After all, wartime budgets under martial rule had the Army and Navy claiming 70% of the Annual Budget. Yoshida probably thought, 'good riddance to that cost; if the Americans want to shoulder that, then they're free to that folly'.

It only took until the outbreak of the Korean War for the old Imperial Army and Navy personnely to be required for service once again. To this end, 'Special Police' were formed out of what remained of the old Army and Navy, which developed into the present day Land and Maritime Self Defense Services we see today. The point was, it only took five years to find out that the Peace Constitution was a load of codwallop in the world of real-politik, and Yoshida was smart enough to make the USA foot the bill for its hubris.

The point is, the Security Treaty that keeps the USA involved in protecting Japan costs a tonne of money that subsequent US Administrations since Truman have found bothersome, if not downright hard to bear. And so this has given rise to ever escalating pressure on Japan to rearm; and at each turn, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan has dragged its heels. After all, the argument ran, "you made us sign that Peace Constitution you dreamt up, and now you want us to do what?"

The LDP were busy building up the economy of a shattered nation. They had no interest in seriously spending more on weapons; espacially if it meant bothersome criticism from neighbouring Nations clamouring for more reparations. Instead the LDP-led Japanese government kept paying bloodmoney in the form of Overseas Development Aid. It was much cheaper to buy favour than rearm and stand tall.
You can bet your bottom dollar that Japan likes the USA to continue shouldering these military costs, take the necessary risks and responsibilities inherent in the military option. Why would they give up that free ticket earned by Shigeru Yoshida in 1945?

On the other hand, if the path truly is for Japan to rearm and then fend for itself militarily, then the USA would have to reckon on the fact that the Pacific War was fought for no good discernible reason. Afterall, there were always diplomatic options available to resolve the differences of the 1930s. Always. Right down ot the last minute. Kichisaburo Nomura was in Washington D.C. until the last minute with full represenational responsibilities for negotiations. Cordell Hull and FDR chose not to speak to him. It was only the bloody-mindedness of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration that preciptated the Hull Note and Pearl Harbour and all the rest.

If Japan does rearm and becomes the 'Britain of the Far East' once again, Americans would really have to ask themselves "what the hell was the War in the Pacific about?"

- Art Neuro

Not Naming Names
In what is turning into a parody of the McCarthy witch-hunts, Mark McGwire chose not to name names.

An emotional Mark McGwire told a House committee today that he would "not participate in naming names" in discussing steroid use during his record-setting baseball career, nor would he say whether he had ever used steroids himself. In answer to questions from committee members, Mr. McGwire said several times: "I'm not here to talk about the past."

And,

Mr. McGwire said that he would help in efforts to discourage young people from using steroids. "There has been a problem with steroids in baseball," he said.

"It is a problem and that needs to be addressed. What I will not do is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates."

Mr. McGwire's voice quavered at times in his appearance at the televised hearing on Capitol Hill. "I've always been a team player," Mr. McGwire said, pausing to maintain his composure. "I've never been a player who spread rumors or said things about teammates that could hurt them. I do not sit in judgment of other players." Mr. McGwire said that his lawyers had informed him that testifying to the committee could "jeopardize my friends, my family and myself." He added, "I intend to follow their advice."

Oh sure, Mr. McGwire. Talk about a non-sequiteur.

Another parent, Donald Hooton Sr., lashed out angrily at the players, saying that their use of steroids had been emulated by his son, Taylor, a high school football player who also committed suicide.

"You are cheaters, you are cowards," he said. "You're afraid to step on the field without the aid of performance enhancing substances."

He said the players who were testifying "should be man enough to face the authorities, admit the truth and face the consequences," instead of "hiding behind the skirts of your union."

"I'm sick and tired of having you tell us you don't want to be considered role models," he said. "You are role models."

Mr. McGwire did say that he would be willing to speak out publicly to young people about the dangers of steroid use. "My message is that steroids are bad," he aid. "Don't use them. I will do everything I can, if you allow me, to say this to young people."

But how did he know they were bad, one panel member asked him. "I've accepted my attorney's advise not to comment on this issue," Mr. McGwire said.

You just gotta laugh at that last line.
Meanwhile, Jose Canseco had this to say:

"Steroids were a part of the game and no one wanted to take a stance on it," he said. "Hopefully this book I wrote educates people about how widespread use steroids is in major league sports, and that people say, look, you've got to stop this. The owners have to stop this. They have all got to stop this, period."

It's a three ring circus. Come watch bearded lady from East Germany and the the muscle-men sluggers of the MLB.

The Washington Post had this report saying that in the near future, the issue of steroids might be surpassed by the issue of gene-technology.

By manipulating the human genetic code, by adding and subtracting genes to replace defective or missing ones, researchers may someday unlock cures for a variety of diseases, from Parkinson's to muscular dystrophy to certain cancers. At the same time, however, researchers are starting to see a more mundane, but culturally significant, sideline to gene therapy: the potential to create nearly superhuman athletes. The same techniques that could repair diseased muscles may enable athletes to heft more weight, run faster or jump higher than ever thought possible.

Gene doping hasn't moved out of the research clinic yet, as far as is known. But the possibility that it will -- and soon -- has moved the World Anti-Doping Agency, which governs Olympic drug testing, to establish a panel to monitor its development. "The feeling is that in sports, where there's so much financial pressure and other pressures to skirt the rules, some people will feel compelled to do a genetic version of BALCO," the California lab at the heart of baseball's steroid scandal, says Theodore Friedmann, a gene-therapy expert who is a member of the Anti-Doping Agency's panel.

Then there's the description of the 'Schwarzenegger Mice'...

It may be possible to glimpse the coming debate in a laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. There, through gene transplantation, physiologist H. Lee Sweeney has created "Schwarzenegger mice," rodents with unnaturally developed physiques. After Sweeney and his associates injected the mice with a gene known to stimulate a protein that promotes muscle growth, the mice grew muscles that were 15 to 30 percent bigger than normal, even though the rodents were sedentary.

Next, Sweeney and exercise physiologist Roger Farrar injected the same muscle building gene into one leg of a group of lab rats and subjected them to an eight-week weight-training regimen (imagine rats scurrying up ladders with weights strapped to their backs). Result: The injected leg became twice as strong as the uninjected leg. After the training stopped, the injected muscles lost strength at a much slower rate than those on the unenhanced leg.

Scary thought. We've arrived at the Brave New World of mega-sports.

- Art Neuro


- Art Neuro

McGwire to Testify
Complying with a subpoena, Mr. McGwire goes to Washington D.C. to tell them about what he knows about'roids.

McGwire's decision, revealed Wednesday by a representative of the former Oakland and St. Louis slugger who spoke on condition of anonymity, made it likely all subpoenaed players except for Jason Giambi would attend the session on Capitol Hill.

Less than 24 hours before the start of the highly anticipated hearing, Jose Canseco's request for immunity was denied by the House Government Reform committee, which also revealed that baseball's drug-testing agreement contains a provision that testing would be "suspended immediately" if the government conducts an independent investigation into drug use in baseball.

Sen. John McCain, who has pushed for tougher rules, said the details of baseball's proposed new agreement angered him. "I can reach no conclusion but that the league and the players' union have misrepresented to me and to the American public the substance of MLB's new steroid policy," he said. "I expect the league and the players' union to modify the new policy to comply with at least what was announced by MLB in January. To do anything less than that would constitute a violation of the public's trust, a blow to the integrity of Major League Baseball, and an invitation to further scrutiny of the league's steroid policy."

This might, in years to come, turn out to be known as McCain-ism where innocent baseballers werw hounded out of the game by an over-zealous Congress - Well, we certainly know McGwire isn't a communist, because commies don't play baseball.

Meanwhile the commentary from the press box is bringing up the Maris name; just as I did yesterday.

"It's kind of an awkward situation," Rich Maris said. "Mark handled things really well with us. It was a great experience back in 1998. Who's to say what's right from wrong? As far as animosity, no, I don't have any.

"Tomorrow, Maris' name will be on the minds of folks who've been paying attention. Bonds already has been caught. No matter what contradictory jive he's throwing out there, he's long since stopped denying he's used. Sosa, who also eclipsed Maris, should appear, too. By tomorrow, they all could have earned real asterisks, whether baseball admits it or not.

"We're curious like everybody else," Rich Maris said.But of course, they're not like anybody else."In our heart of hearts, we know Dad did it the right way. We know he was clean. We know Hank Aaron was clean," Rich Maris said. "Everyone wants to see what's asked and what's admitted. It obviously doesn't look good for Mark."Rich Maris stopped there. He doesn't bash McGwire, beyond agreeing that the three men who beat his dad questionable today. "It looks like they did" take steroids, Rich Maris said.

It's a bit shrill. But you get the gist. The guys at BTF have this thread going. With their usual anal-pedant sensibility they are conetrating on the trivial in order to escape the looming obvious. It's interesting in its own way.

God, just exactly how do you put a smiley face on all this?

Circuit Breaker Breaks On The ISS
In Space News, the ISS is having trouble with the circuit breaker they recently replaced.

In a repeat from one year ago, the latest failure left the space station with only two functioning gyroscopes, the bare minimum needed for control, NASA said. This time, though, the problem could affect NASA's plans to launch Discovery to the station in mid-May after a two-year grounding of the shuttle fleet. The space station must be steady for a shuttle to dock. Despite the early-morning breakdown, the space station continued to cruise along smoothly in orbit and the two men on board went about their normal duties, including repair work on a balky oxygen generator.

It appeared to be similar to what happened in April 2004, when a circuit breaker tripped and cut off power to the same gyroscope. Two months later, two spacewalking crewmen plugged in a new circuit breaker and got the gyroscope working again.

So there you have it. Not only is the space shuttle a bum deal, so is the ISS... :)

- Art Neuro

On Steroids?
Back in 1998 when Mark McGwire went on to smash Roger Maris' record of 61* in '61, people seemed more keen to see the record fall than pay attention to the suspicon of steroids. Which is ironic because well, the reson Maris got stuck with the asterisk was because he did in a 162 game season rather than a 154 game season as Ruth had when he hit 60 in '27.

As a kid growing up, I actually liked Maris' record. I liked the symmetry of numbers; I like that it was a Yankee record; and how it seemingly looked to stand forever as a Titanic achievement. It was record that represented the greatness of the New York Yankees. I wasn't even aware of the asterisk they attached to his number until much later.

Years later when I watched Billy' Crystal's movie on the subject, I felt this oblique sentiment for a moment in my childhood where I innocently thought it was actually a pretty grand record that had so much meaning. When McGwire smashed past it and went on to hit 70, I was one who actually felt quite sad. After all, there went the last of the Yankee homer legacy - Especially in the year that the Yankees put together a 114 win season without anybody hitting more than 30 homers.

Now with the steroid allegations swirling around, Mark McGwire's 70 seems like it's going to get an unofficial asterisk placed upon it too. What do we make of all these allegations? What do we make of McGwire's '98 season? Here's the NYT take on it.

The disappointment is widespread, but not so the disbelief. Baseball fans have been hardened in the past year by the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative investigation and by articles in The San Francisco Chronicle describing what it said was the testimony that Giambi and Bonds gave to the federal grand jury in the case.

The articles said that Giambi admitted to taking steroids and that Bonds acknowledged unknowingly taking substances that turned out to be steroids. Like many of the accused, McGwire's body changed radically over the span of his career, as did his statistics. McGwire had four seasons in which he batted over .298 and four seasons as an established player in which he batted below .236. He hit 49 home runs in his first full season, in 1987, when he was far more slender than he was in 1998, or in 1999, when he hit 65 home runs. He was injury prone, playing only 27 games in 1993, 47 in 1994 and only 97 in 2001, his last season in the major leagues. He retired in November of that year, forgoing a $30 million contract extension.

Nine months later, in a new bargaining agreement, baseball and the players union agreed for the first time to test for steroids.

McGwire is now 41, and those who have seen him recently estimate that he has lost about 40 pounds from his playing weight. He lives on a golf course in Irvine, Calif., with his second wife, Stephanie, their two young sons and a one handicap. He disdains the exposure associated with sports, yet he talks casually about joining the Senior PGA Tour and he posed with Stephanie for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue this year. In 1998, when McGwire heard from Congress, Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, was calling him and Sosa "home run kings for working families in America." Now, Congress has subpoenaed both of them to talk about steroids. McGwire has not offered a reaction since being subpoenaed, but he issued the latest in his series of denials last month, maintaining in a statement to several newspapers that he never took illegal substances.

"I think people would be devastated to think that 1998 is not what we thought it was, that it was in some way a fabrication of the truth," said Peter Roby, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston. "When people come to love someone and then find that they have been in another relationship, their trust has been violated."

Well, for my part, I think Maris never got the praise he deserved. Then, McGwuire comes along, all pumped up on 'roids and steals his record; a few years after which Bonds smashes past that one with his magic flaxseed oil from BALCO; and peopple are still saying plausible deniability for both these clowns. It's all pretty crappy, really.

- Art Neuro

On Drugs
At least that's what Iran thinks the USA is doing when it offered a proposal to curtail the Iranian nuclear programme.

"U.S. officials are either unaware of the substance of the talks or (they are hallucinating," Sirus Naseri, a senior member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team, told the official IRNA news agency.

Err... yeah. Gets better.

Iran dismissed the U.S. offer as insignificant. Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi told IRNA it was "funny and disrespectful."

"The U.S. should apologize to Iran for making this proposal," he said, going on to describe Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) as a "queen of war and violence."

Naseri said it was not clear if greater U.S. involvement in the negotiations was "helpful or an obstacle to progress." He said the EU, which has persuaded Iran to suspend potentially weapons-related activities like uranium enrichment while the two sides try to reach a solution, was close to accepting that Iran would not give up enrichment.

Instead, Tehran has offered to give "objective guarantees" that it will not divert nuclear fuel to military uses. "It seems the Europeans are ready to
adopt a logical position," Naseri said.

Iran has refused to disclose its guarantees publicly but diplomats and analysts say it is offering to allow intrusive inspections that ensure it only enriches uranium to a low grade which would be unsuitable for weapons.

It may also be prepared to restrict its enrichment activities to a pilot project, too small to make weapons production practical, diplomats and analysts say. Such a solution would allow Iran to save face while meeting most of the West's concerns.

Why is Iran, a nation that produces oil so interested in a nuclear programme?
To most observers, doesn't this scream like a case of wanting to have nuclear weapons asa deterrent?
Good God. Now we're playing MAD with the proud Persians.

Or maybe the oil is running out? Or they can foresee a future where oil is going to run out?
It bears thinking upon.

Even so, it's pretty funny how the Iranians construct their rhetoric. IMHO they still have a reckoning with the USA over what happened on Jimmy Carter's watch, and so they had better watch their mouths. They're fully due for a 'smackdown', so to speak; and they don't want to turn Tehran into the next Baghdad. Those guys in the White House are nasty.

Congress Sends An Angry Letter To NASA
Service Hubble, they say.

Congress, in passing an omnibus spending bill late last year, directed NASA to set aside $291 million of its 2005 budget to spend planning and preparing for a servicing mission to Hubble by 2008. When NASA informed Congress just weeks later that it intended to spend only $175 million of that amount on the Hubble repair effort, some saw the move as an indication that the agency was preparing to abandon plans to service Hubble robotically and rely instead on a space shuttle crew to fix the telescope.

Many Hubble backers, including Mikulski, were shocked and angered when NASA announced in early February that it would not make any effort to service the telescope beyond attaching a propulsion module that can be used to drop Hubble into the ocean once it goes dark. Mikulski, an influential member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told Gregory in her March 2 letter that Congress will consider this year including money in NASA's 2006 budget for a Hubble servicing mission. In the meantime, she said, she expects NASA to spend every penny of the $291 million included in the 2005 budget for Hubble servicing.

"I expect NASA to carry out Congress' intent and spend the entire amount appropriated this year so there will be no interruption in the planning, preparation and engineering work that will be necessary for a servicing mission to Hubble," she wrote. The funding that I included in the Omnibus Appropriations Act is to ensure that the workforce at Goddard, the Space Telescope Science Institute and their associated contractors remain fully engaged in all aspects of a servicing mission. Any attempt to cancel, terminate or suspend servicing activity would be a violation of the law unless it has the approval of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees.

Well, sure it's easy to say this, but nobody has the right price tag for servicing Hubble. As we've been tracking that story, we've found everybody has a different price tag for this mission. I doubt NASA wants it to be Another Seven Astronauts, so to speak, so this is going nowhere.

- Art Neuro

A Breakthrough In Visualising Baseball Defense Data
This is seriously great.
David Pinto has been working on his probablistic range model of analysing players' and team defense for some time now. He's been showing numbers at the Think Factory without convincing me of much that he's got something going. Well this does just that.

What I've done is broken the data down by ball in play type (grounders, flys and liners). Each chart below has the direction of the ball on the X-Axis. The Y-Axis represents the probability of turning those balls into outs. Eckstein's actual probability is compared to the predicted probability. For reference, a vector of -4 (minus 4) represents the thirdbase line, and 8 represents straight away centerfield. Here's Eckstein on grounders in 2004 (click on graphs for a larger image):

Then he goes into his various charts for grounders, flyballs and liners. It's great. If nothing else you can take a glance and see what a player's expected values are and how the actual performances deviate from those figures. It's fascinating and dare I say a breakthrough in visualising the defense numbers people have been working on for sometime, but also working from publicly available numbers.

- Art Neuro

Flightless Astronautical Crew
46 of the current 142 astronauts are yet to fly in space. Some may never fly in the shuttle era according to this report.

The last class of astronauts has already been warned that it's unclear whether any of them will fly during the shuttle era — which ends in five years. All face an uncertain future and development of the next-generation space vehicle could take until 2015.

"They knew very well that they arrived at the sunset of the shuttle and the dawn of the new vehicle and they may be exposed to the gap in between the two," Zamka said of the newest class of astronauts. "For the last classes, there has been an effort made to make sure they are informed as to what the wait may be like. And they come anyway."

Hmm. Not sure that's such a great roster situation for NASA.

'The Abortion Of Cool'
I've been putting up my album of 12 songs for the last 11 nights. Tonight I will be putting up the last track in the said collection.

I hope you drop by my page by clicking on the badge and having a listen to this round of offerings. If nothing else, all but one of the tracks so far have received good ratings from people who don't know me from a bar of soap. :) It's been really encouraging and liberating to have the music 'out there' rather than grabbing my friends one by one and forcing them to listen to stuff they wouldn't otherwise have picked for themselves (and that's the truth). That's not to say feedback from friends isn't appreciated, but that it's just been great to have the music out there without any pre-conceptions.

I don't exactly know what I'll do next music-wise as 'The Abortion Of Cool' has overlapped with the Coelacanth project greatly and my head is in a mess. I need to calm down a little, I think.

- Art Neuro

The End of Conspiracy no 1,675,434
It's not really official until a third party verifies it, but now it's uncontestible. The European Space Agencies' SMART-1 lunar probe has sent back images of the old Soviet and American touchdown sites on the Moon.

A European spacecraft now orbiting the Moon could turn out to be a time machine of sorts as it photographs old landing sites of Soviet robotic probes and the areas where American Apollo crews set down and explored.

New imagery of old Apollo touchdown spots, from the European Space Agency's (ESA) SMART-1 probe, might put to rest conspiratorial thoughts that U.S. astronauts didn't go the distance and scuff up the lunar landscape. NASA carried out six piloted landings on the Moon in the time period 1969 through 1972.

Fringe theorists have said images of the waving flag -- on a Moon with no atmosphere -- and other oddities show that NASA never really went to the Moon. No serious scientist or spaceflight historian doubts the success of the Apollo program, however.

"We are observing some of the landing sites for calibration and ground truth purposes," said Bernard Foing, Chief Scientist of the ESA Science Program.

So much for that stuff about Stanley Kurbick we related last year as a joke. :)

- Art Neuro

Looking From Larry's Lookout
Spirit is doing its thing looking across the landscape of Mars from Larry's Lookout.

"We're at Larry's Lookout," said Steve Squyres, leader of the Mars rover science team at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The last few days on Mars have
been spent jockeying the rover into position to take the "Lookout Pan", he added, a rover photographic assignment to fully document the view from the crest of Cumberland Ridge.

No pictures were available.

Cassini Update
There's a lot of little observations reported here.

Ever since the Cassini spacecraft began taking pictures of Saturn and its moons last February, scientists have had plenty of work on their plates. Last week several new images and data from the mission were published in the journal Science.

Among the findings is the detection of molecular oxygen around Saturn's A ring. (The ring system begins from the inside out in this order: D, C, B, A, F, G, E.)

Molecular oxygen forms when two oxygen atoms bond together. It is rarely seen beyond Earth, where it is created continuously as a byproduct of photosynthesis in plants.

On Saturn, where there is no plant life, molecular oxygen must be formed in a different way -- through a chemical reaction between the Sun's radiation and the icy particles that comprise Saturn's rings, scientists said.

There are more little goodies. Check it out only if you have time. :)

- Art neuro

So You Thought Hanging a Dictator Was Easy
Well we was wrong.

By TODD PITTMAN, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen killed a judge and lawyer working for the special tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein and members of his former regime, the first court staff killed since it was set up in late 2003 after the dictator was toppled, officials and a relative of the slain men said Wednesday.

News of the deaths came as two car bombs exploded in the capital, killing 10 Iraqi soldiers and wounding dozens of others. The first blast targeted an Iraqi army base in central Baghdad, killing six troops and wounding at least 25. A second car bomb an hour later at an army checkpoint in south Baghdad killed four soldiers, police said.

Judge Barwez Mohammed Mahmoud al-Merwani and his son, lawyer Aryan Barwez al-Merwani, were shot and killed Tuesday in Baghdad's northern Azamyiah district, said the slain judge's son, Kikawz Barwez Mohammed al-Merwani. The son said unidentified gunmen in a speeding car raked the pair with gunfire as they were trying to get into a vehicle outside their home.

The killings came one day after the court issued referrals for five former regime members — including one of Saddam's half brothers — for crimes against humanity. Referrals are similar to indictments, and are the final step before trials can start.

However, a tribunal official, who asked not to be named, said the judge was not killed because of his job.

"He was not killed because he was working at the tribunal," he said. "It was something personal. I don't have details, but investigations are still going on."

The official said the killings the first of any staff working on the Iraqi Special Tribunal, which consists of more than 60 investigative, appellate and trial judges. An official familiar with the court said al-Merwani was an investigative judge.

Judges and other legal staff working at the court have not even been identified in public because of concerns for their safety, and tribunal officials have kept a low-profile for the same reason, even refusing to say where the court is located.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal was set up in late 2003 after Saddam was toppled. But after five potential candidates were killed, some judges declined calls to work at the
court. At least half of the tribunal's budget has gone to security.

The court official said the slain judge was one of more than 60 investigative,
appellate and trial judges working at the court. An official familiar with the court said al-Merwani was an investigative judge. The announcement Monday by the tribunal marked the first time that the special court issued referrals. No date was given for that trial.

The five referred to trial included Barzan Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, one of Saddam's half brothers, and former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan. The three others were senior Baath Party members. Saddam was captured in December 2003, and others have been in custody for nearly two years.

U.S. military officials transferred 12 of the top defendants to Iraqi custody in June with the handover of sovereignty. They're being held at an undisclosed location near Baghdad International Airport, west of the capital. Meanwhile, the first car bomb exploded outside an Iraqi army base in central Baghdad that occupies the former Muthanna airport, which has been targeted by insurgents several times over the last year.

An Interior Ministry security official, Ayad Hadi al-Maliki, said six people were killed and 25 people were wounded in the blast 15 of them civilians. The explosion could be heard across the city, and a plume of black smoke billowed into the air afterward. Flames leapt from two destroyed civilian vehicles. Debris from the blast was strewn around the area, and witnesses said the severed head of a female soldier lay on the ground.

U.S. and Iraqi troops blocked roads and sealed off the area after the attack, preventing people from entering. Helicopters hovered overhead. Police officer Salam Hashim Mahmoud said the bomber drove up to the base gate, where army recruits normally line up to apply for jobs. Residents said Iraqi security forces opened fire after the incident.

About an hour later, another car bomb exploded in southern Baghdad's Doura neighborhood, killing four Iraqi soldiers at an army checkpoint and wounding three others, police said on condition of anonymity.

Wednesday's car bombings came two days after a suicide bomber rammed into a crowd of police and army recruits in Hillah, a city 60 miles south of the capital, killing 125 people in the deadliest single car bombing since Saddam was toppled in 2003.

Man this sucks. Whether you approve of the war in Iraq or not, this just plain sucks. As for saying it's not in relation to the tribunal... I don't think so. I don't believe in lucky coincidences.

- Art Neuro

Test
- Art Neuro

Hudson To Go Bravely Into The Future
Tim Hudson, one of the Big 3 traded over the off-season from the Moneyball a's got his gravy train sorted out in a 4-year $47 million contract with the Atlanta Braves.

Hudosn was traded for major league ready prospects. Billy Beane of course moved another of the Big 3, Mark Mudler for prospects. The A's intend to compete this year but are looking to build another run soon. It's going to be very interetsing watching the A's this year; but then again, it always is. :)

SpaceShipOne to Land At Smithsonian
Well, you'd expect it to land at the Air & Space Museum. And now it's confirmed.

The rocket plane will be in good company. It joins the Wright Brother's Wright 1903 Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, as well as the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia that carried the first men to walk on the Moon.

By winning the X Prize it clearly represents a next generation of space travel, possibly one that opens the doors to your average person making it into space, as opposed to trained astronauts and cosmonauts, NASM's Golkin told SPACE.com.

No specific date has been set for the craft to go on public display at the museum, but it will be this year, Golkin said.

The X-Prize competition was fun to follow. I feel strangely empty without it...

- Art Neuro

Euclis, Greek God Of Walks
Or so the description of Kevin Youkilis went in the book, 'Moneyball'. Well, it turns out he's not Greek after all.

Fans' comments Greek to Youkilis
FORT MYERS - Kevin Youkilis gained acclaim in Michael Lewis' book, "Moneyball," a look inside the small-market Oakland A's, when A's GM Billy Beane fell in love with Youkilis' ability to get on base.

In the book, Youkilis is called "The Greek God of Walks." But Youkilis, who is hoping to stick with the Red Sox as a backup infielder, isn't of Greek descent - his father's family is from Romania.

"People have come up to me and starting speaking Greek to me and I don't speak it," Youkilis said. "I feel bad. Ever since I was in Lowell (Class A), people have thought I was Greek. People shout at me, 'I'm Greek, you're Greek.' But I'm not."

Youkilis, who batted .260 with seven homers and 35 RBI in 72 games with the Sox last year, said he's enjoyed his "Moneyball" fame, though. "It can't hurt you if another GM is saying good things about you," he said. "The book didn't say anything bad about me. The only bad thing I hear is sometimes in the on-deck circle, someone says, 'C'mon, get a walk.'"

That wouldn't bug me that much. I mean, if my special talent was a .400 OBP and an average Infielder's glove and could make it stick for 10 years, that's a very tidy Major League career.

- Art Neuro