I recently wrote a review of a great book that I am re-reading these days: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. And today I realized that it might contain an explanation for something that has recently rocketed to the top of the news: swine flu in Mexico.
Right now there is open speculation as to why some people are getting infected and others are not, why some people are getting very sick and others not. Some reports suggest more people in Mexico are getting more seriously infected than eslewhere. And here's where 1491 comes in.
Author Charles Mann reviews all manner of resarch as to why some diseases had such a devastating effect on Indian populations. One factor was human leukocyte antigens or HLAs, an important part of the body's disease fighting systems. Humans fight disease better when they have a diversity of HLAs.
Most human groups have a "scatterbox mix" of HLAs but South American Indians have fewer HLA types than populations in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In South America, according to one estimation, the minimum probability that a pathogen in one host will next encounter a host with a similar immune spectrum is about 28 percent. By comparison, in Europe the chance is less than 2 percent.
Now I'm sure that I'm over-simplifying here, but it would seem that there's an infection differential of 14X in there somewhere. While the population of Mexico is, in broad terms a mix of Europeans and Indians, it may well have less HLA diversity than the population of a melting pot like the United States. Which bodes well for the States, not so well for Mexico. I hope the World Health Organization is checking this out.
We Need Broadband! Worth Saying Yes
This survey/petition is not the only "we want rural broadband" effort out there, but one worth spreading. The more people who submit the better:
We Need Broadband Inquiry Form
We Need Broadband Inquiry Form
Brits Go For Steam Car Record!
Given the connection to John Cobb, the first person to exceed 400mph in a wheel driven car, and to Coventry, home of the fastest car in the world today, I thought this video news story was great, headlined "A British team is looking to beat the speed record for a steam-powered car.
Steam car races toward record: Video story fromReuters.com
The current record has stood for 103 years, having been established at just over 127 miles per hour in 1906. At that time, that speed, achieved by a steam powered car, was THE world land speed record (LSR). That record stood as the LSR until 1910 when it was narrowly eclipsed by a combustion-engined vehicle. For the whole story, check the official site.
Steam car races toward record: Video story fromReuters.com
The current record has stood for 103 years, having been established at just over 127 miles per hour in 1906. At that time, that speed, achieved by a steam powered car, was THE world land speed record (LSR). That record stood as the LSR until 1910 when it was narrowly eclipsed by a combustion-engined vehicle. For the whole story, check the official site.
Two Good Books and a Movie: Avoid if you're feeling blue
The common element in stuff I've been reading and watching lately is this: It could really bring you down. We're talking about the suffering and death of millions of people here. So you've been warned. On the other hand, these are stimulating works, they might make you think a lot, and then you might have some new thoughts about how things could be made better. Then you could act on those thoughts and the world would become a better place. I guess we'll see.
First up is the movie Body of Lies
. Great photography and editing. Great casting and acting. And a gripping story without a cheesy ending. To me this film was drenched in authenticity. AFAIK, what you see in this film is very close to how things really are in the field of espionage, as in "espionage in the field" and the people who run it, both locally and remotely.
As Far As I Know, there is this huge gap between remote agent and central office--the controller cheering his kid's suburban soccer game or taking his son to the bathroom, while calling in the kill--which suddenly collapses with a plane flight into the field. Then it zooms back into the clinical and chilling detachment of eye-in-the-sky operational monitoring and direction (with echoes of Patriot Games and The Bourne Supremacy but with great real world moral ambivalence). We are left in no doubt that local assets, people we turn when we pursue humint, are considered expendable, and there's a school of thought that says this is the way it must be. You rarely see that portrayed as bluntly as it is in Body of Lies.
Second up is the novel, Timebomb
, which echoes that same theme of the expendable asset, with deeper historical context as to how it arose. The action here is in Europe, from the UK to the eastern Soviet bloc, but present day, so we have disaffected Russians, Jewish mobsters, and Middle Eastern terrorists. Again the operational authenticity is there, but layered into the basic spy v. terrorist story you find the horrific story of a Polish death camp. And this "second" story is not pasted on, it is integral to the picture that Seymour paints of hate and fear breeding more of the same.
The author of this thick but very readable thriller is Gerald Seymour, a former ITN television news reporter, back when that title meant you got a lot of experience reporting in the field (he covered the Munich Olympics massacre and the Great Train Robbery, and spent time reporting from Vietnam and Northern Ireland). Relatively unknown in the States, judged by a dearth of Seymour titles on the shelves of two different Barnes & Nobles I have visited in the last three months, Seymour is a consistent best-seller in the UK and has penned a string of excellent novels.
For me, his The Walking Dead A Thriller
is the definitive novel about suicide bombing. One of my guilty pleasures on a trip to the UK is stocking up Gerald Seymour novels (not sure why I said "guilty" because "stupid" is more apt--I have to drag the things home on the plane and you can actually order online in the U.S.).
On a literary note, these books rise above the "thriller" tag for me, much like LeCarré's work. Seymour's style is faster-paced but the depth is there. His trademark technique is weaving multiple points-of-view. There are no "main" characters but rather a half dozen or more people that we follow throughout the book. The fun part is deciding who's POV you're getting at the start of a new section. A rare case of entertainment tastefully blended with substance.
.
The last review is 1491
and there's an inverse relationship between the amount of truly fascinating content in this book and the brevity of its title. (Okay, so the full title is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus but what I'm saying is, this book is stuffed with good stuff.)
This such a good book I am now reading it for the second time. I don't read many books twice, so this is quite the accolade (others so honored in my post-college life include Gibson's Neuromancer
and Count Zero
, and Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World
, the latter having more than enough ironic content to warrant the long title).
What I'm doing with 1491 right now is dipping into several different sections at once. It is a testament to author Charles C. Mann's superb writing that one can do this. I can flip from the amazing city of Cahokia on the Mississippi to the dozens of feuding Mayan city states. I can read about the vast earthworks of the Beni and the sophisticated aquaculture of the Amazon, then travel via Norte Chico, a Peruvian civilization older than Egypt, to the indigenous forest-scaping of the North Eastern U.S. And all the while I can follow the plot, which is basically this: America was a heavily populated and highly civilized land before contact with the Europeans.
That many millions of people died as a result of European arrival in the Americas, either killed in conflict or killed as a consequence of contact, is now clear. This truth had been slowly emerging in scientific papers and publications for decades, but Mann has pulled all of the data together and the effect is almost overwhelming. I had long suspected that the sophistication and scale of indigenous culture and civilization was being ignored or suppressed.
With a minimum of moralizing and finger-pointing Mann documents the whole sorry story. He leaves others to state the obvious conclusion: Americans of European origin stole this land and we did our best to destroy the civilizations that once thrived here. It took less than 500 years to erase tens of thousands of years of human history, hundreds of languages, scores of magnificent cities, dozens of libraries, and millions of people.
I believe that many of the consequences of this history have yet to be played out. After all, the consequences of ancient conquest in the Middle East are still shaping events today, and our post-imperial ahistorical ineptness in dealing with them is still causing problems, some of which can be seen in a film like Body of Lies or a book like Timebomb. Watch and read, just try not to get too depressed about it.
(Note: In the interests of full disclosure, all the above links are to Amazon through my Associates account. That doesn't add anything to the price but it means that this blog gets a small kickback from Amazon when you buy from these links.)
First up is the movie Body of Lies
. Great photography and editing. Great casting and acting. And a gripping story without a cheesy ending. To me this film was drenched in authenticity. AFAIK, what you see in this film is very close to how things really are in the field of espionage, as in "espionage in the field" and the people who run it, both locally and remotely.As Far As I Know, there is this huge gap between remote agent and central office--the controller cheering his kid's suburban soccer game or taking his son to the bathroom, while calling in the kill--which suddenly collapses with a plane flight into the field. Then it zooms back into the clinical and chilling detachment of eye-in-the-sky operational monitoring and direction (with echoes of Patriot Games and The Bourne Supremacy but with great real world moral ambivalence). We are left in no doubt that local assets, people we turn when we pursue humint, are considered expendable, and there's a school of thought that says this is the way it must be. You rarely see that portrayed as bluntly as it is in Body of Lies.
Second up is the novel, Timebomb
, which echoes that same theme of the expendable asset, with deeper historical context as to how it arose. The action here is in Europe, from the UK to the eastern Soviet bloc, but present day, so we have disaffected Russians, Jewish mobsters, and Middle Eastern terrorists. Again the operational authenticity is there, but layered into the basic spy v. terrorist story you find the horrific story of a Polish death camp. And this "second" story is not pasted on, it is integral to the picture that Seymour paints of hate and fear breeding more of the same.The author of this thick but very readable thriller is Gerald Seymour, a former ITN television news reporter, back when that title meant you got a lot of experience reporting in the field (he covered the Munich Olympics massacre and the Great Train Robbery, and spent time reporting from Vietnam and Northern Ireland). Relatively unknown in the States, judged by a dearth of Seymour titles on the shelves of two different Barnes & Nobles I have visited in the last three months, Seymour is a consistent best-seller in the UK and has penned a string of excellent novels.
For me, his The Walking Dead A Thriller
is the definitive novel about suicide bombing. One of my guilty pleasures on a trip to the UK is stocking up Gerald Seymour novels (not sure why I said "guilty" because "stupid" is more apt--I have to drag the things home on the plane and you can actually order online in the U.S.).On a literary note, these books rise above the "thriller" tag for me, much like LeCarré's work. Seymour's style is faster-paced but the depth is there. His trademark technique is weaving multiple points-of-view. There are no "main" characters but rather a half dozen or more people that we follow throughout the book. The fun part is deciding who's POV you're getting at the start of a new section. A rare case of entertainment tastefully blended with substance.
.
The last review is 1491
and there's an inverse relationship between the amount of truly fascinating content in this book and the brevity of its title. (Okay, so the full title is 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus but what I'm saying is, this book is stuffed with good stuff.)This such a good book I am now reading it for the second time. I don't read many books twice, so this is quite the accolade (others so honored in my post-college life include Gibson's Neuromancer
and Count Zero, and Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World, the latter having more than enough ironic content to warrant the long title).What I'm doing with 1491 right now is dipping into several different sections at once. It is a testament to author Charles C. Mann's superb writing that one can do this. I can flip from the amazing city of Cahokia on the Mississippi to the dozens of feuding Mayan city states. I can read about the vast earthworks of the Beni and the sophisticated aquaculture of the Amazon, then travel via Norte Chico, a Peruvian civilization older than Egypt, to the indigenous forest-scaping of the North Eastern U.S. And all the while I can follow the plot, which is basically this: America was a heavily populated and highly civilized land before contact with the Europeans.
That many millions of people died as a result of European arrival in the Americas, either killed in conflict or killed as a consequence of contact, is now clear. This truth had been slowly emerging in scientific papers and publications for decades, but Mann has pulled all of the data together and the effect is almost overwhelming. I had long suspected that the sophistication and scale of indigenous culture and civilization was being ignored or suppressed.
With a minimum of moralizing and finger-pointing Mann documents the whole sorry story. He leaves others to state the obvious conclusion: Americans of European origin stole this land and we did our best to destroy the civilizations that once thrived here. It took less than 500 years to erase tens of thousands of years of human history, hundreds of languages, scores of magnificent cities, dozens of libraries, and millions of people.
I believe that many of the consequences of this history have yet to be played out. After all, the consequences of ancient conquest in the Middle East are still shaping events today, and our post-imperial ahistorical ineptness in dealing with them is still causing problems, some of which can be seen in a film like Body of Lies or a book like Timebomb. Watch and read, just try not to get too depressed about it.
(Note: In the interests of full disclosure, all the above links are to Amazon through my Associates account. That doesn't add anything to the price but it means that this blog gets a small kickback from Amazon when you buy from these links.)
Google Street View Privacy Survey: Win an Earth Day Prize!
I recently wrote about privacy attitudes to Google Street View and I thought it would be interesting to carry out a quick survey. Since viewing places on Google Street View is arguably more earth-friendly than going to see them in person, I decided to offers some cool Earth Day prizes!
Five people who complete the survey, between now and April 25, will be randomly selected to receive cool re-usable shopping bags, the kind that save using paper and plastic. These bags are burnt orange in color but very green. And the really cool thing is they fit in your pocket, no kidding! So please take a moment to fill out the form and include your email address if you want to be in the prize drawing. Good luck!
Five people who complete the survey, between now and April 25, will be randomly selected to receive cool re-usable shopping bags, the kind that save using paper and plastic. These bags are burnt orange in color but very green. And the really cool thing is they fit in your pocket, no kidding! So please take a moment to fill out the form and include your email address if you want to be in the prize drawing. Good luck!
Earth Day Prizes? Check out my survey and win
Sounds cheesy but it's true. You could win an earth-friendly prize for taking a very short survey that I created on my technology blog here. The link is bit.ly/bagz which gives you a clue as to the prizes, and an easy way to share it.
Good luck!
Good luck!
Webinars on Delivering Broadband to Rural America April 21/22
These are vendor sponsored events, but probably well worth catching if you're thinking about wireless as the answer to your rural broadband coverage. Airspan Communications WebEx Event Center
Need Help Dealing With Hemochromatosis? Join THE list
Each time I blog about hemochromatosis I hear from people affected by this daunting and life-threatening condition. Often these people are frustrated with doctors failing to recognize the condition and with the slow pace of diagnosis and treatment. Fortunately, if you are one of these people, there is a supportive community you can join, online, via email.
It's called The Excess Iron List, and it includes people from all over the world, people who are dealing with this condition, supporting each other through sharing their experiences. But before I give you the link for this, I want to point out that it is an email discussion list, not an online forum or chat room. That makes it one of the oldest means of getting together over the Internet.
If you haven't used one of these lists before it can seem a bit strange at first (just to be clear, when you join, you are NOT being put on a public mailing list to get unsolicited information--and the list is moderated by a person, not a machine). The basic operations, like joining the list or leaving it, are carried out by you sending blank email messages to a special email address. For example, to join you send a blank email to: ExcessIron-on@mail-list.com
Fortunately, when you do that, you will get a reply that explains how the system works. The big payoff is being able to share with other people who have an interest in iron overload. So, if you're interested click here for details of The Excess Iron List. The page is hosted at the Iron Disorders Institute, a reputable source for information about hemochromatosis.
It's called The Excess Iron List, and it includes people from all over the world, people who are dealing with this condition, supporting each other through sharing their experiences. But before I give you the link for this, I want to point out that it is an email discussion list, not an online forum or chat room. That makes it one of the oldest means of getting together over the Internet.
If you haven't used one of these lists before it can seem a bit strange at first (just to be clear, when you join, you are NOT being put on a public mailing list to get unsolicited information--and the list is moderated by a person, not a machine). The basic operations, like joining the list or leaving it, are carried out by you sending blank email messages to a special email address. For example, to join you send a blank email to: ExcessIron-on@mail-list.com
Fortunately, when you do that, you will get a reply that explains how the system works. The big payoff is being able to share with other people who have an interest in iron overload. So, if you're interested click here for details of The Excess Iron List. The page is hosted at the Iron Disorders Institute, a reputable source for information about hemochromatosis.
What broadband access means to rural areas
What broadband access means to rural areas such as ours - Times-Standard Online: "Of the 250 poorest counties in the United States, 244 are rural. So the promise and opportunity of new communications technologies to improve health, education and public safety for rural communities are particularly important to our nation."
Of Fighter Pilots, F-16s, Grim Reapers, Air Guards and Airlines
Last weeks' news item about "Suicide by F-16" sparked several thoughts, happily none of them suicide-related.Have you ever experienced the "suddenly they're everywhere" phenomenon? For example, your friend takes you for a drive in her new car, a model you've never really noticed before, and in the next few days you see loads of these cars and it's like all of a sudden they're everywhere? Well the same thing happened to me with fighter jets. One day a pair of F-16s are scrambled by Wisconsin Air National Guard and the next I'm seeing all sorts of F-16 related stuff. Admittedly, I went looking for some of it. Like the Air National Guard thing. I was curious about how many American states have their own fighter jets. Turns out a lot of them do.
Have you ever flown into a commercial airport, on a commercial flight, but seen some military planes parked away on the far side of the airport? In America those planes often belong to Air National Guard of the state in which you are landing. Checking out the "local" air guard, I found that the military jets I had noticed at Syracuse airport, which I sometimes fly from, were F-16s from the 174th Fighter Wing of the New York Air National Guard.
Purely from a design and engineering perspective, the F-16 is an impressive machine. The design has a sports car look to it and performance to match. The F-16 has a thrust-to-weight ratio greater than one, which means it has enough power to climb and accelerate vertically. F-16s are used by several flying demonstration teams including the USAF Thunderbirds and the Royal Netherlands Airforce F-16 DEMOTEAM. The cockpit, which comes in one- and two-seater configurations, is designed so the pilot's position is semi-recumbent, rather than sitting up straight. Apparently this helps pilots handle the terrific G-forces the plane is capable of generating during maneuvers.
So as I am Googling through this stuff I find out that the the 174th Fighter Wing is losing its F-16s. They are being replaced with Reapers. What's a Reaper? An MQ-9, a.k.a. Predator "B", as in great big brother to the Predator drone. The Reaper is an unmanned aircraft with a wingspan wider than a regional passenger jet and the ability to stay aloft for over 40 hours while carrying hundreds of pounds of bombs and missiles.
The Reaper is worthy of a separate blog post, but the point that caught my eye about this huge shift for the New York Air National Guard is the effect on pilots. Out of 30 F-16 pilots with the 174th, only 20 are staying on to fly the robot planes. Which got me thinking. Maybe a shift to drones will help the commercial airlines, who are finding it hard to get experienced pilots.
I'm also wondering if the Reapers will be physically based in Syracuse, in which case I may see them on my next flight out of there. But being drones, I guess it's possible that they could be flying anywhere, while still being piloted from Syracuse. And that's what I call a trip.
(BTW, the pic in this post is from the web site of the Royal Netherlands Airforce F-16 DEMOTEAM, shot by P. van Uffelen © 55 jaar 313 Volkel 2008. The pic in the previous post was from the incredibly detailed Wikipedia entry about the F-16.)
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