1) David Brooks in a synapse stoppingly boring column about public figures changing religious sects. I mean how utterly inane. The Times is paying this guy for coming up with this drivel? Sheesh. In rereading Brooks, I can't help but notice how helplessly out of his element he is in discussing religion.
Snapshot:
"That's because many Americans have tended to assume that all these differences are temporary. In the final days, the distinctions will fade away, and we will all be united in God's embrace. This happy assumption has meant that millions feel free to try on different denominations at different points in their lives, and many Americans have had trouble taking religious doctrines altogether seriously."
Master Brooks obviously hasn't embraced a large GOP voting bloc..The Born Agains. Please send him back to the Weakly Substandard. I'll pay you.
2) Iranian Quake toll estimates soar. Reuters is reporting that the death toll in Iran may exceed 50,000. It's good to see that the U.S. has, for the moment put aside political differences and allowed aid. U.S. military aircraft arrived over the weekend, the first in over 20 years..23 years, I believe.
3) In what has to be one of the oddest headlines the day, The Mercury News is reporting that the current strain of influenza: "Flu deadly, but it lacks star power" How very odd. The article then goes on to detail how skewed our spending priorities are(and this is without taking into account the amount lavished on our military):
WASHINGTON - The flu kills 36,000 Americans a year, but the federal government spends only about half as much money on research to fight it as it spends to attack the boll weevil, a pest that eats cotton.
Other diseases that grab headlines or have advocacy groups or celebrity representatives -- such as AIDS, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease -- kill far fewer people than the inseparable duo of influenza and pneumonia. But the National Institutes of Health spends eight to 100 times more money researching those more prominent diseases than it spends for flu.
This year the federal government is spending about $50 million on flu research at NIH and on tracking and fighting the flu at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That's $100 million less than it spends on persuading people to commute in non-peak traffic hours.
The NIH spends on average about $700 a flu fatality. In contrast, it spends about $12,000 an Alzheimer's death, $14,000 a Parkinson's death and $158,000 an AIDS death. NIH spends $25 million a year on flu research, but it spends $79 million a year researching anthrax, which killed five people in 2001. Flu spending is so modest that it isn't listed on the NIH budgetary breakdown for disease spending.
It looks like the cotton lobby, and the various groups advocating for the BIG diseases are doing a far more effective job than the Flu Dudes. America, what a country. Oh, much more at link.
4) New Scientist is reporting that U.S. beef producers are resisting the banning of crippled cattle. I wonder who's madder, the cattle or the USDA?
Snippet:
The US meat industry is resisting the banning of crippled cattle from human food, despite the discovery of the first case of BSE in an American cow. The infected cow was a crippled or a "downer" cow, injured by the birth of a large calf..
The cow confirmed positive for BSE on 25 December, after it was slaughtered for food in Washington state earlier in the same month. Meat from the cow was recalled and its herd and offspring were quarantined.
The discovery confirms the longstanding warnings of European veterinary experts that BSE could be present in the US. But stringent controls, including banning crippled cattle from human food, have been resisted.
The US Department of Agriculture has been testing some 30,000 US cattle a year for BSE since 2001, targeting downers because European scientists found such cows were most likely to reveal the presence of BSE in a herd. A downer first revealed the presence of BSE in Canadian cattle in May 2003.
Some 20,000 downers are eaten yearly in the US. Canada and European countries have banned such cattle from human consumption. But the US National Cattlemen's Beef Association told journalists this week that it would continue to resist efforts to declare all downers unfit to eat. More Madness at link
With a six year incubation period, I'm certainly glad that I don't consume beef. I don't need any malevolent prions messing with my grey matter.
Quick Score: Beef Industry 1 Consumers 0
5) New Scientist at the plate again. 2003: the year in technology. The year gave us everything from novel network nemises AKA worms to weapons acronyms. Lots of links to all the major tech stories from my one link. This internet thing is kinda neat.
6) From the, "Dept. Of Certain to be used as Propaganda," comes this late breaking bit from Iraq via CNN: "BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. forces operating in the so-called Sunni Triangle -- the region of Iraq most loyal to captured former dictator Saddam Hussein -- found a significant weapons cache that included al Qaeda literature and videotapes, the U.S. military said Tuesday." Surprisingly little more at link. Al Qaeda "literature and videotapes." Hmmmm. Oh, there is a bit more about the large weapons cache, but I think the Qaeda angle is a dead horse. Just a hunch.
7) Cheney may be losing grip over Iraqi oil.
WASHINGTON - The Defense Department is removing the Army Corps of Engineers from overseeing oil imports into Iraq, acting just weeks after Pentagon auditors said Halliburton -- Vice President Dick Cheney former firm -- may have overcharged taxpayers under the Corps' supervision.
The Defense Energy Support Center, which buys fuel for the military throughout the world, will supervise the replacement of Halliburton and the award of a new contract for the imports, the center said Tuesday.
"We're taking over the mission," said the center's spokeswoman, Lynette Ebberts. She would not comment on whether the audit prompted the change, which was ordered Dec. 23.
Lynne Ebberts: 1 Dick Cheney's pacemaker: new Duracell™ batteries.
8) ABC news via the AP reports: Iraq Arms Hunt May Hinder Other U.S. Aims -- AP Enterprise: Fruitless Weapons Search in Iraq Could Hurt Efforts to Curb N. Korea, Other Nations.
BAGHDAD, Iraq Dec. 30 — In nine months, not a single item has been found in Iraq from a long and classified intelligence list of weapons of mass destruction which guided the work of dozens of elite teams from Special Forces, the military, the CIA and the Pentagon during the most secretive, expensive and fruitless weapons hunt in history.
For U.S. allies, arms control experts and some involved in the hunt, the lack of evidence in a war premised on the threat of proliferation will have far reaching consequences in the coming year for the United States in its efforts to curb Iran, North Korea, Syria and others.
Read the whole article. It's really odd. Really.
9) An Army of One. This is a truly bizarre case. Read on.
Army drops charge facing Colorado GI
FORT CARSON - The Army effectively dropped a charge of dereliction of duty against a 32-year-old soldier with the 10th Special Forces Group, a charge that could have put him behind bars for six months.
But Staff Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany's military career remains in limbo.
The five-year veteran, who up until this fall had a stellar service record, is waiting to see if the Army will reinstate the charge or bring new ones.
That's because the charge was dropped as part of an offer by the Army to resolve the matter in a so-called Article 15 hearing rather than a court-martial - an offer Pogany refused because of the consequences it could have for his reputation and military career.
Now, it's up to the Army to decide whether to reinstate the charge and proceed with a court-martial.
The matter "could go forward or it could die," said Richard Bridges, a public affairs officer at Fort Carson.
Pogany's legal woes date from early October, when he returned to the United States from Iraq just days after arriving in the U.S.-occupied country and seeing a badly mangled body stuffed inside an open body bag.
Pogany could not purge the image from his mind and began vomiting, shaking and thinking about impending doom. After asking for counseling, he was put on a plane and sent home.
Once back in the U.S., on Oct. 14, Pogany was hit with the rarely used charge of cowardice, a charge that could have been punishable by death. Less than a month later, under the glare of national publicity, the Army decided against going ahead with that charge and replaced it with the lesser dereliction-of-duty charge.
The new charge, too, stung Pogany, and he isn't backing down in a quest to restore his name.
Two weeks ago, he decided against going through with the Article 15 hearing. He asked that his case instead be brought to court- martial - much like a trial in the civilian world, in which a judge or jury decides the suspect's fate.
An Article 15 hearing is a gamble. Although they're often thought of as a slap on the wrist, most Article 15 cases result in a conviction. Not only could a conviction have resulted in military confinement and reduction in pay and rank for Pogany, but a guilty verdict also could have gotten him kicked out of the military.
Moreover, had Pogany gone through with the hearing, his fate would have been decided by the same officer who brought the dereliction charge against him.
"To have the same person now be the judge of an Article 15 I think would make the average person uncomfortable to say the least," said Richard Travis, Pogany's attorney.
Travis, a former military prosecutor, said Pogany is grateful the charge was dismissed and is willing to gamble with a court martial to clear his name should new charges surface.
"It continues to be very stressful on him. Not knowing what the ultimate disposition is, that is stressful," Travis said. But he says Pogany is "ready to go forward," no matter what the Army decides.
Two Army psychologists who spoke with Pogany at length said he has no psychological disorders but showed symptoms consistent with normal combat stress reactions.
I guess a re-up isn't looking like my best career route at present.
10) Wesley Clark, who just last week said he, "would beat the shit out of," anyone questioning his partriotism, today came out swinging for voters' rights. The NYT has the dirt:
In Southern Stop, Clark Promises to Enforce Voting Rights
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Dec. 29 -- Forty years after four black girls were killed in a church bombing here, Gen. Wesley K. Clark visited the same church on Monday and said African-Americans were still in danger of having their votes go uncounted and their voices unheard.
Speaking at the 16th Street Baptist Church on a two-day campaign visit to the South, General Clark said voting rights were a "very personal issue for me," as someone who had grown up in the South and who had supported affirmative action in the armed forces.
He said that if he became the Democratic presidential nominee he would appoint a legal team to monitor the 2004 elections to ensure that problems reported in the contested 2000 election in Florida would not be repeated.
"If anyone is intimidated or turned away from the polls illegally, we will push to prosecute the perpetrators to the full extent of the law," he said. More at link.
And if he has to bust a few heads while he's at it, all the better! Dean/Clark 2K4?
11) I have always believed in many small unmanned space vehicles to that unwieldy space shuttle. Definitely more for your money. It isn't as if NASA has the unlimited budget that the Pentagon does!! On that note, here's the latest on the Mars Probes:
U.S. probes may put Mars back on map -- NASA hopes to land first of 2 craft on Red Planet this week
After five years of American space disasters coupled with triumphant interplanetary discoveries, the first of two new Mars-bound spacecraft will attempt to land on the planet this week and roam the landscape in search of signs that abundant water may once have flowed there -- perhaps to support some unknown forms of life.
Scientists and NASA engineers are buoyed by fresh images showing that the cold and arid Red Planet may once have been warm and wet. Despite all outward appearances, they say, it's possible that liquid water may still lie just beneath the frigid, dusty, bone-dry Martian surface.
Scientists again were unable Sunday to establish communications with Britain's tiny Beagle 2, a space probe that was supposed to begin its search for life on Mars on Christmas Day. If the European effort fails, America's newest robot rover missions may mark the first ventures onto the Martian landscape since the tiny vehicle named Pathfinder first explored a cluster of rocks there for nine months in 1997.
The hazardous and extremely complex effort at two new landings puts the American space program and Mars very much back in the public spotlight, inspiring educational programs and special events celebrating everything Martian at venues across the country, including the Exploratorium science center in San Francisco, the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, and NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View. Scads more red planet stuff at link.
Space Missions: Unmanned and many, not manned and few.
Those are today'steneleven links of interest somewhat randomly pulled from the web.
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