This may appear to be late, but that's just an illusion. LOL.

Here's the link to this year's contribution to Christmas, and one year ending and another starting. I hope you find it useful and maybe a little entertaining.

A recent article in TIME magazine ("Evolving Darwin," by Carl Zimmer, February 23, 2009, issue) about Darwin's theories and scientists' more recent findings using DNA had some rare gems in it that I'd like to share. The basis of the article is a book -- Why Evolution is True -- by Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist a the University of Chicago.

Note that Darwin's theories were first published in his book On the Origin of Species on 24 November 1859. In it he recognized that

variation and heredity were the twin engines that made evolution possible, [but] he didn't know what made them possible. It would take almost a century after the publication of On the Origin of Species for biologists to determine that the answer was DNA.

DNA is like a genetic cookbook, using four molecular "letters" to spell out recipes for everything from hormones to heart valves...

Time and again, biologists are finding that Darwin had it right: evolution is the best way to explain the patterns of nature.

Here's a compendium of nuggets from the article:

• Besides studying fossils, biologists can discover the genealogy of species by looking at their DNA. The fossil record points to hippos and other hoofed mammals as being the closest living relatives of whales. So does their DNA. Our own DNA contains clues to the bonds we share with the rest of life — it turns out, for instance, that we are closer kin to mushrooms than to sunflowers.
• In fact, a lot of mutations that all humans carry neither helped nor harmed our ancestors. They spread just by chance. And a lot of our genome is not made up of protein-coding genes. In fact, 98.8% of it is not. Some of that 98.8% consists of "pseudogenes" — genes that once encoded proteins but no longer can because of a crippling mutation. They are the molecular equivalent of a vestigial tail, allowing us to see evolution's track.
• [Referring to Darwin's metaphor for evolution, the tree of life] ... there's more to the history of life than the branching of a tree. Viruses ferry genes from one host to another. Bacteria swap genes inside our bodies, evolving resistance to antibiotics in our own gut. Some 2 billion years ago, one of our single-celled ancestors took in an oxygen-consuming bacterium. That microbe became the thousands of tiny sacs found in each of our cells today, known as mitochondria, that let us breathe oxygen. When genes move this way, it's as if two brances of the tree of life are being grafted together.
• There are 10,000 species of bacteria in a spoonful of dirt, twice as many species as all the mammals in the world.

This article also contains a table comparing Darwin's theory to current findings, here quoted:

Here are the Moon charts for February:

• February 25th: New Moon at 06° Pisces 30′
• A new Moon/U.S.natal comparison chart
• March 11th: Full Moon at 20° Virgo 40′
• A full Moon/U.S.natal comparison chart

This post begins a series that looks at the new and full Moon events as a whole. A reference page is available that explains the basic concepts a little more.

Read more »

Here is a second selection of quotes from recent issues of TIME magazine:

• June 25 2007: "The New Action Heroes" (Michael Grunwald) -- an article on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and how they and other mayors and governors are attacking, and effectively winning on, social issues that the feds won't touch (but should). What caught my attention was this description of gun control:

  To Bloomberg, Washington means gridlock, extremism and pettiness. It's the place where homeland-security funds were "spread out like peanut butter" for political reasons, so that rural states got more per capita than New York. And it's the place that's blocking him from cracking down on illegal guns. In 2005, after a rash of shootings, Bloomberg's aides told him that 90% of the illegal guns used in local crimes came from out of state and that 1% of U.S. gun dealers supplied 60% of its crime guns. And the Bush Administration had stopped tracking the problem; in fact, the GOP Congress had enacted NRA-backed language restricting federal officials from sharing gun-trace information with local police. Bloomberg appealed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales but got the brush-off. So the mayor hired investigators to run stings in gun shops nationwide and sued 27 of the shadiest dealers; a dozen are now under court supervision. He also started Mayors Against Illegal Guns to fight the information-sharing restrictions; the group has recruited more than 220 mayors in a year, but Congress has not reversed the policy. "Ultimately, you have to blame the public," Bloomberg says. "They're not holding Washington accountable."

• July 9 2007: The Growing Dangers of the China Trade (Jyoti Thottam) With recalls of lead-tainted toys and lethal toothpaste, this article is particularly pertinent. We

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also struggling to keep up [as are other federal product-safety agencies]. Shipments of FDA-regulated goods from China have jumped fourfold over the past decade, according to the Congressional Research Service. But the FDA has only 1,317 field investigators for 320 ports of entry. The agency inspects just 0.7% of all imports under its purview, half of what it did 10 years ago. We've dropped our guard.

  Sure, it would be great if the FDA could stamp every import with its seal of approval the way the Department of Agriculture does: meat, poultry and eggs can't be imported without meeting its standards. But David Acheson, who was appointed the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection after the recall of tainted pet food in March, says that kind of monitoring for 16 million shipments of everything from cough syrup to toothpaste would be "too complex and cumbersome."

  So instead the FDA saves its fire for the high-risk goods that have caused health problems. That's what happened in early June with Chinese-made toothpaste. Following 100 deaths in Panama linked to cough syrup containing diethylene glycol (the ingredient had been mislabeled as glycerin, which is harmless), the FDA issued an import alert on all toothpaste made in China, tested the tubes it could find for the toxin and recalled the questionable batches. "Obviously it's not possible for us to test every product that is coming in to make sure it's meeting every standard we have," Acheson says. "It's got to be based on risk."

  That's an efficient use of resources, but it makes the FDA a "tombstone" agency: nothing happens unless someone dies. "Consumers are the canary in the coal mine for this system," says Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "That's not what a government program should do. It should anticipate and prevent problems." ...

  Large global corporations have, for the most part, assumed that responsibility. Nike, the athletic-apparel company, sources 78 million shoes from contract manufacturers in China and requires them, in writing, to meet Nike's standards, says spokesman Alan Marks. When the company recently decided to reduce its environmental impact by using a water-based adhesive in its shoes, Nike added layers of checks to make sure its contractors followed the new specs. Nike's product specialists developed a list of banned substances; there is systematic monitoring in the factory and quality control of the finished products. In some industries, like electronics, manufacturers pay outside-testing outfits such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to fill that role. UL has been testing products like extension cords from Chinese companies for the U.S. market for almost 30 years. ...

• July 16 2007: "Giving the Poor Their Rights" (Madeleine Albright) -- an article about the powerlessness experienced by those *NOT* having a birth certificate, legal address or deeds to their shacks and market stalls. (Something I had never considered before, but intriguing. On the reverse side, having a paper trail gives Big Brother your name and whereabouts--something only someone with a birth certificate can appreciate, I suspect.) Quoting Ms. Albright,

  In Kibera--and in thousands of other urban settlements around the world--poor citizens like Margaret have no legal identity: no birth certificates, legal addresses or deeds to their shacks and market stalls. Without legal documents, they live in constant fear of being evicted by local officials or landlords. Joseph Muturi, 33, who runs a small clothing business in Toi market, says, "We live with the thought that bulldozers can flatten our stalls anytime. I know that in a matter of hours, all this can disappear." ...

  The problem is twofold. Illiteracy is a major reason poor people often choose not to seek the protection of local courts, since in many countries, laws established under colonial rule have never been translated into local languages. When would-be entrepreneurs do set out to legally register a business, they are easily discouraged by the mass of bureaucratic red tape and costly fees. In Egypt, for example, starting a bakery takes 500 days, compliance with 315 laws, visits to 29 agencies and the financial equivalent of 27 times the monthly minimum wage. A recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank in 12 Latin American countries found that only 8% of all enterprises are legally registered and that close to 23 million businesses operate in the shadow economy. The proprietors of these businesses cannot get loans, enforce contracts or expand beyond a personal network of familiar customers and partners.

  As a result, the poor have no choice but to accept insecurity and instability as a way of life. But when governments grant people legal means to control their assets, they empower them to invest and plan for the future. In San Francisco Solano, a barrio outside Buenos Aires, Argentine economists studied the experience of two communities--one that received title to its land in the early 1980s, another that did not. The group of neighbors that had received legal title to its land surpassed the group without title in a range of social indicators, including quality of house construction, education levels and rates of teen pregnancy.

  Our organization is visiting settlements around the world to map out practical paths for change. We are also working with partners like Sheela Patel of Slum Dwellers International, who is helping to relocate more than 23,000 households in Mumbai by organizing communities to present their demands directly to state and municipal governments. The challenge is to replicate that experience globally--to give the poor a platform for demanding legal rights and hold political leaders accountable for responding. The commission is also partnering with CIVICUS, an international alliance dedicated to strengthening citizen action, to put this vital issue on the agenda in the global fight on poverty. You can get involved by visiting our website, where you can vote in a CIVICUS poll.

  ________________________________________________
  Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, and de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, are co-chairs of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor

All of these articles can be found at TIME's archives -- www.time.com. Use the title of the article to search.

Journal entry dated 29 August 2007
Category: Eye on a world becoming

Here is a selection of quotes from current issues of TIME magazine:

• June 4 issue: "How Not to Treat the Guests" (Nathan Thornburgh/Vass) -- an article on guest workers entering the U.S. to work in North Carolina on temporary work visas.

  Garland Fulcher's [of Garland Fulcher Seafood Company] experience proves guest-worker programs don't necessarily keep Mexicans from settling here illegally. More than 10% of the company's 2006 workforce took off to live in the U.S. without returning home to Mexico. "If you want to talk about illegals," says Michelle Noevere, who worked in Garland Fulcher's front office last year, "there's the border, and then there's this foot in the door called a guest-worker program."

  So what's the solution? One clue can be found in the failed amnesty of 1986, widely viewed as the genesis of the current crisis. The moment newly legalized farmworkers realized they had better options, they left for the cities instead of staying in low-paying agriculture jobs. Their exodus from the fields opened the door to an even larger wave of illegal immigration. And that raises the question, Will American agriculture ever pay enough to attract American citizens rather than just illegals? If it did, the newly legalized millions who are currently working in the fields might be inclined to stay there. But paying living wages for farmwork would, of course, require the rest of us to pay a lot more for food, become much more protectionist or both. If the country isn't ready to take those steps, here's an apostasy being whispered by some economists: get rid of large-scale agriculture altogether. England did it and is content to buy the bulk of its food from foreign producers. Less food security, perhaps, but also less need for guest workers. It's a difficult discussion in the U.S., a country that has become addicted to cheap labor. But one thing is certain in North Carolina: the immigration solution of the future isn't even working today.

• June 18 issue: "Corn-powered in Yuma" (Bob Diddlebock/Yuma) -- an article about a small Colorado town preparing to be an alternative-fuel production center. The article closes with this:

  Trent Bushner, a Yuma farmer and county commissioner who grows 1,200 acres of corn on his 3,500-acre spread, says $4 corn brings its own set of problems--higher planting costs, for one, as he busts more sod. But Bushner allows that he can live with that: "Every time we put a gallon of ethanol in our car, that's a gallon of gasoline we're not putting in it that we got from the Middle East." Seems that the view on alternative fuels from down on the farm goes much farther than just over the next ridge.

• June 18 issue: Why Pixar is Better (Richard Corliss/Emeryville) -- an article about Pixar's new release, "Ratatouille" [pronounced rat-a-tooey]

  When he starts work on a movie, Bird [the director] looks for core thoughts. The core here: "Cooks are givers, and rats are takers. In the larger world there are people who are givers and people who are takers. Cooking, feeding people, is a giving act. All art at its best is a giving act that continues to give as long as the art is consumed. As with a cook, you're handing it over to someone to enjoy."

  Toward the end of the movie, Remy whips up his specialty for Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole), a food critic so severe he is known to trembling chefs throughout Paris as the Grim Eater. Ego puts a forkful in his mouth, and in a flash, fond memories--of a loving mother giving him delicious food--play across his face. As Bird describes the moment, "His eyes drift down toward the dish, like, 'Is it this? It is this. I love food again. This is what I was missing.'" A taste of something wonderful can humanize almost any misanthrope, even a critic.

All of these articles can be found at TIME's archives -- www.time.com. Use the title of the article to search.

Journal entry dated 24 July 2007
Category: Eye on a world becoming