Sunday, October 23, 2011
For 30 years Whats New was a Friday thing. Oh, there were delays due to
server problems and stuff but we still put Friday on the dateline. In
2000 a rampaging red-oak (Quercus rubra) attacked Bob while he was jogging,
scrambling both the calendar and Bob. We called the day it went
out Friday. However, the dateline of a column devoted to truth, should
mean something. Henceforth the dateline will show the day WN is actually
sent. But why must it be weekly? God put us on a seven day schedule so
we could have a Fourth Commandment. By now its probably written in our
DNA.
Ten years ago, a brilliant Danish epidemiological study found no link
between mobile phone use and brain cancer (JNCI 2001, 93: 203-7). A
decadal reexamination by Denmarks Institute of Cancer Epidemiology,
released last week, again found no link. The object of the new study was to
look for any evidence of latent cancer that had not yet shown up in 2001;
none was found. In a 2001 JNCI editorial I pointed out that none would be
expected, since microwave radiation is non-ionizing, Park, Robert L, JNCI
2001, 93: 166-167. Can we now put the damned cell-phone/cancer scare
behind us?
The most comprehensive scientific review of historical temperature records
ever carried out seems to remove any lingering doubts. A group of
scientists at the University of California, Berkeley find that the average
global land temperature has risen by about 1C since the mid-1950s. Thats
big. The group has submitted four papers describing their findings to
Geophysical Research Letters. It is unusual to circulate papers prior to
peer review, but Richard Muller, author of "Physics for Future Presidents,"
who heads the project, may have been influenced by the apparent attempts of
the energy industry to corrupt the scientific process, such as the hacking
of private climate-files at the University of East Anglia
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN09/wn121809.html
.
Never a scholar, Steve Jobs didnt understand, or didnt believe, the first
law of science: "Every observable effect has a physical cause." Perhaps
the most profound insight of all time, causality is a total rejection of
the supernatural. According to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, whose
book, Steve Jobs, will be out Monday, Jobs declined surgery when the
cancer was detected and relied instead on acupuncture, herbs and
other "alternative therapies." Eventually he regretted his decision, but
by then the cancer had spread. A week after the world mourned the death of
Steve Jobs, the body of 70 year old Dennis Ritchie was found in his New
Jersey home, where he lived alone. The developer of the Unix Operating
System, Ritchie made Steve Jobs possible.
|
