Author: Mick Hartley

A list of the top 100 city skylines, rated by the number and size of high-rise buildings. Surprisingly, London is 23rd (I’d have thought it would be lower) and the highest placed in Europe. The only other British city is Glasgow, at 63, “home to nearly 50% of all 20-storey tower blocks in the UK”. New York is second. Top? Hong Kong, by a mile. (Via Metafilter.)

n Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

In the recent Edge Annual Question (what do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?), John Skoyles had an interesting idea about the placebo effect: that we’d evolved such that our immune system was receptive to social factors, so if someone we believed had more expertise than us – a healer – gave us a “cure”, we reacted appropriately, ie our immune system gave up fighting and assumed the problem was over. Not sure how Benedetti’s finding would fit in with that, mind you.

So now they’re admitting there’s a problem:

Europe is reconsidering plans to lift its arms embargo on China in the light of America’s implacable opposition and a new Chinese threat against Taiwan.
Several European Union member states have got “cold feet”, making it “significantly” more likely that the EU will eventually drop its controversial plan, senior diplomatic sources have told The Times.

At the very least, the decision is likely to be postponed.

“Taking our time rather than rushing may not be a bad idea,” one EU official said. […]

Britain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Scandinavian countries and Luxembourg — which holds the EU’s rotating presidency — are among those having second thoughts. Greens in the ruling coalition in Germany are also uneasy with the proposal. A decision to lift the embargo must be agreed unanimously by all 25 EU member states.

Jack Straw betrayed Britain’s unease on Sunday when he said that the unanimous approval by the Chinese Parliament last week of legislation authorising force if Taiwan formally declared independence had “created quite a difficult political environment”.

It would be interesting to know what’s been going on behind the scenes. That letter to the Times from Gisela Stuart last week now looks as though it reflects Jack Straw’s position.

most of the countries of the Middle East, using a personal Weblog to express political dissent can land someone in jail as easily as taking part in an unauthorized political protest in a public square. For example, recently in Iran – one of the worst anti-blogger offenders – a blogger was jailed for 14 years for “spying and aiding foreign counterrevolutionaries,” after using his site to criticize the arrest of other online journalists. Despite the risks, an estimated 75,000 Iranians among the country’s five million Internet users maintain online blogs. Especially among middle class youth, they have become an important way of expressing dissatisfaction.

Mona al-Tahawy, a columnist at the London-based Saudi daily Ash-Sharq al-Awsat, writes that bloggers in Iran and Iraq “have inspired others in the Arab world.” She also adds: “Despite working in an elite medium, requiring a computer and literacy, bloggers are the voice of the true Arab Street, especially the young.”

Like Iran, most countries of the region impose varying degrees of restriction on Weblogs. Saudi Arabia, where authorities block some 400,000 Web sites, is among the most restrictive. It is unclear how many blogsites there are in the kingdom, but those that are accessible focus largely on political dissent.

Typical is a site called “The Religious Policeman.” One recent posting asked:

“What reforms? There aren’t any reforms! The government promised to set up a higher commission on women’s affairs, guaranteed women participation in the recent National Dialogue Forum and in the National Human Rights Commission.” It adds: “The National Dialogue Forum agreed to change nothing, the ‘team photo’ had no women in it, anyone with any sense left in tears.”

A recent posting? The Religious Policemen has, sadly, been silent since last August. Stll, it’s a useful round-up.

In Egypt, authorities have tightened their control of the country’s 600,000 Web users. For example, the Web master of the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly was sentenced to a year in prison for posting a sexually explicit poem, and a 19-year-old student was sentenced to a month in jail for “putting out false information” after reporting that a serial killer was on the loose in Cairo.

In Syria, one blogger asked others to sign an online petition addressed to “The White House” and “The ElysŽes” [sic], the French presidential palace. “With the killing of [former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Lebanon,” the site said, “Syrian Baathists are out of control. Who’s next? Syria is inciting civil war in Lebanon.” Another Syrian, calling himself “Kafka,” wrote that a recent speech to the Syrian Parliament by President Bashar Assad “made the Syrian people forget that [he] never cared to give a damn about us since he came to power.”

In Tunisia, President Zine al-Abidin ben Ali has been determined to stamp out all cyber-dissidence. The death just over a week ago of prominent cyber-dissident Zouhair Yahyaoui, who was sent to jail in 2002-03 for publishing an open letter by his uncle, a prominent magistrate, asking for an independent judiciary, provided a reminder of how harshly the regime had treated the young editor of Tunisia’s most popular TuneZine Web site. But Yahyaoui was not alone. Recently, a well-known lawyer was arrested merely for posting an article online.

Nothing surprising here:

It is impossible for Zimbabwe’s parliamentary election, due in ten days’ time, to be free and fair, according to a powerful report to be released today.

The Human Rights Watch document, based on the work of an undercover team that has spent several weeks inside Zimbabwe, confirms widespread suspicions that opposition supporters face daily intimidation, The Times has learnt.

The report accuses the Government of President Mugabe of lacking respect for the basic freedoms of expression, association and assembly and says that the poll will be based on an electoral roll manipulated to favour Mr Mugabe’s ruling Zanu (PF) party.

Except that this new report also criticises Zimbabwe’s neighbours:

The Mugabe Government has faced such criticism many times in recent years, but this report is likely to have a greater impact among Zimbabwe’s neighbours because it measures the conduct of the campaign against an agreement that was signed by 14 heads of state, including Mr Mugabe himself. It criticises the other heads of state for failing to press Mr Mugabe to fulfil his obligations under that agreement.

Thabo Mbeki has gone on record as stating that the forthcoming elections in Zimbabwe would be free and fair, a position he may now have some difficulty justifying.

A report in The Scotsman reports on the humiliation of Gerry Adams:

There is a peculiarly Irish-American tradition around this time of year of eating corned beef and cabbage. But when Gerry Adams went to Washington for St Patrick’s Day he was forced to eat some humble pie.

Never mind that he was overshadowed by the McCartney sisters, there to continue their campaign for justice for their dead brother, Robert, and who were accorded the kind of rock star treatment in which Adams himself used to revel.

Never mind that Teddy Kennedy – old friend of Ireland Ted Kennedy, of all people – refused to even meet him.

No, Gerry Adams had to endure much more than that as he sat at his table at the American Ireland Fund dinner on Wednesday and took a verbal beating from John McCain, the Republican senator and presidential hopeful from Arizona. The Sinn Fein president sat stoney-faced as McCain lambasted the IRA and Adams’ own political party.

If the Shinners, as Sinn Fein’s remaining friends like to call them, thought that former prisoner of war McCain might be even remotely sympathetic to the cause of Bobby Sands and the H Block veterans, they were sadly mistaken.

“No one,” McCain proclaimed, with Adams sitting just a few yards away, “can honestly claim the IRA is anything better than an organised crime syndicate that steals and murders to serve its members’ personal interests. There’s nothing republican about the Irish Republican Army.”

But back in Northern Ireland, a vicious whispering campaign has begun against the McCartneys:

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that the women returned from Washington at the end of last week to an increasingly hostile atmosphere as republicans mounted a campaign of misinformation and vilification.

According to residents in Belfast, the onslaught is being led by Sinn Fein members who have suggested the sisters are being used by the British government or the SDLP to damage Sinn Fein and the IRA. This includes unfounded claims that the family’s trip to the United States was funded by either government or party sources.

In fact, the family paid for the trip themselves and were short of cash throughout their stay in Washington, even having to ask for lifts from television crews in order to save money on taxis. […]

Meanwhile, police say the investigation into the McCartney murder is no nearer the point of bringing charges.

Two of the key suspects in the brutal slaying were last week seen casually walking into bookmakers in south Belfast to place bets on the Cheltenham races.

According to sources, the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) investigation is being hampered at many levels, from witnesses being intimidated into not giving statements, to the IRA pressurising others to make admissions. Such admissions, made under threat of death by the terror group, would be inadmissible in court, police sources said.

One crucial witness, whose honest testimony would almost certainly lead to the jailing of several suspects, is known to be seriously in debt to an IRA money lender in Belfast who is a close friend of the key suspects. People in the Markets and Short Strand areas said last week they believe the witness has been told his debt will be cleared so long as he refuses to comply with the PSNI. It is believed he borrowed £15,000 from the loan shark who heads the IRA in the Ardoyne area.

Remember the story of the peppered moths? In the mid nineteenth century, peppered moths in the North of England grew darker, as the Industrial Revolution took hold. In a well-known series of experiments in the 1950s, naturalist Bernard Kettlewell demonstrated that this was an example of natural selection at work: the lighter moths, previously well camouflaged against tree trunks, became more visible to predatory birds as the soot from the factories darkened the landscape. The darker or melanic variety came to predominate.

If you know about that, you’ll probably also remember that this was all supposedly debunked a few years back, in Judith Hooper’s book “Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale“, which told a story of scientific fraud and Darwinian zealotry.

Well, now we’re back where we started, as Matt Young at The Panda’s Thumb takes a fresh look at Kettlewell’s data:

Hooper’s claims are moonshine; they are based on a lack of understanding of Kettlewell’s experiments in particular and experimental science in general…. Hooper should have performed a careful analysis before she presumptuously insinuated fraud. […]

The peppered moth properly remains a valid paradigm — no, an icon — of evolution.

Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ has sold over 50,000 copies in Turkey so far this year:

Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler’s infamous autobiography, “Mein Kampf.” The book was first published in Turkey in 1939, when Axis and Allied countries were competing for Turkey’s soul as they tried to woo it away from the neutrality it would maintain until the very end of World War II.

But since January, the book has sold more than 50,000 copies and is number four on the best-seller list drawn up by the D&R bookstore chain.

“‘Mein Kampf’ has always been a sleeper, a secret best-seller,” said Oguz Tektas of Mefisto editions, one of several publishing houses to re-release the book Hitler wrote while in jail in 1925. “We took it out of the closet for purely commercial reasons.” His company’s sole aim, he stressed, was “to make money,” which they did by slashing the cover price.

“Mein Kampf,” published by about a dozen companies over the years, always sold at a fairly steady annual rate of about 20,000 copies at some 20 New Turkish Lira ($15) a copy. […]

“This book, which does not contain a single ounce of humanity, unfortunately appears to be taken seriously in this country,” political scientist Dogu Ergil complained in a recent newspaper interview.

He agreed that the unexpected popularity of “Mein Kampf” in this Muslim-majority country has its roots in a rise in anti-American sentiment sparked by the occupation of Iraq and anti-Semitism resulting from Israel’s Palestinian policy.

“Nazism, buried in the dustbin of history in Europe, is beginning to re-emerge in Turkey,” he warned.

In the Daily Star, Lebanese business man Wissam S. Yafi writes about Lebanon’s silent majority, who demonstrated in such numbers on Monday:

Why did this silent majority move? Quite simply because it was tired. It was tired of seeing moderate and visionary leaders assassinated, while its fortunes were at the mercy of visionless officials appointed by outsiders who acted only on instructions. It was tired of having a clueless government that did not represent the majority’s interests, particularly at such a crucial time in Lebanon’s history when many dark clouds are gathering. And those in the majority were tired of having to tell their children that it was best for them to leave their nation in search of a better future.

While some may claim that Lebanon is unique, the national demonstration on Monday showed that the silent majority was no different than its counterparts elsewhere in the world – for example in Chile, where people brought down the all-powerful regime of Augusto Pinochet, having tired of his repressive police state and self-serving and obsolete security warnings. Lebanon is not different from Eastern Europe, where societies brought down oppressive and manipulative governments that had led them to economic ruin, while their neighbors in the West were well on their way to economic prosperity. And, it is not so different than Iraq, which in the January elections bravely showed the world how powerful the voice of freedom could be – even as voters faced the direst of personal risks.

Lebanon’s silent majority is not unique, for it wants the same thing that all humans everywhere want: dignity, freedom and peace. It has a vision of a Lebanon that is economically ambitious, entrepreneurial and prosperous. It will follow those offering this optimistic vision; and it will dwarf those who wish to bind Lebanon to its dark past through strategies that undermine this vision. The silent majority in Lebanon has spoken with a voice that has silenced everyone else; and in this has taken Lebanon’s destiny into its own hands. Those in power had better yield and quickly.

There’s something unsatisfactory about the puzzle over altruism, as expounded in this New Scientist article, fretting about how come people do kind things like donating to tsunami appeals (via AL Daily….and Butterflies and Wheels).

In evolutionary terms it is a puzzle because any organism that helps others at its own expense stands at an evolutionary disadvantage. So if many people really are true altruists, as it seems, why haven’t greedier, self-seeking competitors wiped them out?

At the end of the article, three possible motives are given for an act of generosity. Firstly, because it makes us feel good (chemicals in the brain); secondly because it makes us look good (increased prestige); and thirdly, because of belief systems like religion which promise rewards and punishments for our actions.

The scientific study of altruism is a fascinating field, and evolutionary biologists like Bill Hamilton have made important contributions to our understanding, but you don’t have to be a Romantic to think that this is all depressingly reductionist when it comes to human morality. If asked why you’d rushed over to help that man who’d just collapsed on the pavement, is “because it was the right thing to do” not a sufficient answer? If pressed – So, come on, what was the real reason you helped him? Was it because you thought people might be watching who you hoped would be impressed? – or because you thought it would increase your chances of going to heaven? – or was it because you thought that helping might provide an example whereby people would help you if you collapsed on the street at some point? – you’d very likely resent the implication that ultimately you were just looking out for number one. And if that’s true for an individual case of morality in action, why is it not true in general? We’re moral animals. Yes, it’s an interesting question as to why that is, but you’re going to need culture and language and all sorts to explain it, not just individual cost-benefit calculations. There doesn’t need to be a deeper reason than the moral reason. In situations like donating to charity appeals, or helping someone in trouble, morality is sufficient as an explanation: “it was the right thing to do“. Nor is it necessarily true that the more reductionist you are, the more scientific you are.