The Christian Science Monitor - csmonitor.com
 
from the December 20, 2005 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1220/p18s02-hfes.html

A classic two-step: read the book, see the movie
By Robert Klose

My 9-year-old son has "screen-itis" - he is magnetically drawn to anything with a screen, be it the TV, movie theaters, a computer, or his
all-important Game Boy. I do my best to moderate and modulate these attractions, and with some success. The trick has been to give nongraphic activities - particularly books - equal time.

In this light, a while back I began collecting volumes of Illustrated Classic Editions - palm-sized, 1970s and '80s-vintage, pulp condensations of great literature aimed at children. I find them for pennies in used book stores, at yard sales, and in thrift shops. There are, I believe, 24 volumes in the set, of which I have collected 12. They have been a bonanza for my son and me, and have drawn him to our nightly reading with great anticipation.

However, the reading itself didn't quite turn his head. In a flash of inspiration, I proffered a plum: at the end of each book we would watch a film that it had spawned. To seed the effort, I wanted to make sure that the first story we read was a doozy. As I reached for the books on a high shelf, one volume suggested itself by falling on my head: "Moby Dick."
This volunteer was a charm. Anton and I sat on the couch by the crackling warmth of the wood stove. As soon as I began to read - and Anton had heard the words "whaling," "harpoon," and "Queequeg" - he was hooked.

The strategy of these highly distilled books is to eliminate any byways or complicated character developments that do not occupy the straight and narrow of the story line. In the case of "Moby Dick," the rewriter did away with Melville's chapters-long preamble about the history of whaling in New England. He puts Ishmael immediately into that Nantucket inn with the enigmatic Pacific Islander Queequeg, and a-whaling they go.

All along the way, Anton asked questions about the narrative. Why was Ahab so angry? What kind of whales did they hunt? Where is Nantucket? As we read, he snuggled closer to me, his big brown eyes blazing with interest.
When, at last, the story ended with Ishmael afloat on the sea, clinging to Queequeg's coffin, Anton released a sigh, as if he had been holding his breath for the entire length of the book.

And then, for the pi&#E8;ce de r&#E9;sistance, we saw "Moby Dick," starring Gregory Peck and Richard Basehart. We plopped in front of the video with our bowl of popcorn and having already been oriented to the characters and the story through our reading, Anton began to tell me about the progression of the plot, identifying situations and cueing me in on what would happen next. When the film finally came to an end, it was as if we had completed a mission.
"Ready for the next book?" I asked him. He nodded with alacrity. "Then you choose."

Anton went to the bookshelf and, after a few moments' consideration, returned with "The Man in the Iron Mask" by Alexander Dumas. "Oh, this is a good one," I said. "It's about the Three Musketeers."

"Who are they?" my son asked.

" 'One for all and all for one!' " I quoted. "Just remember that." Then I cracked open the volume, and we began to read. Once again, the book went down like honey, and when we finally slipped a video starring Leonardo DiCaprio into the VCR, Anton's first words were, "When will we see D'Artagnon?"
This reading-movie two-step has established a tradition between my son and me that has persisted for several months now. In the interim, we have tackled "Captains Courageous," "Oliver Twist," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," and "Tom Sawyer."

It has been a singular pleasure to be in on a child's first exposure to timeless literature. But beyond this, our enterprise has given me an opportunity to resurrect books that were old friends, books that I might never have reapproached if not for Anton's interest in making this journey together.

The weather report says that tonight will be cold, with high winds and a roving cloud cover. It's also my turn to choose our next reading. Among our dozen neatly shelved Illustrated Classic Editions, only one will fit the predicted atmospheric mood: "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." I hope there will be thunder and lightning. Failing that, we always have the movie to look forward to. The old black-and-white one, starring Fredric March.

I can hardly wait.

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright &#A9; 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright

The Guardian agrees this article in the new Yorker is well worth tracking down--

>The best piece of journalism on the trial is sadly not online. Margaret
>Talbot sat in Harrisburg for the New Yorker and produced one of the
>magazine's 10-page articles on the background to the case and exchanges
>between the judge, lawyers and expert witnesses. You can get a flavour of
>the court from an online Q&A she later took part in with readers.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/...cial_selection.html
Here is the only on-line article--
mpb
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Darwin on Trial
Margaret Talbot discusses Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the first case to test whether it is constitutional for public-school classes to present the argument of intelligent design.
Issue of 2005-12-05
Posted 2005-11-28

This week in the magazine, Margaret Talbot reports from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on the trial of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. In January, the presiding judge, John E. Jones III, will render his verdict and decide whether Dover biology students will be read a four-paragraph statement casting doubt on the validity of Darwinian theory and endorsing intelligent design as an alternative. Here, with Daniel Cappello, Talbot talks about the case, the state of science, and what Americans believe about evolution.

DANIEL CAPPELLO: What first attracted you to the Kitzmiller case?
MARGARET TALBOT: For one thing, it was the first time that the
constitutionality of teaching intelligent design in public schools was going to be tested, so I knew it was going to be an influential decision for the teaching of science in this country and for the ongoing negotiation between the courts and American fundamentalists. For another, I had a sense that there was a dramaaa neighbor-versus-neighbor, even
family-member-versus-family-member, debate about science and
religionataking place within this small Pennsylvania town. I hoped that the trail would open a window onto that, and it did. At one point, one of the plaintiffs testified that her teen-age daughter had come home from school one day, announced, ]Evolution is a lie,^ and demanded, ]What kind of Christian are you?^

What, briefly, is the history of the teaching of evolution? Most Americans know about the Scopes trial, in 1925. What are the other milestones?
Scopes was a young schoolteacher who volunteered to participate in an A.C.L.U. challenge to a law in Tennessee; the law forbade teaching that ]man has descended from a lower order of animal.^ Scopes lost the case, and never appealed it beyond the Tennessee Supreme Court, which upheld the constitutionality of the law but overturned Scopes\s conviction on a technicality. But since then the courts, including the Supreme Court, have consistently held that laws forbidding the teaching of evolution or mandating the teaching of creationism side by side with evolution are unconstitutionalathat they violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment, because they breach the separation of church and state. The key Supreme Court decision in this area was Edwards v. Aguillard, in 1987, in which the Court overturned a Louisiana statute that mandated the teaching of creationism alongside evolution. Scalia wrote a sharp dissent, which is an indicator of how he might vote if an intelligent-design case ever made it to the Court.

And recentlyaas in a Cobb County, Georgia, case involving what you might call ]warning labels^ on high-school biology textbooks, which say that evolution is a theory, not a factacourts have gone further, seeing such invitations to look askance at evolutionary theory as violations of the establishment clause. In that case, the U.S. District Court judge said that the stickers were tacit endorsements of a fundamentalist-Christian viewpoint, even though they did not mention anything explicitly religious.
What is at the crux of Kitzmillerathe validity of evolution or the legality of teaching intelligent design in schools? Or are those two issues impossible to separate?

I think the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools is what is at stakeais it constitutional or not. But, of course, in order to show that intelligent design is not good science, and therefore that it\s unsound pedagogy to be touting it as an alternative to Darwinian evolution, it helps to remind people how broadly supported the theory of evolution is by recent developments across the sciencesain genetics, for example, as well as in paleontology. That was part of the case the plaintiffs\ lawyers madeaquite convincingly, I think.

How does the town of Dover compare to the rest of America, politically, religiously, and demographically?

It sounds pat to say it\s a microcosm, but I think there\s something to that. There\s a joke about Pennsylvania, that it\s Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with southern Alabama in between. Dover itself has
fundamentalist-Christian elements, quite clearly, but it also has people who worry about the influence of fundamentalism, peopleasome of them quite religious themselves, some Republican, some Democrat, some
college-educated, some notawho really believe in the separation of church and state, and really believe in promoting what they see as sound science education, which for them includes a thorough, not a reluctant or halfhearted, grounding in the theory of evolution.

In polls, Americans are divided on evolution. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, for instance, forty-two per cent of Americans said they believed that ]humans and other living things^ have ]existed in present form only^ahave not, in other words, evolved. This is an astonishingly high percentage, and one that obviously reflects American religiosity (and maybe the inadequacy of our science education). Forty-eight per cent said that humans and other living things had evolved over time (though only twenty-six per cent of those said that evolution was through natural selection; eighteen per cent said it was through guidance by a supreme being, and fourteen per cent didn\t know). Dover was divided, too. Its citizens elected a school board that wanted to add intelligent design to the curriculumaand several of whose members were pretty open about their religious motives for doing soaand then they resoundingly voted the board out, on November 8th of this year, fed up, evidently, with how far the board had pushed this agenda, and how much they may have to pay in legal fees if the board loses. Some version of this drama could have taken place almost anywhere in America. I think part of what happens is that while many Americans will acknowledge, in a poll, say, that they personally have a spiritual view of how life on earth developed, some of them may have quite a different feeling when a religious interpretation is grafted forcibly onto a science curriculum.

Has any one of these factors in particularapolitics, religion, ageabeen an indicator for which side of the case Dover residents come down on?
Interestingly, the division didn\t conform neatly to any of these lines. One consistent division I noticed, and that I wrote about, was between people who read and trusted the very good local newspapers (nearby York has two, which is pretty unusual for a small American city these days) and those who just didn\t trust them. The plaintiffs were the newspaper readers; the pro-intelligent-design school-board people were the newspaper rejecters.

Where does this notion of intelligent design come from? Is it merely creationism by another name, or not?

Some notion of intelligent designathat there are things in nature that are so intricately put together that they seem to bear hallmarks of design by a master intelligenceahas been around for a long time. The most recognizable antecedent, perhaps, is the argument for the existence of God made by the Reverend William Paley in the early nineteenth century, in England; for him, the marvels of the human eye were proof of design by a supreme being.
But, in its modern form, it emerged in the nineteen-eighties and nineties as a legally palatable substitute for teaching creationism, which really had its last day in court with Edwards v. Aguillard, in 1987. The courts have made it clear that creationism cannot be taught in the public schools, but until now they have not addressed the possibility that something like intelligent design could be. There is a document called ]The Wedge Strategy,^ which has been circulated on the Internet, which was apparently produced by someone at the Discovery Institute, a pro-intelligent-design think tank based in Seattle. ]The Wedge Strategy^ came up at the trial, and has been extensively written about by Barbara Forrest, a historian of the intelligent-design movement. In that document, the movement\s goal is said to be to ]reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.^
Some of the board members who voted in favor of mandating the teaching of intelligent design in Dover admitted to having no definition of what, exactly, it is. Did you get a sense of why they voted the way they did? Did they view intelligent design merely as a lesson in critical thinking or did they believe in it as a theory?

I would say there was a certain amount of, to put it delicately, disingenuousness in how they presented these arguments in court. Several of the board members said they thought they were promoting good pedagogy, critical thinking, the chance to learn about another theory, and so on. But at the board meetings, one of the members had said, for example, ]Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can\t someone take a stand for Him?^ and ]This country wasn\t founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution. This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such.^ There was evidence presented that they had started off wanting to teach creationism, before they latched on to intelligent design. And, as you say, they didn\t seem to have a particularly sophisticated understandingaor, in some cases, an understanding at allaof intelligent design.
You write that, in the years following the Scopes trial, the battle between evolution and creationism was fought not in courts but in the pages of textbooks, and that the books that minimized Darwin sold better. How is that being played out today?

Yes, one reason there were few court challenges for several decades after Scopes was that textbook publishers got very timid and omitted evolution from biology books. One contemporary estimate was that by 1930, seventy per cent of American high schools were not teaching evolution. And that continued pretty much until the early sixties, when public support for science in America was triggered by Sputnik and competitive anxiety about the Soviets. At that point, the National Science Foundation stepped in and funded an effort to get biologists to write biology textbooks and to put evolution back in. (This is a history that is discussed in a great book titled ]Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Science and Evolution,^ by Edward Larson, who also wrote a fascinating history of the Scopes trial itself, ]Summer for the Gods.^) That, in turn, triggered the first legal challenges to evolution since the twenties.

Now, though textbooks certainly include evolution, a lot of public-school teachers feel that students and parents push them to include alternatives to evolution or even to omit it. In a survey taken last spring by the National Science Teachers Association, for instance, thirty per cent of the teachers respondingamostly high-school teachersasaid they felt pressured to de-emphasize or drop evolution and related topics from their science coursesaa disturbing phenomenon, I think, when you consider how central evolution is to understanding everything from the fossil record to the classification of species, from antibiotic resistance to the commonalities between the human and chimpanzee genomes.

Intelligent-design proponents also tout another approach to the issue, which is the ]teach the controversy^ movement. Can you talk about that a bit?
The Discovery Institute has been a big proponent of that language, which is subtler and perhaps constitutionally safer. The idea is not to say anything as blunt as, ]Intelligent design is a good alternative,^ but, rather, to emphasize criticisms of evolutionary theory. It\s funny, because a lot of people associate ]teaching the controversy^ with the left-wing academy, but now it\s rhetoric associated mainly with trying to introduce doubts about evolution. It sounds kind of appealingathe free marketplace of ideas, let a thousand schools of thought bloom, that sort of thing. But most scientists don\t like it, because they say there is no real debate over the fundamental validity of evolutionary theory, though there are certainly unanswered questions and debate about the relative importance of various mechanisms of evolution. As Steven Gey, a law professor who has written about the intelligent-design movement, said to me, ]It\s like saying we want to be able to teach that the earth is round, but also that it\s flat, that it revolves around the sun, but also that the sun revolves around the earth. Science doesn\t work that way. We know these things are wrong.^
Intelligent-design advocates often present themselves as revolutionary thinkers who are going up against the scientific establishment, and they like to point out that a lot of people thought the big bang was a crazy idea, too. But as evolutionary scientists counter, Well, maybe you do have a revolutionary idea, but, if so, then do the experimental work to prove it, and publish that work in peer-reviewed journals, which the
intelligent-design people have not done. Don\t try to get it taught in high schoolsaeven as part of a ]teach the conflicts^ approachabefore you\ve done the science. ]The interesting question is not whether revolutionary ideas occasionally win out in science^ is how Kenneth Miller, a biologist at Brown, put it at a forum recently. ]The interesting question is, How do revolutionary ideas win out? And the big bang won out because of scientific research, because Arno Penzias [and Robert Wilson] found the background radiation to the big bang. They completed the theory. They stitched it together. It is a predictive theory that said you ought to go out and find this in nature. Now, the curious thing is that the advocates of that theory did not try to get this injected into the curriculum. They did not produce pamphlets on how you could get the big bang taught in your school and avoid the constitutional questions. They did research. They won the scientific battle.^

The trial isn\t over, but the school-board elections seem to give some sense of the community\s feelings about the issue. Evangelicals like Pat Robertson, who denounced Dover as having turned its back on God, aren\t happy about this. Will the debate rage on forever?

Well, maybe not forever, but I don\t think court rulings will quash it, either. It goes back to a very deep division in American historyabetween the Puritans, whose main objective in shaping this country was the desire to implant and live out their faith, and the side represented by Thomas Jefferson, for instance, the sort of Deist, Enlightenment figures who developed the metaphor of the wall of separation between church and state.
At one point, a British documentarian following the trial asked if America has a love-hate relationship with God. How does the rest of the world see a case like this? Or, for that matter, how has America perceived this case?
Well, many Europeans probably see it as another example of bizarre American exceptionalism. There were reporters from around the world at the trial. I met one young journalist from Italy at the Dunkin\ Donuts in Harrisburg, and I couldn\t tell whether he thought Dunkin\ Donuts coffee or a trial about evolution was weirder. But I think there were some great, very American things about this trial, tooathe really standup Doverites, grassroots rationalists, who took this case to court, though they stood nothing to gain financially and some were criticized as atheists when they weren\t; the sensible judge, a Bush appointee and former state liquor-control chairman, with a great sense of humor, an impressive command of the precedent, and a genuine, if slightly bemused, interest in all the science. And the trial was a great, even thrilling, science lessonacivic pedagogy at its best.

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/online/051205on_onlineonly01

Panbanisha the communicative chimpanzee. Intelligent maybe, but now officially ruled to have not been designed.

Judge rules against 'intelligent design'

Staff and agencies
Tuesday December 20, 2005

Guardian Unlimited
A US federal judge today ruled that "intelligent design" - the belief that a higher power, rather than evolution, created life - cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania school district.

The Dover area school board violated the constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include intelligent design (ID), district judge John Jones said.

The policy, adopted in October 2004, is believed to have been the first of its kind in the country.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for the ID policy," Judge Jones wrote in his 139-page judgement.

"It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom."

The board's attorneys said members sought to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, or evolution. Intelligent-design supporters argue that it cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms.

The district was sued by a group of 11 parents who claimed the intelligent design policy was unconstitutional and unscientific and had no place in science classrooms. They argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of creationism, which the courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools.

The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement said Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact", has inexplicable "gaps", and refers students to ID textbook Of Pandas and People for more information.
Mr Jones said advocates of intelligent design "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavours" and that he didn't believe the concept shouldn't be studied and discussed.

"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," he wrote.
The dispute is the latest chapter in a long-running debate over the teaching of evolution dating back to the famous 1925 Scopes monkey trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John Scopes was fined $100 (&#A3;57) for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee supreme court reversed his conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine exceeding $50, and the law was repealed in 1967. Guardian Unlimited &#A9; Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

The decision
http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf


Related Articles

    * <http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=....200>Intelligent Design trial is over
    * 12 November 2005
    * <http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8289>Kansas backs intelligent design in science lessons
    * 09 November 2005
    * <http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825234.300>God goes to court in all but name
    * 31 October 2005

Web Links

    * <http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/ki...er_342.pdf>Judge Jones' decision
    * <http://www.aclu.org/religion/intelligentdesign/>Intelligent design, American Civil Liberties Union
    * <http://www.discovery.org/>The Discovery Institute

>Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 06:00:00 -0900
>To: "ArcticInfo" <arcticinfo@list.arcus.org>
>From: ArcticInfo <arcticinfo@list.arcus.org>
>Subject: Resources Available on Arctic Change - The New York Times
>
>List-Subscribe: <mailto:arcticinfo-on@list.arcus.org>;
>
>Resources Available on Arctic Change
>The New York Times
>
>For further information, please contact:
>Andy Revkin, The New York Times
>E-mail: revkin@nytimes.com
>
>-----------------------------------------
>The New York Times recently co-produced a documentary with Discovery,
>"Arctic Rush," and posted a three-part series on the trajectory and
>consequences of arctic change entitled "The Big Melt." The articles are
>archived at:
>http://www.nytimes.com/earth
>
>To maximize the value of all of this work, particularly in the runup to
>the International Polar Year, the paper is planning to develop a web
>portal archiving its arctic coverage and multimedia packages, including
>some archival stories dating back to the 1850s. A goal is to establish
>web destinations for both college-level and secondary courses focusing
>on the science and significance of high-latitude climate change. A
>prototype arctic web page is in design stages. Other similar pages can
>be explored at http://www.nytimes.com/college and
>http://www.nytimes.com/learning.
>
>Also, Andy Revkin, the environment reporter for The New York Times and
>lead writer of "The Big Melt", has begun doing iSight iChat interactive
>'visits' with undergraduate and graduate classes around the country to
>discuss the series and his three recent visits to the far north: the
>North Pole, North Slope, and Greenland. The interchanges allow students
>to hear a brisk lecture from Revkin and then do a Q&A session. Sessions
>are easy to arrange on any campus with a Mac, an I-Sight camera/mic, AOL
>instant messaging AIM software, and a digital projector. For further
>information and to participate in an interactive visit, contact Andy
>Revkin (revkin@nytimes.com).
>
>Finally, for institutions doing polar-related outreach to the middle
>school or high school level, Revkin has written a book on the once and
>future arctic, to be published this April, called "The North Pole Was
>Here: Puzzles and Perils at the Top of the World." It follows his trip
>to the sea ice with the NSF-funded team running the North Pole
>Environmental Observatory. Details on the book are available at:
>http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalo...?titleNumber=561115
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>ArcticInfo is administered by the Arctic Research Consortium of the
>United States (ARCUS). Please visit us on the World Wide Web at:
><http://www.arcus.org/>;

>
>Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 16:53:49 -0500
>From: Dawn Wiseman <dawn@encs.concordia.ca>
>
>Happy holidays everyone. We hope you all have a wonderful time with
>family and friends over the next few weeks. Before you go off to spend
>time with your loved ones, we wanted to let you know about a new project
>in which we are involved.
>
>NAEP is acting as the information gathering source for a growing network
>of people across the country who are interested in engaging
>Aboriginal young people in math and science. As a first step, we are
>hoping to compile a complete inventory of existing programmes, projects,
>initiatives etc. for Aboriginal children and youth (and their parents
>and communities) which focus on math and science. We are particularly
>interested in programmes which provide means for young people to examine
>both indigenous and western approaches to understanding the world and
>the way it works.
>
>Do the young people in your community participate in any science/math/IK
>focused programme operated by the tribal authority, community centre,
>region, province, school or an enthusiastic local teacher? It could be
>a science fair or camp, a cultural fair, an after school club or a
>community centre group. We know there are many excellent and exciting
>programmes out there, and are hoping to find a way to more effectively
>share information about them.
>
>Please visit the following site to submit information about programmes
>in your local area,
>http://www.nativeaccess.com/teacher1/survey2.php.
>
>There is a deadline of February 10, 2006, 17h00 EST for submission.
>
>In order to encourage your participation in this project, everyone who
>submits a programme to the inventory will be eligible for a drawing for
>a $500 gift certificate from Chapters. Please note that we are
>particularly interested in programmes based in Canada, however,
>programmes based in the US or other countries which allow for
>participation of students from Canada can also be submitted.
>
>All the best,
>Dawn
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Nae mailing list
>Nae@nativeaccess.com
>http://nativeaccess.com/mailman/listinfo/nae_nativeaccess.com

>Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 07:47:26 -0500
>From: Beryl Rosenthal <berylr@MIT.EDU>
>Subject: intelligent design
>
>ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
>Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
>*****************************************************************************
>
> >The following was sent to me by a colleague - I thought you'd all enjoy it.
>
>Beryl
> >------------
> >
>http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/db/2005/12/18/index.html
>--
>Beryl Rosenthal, Ph.D.
>Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs
>MIT Museum

Alaska Dept of Fish & Game

>Never say ADF&G doesn't have a sense of humor - see
>http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/pubs/notebook/.../santasreindeer.php
WHAT'S UP - December 21, 2005 - Compiled Weekly by Peg Tileston
On behalf of the Alaska Women's Environmental Network (AWEN), Alaska Center for the Environment (ACE), and Alaska Conservation Alliance (ACA)

Japanese community works to preserve heritage

Younger generations unite with the elderly to keep traditions alive
By JULIA O'MALLEY
Anchorage Daily News

Published: December 22, 2005
Last Modified: December 22, 2005 at 03:32 AM

Standing in the gym at the Spenard Recreation Center, Alex Sherman, 16, hefted an enormous wooden mallet above his head and brought it down on a glutinous, basketball-sized blob of smashed rice, his Japanese robe billowing.
"Yoi-Sho!" encouraged the men circled around him. One of them spanked the mass with a wet hand. Sherman lifted the mallet and let it fall with another swift, satisfying smack.

Near the year's end for more than a decade, members of Anchorage's Japanese and Japanese-American community have been meeting to beat steamed rice into an elastic paste called mochi. Sunday's turnout at the rec center was the highest yet for the occasion, according to Yoshi Ogawa, president of the Japanese Society of Alaska.

Though more people attended the rice pounding, the character of the group has evolved, reflecting changes in the Japanese community in Anchorage as a whole, Ogawa said.

Once, mostly Japanese citizens living here attended the rice pounding, but now the gym was filled with second- and third-generation Japanese Americans, many who have only one Japanese parent or grandparent. Also attending were non-Japanese students who are studying the language in the local K-12 immersion program and University of Alaska Anchorage classes. Though enthusiasm for the culture is growing, the community of people with direct ties to Japan is in decline, Ogawa said.

"Our numbers have dwindled substantially from when there were many more flights coming through Anchorage with Japanese airlines," Ogawa explained. "We have a hard time trying to run this organization. There just aren't enough bodies to be on the board."

The number of Japanese citizens living here has remained static -- between 500 and 600 people statewide for the last decade, according to the Japanese Consulate -- while the general population and other Asian and Pacific Island-born populations have surged in Alaska, according to the U.S. Census. Asian and Pacific Islanders now make up 9 percent of the city's population, according to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Anchorage's Japanese Consul General office, which represents that nation's interests and assists citizens with travel and other issues, will close after the first of the year. A smaller office, an extension of the Japanese Consulate in Seattle, will replace it. Consulate officials would not give a reason for the closure, but Ogawa said it was further evidence the community has shrunk since the early 1990s when several major air carriers scaled back passenger flights to and from Japan.

Estimates vary because more and more people identify with multiple ethnicities, but the number of Japanese Americans living in Anchorage probably ranges from 1,500 to 2,000, according to Susan Churchill, who is Japanese-American and the executive director of the multi-cultural group Bridge Builders.

A lot of them, she said, "are my middle-aged contemporaries, and most of us don't speak the language," Churchill said. "After the war, our parents thought they were doing us a favor by not teaching us Japanese."

Churchill stood in line with her daughter, Mariko, at a long table covered with foods made from mochi, like luminous dumplings filled with sweet bean paste or nori seaweed rolls. The women came especially for a taste of ozoni, traditional New Year's soup made with vegetables and moon-colored orbs of mochi floating in golden broth.

New Year's is the biggest holiday in Japan, when people clean their houses, pay off debts and eat mochi. Many practice a Shinto tradition of placing stacked mochi patties on an altar to usher in the new year. Eaten fresh with chopsticks, mochi can also be pulled into a taffylike string, making it a symbol of a long life, Ogawa said.

Churchill is part of a generation of Japanese-Americans who were raised to assimilate in a post-war political climate unfriendly to Japanese. Her parents, isolated from the community and carrying fresh memories of the era and American-Japanese internment, didn't pass on traditions.

"I am always looking for a way to connect with my roots," she said. " I don't even know how to cook some of these things."

Chieko Mitchell, 75, sat at a paper-covered table with several older Japanese women, sipping ozono. Originally from Japan, she came to Anchorage with her husband in the 1950s. Her daughter, Carol Mitchell-Springer, and 11-year-old grandson, Will, sat nearby. Like Churchill, Mitchell-Springer doesn't speak Japanese but has found connection with Japan through visits, food and cultural events like rice pounding. She asked her mother why she didn't speak Japanese at home.

"There was no Japanese school here unless I teach you," Mitchell said. "I was too busy. To live in the United States, English is important."
"Issei" is the Japanese word for a first-generation Japanese immigrant. A second-generation with two Japanese parents is called "Nessei," Mitchell explained. There is no Japanese word to describe second- and
third-generation half-Japanese people in America, Mitchell said after discussing it with the older women.

"Maybe mixed-blood," she said.

Mitchell's grandson Will, who is a quarter Japanese, struggles with the question when asked to identify his race at school.

"I check the box that says, 'other'," he said.

Japanese have been in Alaska for more than a century, some of the first coming as prospectors, according Ron Inouye, a Japanese historian at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In Anchorage, members of the military returned with Japanese brides after World War II, and another influx of Japanese came with international flights and shipping in the 1970s and '80s. Japanese investment in natural resources and tourism also brought families to the city, he said.

As mixed marriages became increasingly common during the second half of the century, so did a longing among second-generation half-Japanese children to connect with culture. Traditional-style rice pounding, for example, isn't done too often in Japan anymore, Inouye said. More often, mochi is made by machine or bought at stores.

"Usually, the old people from Japan want to use the machine because it's easier," he said. "The younger ones want to make it the old-fashioned way because it is romantic."

The newest generations of Japanese-Americans -- those in their teens, 20s and 30s -- see themselves differently from how their parents did, Inouye said. Now, it's more common for them to speak Japanese. Postwar wounds seem to be healing within an emerging mixed-race culture, he said.

"If you look at the ads and the media, there's a certain pizazz about being mixed when it used to be something of shame," he said. "There is a new generation now riding the crest of that. They take pride in learning about both cultures."

That's true for 16-year-old Sherman, whose mother is Japanese. He speaks the language and has made trips to the country.

"Keeping old tradition is important. It builds character," he said. "Right now I am trying to learn everything possible."

Daily News reporter Julia O'Malley can be reached at jomalley@adn.com or 257-4325."
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7306053p-7217772c.html

Tsunami: Mangroves 'saved lives'
By Mark Kinver
BBC News science and nature reporter

Healthy mangrove forests helped save lives in the Asia tsunami disaster, a new report has said.

The World Conservation Union (IUCN) compared the death toll from two villages in Sri Lanka that were hit by the devastating giant waves.
Two people died in the settlement with dense mangrove and scrub forest, while up to 6,000 people died in the village without similar vegetation.
Many forests in the past were felled to build prawn farms and tourist resorts.
The IUCN said it showed that healthy ecosystems acted as natural barriers.
"It saved a lot of lives as well as properties," said Vimukthi Weeratunga, the union's biodiversity coordinator in Sri Lanka.

"We have carried an out ecological assessment of the damage caused by the tsunami. In some areas the damage was very minimal, and mangrove vegetation had played a role."

Research has shown mangroves are able to absorb between 70-90% of the energy from a normal wave.

There is, however, no reliable data on how the trees mitigate the impact of a tsunami.

Many people living in coastal areas now want to see their communities benefit from the apparent protection offered by mangrove forests.
"People tend to respect these natural barriers even more, especially after the tsunami," Mr Weeratunga said.

"Now everyone is keen to plant a lot of mangroves in the coastal areas but unfortunately we cannot plant mangroves everywhere."

Slow recovery

Coral reefs were also in the direct path of the tsunami. Fears for these ecosystems were allayed after initial surveys found that there had not been widespread, long-term damage.

But they did not escape unharmed. Debris and silt from the shore was washed out to sea and covered the reefs.

Twelve months later, the IUCN has found that reefs which were in good shape before the waves struck are recovering much more quickly than degraded sites.
Lucy Emerton, head of the union's ecosystems and livelihoods group in Asia, explained why.

"Healthy coral reefs are much more robust in terms of recovering from either natural or man-made disasters," she told the BBC News website.
"Physically, you see a beautiful coral reef that is coming back to life rather than one that is still smothered in debris."

Many of the reefs in the Indian Ocean had been damaged from dynamite fishing, coral mining and bleaching.

The protection that healthy marine and coastal ecosystems provided during the disaster highlighted the need for effective environmental policies, Ms Emerton said.

"It was immediately obvious what an important role mangrove forests, wetlands and coral reefs played in mitigating the impact [of the tsunami]," she argued.

"It has led to a real step forward in looking at integrated coastal management systems."

She said strong conservation laws already existed but there had been questions about how effective they had been enforced.

One example of a local government flexing its conservation muscles is the recent declaration to establish two new turtle sanctuaries in southern Sri Lanka.

Elsewhere, four international conservation groups, led by Wetlands International, have launched a project called Green Coast.

Working alongside local governments and construction companies, the project hopes to rehabilitate the habitat in areas affected by the disaster.
Fishing fears

Both mangrove forests and coral reefs found in coastal areas provide vital protection and breeding grounds for fish - a key source of income and nutrition for people in the region.

A report published by the Malaysian-based WorldFish Center has warned that misplaced investment by donors could do more harm than good in the long term.
When the giant waves swept inland in December 2004, between 80-90% of the fishing fleet was destroyed.

This prompted a massive effort by the international community to replace lost vessels and gear.

While welcoming the overwhelming response, the centre's director general, Stephen Hall, said it was important for donors to coordinate their efforts with the governments.

"There is a real danger that we are going to set these communities back on the downward spiral of unsustainable fish stocks," he said.

"The Indonesian government estimates that 10,500 boats were lost [in Aceh]. Of those, around 2,500 were repaired. Recent estimates put the number of boats that have been built or in the process of being built at around 10,800.
"So we now have 2,800 more boats than we started with."

Dr Hall said this created the potential to place even greater pressure on already overexploited stocks.

This view is shared by the IUCN's Vimukthi Weeratunga.

"Immediately after the tsunami, a lot of the NGOs and other well wishers were distributing boats.

"But we saw the distribution of too many boats and an increase in fishing."
Latest figures from the UN Farming and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show fish catches in Aceh for 2005 are down 41% for marine fishing and 26% for brackish water aquaculture.

Balancing act

The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) published a report in November highlighting the challenges of meeting the demands of the mammoth relief effort without exacerbating the damage to the environment.
It warned that haphazard groundwater extraction, unsanitary disposal of waste, chaotic rebuilding of homes and unsustainable timber harvesting could result in more environmental damage, leading to an increase in poverty and greater vulnerability to future disasters.

A number of agencies, including the FAO and Unep, are working closely with the governments of nations affected by the disaster.

Help is being provided in a number of areas, such as offering technical assistance to overstretched environment ministries and coordinating the mobilisation of funding.

As attention begins to focus on the future, Vimukthi Weeratunga warns that there are no quick fixes when it comes to repairing the environmental damage.
"It will take five to seven years, at least, to get to the pre-tsunami stage - and that is a conservative estimate."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/4547032.stm

Published: 2005/12/25 07:56:34 GMT

&#A9; BBC MMV

For saving about 100 tourists in Thailand in last year's tsunami, Tilly Smith was named "Child of the Year" by the French magazine Mon Quotidien. While on vacation, the British schoolgirl, now 11, told her parents she saw "bubbling on the water ... and foam sizzling just like a frying pan" that indicated a tsunami was nearing. She had been studying tsunamis in geography class in Oxshott, south of London, before her trip. After the discovery, her parents told the staff at the Marriott where they were staying. Soon thereafter, the beach was evacuated. It was one of the few beaches in Phuket, Thailand, where no one was killed or seriously injured. Smith and her family were expected to return to Thailand for Monday's anniversary.

Permafrost-thawing concern deepens

checkout the graphic (reposted here
http://img431.imageshack.us/my.php?image=63925permafrost8rw.gif)

and the follow up resources ADN provides

<http://www.acia.uaf.edu/>The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (UAF)
<http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/Permafros....html>University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute Permafrost Laboratory

<http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/per...t.shtml>National Center for Atmospheric Research press release

<http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL025080.shtml>;"A projection of severe near-surface permafrost degradation during the 21st century," abstract published in Geophysical Research

==========================================
Anchorage Daily News
  http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7312148p-7223885c.html

Permafrost-thawing concern deepens
PERMAFROST: Computer scenario shows rising temperatures could melt top 11 feet in Alaska by 2100.

By DOUG O'HARRA
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: December 25, 2005)

Warming temperatures could melt the top 11 feet of permafrost in Alaska by the end of the century -- damaging roads and buildings with sinkholes, transforming forest and tundra into swamps, and releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the air.

This meltdown forecast comes amid other signals that Arctic climate has been changing fast: shrinking sea ice cover, warmer temperatures and shifting vegetation.

A new federal study released last week applied one of the most
sophisticated supercomputer climate models ever developed to the future of permafrost. The results were startling.

Under the most extreme scenario, global warming could thaw the top 11 feet of permafrost near the ground surface in most areas of the Northern Hemisphere by 2100, altering ecosystems across Alaska, Canada and Russia on a scale unseen for thousands of years.

And then it gets worse.

Methane and carbon dioxide gas could ooze from the soggy dirt and peat, triggering even faster warming.

"If that much near-surface permafrost thaws, it could release considerable amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and that could amplify global warming," said lead author David Lawrence, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "We could be underestimating the rate of global temperature increase.

"I think this is another piece of evidence that says we should be considering actions" to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, Lawrence said.
But a leading permafrost researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks disagrees that the thaw could be so large. Alaska's permafrost won't melt that deep or that fast, said Vladimir Romanovsky, who monitors the world's most extensive network of permafrost observatories for the Geophysical Institute.

If air temperatures increase 2 to 4 degrees over the next century, permafrost will definitely begin thawing south of the Brooks Range and start degrading in some places on Alaska's Arctic slope, he said. But a prediction that melting will reach 10 to 11 feet deep over the entire region goes too far, he said.

The computer climate model didn't take into account some natural factors that tend to keep the permafrost cold, Romanovsky said. Deeper permafrost, largely untouched by recent warming at the surface, will have an influence, for instance.

Lawrence said he hopes to collaborate with Romanovsky to fine-tune future work-ups to deal with those deeper layers.

"We'd be excited to work with Vladimir or other scientists like him to improve our modeling," he said.

Permafrost -- earth that remains frozen year-round -- underlies much of Alaska, Canada and Siberia. Intermittent through Interior forests and southern Alaska, permafrost can be more than 1,000 feet deep on the Arctic slope.

Even with his reservations about predictions of widespread permafrost meltdown, Romanovsky agrees that conditions have begun to shift. He's been monitoring the collapses of permafrost caused by human disturbances near his home outside Fairbanks.

During the past few years, permafrost has been flirting with some of the warmest conditions since the ice age ended 10,000 years ago. The record warmth of summer 2004, followed by insulating snows, kept some soil from refreezing all the way down to permafrost over the winter, Romanovsky said.
"That was the first time we saw that on many sites," he said. "It was very unusual."

Then, last summer, with continued warm temperatures, the active layer of thawing earth extended 6 inches deeper into the ground than normal, Romanovsky said.

Such ground melting is only one clue that Arctic climate change may be speeding up. In September, the polar ice cap shrank to its smallest extent in 25 years of satellite monitoring. Tundra has been greening up, with shrubs moving north. Spruce forests are ailing, dry and burned by extensive forest fires. NASA recently reported that 2005 may beat 1998 as the Earth's warmest year on record.

The new permafrost simulations came from some of the most detailed climate models ever made, Lawrence said. Using supercomputers in the United States and Japan, it calculated how frozen soil would interact with air temperatures, snow, sea ice changes and other processes over time. He and his co-author, Andrew Slater from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, analyzed multiple runs of the simulation, viewing virtual permafrost processes over thousands of years.

The study was published Dec. 17 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and presented earlier in the month at a science conference in San Francisco.
Creating 100 years in cyberspace took about three months of computer time in the real world, Lawrence said.

"This is the state-of-the-art global climate model," he said.

The simulations used the high and the low estimates of how much greenhouse gas will be released into the atmosphere by human activity over the next 100 years, as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Under the worst-case emission scenario, land area with permafrost reaching within about 11 feet of the surface shrinks from about 4 million square miles to 1 million square miles by 2050. By 2100, the near-surface permafrost is practically gone.

Even with the least catastrophic low-emission scenario, the area with permafrost near the surface shrinks by more than 60 percent, to about 1.5 million square miles in 2100. By comparison, all of Alaska covers about 586,000 square miles.

This vast increase in mushy, water-saturated soil will release huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the air and increase the run-off of water into the Arctic Ocean by 28 percent, the scientists said.

Daily News reporter Doug O'Harra can be reached at do'harra@adn.com.



Copyright &#A9; 2005 The Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com)

The Christmas Bird Count, done by amateurs, is a very useful scientific tool. The Cornell Lab has more info. http://birds.cornell.edu/

Startling starling numbers appear in bird count
http://www.adn.com/life/story/7315279p-7227083c.html
Anchorage Daily News

AUDUBON: Invasive species has spread since its U.S. arrival in 1890s.
By GEORGE BRYSON
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: December 27, 2005)

Look out, Anchorage woodpeckers. The starlings are coming -- and they just might be admiring your homes.

Local birders who participated in the recent 2005 Anchorage Christmas Bird Count noted a sharp increase in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), a sometimes aggressive species that's relatively new to Alaska.

Only three starlings were spotted in town a decade ago during the 1995 Christmas bird count, according to the local chapter of the National Audubon Society, which sponsors the annual survey.

Last year, there were 35. But observers who joined the Dec. 17 count found 156 European starlings, almost four times the old record.

That's not very welcome news, said Alaska Audubon director Stan Senner. Starlings were artificially introduced to North America and compete fiercely with local birds.

"They're pretty much a pest species," Senner said. "They nest in holes in trees and buildings, and they displace native birds, particularly woodpeckers -- like flickers -- out of their natural cavities."

You can blame Shakespeare for that, or at least the people who used to love him.

According to the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, all the European starlings in North America -- which now number about 200 million -- are descendants of about 100 original starlings that were introduced into New York City's Central Park in the early 1890s by a society dedicated to bringing to America all the birds ever mentioned in the works of Shakespeare.
(Through dozens of plays and more than 150 sonnets, the great English bard reportedly laced his work with more than 600 references to birds, including the swan, bunting, cock, dove, robin, sparrow, nightingale, swallow, thrush, wren ... and starling -- to name only a few.)

It took a century for the first starlings to reach Anchorage. But now, local birders are bracing for a boom.

"We're still talking about only a few hundred starlings in town; we're not talking about thousands and thousands," Senner said. "But once they get a foothold, they do tend to expand."

Also increasing in this year's Christmas count were several species of waterfowl, including a record number of northern pintails (33), Barrow's goldeneye (13) and a slew of mallards (2,308) -- about a thousand more than last year, but short of the mallard record (3,351).

This might be partly attributable to climate change and warmer winter temperatures, Senner said. The number of mallards over-wintering in Alaska has been growing statewide in recent years.

"I was over at Bean's Cafe the other day, and there were a whole bunch of them in the parking lot," he said. "So they're supplying food for fowl as well as people."

Warmer winters might also explain the growing incidence of normally migrating songbirds, such as robins, 24 (compared to the Christmas count average of 13), and red-breasted nuthatches, 194 (compared to the average of 95).

"You go back here 30 years in the Christmas count, and you couldn't buy a red-breasted nuthatch," Senner said. "Now they're even recording them in Fairbanks."

On the downside, Anchorage observers failed to spot a single ptarmigan (compared to 25 on average) or a rusty blackbird (8 on average) -- a species recently added to Audubon's list of Alaska birds at risk.
Also down were the number of seagulls, 1 (compared to more than 100 on average), though Senner said the average is skewed by high counts of seagulls that were recorded in the pre-1990s when Anchorage had uncovered landfills that attracted gulls even in the winter.

Overall, the number of total bird species observed (43) was above average (33) but short of the record (52).

Similarly, the number of individual birds counted (13,325) was above average (8,142) but well short of the record (26,521) set last year.
The big decline is almost entirely explained by the relative absence of some of Anchorage's most abundant winter birds, the common redpolls, 296 (compared to 1,365 on average), and Bohemian waxwings, 5,823 -- which bettered the Bohemian average (2,671) but fell well short of last year's record (11,415).

"That doesn't necessarily mean anything in the way of a decline or problems for (waxwings)," Senner said. "They're what we call an eruptive species. They come and they go, and their numbers fluctuate widely. This was simply a low number."

Assisting in the Christmas bird count this year were 118 volunteer observers, about 14 fewer than last year, who canvassed the 176-square-mile expanse of the official Anchorage counting zone, a circle 15 miles in diameter.
Daily News reporter George Bryson can be reached at gbryson@adn.com.
Copyright &#A9; 2005 The Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com)

Harry Potter casts a spell on accident prone children

BMJ 2005;331:1505-1506 (24 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7531.1505
Stephen Gwilym, specialist registrar1, Dominic P J Howard, senior house officer1, Nev Davies, specialist registrar1, Keith Willett, consultant1 1 Department of Orthopaedic Trauma Surgery, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DU

Correspondence to: S Gwilym s_gwilym@yahoo.com

In the infancy of this millennium two things are certain: children injure themselves on the latest "craze" and children will (probably) read the Harry Potter books. Previous reports have highlighted the impact of emerging crazes such as inline skating and microscooters, with attention being drawn to potential accident prevention and emerging patterns of injury.
One modern craze is the Harry Potter series of books and films. In the United Kingdom sales of the latest Harry Potter book, The Half-Blood Prince, are estimated to reach four million, with around three million volumes being sold in the first week.

Given the lack of horizontal velocity, height, wheels, or sharp edges associated with this particular craze we were interested to investigate the impact the Harry Potter books had on children's traumatic injuries during the peak of their use.

Methods and results

We undertook a retrospective review of all children aged 7-15 who attended our emergency department with musculoskeletal injuries over the summer months of a three year period. Weekend admissions were counted as those occurring between 8 am on Saturday and 8 am on Monday. The age range was based on that of reading competence on the advice of an educationalist.
The launch dates of the two most recent Harry Potter booksaThe Order of the Phoenix1 and The Half-Blood Prince2awere Saturday 21 June 2003 and Saturday 16 July 2005. We compared the numbers of admissions for these weekends with those for surrounding summer weekends and those dates in previous years.
We obtained data from the MetOffice3 (www.metoffice.gov.uk) to establish weather conditions recorded for each of the identified weekends at the closest weather station (Brize Norton) to our hospital. This allowed us to adjust for weather as a confounding variable if necessary.

The figure shows the weekend attendance to our emergency department in June and July between 2003 and 2005. The mean attendance rate for children aged 7-15 years during the control weekends was 67.4 (SD 10.4). For the two intervention weekends the attendance rates were 36 and 37 (mean 36.5, SD 0.7). This represents a significant decrease in attendances on the intervention weekends, as both are greater than two SD from the mean control attendance rate and an unpaired t test gives a t value of 14.2 (P < 0.0001). At no other point during the three year surveillance period was attendance that low. MetOffice data suggested no confounding effect of weather conditions.

What is already known on this topic

Traumatic childhood injuries are a serious source of mortality and morbidity
There is a seasonal variation in the incidence of injuries in muggle children, with the highest numbers occurring during periods of longest daylight, warm weather, and school holidays

What this study adds

Releasing Harry Potter books seems to reduce the incidence of traumatic injuries in children

Comment

Harry Potter books seem to protect children from traumatic injuries. Fashionable or "craze" activities have previously undoubtedly contributed to the two million children who attend emergency departments with traumatic injuries each year. Organisations such as the Child Accident Prevention trust (www.capt.org.uk) and Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (www.rospa.org.uk) have yet to recognise the potential benefit of this new pursuit.

To date no research has addressed the option of "distraction therapy" to prevent traumatic injuries. Alternative strategies such as "restraint therapy" and "pharmacological modification'" have been considered and abandoned on ethical grounds. Distraction therapy has been used
successfully in settings such as painful clinical procedures with good effect.
We observed a significant fall in the numbers of attendees to the emergency department on the weekends that of the two most recent Harry Potter books were released. Both these weekends were in mid-summer with good weather. It may therefore be hypothesised that there is a place for a committee of safety conscious, talented writers who could produce high quality books for the purpose of injury prevention.

Potential problems with this project would include an unpredictable increase in childhood obesity, rickets, and loss of cardiovascular fitness.
Contributors: KW conjured up the original idea for the work having experienced a quiet on-call weekend, then witnessing three of his children "petrified" on the sofa. DPJH and ND are wizards with numbers. SG wrote the paper and performed a spell check. DPJH is guarantor.

Funding: None.

Competing interests: KW has five children and has spent many summer days in the emergency department. SG, DPJH, and ND have no children but each have a pet owl.

Ethical approval: Not required.

References

    1. Rowling JK. Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.
    2. Rowling JK. Harry Potter and the half-blood prince. London: Bloomsbury, 2005.
    3. The Met office. www.met-office.gov.uk (accessed 4 Sep 2005).
(Accepted 22 November 2005)

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/331/7531/1505?etoc

Ten websites you shouldn't miss
 
from the December 29, 2005 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1229/p14s02-stct.html


By Jim Regan | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

In the seven years I've been writing website reviews for the Online Edition of the Monitor (www.csmonitor.com), the most common question I'm asked is: "How do you decide which sites to review?"

The answer is an easy one: "I don't know. I guess I look for the good ones."
I've submitted more than 300 reviews since 1998, so it might be reasonable to assume that I know what I'm looking for. In truth, all I can really say is that I'm looking for a site that contains some element that holds my interest or sets it apart. Naturally, all this makes it rather difficult to point out any patterns or purpose behind my choices, as this selection of 10 of the best sites from 2005 illustrates:
Google Maps

http://maps.google.com

This site takes the prize for having the biggest impact on the Web this year. A practical tool that's probably used more for entertainment than any genuine need to locate addresses, GoogleMaps created a minor cartographic arms race between developers in 2005. Its capabilities are evolving at such a pace that there's a blog (www.googlemapsmania.blogspot.com) dedicated entirely to that single application.

The Theban Mapping Project

www.thebanmappingproject.com

A recent redesign has made this archeological website spectacular. With interactive maps of every known tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, an interactive and narrated "walk-through" of one of the better-documented tombs, and an interface that manages to keep everything straight, the Theban Mapping Project is probably the most impressive website I've encountered.
Future Vision

www.vodafone.com/flash/futures

Vodafone's website takes an optimistic look - with obvious commercial motives - at future wireless technologies and the roles they might play in daily life. But this project's high-tech mode of exploration and presentation were even more important than its predictions. Future Vision was an engaging example of pushing the Web interface envelope for its own sake. Unusual Articles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:UA

At the other extreme, Wikipedia's website was chosen strictly on the basis of content. With essays covering everything from "Apollo Moon Landing Hoax Theories" to "Extreme Ironing," to the scientific study of "Navel Lint," Wikipedia doesn't need flashy displays to hold the surfer's attention. McGonagall Online

www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk

This site was also chosen purely because of content - in this case, the works of a man Scots embrace as The World's Worst Poet. (e.g. "A chicken is a noble beast, The cow is much forlorner; Standing in the pouring rain, With a leg at every corner.")
300 Treasures

http://gemeentearchief.amsterdam.nl/schatk...atten/index.en.html
I can't say I was looking for anything in particular when I found this site for Amsterdam's municipal archive. Viewing tax assessments didn't seem like choice subject matter, but as I explored, the artifacts on display (including letters from Oliver Cromwell and Charlie Chaplin, a 1942 report of the theft of Anne Frank's bicycle, and a 1950s pop hit about Amsterdam's canals) made for a fascinating tour.
Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704

www.1704.deerfield.history.museum

This site demonstrates a "made in heaven" marriage between project goals and Web capabilities, as it recounts an attack on the English settlement of Deerfield, Mass., three centuries ago. Using Flash interactives to permit parallel accounts from the perspectives of all five native and European cultures involved in the raid, Deerfield uses the advantages of the Web to show that there can be more than two sides to any story.
Library Thing

www.librarything.com

Here's an example of the Web offering something you probably never knew you needed: the ability to catalog your books and then store or share your anthology online. More than 1 million books have been cataloged on the site since its launch Aug. 29.
The Tofte Project

www.tofteproject.org

This site uses the Web to spread the word about sustainable architecture. Even its design is soothing as it presents a cabin home so efficient that, in the summer, it generates more power than it uses.
The Monitcello Explorer

http://explorer.monticello.org/

With 3-D tours of Thomas Jefferson's estate, this site offers an extensive survey of a more traditional property. Explorer was as impressive for its ease of navigation as for the quality of its interactive tours.

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

www.csmonitor.com | Copyright &#A9; 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
For permission to reprint/republish this article, please email Copyright

Language affects half of what the human eye sees


Language affects 'half of vision'
Language affects half of what the human eye sees, a study suggests.
University of California researchers tested the hypothesis that language plays a role in perception by carrying out a series of colour tests.
They found that people were able to identify colours faster in their right visual field than in their left.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study said it was because the right field is processed in the brain area responsible for language.

The theory that language impacts on perception forms part of the Whorf hypothesis, which states there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.

For example, speakers of English judge colours that straddle the green/blue boundary as less similar than speakers of Tarahumara, a language spoken in Mexico which does not have separate words for the colours.

The researchers thought that if language was to have this affect it would only do so on the right of their visual field because of the way the brain handles language.

They asked 13 people to identify a colour on a square among a group of other squares all of which were the same colour.

In one test the squares were all shades of blue, with one square being a different shade.

In the second test there was two colours used, blue and green. The participants were quicker in the second test at identifying the different colour square when it was in their right field of vision - to the right of their head.

There was no difference in speed in the first test, suggesting because the colours had a different name in the second test the mind was able to identify the colour more quickly when it was seen in a certain field of vision.
To reinforce the findings, the team carried out the tests again but asked the participants to silently rehearse an eight-digit number in a bid to interfere with the language function of the brain.

The results showed that the differences between the two field decreased.
The researchers said the findings supported the Whorf hypothesis, but only in the right visual field.

Report co-author Aubrey Gilbert said: "Previous studies addressing the possible influence of language on perception have tended to look for a simple yes or no answer to the question.

"Our findings suggest a more complex picture, based on the functional organisation of the brain."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/4555052.stm

Published: 2005/12/27 08:33:43 GMT

&#A9; BBC MMV