This image is from War on Line, a Russian-language blog. It is a powerful image and I cannot read copyright details (they are in Russian) but I hope the link to the site is sufficient. I am not in a position to have any pictures of my own of the group. For some reason they have not invited me to visit.
The BBC reports on a British breakthrough in the development of more effective artificial limbs. Given terrorist acts, war, disease and accidents, there is a growing understanding of this neglected field.
UK scientists have developed technology that enables artificial limbs to be directly attached to a human skeleton.
The breakthrough, developed by researchers at University College London, allows the prosthesis to breach the skin without risk of infection.
The team says early clinical trials have been “very promising”.
It hopes the work - which is to be published in the Journal of Anatomy - may help survivors of the 7 July bombings, as well as other amputees.
The work paves the way for bionic limbs which are controlled by the central nervous system.
The technique is called “Intraosseous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP),(which) involves securing a titanium rod directly into the bone.”
Reuters Health reports that,
Mediterranean-style diets, rich in healthy fats from olive oil or nuts, may be better for the heart than low-fat regimens, a new study shows.
Spanish researchers found that the traditional Mediterranean diet bested a low-fat diet in helping older adults improve their cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels. The findings, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, add to evidence that diets rich in healthy fats offer a better heart prescription than diets that limit fat altogether.
Their source for the Barcelona-based study was Annals of Internal Medicine, July 4, 2006.
Another study adds to the growing evidence that a drink each day helps lower heart risks and extend life span.
Moreover, the effect appears to be due to something other than alcohol’s anti-inflammatory effects, the Florida researchers found. Prior studies have found that light to moderate drinking reduces blood levels of inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6.
“Light to moderate alcohol intake is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease in older subjects,” concluded lead author Dr. Cinzia Maraldi, of the Institute on Aging at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
This is the positive news from Steve Reinberg in an article in Health Day.
The BBC noted today, July 24, that “US judge overturns Cuba book ban”.
The Miami-Dade Student Government Association and the ACLU said removing the book was violated students’ constitutional right of access to information under the First Amendment.“By totally banning the Cuba books and the rest of the series, the school board is in fact prohibiting even the voluntary consideration of the themes contained in the books by students at their leisure,” said Judge Gold.
America and Florida are again leading seeing the results of those who would deny access to knowledge to those who voluntarily seek. In this case it is political rather than religious and the complainant, Juan Amador Rodriguez, may have good reason to feel strongly about the Castro government. He does not want his primary school daughter to read anything positive about the country where he was a political prisoner. The desire to protect her is valid enough for a parent. However, he also fled this totalitarian regime to enter into the freedoms that the American Constitution guarantees. That means his daughter does not have to read the book, Vamos A Cuba. It does not mean that his complaint nor the support of a strong member of the Miami-Dade County School System, Frank Bolaños , can keep other children from this book nor from the entire series of childrens’ books that had been banned.
The entire, lengthy legal opinion of the United States Southern District Court, Southern District of Florida in the case of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida v. Miami Dade County School Board is available as a pdf document for download.
The Miami Herald which has been reporting on this issue published an article by Ani Martinez on 14 July titled “VAMOS A CUBA Book’s foe sensitive to tyranny” where she describes the Cuban exile’s third grader’s interest in her father’s homeland.
Ten-year-old Yilen Amador Rodriguez couldn’t wait for bedtime so she could show her dad a book about Cuba that she had brought home from school.
The third-grader had often heard her father talk about his homeland at the dinner table. But she was surprised when he began to thumb through Vamos a Cuba, which Yilen had checked out last spring from the library at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Elementary School in West Miami-Dade County.
His smile quickly faded when the former political prisoner saw pictures of children dressed in communist school uniforms.
”When you are 5 years old in Cuba, you denounce your family and belong to the state,” explained the father, Juan Amador Rodriguez, who formally complained about the book in April and got it banned by the Miami-Dade School Board on June 14.
He has his right to request a time-out from freedom. Amazingly (except that it is Florida) the school board went along with him and banned this book and a whole series of books about children living in other societies.
Rodriquez was jailed in Cuba for over four years when he was 18 for denouncing the Castro government. When he was released he went to work building a raft. In 1995 he, his wife and his brothers embarked on the raft and made it to Miami where the little girl, Yilen, was born. He now owns a number of lunch trucks that sell to construction workers in the Doral area of Miami.
The blog, “Miami Gradebook: Inside South Florida Education” by the education writer for the Miami Herald who is writing about the case, Matthew I. Pinzur, says
It’s a pretty decisive win for the ACLU. The question now is whether Frank Bolaños can convince the majority of the board to appeal the injunction and push forward on the case, or whether the majority of the board reads Judge Gold’s decision and decides to cut bait.
Mr. Rodriquez undoubtedly has reason for a strong distaste for anything that seems to support a totalitarian regime from which he fled. However, the banning and burning of books whether for children or anyone else who can or can hope to learn to read is anathema to the freedoms of the country to which he fled. Florida has a terrible history of repressiveness and racism, bigotry and religious intolerance. This decision seems to buck that tradition as it protects the society as a whole from the desires of a few to limit access to information.
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Postcard of Beirut in 1974 from Discover Lebanon, a tourism site.
It was the “Paris of the Middle East” it was said back in the Sixties.
Now it is always “war-torn” Beirut and is again torn by war. “The Opinion Journal” of the Wall Street Journal in an editorial, “Hostage to Hezbollah” by Fouad Hajami writes of the sadness of Lebanon as an international tool of the Iranians and Syrians.
A cleric by the name of Hassan Nasrallah, at the helm of the Hezbollah movement, handed Lebanon a calamity right as the summer tourist season had begun. Beirut had dug its way out of the rubble of a long war: Nasrallah plunged it into a new season of loss and ruin. He presented the country with a fait accompli: the “gift” of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped across an international frontier. Nasrallah never let the Lebanese government in on his venture. He was giddy with triumphalism and defiance when this crisis began. And men and women cooped up in the destitution of the Shiite districts of Beirut were sent out into the streets to celebrate Hezbollah’s latest deed.
The editorial presents a fascinating view on the political and realpolitik threads in the conflict raging after the Israel Defense Forces responded to Lebanese attacks on their country.
The question for us is what George Bush’s administration will do to help or what line it will take. For now, The New York Times reported that the US will send more smart bombs to Israel.
The Jerusalem Post reports on the stepped-up sale of smart bombs,
T
he US is rushing a delivery of “smart bombs” to Israel after Israel indicated it needed the bombs for its military campaign against the Hizbullah.The New York Times reported Saturday that the decision to rush the shipment was reached after little debate within the administration.
The “smart bombs” - bombs which are equipped with precision guidance devises, are part of an arms deal reached months ago between Israel and the US, but the fighting in Lebanon led Israel to ask for an expedited delivery of the bombs, before the agreed scheduled of supply.
Wikipedia describes comtemporary histoy of the city, a sad story of civil war, religious strife and international machinations,
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire following the First World War, Beirut, along with all of Lebanon was given to the French. The French administration showed great preference for the Christian community, leading to religious strains in the city. Lebanon was given its independence following the Second World War and Beirut became its capital city. Beirut remained the intellectual capital of the Arab world and a major commercial and tourist centre until 1975 when a brutal civil war broke out in Lebanon. During most of the war, the city was divided between the largely Muslim west part and the Christian east. The central area of the city, previously the focus of much of the commercial and cultural activities, became a no-man’s land. Many of the city’s best and brightest inhabitants fled to other countries. In 1983 French and US barracks were bombed, killing 302.
Since the end of the war in 1989, the people of Lebanon have been rebuilding Beirut, and the city has regained its status as a tourist, cultural and intellectual centre of the Middle East, as well as the center for commerce, fashion and media. Beirut is home to the international designer, Elie Saab and to some of the most popular and successful satellite television, such as Al-Manar, New TV, LBC and Future TV. The city was host to the Asian Basketball Championship and the Asian Football Championship. Beirut also successfully hosted the Miss Europe pageant twice.
Another article soon is rattling around in my head. How many “paradises” can the world afford to lose? Not merely Beirut of civil wars and terrorist havens but Bacalar (here in Mexico) being hit with anti-American violence and crime waves, our mid-Hudson Valley of NY being gentrified by the exurban masses, New Orleans allowed to slip beneath the waters and how many more places were once beautiful and sweet and now are not?
An unusual advertisement appeared in a London newspaper in 1910:
WANTED: Volunteers for a hazardous journey. Small wages.
Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger.
Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.
It did not work as he planned. It was hazardous and bitter cold. It became painfully obvious that a safe return would be, at least, miraculous.
The honor and recognition came from their failure. I reviewed the book, Endurance on BC quite some time ago. Fine book, great story. From the mouth of deadly failure, Shackleton led his crew through the travails and dangers of a winter iced into pack-ice at the bottom of the world as their ship was slowly crushed. They lived on ice floes, braved the currents and winds of the seas near Antarctica and won immortality when they all got back through his leadership, their courage, seamanship and the bravery that is like the inventor or scientist’s spark, the artist’s flash of insight. They beat the odds because they fought hard and smart and they prevailed..
Bob Clarebrough in The Space Review looks at the subject from other points of view. He writes on management and is studying “innovation in the private enterprise space system”. He sees Shackleton’s successful failure as something for which,
… we celebrate his heroic leadership and tenacity which resulted in the rescue and safe return of all his men. The same can be said of the exemplary leadership of Eugene Krantz during the high tension of Apollo 13’s return to Earth. Today, these failures are major sources of learning and are studied by managers around the world as they go about developing their own skills as leaders. That’s why we need failure—it’s how we learn. And the emerging space industry needs it, too.
It would be wrong to call for more failures caused by poor workmanship or downright carelessness. The key point is to plan for failures, value the learning they provide, and act on what has been learned.
Falcon 1 finds knowledge in failure. From the BBC
He wrote on SpaceX and the recent failure to launch its Falcon I as
SpaceX would have learned very little from a successful launch. There would have been no urgent reason to review the design of the rocket, people’s roles and responsibilities, the processes and procedures they used, or the overall project management. Arguably, SpaceX now has significantly more knowledge about launching rockets than other space entrepreneurs who have yet to fly.
and quotes Thomas Watson of IBM who said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”
In my life I did incredibly well at keeping my failure rate high. Learning from the mistakes and not making them again came harder. Still, I learned photography from the Ansel Adams photo book series and a lot of experimenting and learned to see by looking at a lot of photos, paintings, drawings and graphics. Very few people merely succeed. An unbroken procession of successes would be reasonably impossible, boring and not lead to new ways of seeing or thinking. Of course I was not launching spacecraft.
A fine book Inventions and America Today (also reviewed when I first started writing for Blogcritics) is Inventing Modern America by David E. Brown. David tells great stories in his biographical sketches of inventors. Many are examples of those whose most lasting discoveries were the result of learning from previous failures and the “lucky” accident (wherein the questing mind sees the possibilities that have opened from the unforeseen event)…
MORE at Blogcritics and, in a similar article, at Desicritics.
A new report in the Doctors’ Guide is entitled “Quitting Smoking Improves Lung Function Test Scores by More Than 15% in Less Than 2 Months”.
That is amazing and should give impetus to those who truly want to change their “life styles” in order to keep themselves alive. It is not useless to stop smoking because it has been going on so long or because you are no longer so young. The results can be seen much more quickly than thought.
The 14 July report noted
For smokers with asthma, quitting smoking can improve lung function test scores by more than 15% in less than 2 months.The findings appear in the second issue for July 2006 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.
Neil C. Thomson, MD, of the Departments of Respiratory Medicine and Immunology at the University of Glasgow, and seven associates studied 11 asthmatics who continued to smoke and 10 who quit for six weeks. After only one week of no cigarettes, the researchers said that the lung function test results of the non-smoking patients had improved to a “considerable degree.”
The Chinese are going to win my prize: Car Saviors of the Decade. Maybe it should be for a number of decades. On 11 July The New York Times reported that the Nanjing Automobile Group of China announced plans to re-create the MG motor care marque (car line to American aficianados) from the ruins of the now bankrupt MG-Rover company of England who made the MG Ts, the MGAs and Bs and just plain made a generation or two of people who love cars happy. The plans are to create a “tri-continental car company” from China, England and the United States.
The company plans a news conference and announcement of the siting of a plant in Oklahoma. They plan to build an MG TF coupe to compete in the Mazda Miata class. The machines should have a selling price in the neighborhood of $US 20-25,000 and be produced starting in 2008.
It also will assemble a convertible TF Roadster version at MG’s now-shuttered factory in Longbridge, England, and three sedan models in China. American and European operations for MG Motors will be based in Oklahoma City, 90 miles north of the new factory in Ardmore, Okla.
The Nanjing Company is creating a unique niche in the world car market by restoring a famous marque and thereby attracting a loyal base of MG enthusiasts, many of whom live in the US. The MG Owners Club based in the U.K.
run out of a large MG parts shop near Cambridge, England, has about 40,000 members worldwide. Many live in the United States, despite the brand’s 26-year absence here.
MG began in the 1920s as Morris Garages and became an international symbol of freedom and non-conformity in the 40s and 50s when soldiers brought them and their memories back to the States. I even remember Rock Hudson folding himself into an MG TD in some long-ago comedy. The movie is forgotten. MG TDs can never be forgotten. In many ways they are the symbol of the sports car that was. David E. Davis, Jr. who runs an on-line magazine called Winding Road says — and I cannot argue as the once owner of an MGA 1500 coupe,
“MG was really an integral part of the foreign car revolution that started in the late 40’s and early 50’s,” Mr. Davis said. “They weren’t terribly good cars, but they were so different and they were so much fun to drive that we all forgave them for their lack of reliability and fragility.
Nanjing promises the coupe, a roadster made in the British facility and three sedans made in China. Happy faces may be found in the MG Enthusiasts Club in Britain. At least, hopeful faces. The site includes a Buying Guide. A new $20,000 model might make it easier to own the MG marque than these prices:
Australia was a popular destination for new MGAs and the cars’ ongoing desirability has ensured high survival levels with most of those available being 1500 and 1600 Mk 1 Roadsters.The Mark 2 and Twin-Cam are rare while the Fixed Head Coupe wasn’t popular here and is also scarce. For practical and aesthetic reasons wire-wheeled cars command better money than those with drilled steel rims.
Prices are reasonable with $15.000 buying an older restoration needing minimal mechanical and cosmetic refurbishing.
Top-quality recent restorations will cost $10,000 more and cars with concourse potential $30,000-35,000.
I bought my 1959 MGA 1500 twin-cam coupe (the coupes were rare and had roll-up glass windows and non-leaking roofs) in about 1963 for $900 — a gigantic sum. It had wire wheels, knock-off hubs and a continental kit I removed. I painted it silver, pulled off the vinyl dashboard cover and finished the wood. Then covered the cracked leather seats with black naugahyde. It was one of the prettiest cars in car-culture Tampa and I made the best of it. I loved that car and even managed (I was thin then) to make love in it. It was the essence of sporty and the crux of fun. I owned a lot of cars after that including a ‘59 Mercedes, a new Saab (sob with a Saab), a raft of wonderful Volvos including two fine Volvo 164s, an Alpine (junk), a new 2001 Jetta built in Mexico (sturdy and fast but conservative) and my beloved ‘86 Bronco 4×4 302 which I am now renovating to get a few more miles out of it (past the 250,000 it has). Nothing touches the MG for joy and dreams of youth and freedom, fun and sex. I scanned an ancient print of me (the cropped out 18 year old) and left in the sexy beauty of that coupe.
Happy memories. Searching for more information on the Chinese group and the state of the UK facility I did discover that MG continues to be made and distributed in some countries — the U.S. is not one of them and the Lebanese showroom may not be full this week. They offer models of MG and, I assume, the Chinese influence could bring the car back to our shores and provide further stability. The future remains to be seen. My view of the past catalyzed by this press release gave me pleasure in the memory of a great machine.
The recent article on Blogcritics and here, “Air Force Targets The Blogosphere For Warfare” has been chosen an Editors’ Pick for the week of July 5 through July 11.