The organ grinder

  New York magazine has one of its patented — well, copyrighted, anyway — inside-stories, this one on the man seen here who masterminded a ghoulish cadaver snatching ring that included the remains of such luminaries as Alistair Cooke.  

How detailed and fascinatingly creepy is the story? Consider this excerpt:

“They were just going to come and collect him and return the ashes in due course,” (Cooke’s daughter Susan) Kittredge recalls. But instead, there was a man waiting for Alistair Cooke, with a knife.

“He cared nothing for Cooke’s mind or manners. He had actually come for the body — that pale, wizened, cancer-ridden cadaver of a 95-year-old Englishman, stretched out now beneath the light in the embalming room.”

Brrr. Scary, boys and girls.

It’s a matter of ones and ooohs

OMG!

The first chip to pack more than 2 billion transistors has been launched by silicon giant Intel. Just to prove it, that’s a picture of it over there on the right.

According to the technology press, in this case a breathless BBC writer:

“The quad-core chip, known as Tukwila, is designed for high-end servers rather than personal computers. It operates at speeds of up to 2Ghz, the equivalent of a standard PC chip. It marks the latest milestone in chip technology; Intel released the first processor to contain more than one billion transistors in 2006.” 

I have no idea what that means, except that maybe early in 2010 Intel will announce a 3 billion zoomawatz chip.

Well, maybe I have a little bit of an idea what it means: more proof of the legitimacy of Moore’s Law.

Intel co-founder Gordon Moore said way back in ‘65 that the number of transistors it is possible to squeeze in to a chip for a fixed cost doubles every two years.

But there’s another scientific finding just announced that requires little explanation: that high heels may improve one’s sex life. Just to prove it, that’s a picture of high heels over there.

Now, that is a finding I can deal with.

in a letter to the publication European Urology, Dr. Maria Cerruto of Italy said her study of 66 women under age 50 found that those who held their foot at a 15-degree angle to the ground — the equivalent of a 2-inch heel — had as good posture as those who wore flat shoes, and crucially showed less electrical activity in their pelvic muscles.

As an appreciator of electrifying female pelvic muscles, this study seemed of very high importance.

Her study suggests the muscles were at an optimum position, which could well improve their strength and ability to contract. Thus, wearing higher heels, even if they aren’t stilettos, may improve a woman’s pelvic floor muscles and, therefore, her sex life.

His, too, one would assume. 

TOM JEFFERSON, RE-BORN AGAIN AMERICAN

OK, so for those of you who think Thomas Jefferson might have been America’s first president of African or Arab descent, it’s probably not true.

Oh, you didn’t think such a thing? What? You never even heard that supposition?

Well, that’s what we’re here for, to help solve puzzles and report on the latest findings that might increase your store of knowledge. No, no need to thank me.

The debate began about a decade ago when DNA samples were taken from male relatives of Jefferson to see if the prez had fathered a son with one of his slaves, probably Sally Hemmings. In the testing it was discovered that Jefferson had a rare genetic signature found mainly in the Middle East and Africa, quite surprising for a man who claimed Welsh ancestry.

Now, according to the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, the same DNA type — a rare male (or Y) chromosome type — has been found in two Britons with the Jefferson surname. The journal said genetic analysis showed the British men shared a common ancestor with Jefferson about 11 generations ago. But neither knew of any family links to the US.

“The unusual lineage has not been found in white Britons before. This discovery scotches any suggestion that Jefferson – who was president between 1801 and 1809 – must have had recent paternal ancestors from the Middle East,” said a report by the BBC.

It’s OK. Some of my best friends are Welsh.

THE OTHER 30% IS A BITCH

I am pleased to share the news with you that the world’s oceans are 70% shark free.

That’s according to the findings of an international team of scientists that postulates the absence of sharks from abyssal zones of the world’s oceans may mean some species are in danger of extinction. The abyssal zones are the ones that are in perpetual darkness at depths below 6,560 feet, and have phenomenal pressures that can be up to 10,000 pounds per square inch!

The findings were published in the “Proceedings of The Royal Society, Biological Series.” Among conclusions: sharks may be having more difficult times than ever finding food.

Monty Priede, director of Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, told United Press International: “Sharks are already threatened worldwide by the intensity of fishing activity, but our finding suggests they may be more vulnerable to over-exploitation than was previously thought.”

Since there still are plenty of sharks, I’m glad to be living up here on a hill where shark sightings are a rarity and likely to remain so.

PUTTING A 太空人 ON THE MOON

Where will you be in 15 years?

The Chinese think they know precisely where they’ll be. On the moon.

The Chinese government has confirmed it will launch its first lunar probe later this year and that it fully expects to be able to put astronauts — or taikonauts, as they are called — on the moon by 2022.

The probe is supposed to provide 3-D images of the moon, survey the lunar landscape, study lunar microwaves and estimate the thickness of the moon’s soil. Guess they didn’t believe what ours guys said — all that stuff about a lack of green cheese and air.

It’s been about 3½ years since China joined the U.S. and Russia as the only nations to rocket a human into space. This latest announcement — which included mention of a planned lunar fly-by in 2007, a soft landing in 2012, return of lunar samples by 2017, and landing on the moon within 15 years — is a clear indication the space race is heating up.

And, if so, the upside is that the Chinese will have less time to spend brewing up toxic goods to sell us.

NOTHING TO SNIFF AT

How often have you looked at a seemingly mismatched couple walking hand-in-hand and wondered what was it that attracted them to each other?

That attraction may be so strong one of the parties could be accused of being led around by the nose. If Nobel Prize winner Linda Buck and a colleague at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are on target, that is literally correct.

What Drs. Buck and Linda Buhumans have discovered is a new class of receptors used by mice to detect pheromones, the sex hormones released by a potential mate. The same gene is found in humans, so they theorize it may work the same way. In other words, their partner’s smell attracts them.

Of course, not just any smell will do. Mammals have about 1,000 different odor receptors which help trigger all sorts of responses to all sorts of smells — fear, repulsion, love, hunger and so on.

Buck should know what she’s speculating about. She won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discoveries on odor receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.

Then again, perfume makers throughout human history have known the way to a man’s heart is through his nose.

The plight of the bumblebee

I suppose, given the fresh coverlet of snow that fell late yesterday, it is unseasonable to think about bees. But, I am thinking about both the birds and the bees of late, and not at all in the amorous sense.

The birds continue flocking (no pun intended if one was detected there) to the feeders in the crabapple tree outside my kitchen window. All sorts of birds.

Bees apparently will be a different story if the mystery malady that is making entire hives of them disappear in our area continues. It’s getting difficult not to be aware of the problem since it’s being reported all over, such as in Illinois, Maine and about 20 other states.

This also apparently has been going on for several years in Spain where a mysterious disease has wiped out 40% of that country’s bee population. The same thing is happening in Canada’s New Brunswick Province where 45% of the hives have been depopulated. And in New Zealand, where everyone is all abuzz about the missing bees, it is suspected that some sort of varroa bee mite might be killing off the honeymakers.

Anyway, I find the bee thing particularly troubling because back in July 2005 I wrote about the scarcity of such summer bugs as mosquitos and lightning bugs, a/k/a fireflies, a shortage I haven’t seen being alleviated by man or nature since then.

Like the canaries in the coal mine that once were used as a toxic gas early warning system for miners, the missing insects might be showing us something scary by not showing up at all.

Somewhere out there

Years ago, my eldest son described to me the most awe-inspiring sight he’d experienced as a U.S. Marine.

He was on temporary duty in Norway, above the Arctic Circle, and had taken a break from the usual indoor meetings to sit outside with some buddies. Above and around them were the Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the Northern Lights.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “It was like you were floating into the lights. There was no real divide between the earth and the sky, no real horizon.”

The Northern Lights have fascinated mankind for untold centuries, so much so that we’ve just sent a rocket up to study the phenomenon. NASA’s Delta II finally got off the ground at Cape Canaveral, FL, yesterday after being delayed by high winds. The THEMIS mission, NASA explains, is five identical probes they hope will gain new insights into sudden brightening of the Lights in high-latitude skies.

These flareups are known as “auroral substorms.” THEMIS (which stands for “Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms“) is supposed to determine what causes them.

The five-probe Delta II package needs to have only four of the probes work, scientists say. They’ll magnetically map the North American continent every four days while 20 ground stations in Alaska and Canada will document the auroras and space currents from Earth. The hope is to be able to predict the substorms which soimetimes disrupt communication transmissions on Earth.

That’s nice. I’m as big a fan of science and discovery as the next guy. On the other hand, I just hope they get some wonderful pictures out of the whole thing. I really don’t need every wonder in the universe dissected and described for me.

MAYBE IF WE ALL PUSHED

NASA’s plan for its New Horizons unmanned spacecraft is for it to journey for nearly nine years (!) through the tricky reaches of space to take a close-up look of distant Pluto.

The only trick is getting the sucker off the ground.

For the second straight day, the rocket scientists at Cape Canaveral, FL, had to scrub the launch because of inclement weather. Earth weather. Nothing like the buffeting and meteorites and asteroids and things the New Horizon will have to dodge on its trip. Just Earth weather.

It was a bit breezy — winds up to 38 mph — on Tuesday, so the liftoff was scrubbed. Early today, it was discovered that a storm in Laurel, MD, had knocked out power at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing operations of the project.

And this is for an unmanned craft. Your tax dollars in action.

They promise to try again tomorrow. The forecast for Cape Canaveral is sunny, with a high of 71°F, no precipitation, 58% humidity and gentle winds of up to 12 mph. For Laurel, MD, no storms are predicted.

Here, we can read all about it under clearing skies, although our high will be just 39°.

PANDAMONIUM

The year 2005, it seems, was a boom year for panda growers.

The Chinese government reports that 21 of them survived early infancy and are thriving in the nation’s various zoos and breeding centers, bringing the captive population to 183 nationwide, with another 24 living in the U.S., Japan, Germany, Austria and Thailand.

“Despite the early deaths of a few baby pandas, 2005 has witnessed the largest number of surviving newborn pandas in China’s history of artificial fertilization on the rare species,” Na Chunfeng, an official with State Forestry Administration, was quoted as saying. The previous record was set in 2003, when 15 babies born in captivity survived.

The pandas of the world apparently are in better hands than the wallabies. The kangaroo-like Australian animals have been dying out, so captive breeding programs have been started and offspring from them sent to various nature preserves in Australia to help boost the numbers worldwide. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the numbers game was messed up when a worker at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo inadvertently put a toxic plant in the wallaby exhibit. Three of the animals died after ingesting the plant.

NOTHING TO SNIFF AT

How often have you see a seemingly mismatched couple walking hand-in-hand and you wonder what was it that attracted them to each other?

That attraction may be so strong one of the parties could be accused of being led around by the nose. If Nobel Prize winner Linda Buck and a colleague at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are on target, that is literally correct.

What Drs. Buck and Linda Buhumans have discovered is a new class of receptors used by mice to detect pheromones, the sex hormones released by a potential mate. The same gene is found in humans, so they theorize it may work the same way. In other words, their partner’s smell attracts them.

Of course, not just any smell will do. Mammals have about 1,000 different odor receptors which help trigger all sorts of responses to all sorts of smells — fear, repulsion, love, hunger and so on.

Buck should know what she’s speculating about. She won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discoveries on odor receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.

Then again, perfume makers throughout human history have known the way to a man’s heart is through his nose.

INSTINCTIVELY DOING RIGHT PROVES ON TARGET

As I aimed the spray of water at the sprawling herb garden, just emerging from a prolonged period of heavy rain but already threatening to wilt under the hot early summer sun, I mentally ticked off everything I was going to do when the crop reached its peak.

Creating herb blends to perfume the smoke of the barbecue grill. Brightening the routine tossed salads in need of some new tastes. Finding just the right chopped leaves to blend into artisanal chevre cheeses from the local farm stands.

And, of course, infusing vodka.

On top of all those activities, I apparently will be helping ensure my stay on this spinning globe just a little longer. Researchers have announced in the Journal of Nutrition that there is a 38% smaller buildup of fatty deposits in the arteries of mice who were fed a mixture of vegetables, including carrots and peas.

They’re still not sure what that means for the effect of diet on atherosclerosis in humans, but it is widely accepted that eating fruit and vegetables is known to protect against heart disease.

The researchers are from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. The Winston-Salem, NC, school pays a lot of attention to what we eat and drink. Just a few weeks ago, in the journal Neuroepidemiology, a Wake team reported that compared to non-drinkers, women who drink up to two or three drinks per day performed better on measure of global cognitive function, which includes concentration, language, memory and abstract reasoning.

The women were strongest in verbal skills: those who reported having at least one drink a day did better on vocabulary tests and on a word fluency test asking them to generate a list of words beginning with a specific letter.

So, next time you sit down to a great salad and a glass of wine or a tumbler of vodka, toast the diligent researchers at Wake Forest and think nice thoughts about higher education.

ULTIMATELY FALLACIOUS OCCURENCE

There have been many moments in our little two-month hiatus from this blog that tempted us to return. Many, many of them.

We resisted all such lures, until today. The revelation that the results of a British study of unidentified flying objects were kept secret for six years revitalized our interest in current events.

Now, we can help reveal the finding that has been kept under lock, key and official seal. Brace yourself. Here it comes. We’re not kidding. Here it is:

THERE ARE NO UFOS

And you, my silly little WH followers, were going about your daily lives secure in the knowledge that alien beings were trundling around overhead on their secret missions, occasionally grabbing fishermen off a Louisiana bayou for a bit of anal probing, or helping some underdeveloped tribes in the deepest jungles figure out their own versions of Swiss Army knives, or just playing havoc with our airline pilots by darting in and out of clouds at warp speed. Maybe even causing violent changes in our atmosphere that are hastening a warming trend or a spate of unusually strong hurricanes.

Amazing, is it not, that a government study thought the fact it could find nothing to concern the public was worth keeping from the public?

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (yes, they spell it with a “c”) completed the 400-page report in 2000, and stamped it “Secret: UK Eyes Only.” It is now open to the public as a result of a request made by a college professor under the nation’s Freedom of Information Act. The BBC covered it thoroughly.

The report says, “No evidence exists to suggest that the phenomena seen are hostile or under any type of control, other than that of natural physical forces. … There is no evidence that ’solid’ objects exist which could cause a collision hazard.”

The identity of the report’s author remains a government secret. We think it might be that pale green fellow over in the corner, the one with the desk nameplate that says “Mr. Gork-mz-freng-blk.”

THIS JUST IN: PLAGUE AFFECTS CLIMATE

“Global warming” notwithstanding, this winter’s killer storms and sub-zero temperatures have wreaked havoc across Europe. Perhaps a few centuries from now, scientists will figure out why.

Why a few centuries? It took them that long to figure out that the “Black Death” — bubonic plague — that wiped out about a third of Europe’s population in the 14th Century may also have triggered what is known as the Little Ice Age, a 300-year period of markedly decreased temperatures.

Say what? Well, using what some may now label Chaos Theory, think about how small things can cause other things. The popular example is the movement of a butterfly’s wings eventually causing a storm a continent away.

With so many people dying, untended and abandoned farmland wound up going back to nature, with trees and bushes taking over formerly tended fields. Pollen and leaf data, researchers say, support the idea that millions of trees sprang up, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which, in turn, had the effect of cooling the climate.

A team from Utrecht University in the Netherlands notes that such a happenstance coincides with the drop in average temperatures across Europe at that time. Of course, not everyone believes in this latest theory. Tim Lenton, an environmental scientist from the University of East Anglia in England, told the BBC, “It is a nice study and the carbon dioxide changes could certainly be a contributory factor, but I think they are too modest to explain all the climate change seen.”

And Richard Houghton, a climate expert from the Woods Hole Research Center on Cape Cod, says that the oceans would have compensated for the change. “The atmosphere is in equilibrium with the ocean and this tends to dampen or offset small changes in terrestrial carbon uptake,” he explained.

OK, BOYS, ONE MORE TIME!

Ever hear of Cryosat? You will, if it ever gets off the ground. Well, stays off the ground would be more like it.

Cryosat is the European Space Agency’s project to study how the Earth’s ice sheets are responding to climate change. The satellite that will do the work was lost in the Arctic Ocean last year mere minutes after launch from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia. But, the ESA has decided to build another at a cost of about $150 million, and hopes to have it in the air within three years.

A BBC article reports that “Some of the world’s leading scientists have expressed their support for Cryosat-2, saying the data will greatly improve our understanding of climate change. Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University, UK, said it would help answer the question of whether the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are growing or decaying. Cryosat-2 will fly closer to the poles than previous satellites, providing valuable missing data.”

While we’re wating to see if the ice is growing or shrinking, we can pause to wonder if the weekend will offer snow or sunshine. The answer is, yes. Saturday’s forecast calls for snow, a high of just 25° and a frigid low of 10°. Temperatures will be as uncomfortable on Sunday — a high of 22° and a low of 5° — but with no snow.

DATA GETS SEAL OF APPROVAL

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, some hysterics claimed that 36 dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy to carry toxic-dart guns for military purposes had escaped in the confusion.

I kind of doubt that, but it’s a fun thing to contemplate. On a more realistic plane, elephant seals are being used to collect new information on conditions in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. They’re equipped with little computers stuck on their heads that flash data to scientists in Scotland via satellite when the animals surface to breath. It’s a fascinating story.

“These animals are opening an interesting new window on the ocean,” Mike Fedak told the BBC. He’s with the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU), Gatty Marine Laboratory, University of St. Andrews. “They can go to places in the ocean that we very often can’t go to, and can sample parts of the ocean where we can’t afford to or logistically are not able to.”

Up here on Weathering Heights, our animals are less interested in plumbing the depths of their environment. The Other Beings who live indoors with us may go down to the basement occasionally, but they’re usually not providing much data except that their litter boxes need cleaning or their food bowls need filling. The outdoors wildlife, however, does tell us it’s been a mild winter because they’ve munched on far fewer of our ornamental shrubs and plants than usual. Of course, that only verifies what we already knew.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

The accuracy of the familiar phrase “there is nothing new under the sun” is open to debate. Assuming for the sake of argument that it were true, however, there is enough old under the sun to keep us busy.

Announcement of the discovery of a new pharonic tomb in Egypt’s sun-baked Valley of the Kings is just the latest find we’ve heard about this week. (See earlier posts on the grave of Genghis Khan and the discovery of new flora and fauna in Indonesia.)

Archaeologists have discovered an intact, ancient Egyptian tomb about three miles from the site of King Tutankhamun’s, the last such discovery (1922). A team led by the University of Memphis found the “new” tomb which contains five undisturbed mummies and unopened sarcophagi.

That makes 63 tombs discovered since the valley was first mapped in the 18th century, and it seems to have been by chance.

Patricia Podzorski, curator of Egyptian Art at the University of Memphis, whose team led the expedition, said in an interview with BBC’s “World Tonight” news program, “The excavation team was focused on the tomb of a 19th Dynasty pharaoh, King Amenmesses. They were working in front of the tomb looking for foundation deposits possibly related to that tomb, and clearing away some workmen’s huts from the 19th Dynasty that were both to the left and right side of the tomb. Underneath these workmen’s huts, they found a shaft.”

That shaft led to the find, thought to date from the 18th Pharaonic Dynasty, the first dynasty of the New Kingdom which ruled between 1539 B.C. and 1292 B.C. and made its capital in Thebes, the present city of Luxor.

Why do we go on about this? Because new knowledge is what life is all about. It’s the sort of thing that makes you eager to begin each new day.

ANCIENT PUZZLES, MODERN PASSIONS

Who was buried in Grant’s Tomb?

Well, we know it wasn’t Genghis Khan. But, where was the legendary Mongol warlord and creator of a vast ancient empire buried?

That’s a question that has been an archaeological puzzle of the first order since Khan died in 1227 and was buried at a secret location by his ferocious horseback warriors.

Now, out on the flat plains of eastern Mongolia, an oval area enclosed by a two-mile wall has yielded clues to the site of the grave. As The Washington Post’s foreign service reports:

“For eight centuries it has been (a secret), despite a number of more or less scientific expeditions, claims and counterclaims, some of them evocative of an Indiana Jones movie. But a U.S.-Mongolian expedition organized by Maury Kravitz, a retired Chicago commodities trader, made what may have been a breakthrough two summers ago. His explorers unearthed several graves dating from the 13th century inside the wall, a shambles of stone 200 miles east of Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital. Shagdaryn Bira, secretary general of the International Association for Mongol Studies and a recognized authority, said the graves are a promising sign that the wall could surround the bodies of Genghis Khan and his closest kin.”

” … Kravitz, who shares the dream to the point of obsession, said he was unable to continue searching last summer because of a shortage of funds and an associate’s health problems. But he is raising money for an expedition this summer to comb the now-frozen site anew in hopes of confirming it as a family burial ground — and eventually of pinpointing the grave of the conqueror himself.”

This sort of single-minded curiosity is how great discoveries are made. The people making them may sometimes seem eccentric, strange or just a bit odd, but they’re the adventurers who bring knowledge to light. We can hardly wait to hear more of Kravitz & Company’s fascinating adventures.