Was Mars a Watery World?

This map of Mars was produced by two University of Colorado scientists using the latest imagery and published in Nature Geoscience. Tracing the ancient shoreline visible in photographs from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other probes, they estimate that 3.5 billion years ago the lowlands of Mars were covered by an ocean up to 550 meters deep. But this remains very controversial.

Thought

There are many things for which no reason can be given, but that does not mean that there is none.

--St. Augustine

Sperm Whales and Ocean Fertilization

From Not Exactly Rocket Science:

While the world wrangles over ways of reducing carbon emissions, some scientists are considering more radical approaches to mitigating the effects of climate change. Dumping iron dust into the world’s oceans is one such strategy. Theoretically, the iron should act as fertiliser, providing a key nutrient that will spur the growth of photosynthetic plankton. These creatures act as carbon dioxide pumps, removing the problematic gas from the air and storing the carbon within their own tissues. When the plankton die, they sink, trapping their carbon in the abyss for thousands of years.

It may seem like a fanciful idea, but as with much of our technology, nature beat us to it long ago. Trish Lavery from Flinders University has found that sperm whales fertilise the Southern Ocean in exactly this way, using their own faeces. Their dung is loaded with iron and it stimulates the growth of plankton just as well as iron dust does.

Sperm whales are prodigious divers, descending to great depths in search of prey like squid. When they’re deeply submerged, they shut down all their non-essential bodily functions. Excretion is one of these and the whales only ever defecate when they reach the surface. By happy coincidence, that’s where photosynthetic plankton (phytoplankton) make their home – in the shallow column of water where sunlight still penetrates. So by eating iron-rich prey at great depths and expelling the remains in the shallows, the whales act as giant farmers, unwittingly seeding the surface waters with fertiliser.

Indian Immigrants and American Identity

Every day that I walk the dog in the woods I pass by one of the biggest houses in my neighborhood. It's an extra-long 70s trilevel, with a perfect lawn, a plastic wreath of blue flowers on the door and huge deck with gas grill out back. There is a big Winnebago parked in the driveway, along with a BMW, and since each of the three or four resident college-age children has a car, there is often a long line along the curb. I have never met the residents except to say hello, but they are obviously south Asians, and I sometimes muse that they have gone American in a really big way.

I was thinking about this because Jesse Washington of the Associated Press has a feature today on Indian-American politicians running for Congress or governor -- there are eight this year, a record. Part of the story is about whether some of these people, especially governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and likely future governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, have shed their Indian identities in their pursuit of power. Bobby Jindal was born Piyush, and Nikki Haley was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, and both converted to Christianity as teenagers.

Vidya Pradhan, editor of India Currents magazine, says Haley and Jindal

were really ambitious about their politics, and they could not do it being Hindu or their old religion. I do think it was a political move. They felt that not being a Christian would hurt them.

I think this is unnecessarily cynical. Consider my neighbors, who don't seem to be running for anything, and millions of other immigrants who have thrown themselves whole hog into becoming Americans. Many Hispanic immigrants have converted to Protestantism in America, so why assume that Sikhs and Hindus who convert must have political motives?

Posing as a White Businessman

A new career path for westerners in China:

Not long ago I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit.

“I call these things ‘White Guy in a Tie’ events,” a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. “Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?”

I was.

And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. . . .

The Red Rectangle Nebula

Hubble photograph. Click to enlarge.

Sarah Palin Makes Sense!

Sarah Palin offers the opinion that marijuana is a "minimal problem":

“If we’re talking about pot, I’m not for the legalization of pot,” Palin said. “I think that would just encourage our young people to think that it was OK to go ahead and use it.”

“However I think we need to prioritize our law enforcement efforts,” Palin added. “If somebody’s gonna to smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody any harm, then perhaps there are other things our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems we have in society.”

This position has been criticized for insufficient rigor; your logical purists think that unenforced laws are silly, or invitations to selective enforcement by the police, so if Palin really thinks pot isn't such a bad thing she should support legalization. But she is a politician in a conservative party, this is probably as far as she can go in this direction. As she says, this is just not a problem we should be devoting a lot of attention to. I think it is perfectly reasonable for politicians to spend their energy on issues that matter, rather than taking potentially risky positions about things that really are minimal problems.

Weird Parenting Worries

As Matt Yglesias says, "The list of middle class child-rearing anxieties grows ever more baroque." Hilary Stout in the NY Times:

Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”

“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”

Note to parents and teachers: back off. Yes, it sucks to be left out, but a world in which children are only allowed to interact in ways approved by child psychologists would suck a lot worse.

Fieldwork

I was out in western Maryland all day with my crew, testing on an Indian village site dating to AD 1250-1500, finding things like the big piece of antler in the picture below.

Fusion Again

Fusion advocates are promising commercial power within a decade, again. I believe they have been promising fusion power within a decade since about 1970.

Marriage and Children

One of the interesting results of other long-term trends -- delayed marriage, small families, long lives -- is that most people spend a much smaller percentage of their lives raising children than they did a century ago. Partly as a result, people now tend to see marriage much less as a way to raise children and much more as a relationship between two adults. According to a recent Pew poll:

Only 41 percent of respondents said children were important to a happy marriage, down from 65 percent in 1990. The only thing less important to a happy marriage than children, the survey found, was whether a couple agreed on politics.

Thinking this over, I find the notion that children are essential for a good marriage somewhat odd. I always thought you had children because you wanted children, not to make your marriage better. I can see how not having children would be a problem if one or both partners really wanted children, but that strikes me as a separate issue from how they get along with each other.

Kepler's Planets

NASA just released a huge pile of data from the Kepler satellite, which is designed to search for extra-solar planets. These data include 312 candidates for planets or planetary systems.

More intriguing is word that the mission scientists have held onto data for 400 other stars where they suspect smaller planets. One of Kepler's missions is to find planets as small as the earth, and distant enough from their stars to be candidates for life. (The bigger and closer to their stars planets are, the easier they are to find.) Mission scientists are following up themselves on several good candidates; obviously they hope to be the ones who announce the first discovery of an earth-like planet around another star.

Eadgyth's bones

Eadgyth was the sister of Athelstan, the first person to have the title "King of England." Athelstan was also the victor at the Battle of Brunanburh (A.D. 937), immortalized in a famous poem:

Athelstan King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-Bestower and
Baron of Barons . . .
Gaining a lifelong glory in battle
Slew with the sw0rd edge
There by Brunanburh
Brake the shield wall
Hew'd the linden-wood
Hack'd the battleshield
Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.

in Tennyson's translation. Anyway, Athelstan's sister Eadgyth was married to Otto of Saxony in 929, when she was 19. (Actually Athelstan sent both Eadgyth and her sister Adiva to Germany and invited Otto to take his pick. I always thought Adiva would make an interesting subject for a novel.) She had a successful reign and died in 946. Her bones were moved several times and eventually put in a large tomb in Magdeburg cathedral, whence they were supposed to have disappeared during some later round of religious or political trouble. Now they have been rediscovered and are being studied by forensic anthropologists. Eadgyth was well-nourished and ate lots of fish, and her leg bones suggest she was frequently on a horse. Her bones are scheduled to be put back in her tomb by the end of the year.

bon mot

The vampire story as we know it was born in the early 19th century, as the wicked love child of rural folklore and urban decadence.

--Michael Sims

Dirt on My Shirt

Ben just came up to me and recited this poem:

There's dirt on my shirt
And leaves in my hair
There's mud on my boots
But I don't really care

Playing outside is so much fun
To breathe the clean air
And feel the warm sun

To stomp in a puddle
Or climb a big tree
Makes me quite happy
Just look and you'll see.

I looked it up and discovered it is by comedian Jeff Foxworthy, from this book.

Discoveries (6) : The Mosaics of Zeugma

At Zeugma in Turkey a villa dating to the glory days of the Roman Empire has been uncovered, and among the finds were a dozen spectacular and very well preserved mosaics.

Energy Ho Hum

Obama gave a major address about energy policy -- did you notice? (James Fallows' reaction: "Sigh.") It was, I would say, his most purely rhetorical effort to date, lots of words but no meaning. During his campaign he had a lot of concrete things to say about energy policy, but not any more.

The political situation in America right now makes it impossible for him to call for anything bold or interesting. The oil spill has gotten people's attention, but it seems to be playing out as "evil corporation BP committed a crime," not as a nearly inevitable consequence of our ever widening search for harder to get oil. According to the polls I have seen, a majority of Americans are concerned about climate change, but the same polls show that Americans don't feel personally responsible and think the problem can be solved by regulations that require corporations to pollute less. A large majority opposes new energy taxes. Americans feel under siege already, and nobody is in the mood to sacrifice anything. And in the short term it would be expensive to move away from our dependence on coal and oil, so that means nothing will be done.

Dark Candles

Candles for Goths -- "light for those who prefer the dark" -- available in scents like:

Apparition

Isn't an apparition something you see, not something you smell?

Arachne's Garden

This one is described as "A mysterious floral garden with some dewey spiderwebs thrown in..."

What do dewey spider webs smell like?

Black Rose

"The rarest of florals, a fragrant bouquet of black roses with a subtle yet haunting dark..." Ah, the scent of dark!

Coffin

Dirt and rotting flesh? Or does it smell like a new coffin, still at the funeral home? Is there a new coffin scent, that they spray in, like new car scent?

Crypt Moss

This one leaves me at a complete loss.

Dracula

Suddenly I understand the secret of his appeal: he smells so good!

Vasily Polenov

Russian painter, 1844-1927. Above, The Grandmother's Garden. Below, A Room in the Magic Castle. Extensive collection of images here.

The Philosophy of Tea Partyism

Philosopher Professor J.M. Bernstein has a metaphysical take on the anger of Tea Party activists:

My hypothesis is that what all the events precipitating the Tea Party movement share is that they demonstrated, emphatically and unconditionally, the depths of the absolute dependence of us all on government action, and in so doing they undermined the deeply held fiction of individual autonomy and self-sufficiency that are intrinsic parts of Americans’ collective self-understanding.

He goes on to oppose the notion that the individual and his or her rights have some sort of pre-existing reality, and to support the Hegelian notion that the individual as we understand it is a creation of social forces:

practices of independence, of freedom and autonomy, are held in place and made possible by complementary structures of dependence.

Whatever the truth of the deep philosophical questions, I think there is something to Berstein's analysis of contemporary politics. Many people feel that their lives are under the control of mysterious entities and forces from outside: worldwide corporations, big government, international currency markets, and the like. They feel this as an attack on their desire to be independent. Some people react to this lack of control with anger.

But Bernstein is missing some more narrowly political considerations. The people most angry about things right now were a lot less angry when George W. Bush was President. He was one of them -- white, southern, conservative, folksy. Obama -- black, elitist, liberal, from a big city -- is not one of them, so having him as President increases their sense that they are controlled by outside forces. Also, nothing undermines people's sense of autonomy like not being able to find a job, and the fear of losing one's job can be pretty bad, too.

The metaphysical situation of we moderns is, I think, that we have very strong desires for autonomy and independence but live in a world in which many things about our lives are controlled by vast, impersonal forces and institutions we cannot influence and only vaguely understand. I agree that the kind of conservative populism expressed at Tea Party rallies is an expression of this conflict. It is not, though, the only possible such expression, and it also draws on other things, especially economic insecurity, racism, and a tradition of American conservative rhetoric.

First Morning Glories

What Hope in Iran?

Reuel Marc Gerecht, once a CIA operative in Iran, is optimistic about the chances of democratic change: "30 years of theocracy have done an astonishing job of Westernizing Iran’s culture and political preferences."

Weird News from Afghanistan

It seems that American geologists have identified vast, untapped mineral resources in Afghanistan:

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe. . . .

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

Ok, so that's interesting, but why are we seeing what looks like a well-organized presentation about this from the Pentagon, involving several different officials? I suppose the generous interpretation would be that they hope news of possible great wealth will distract Afghans from trying to kill each other. But it looks to me like an attempt to drum up more American support for the war by convincing people that Afghanistan is not just a godforsaken mountain hellhole, but might one day be essential to our economy. The whole business smells very bad.

A Field of Wildflowers

I spent the day in a pasture in western Maryland, looking for a frontier settlement dating to the 1740s. I feel fairly confident that we found the site, and even if we haven't, it was a great day. It wasn't too hot, we had clouds for much of the afternoon, and the field was full of flowers. Nothing spectacular, mainly daisies, but amazing in the sheer profusion and variety of flowers around us.

Nautilus Cups

A 17th-century fad among the idle rich. Nice collection here.

No Little Plans

When architect Daniel Burnham wrote these famous words:

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.

He had in mind L'enfant's plan for the city of Washington. Burnham was the leading spirit of the McMillan Commission, which in 1901 reformulated the plan and led to a major rebuilding of central Washington. The McMillan Plan gave us the mall, as a grand boulevard surrounded by monuments and museums, the Lincoln Memorial, the Tidal Basin with its cherry trees, and many other refinements. But Burnham and his colleagues preserved the basic geometric structure of L'enfant's original plan. That plan has indeed lived on, asserting itself in every generation. It is an amazing thing, that a person in the right time and place can so shape history with a few weeks of work.

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

-- Adrienne Rich

New Technology, Old Psychology

Many humans obsess about a future event that will transform the world -- apocalypse, armageddon, ragnarok, rapture. Nothing new there. These days we have a technocratic version, something called The Singularity.

As far back as the 1950s, John von Neumann, the mathematician, is said to have talked about a “singularity” — an event in which the always-accelerating pace of technology would alter the course of human affairs. And, in 1993, Vernor Vinge, a science fiction writer, computer scientist and math professor, wrote a research paper called “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era.”

“Within 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence,” Mr. Vinge wrote. “Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

In “The Singularity Is Near,” Mr. Kurzweil posits that technological progress in this century will be 1,000 times greater than that of the last century. He writes about humans trumping biology by filling their bodies with nanoscale creatures that can repair cells and by allowing their minds to tap into super-intelligent computers. . . . “Ultimately, the entire universe will become saturated with our intelligence,” he continues. “This is the destiny of the universe.”

I also expect that technological progress over the next century will be impressive. But it will happen step by step, not all at once in some dramatic event. Progress in computing is already running up against obstacles, like problems printing smaller elements on chips and the supply of electricity, that I think will slow the great advances of recent years. New digital and biotechnologies will change life, but I seriously doubt anything will be "transformed." I really dislike that word, which lends a suddenness and importance to change that change rarely has.

What all of this "Singularity" stuff shows me is that technological change has not altered the fundamental human thought patterns that have made apocalyptic religion so popular, and that only reinforces my belief that fundamental changes in human nature are unlikely in the foreseeable future.

The Disappointments of Genetic Medicine

Back when the human genome was first sequenced, the project's backers predicted great medical advances:

In announcing on June 26, 2000, that the first draft of the human genome had been achieved, President Clinton said it would “revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases.”

But it has been a decade since the first complete genomes were sequences, and so far the usable medicine to come out of this is minimal. The original idea was that we would identify the gene variants responsible for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and so on. But the genetic background to these diseases has proved to be diabolically complex, depending on interactions between dozens or hundreds of genes. There are genetic tests for vulnerability to some diseases, such as breast cancer, but so far they work no better than the old method of studying family histories. A few treatments based on genetic information, but none are proven successes. Some people have thrown up their hands and walked away, like the new head of the National Cancer Institute, who once said "Genomics is a way to do science, not medicine." There are still enthusiasts, but they have lengthened the time frame of their predictions, and now they talk of great achievements fifteen or twenty years from now.

I think it will take at least that long and maybe longer. So far our knowledge of the genome itself remains limited, and our understanding of how changes in DNA are reflected in cellular processes barely exists. We need to know a lot more about how a genetic changes effects a protein and how the changed protein effects the operation of the cell before we will be able to use this information to fight disease. That knowledge will come, but only very slowly.

Schumer Says It

Via Matt Yglesias, Senator Chuck Schumer articulates what Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is really about:

You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.

Since this is impossible, I predict ongoing low-level conflict and great misery for at least the next 20 years.