A silver lining

The plot to blow up a bomb packed in laser printer cartridges and sent via an airmail package fortunately failed. Because the trigger may have been a cell phone, this incident may result in the cancellation of plans to provide Wi-Fi and cell phone access to people on planes.

While the lack of Wi-Fi access is a minor inconvenience, not allowing cell phones on planes is a great relief. I had always viewed with horror the thought of being trapped next to a passenger who yakked loudly on a cell phone for the duration of a flight.

Why do so many birds die by flying into power lines?

This was a puzzle and attempts to make the power lines more visible failed. Apparently the answer is that birds have blind spots in their field of vision that make the power lines ‘invisible’ to them, due to the way they have evolved to become successful foragers.

Although the heavy bustard differs greatly in general body shape from the delicate crane and stork, the birds share a foraging technique – visually guiding their bill to take food items.

This technique requires excellent vision at the end of the bill, resulting in a narrow field of vision and wide “blind spots”.

“Once we saw the wisdom of looking at the problem through birds’ eyes rather than human eyes, it all made sense,” says Professor Graham Martin.

“These birds can see straight ahead in flight but they only need to pitch their heads forward by a small amount and they will be blind in the direction of travel.”

Many species of bird have been observed looking down during flight, possibly to locate fellow birds and suitable foraging and nesting sites.

Narrow binocular fields combined with birds’ tendencies to look down effectively means certain species cannot see power lines until it is too late.

It is sad that there seems to be nothing we can do about it.

A morally bankrupt pundit class

David Broder, the so-called ‘dean’ of the US pundit class, suggests that Barack Obama should go to war with Iran in order to boost the economy and his re-election chances. Stephen Walt provides the required dissection of this insanity.

Jonah Goldberg wonders why Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has not already been murdered by US security forces. He even specifies that Assange should be ‘garroted’. Goldberg’s barbaric nature is, of course, well documented. It does not matter how many times people like Juan Cole slap him down, he resurfaces.

Our keyboard commandos are always willing to send other people to their deaths to compensate for some weird sense of personal inadequacy. And our major media continue to publish them.

Alcohol more harmful to society than heroin?

The former chief drug advisor to the UK government, who was sacked from that post in 2009, has published a study that examines the harm to the individual and to society of various drugs.

alcohol.gif

Heroin, crack cocaine, and crystal meth are the most harmful to individual users but the widespread use (and abuse) of alcohol is what makes it the most harmful to society, followed by heroin and crack cocaine.

Understanding the ‘bad’ choices of poor people

In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell writes in chapter 6 about how government and social service agencies calculate carefully how much money should be given as public assistance to be sufficient, with careful budgeting, to purchase enough wholesome food to meet their nutritional needs. However, the actual choices of the poor, with its outlays on alcohol, tobacco and sweets, would appall social workers. These better-off people would scold the miners and their families for wasting their money on what should be considered luxuries, when their basic nutritional needs were not being taken care of first.
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File this under ‘Clueless’

The September 2010 issue of Awake!, the magazine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has an article titled Is Atheism on the March? that says right at the beginning:

A new group of atheists has arisen in society. Called the new atheists, they are not content to keep their views to themselves.

I have written before about the absurdity of religious people complaining about the new/unapologetic atheists not keeping quiet about their disbelief when we are swamped with religious messages. But coming from a group that actually comes to your door to proselytize, this surely must win the prize for lack of self-awareness.