Indigenous Cases of Leprosy Found in the United States

Everything I know about Leprosy, I got from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Thomas Covenant, the protagonist of the fantasy series suffers from leprosy and Stephen Donaldson, the author, had to go into a certain amount of detail about the disease to establish the character’s background. Since the books were written back in the late 1970’s, it is no surprise that my information is out of date. So I was interested to read this article.

In the Chronicles, Covenant’s doctors told him that the method of transmission was unknown. It seems that they have established that leprosy is transmitted from person to person and even from armadillos. Covenant was also told that there was no cure, only treatments to halt the spread of the disease. According to the article, leprosy can be cured with antibiotics and the patient, Jose Ramirez is disease free.

Science and the EPA Administrator

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson spoke at the Power Shift 2011 conference. She had this to say about the role of science in her administration;

Let’s take a minute to look at a little bit of the road over the past two years. We restored science to its rightful place as the backbone of everything the Environmental Protection Agency does. And that includes the science of climate change. We are using that science to take action on climate change.

No, no, no. Like so many on the Left, Ms. Jackson is using science as an Authority for political action. The problem is that science is not an infallible Authority, but rather is a method for asking the questions. Anyone who states that the science is settled is either misinformed or being deceptive. the science is never settled and any hypothesis in only as good as the last experiment or observation. In this light, I would like to quote the late, great Richard Feynman. At his 1974 Caltech Commencement address he referred to “cargo cult science” and had this to say;

But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school–we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty–a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid–not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked–to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated. Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can–if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong–to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition. In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

If Ms. Jackson were really interested in bringing science to the EPA, she would adopt this skeptical attitude and insist on the most rigorous testing of every assumption or hypothesis that the EPA uses to formulate policy. I don’t see that happening.

Scientists Abuzz Over Controversial Rumor that God Particle Has Been Detected

Here’s something incredible from the world of science.

A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world’s largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the “God particle.”

The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It’s not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean — but the note already has researchers talking.

The Higgs boson is believed to be what gives matter its mass. It is the only elementary particle of the Standard Model which has not been detected yet, because it is so massive. Physicists are hoping that the Large Hadron Collider will be able to detect it. If this rumor is true than they have succeeded.

One thing though, I don’t much care for the habit of referring to the Higgs Boson as the “God Particle”. It seems somehow disrespectful.

I Hate the Squiggly Light Bulbs

I have always hated the compact fluorescent light bulbs. I don’t like the quality of light they give off. I don’t like the harsher bluer light as opposed to the warmer oranger light of the incandescent light bulb. I don’t like the way they gradually warm up. And now it seems that they’re a health hazard.

Their report advises that the bulbs should not be left on for extended periods, particularly near someone’s head, as they emit poisonous materials when switched on.

Peter Braun, who carried out the tests at the Berlin’s Alab Laboratory, said: “For such carcinogenic substances it is important they are kept as far away as possible from the human environment.”

The bulbs are already widely used in the UK following EU direction to phase out traditional incandescent lighting by the end of this year.

But the German scientists claimed that several carcinogenic chemicals and toxins were released when the environmentally-friendly compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) were switched on, including phenol, naphthalene and styrene.

Oh, and they might cause breast cancer too.

But it’s all worth it to save the world from global warming, or climate change, or whatever they’re calling this week.

Gloomy Greens

Back from his trip to Brazil, Walter Russel Mead has some rather harsh words to say about the Greens and their stupidity.

I went to Rio in 1992 for the environmental summit, the disastrous meeting that focused the world’s attention on the first giant misstep of the climate change movement: the misbegotten Kyoto Protocol that consumed two decades of green political energy around the world, alienated the United States from its European allies and at great cost achieved absolutely nothing worthwhile.  Global warming was not slowed, greenhouse gas emissions were essentially unaffected, green credibility took the first in a series of crippling hits, and opposition in the US to the global green agenda hardened.

That’s what happens when green Malthusian panic meets the political system.  At Rio back in 1992 I first began to dimly suspect what now seems sadly clear: that green political activists are afflicted with a kind of reverse Midas curse.  Whatever they touch turns to — compost.

In the twenty years I’ve been tracking the global green movement since the Rio summit,  the scientific evidence for climate change, still controversial and incomplete, became more convincing — even as the evidence that the environmental movement is headless and clueless became overwhelming. There is far more evidence that environmentalists in general have no idea how to address climate change than there is that the climate is actually changing.  Between the greenhouse gasses emitted by green activists globetrotting to international conferences and the unexpected side effects of green policy fiascoes (like the ethanol from corn program in the US), the environmental movement as a whole may well be responsible for a modest net increase in greenhouse gas production over the last twenty years.  The planet, in other words, might be slightly cooler if the greens had all just shut up and stayed home.  Certainly the world’s taxpayers would be better off.

We would also likely be closer to some kind of reasonable policy mix if the green activists had spent more time perfecting their home composting techniques and less time pushing a hopelessly unworkable global agenda.  (It’s not the fault of the greens that environmental problems don’t have easy and simple solutions, by the way.  I don’t blame greens for giving us magically easy and popular solutions.  But green ideas tend to be the opposite: greens habitually propose clumsy, expensive and unwieldy programs that won’t work and will ultimately go down in flames.)

Mead is not a conservative and is broadly sympathetic to the environmentalists’ goals. He is not, however sympathetic to the kind of cluelessness and panic that leads the Greens to propose solutions that have no chance of being enacted. To put it bluntly, no sane politician is going to support policies that will lead to a drastic reduction in their constituents standard of living. Not even the Chinese are going to do that, at least not since they’ve abandoned the “let’s kill people by the millions” brand of Communism in favor of a more humane “let’s get everybody rich and hope they don’t notice they have no freedom” type of Neo-Fascism. The Greens should listen to people like Mead.

Of course the problem is that too many people in the environmentalist movement are either political activists, more interested in imposing Socialism, than in saving the earth, or adolescents, who would rather feel good than take effective action.

Yellowstone Supervolcano Bigger than Thought

This is not good. There is a huge volcano or hot spot under Yellowstone National Park that extends all the way to the Montana-Idaho border. It last erupted 600,000 years ago and could blow again any day, completely destroying all life in North America. We are all going to die!!!!!

I wouldn’t worry too much about it though.

The Hidden Reality

I’ve been reading, or really listening to  “The Hidden Reality” by Brian Greene. Greene is one of the  scientists who can make advanced science accessible to the general public. There are too few of them left since the passing of Carl Sagan and Stephen J Gould. Anyway, The Hidden Reality is all about the concept of parallel universes or the multiverse. Greene describes all the various kinds of universes that might exist.

It is an interesting book and an intriguing subject. I’m skeptical about the multiverse concept though. The problem is that there is no evidence that any of the various multiverses actually exist. And, given that each universe in a multiverse is self-contained with no means of communicating with one another, it is not likely that we will ever have such evidence. As I said, it is an interesting concept, but unless they can come up with a testable hypothesis about the matter, I don’t think that it can be, strictly speaking, science. You might as well argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

By the way, the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is infinite. Angels are not composed of matter/energy and do not take up physical space, you see.