Jacques-Yves Cousteau (French pronunciation: [ʒak iv kusto]; 11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française. He was commonly known as “le Commandant Cousteau” or “Captain Cousteau“.

http://www.cousteau.org/

Early life

Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the prestigious Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930 he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea.

In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern diving masks.^[2] He later worked his way up the ranks as he became more famous and more useful to the navy. Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).^{[citation needed]}

On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons took part in the adventure of the Calypso. In 1991, one year after his wife Simone’s death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau’s marriage to his first wife.

Early 1940s: Innovation of modern underwater diving

The years of World War II were decisive for the history of diving. After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in Embiez (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, without forgetting the paramount part played, as originator of the depth-pressure-proof camera case, by the mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).

In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks): for this occasion, they used the aqua-lung, which continued the line of some inventions of the 19th century (Rouquayrol’s and Denayrouze’s Aerophore) and of the early 20th century (Le Prieur). When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child’s camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.^[3]

Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa “Baobab” at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan’s villa “Reine”), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine, a “pen anti-semite” who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere) and who received the death sentence in 1946. However this was later commuted to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.

During the 1940s Cousteau is credited with improving the aqua-lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. According to his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure (1953), Cousteau started snorkel diving with a mask, snorkel, and fins with Frédéric Dumas and Philippe Tailliez. In 1943, he tried out the first prototype aqua-lung — designed by Cousteau and Émile Gagnan — which finally made extended underwater exploration possible.

Late 1940s: GERS and Élie Monnier

In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film “Épaves” to Admiral Lemonnier, and the admiral gave them the responsibility of setting up the Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (Underwater Research Group) of the French Navy in Toulon. A little later it became the GERS (Groupe d’Études et de Recherches Sous-Marines, = Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER (“COMmandement des Interventions Sous la MER”, = “Undersea Interventions Command”), and finally more recently the CEPHISMER.

In 1948, between missions of mine clearance, underwater exploration and technological and physiological tests, Cousteau undertook a first campaign in the Mediterranean on board the sloop Élie Monnier,^[4] with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat and the scenario writer Marcel Ichac. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia (Tunisia). It was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology. Cousteau and Marcel Ichac brought back from there the Carnets diving film (presented and preceded with the Cannes Film Festival 1951).

Cousteau and the Élie Monnier then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard’s bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3.

The adventures of this period are told in the 2 books The Silent World (1953) by Cousteau and Plongées Sans Câble by Philippe Tailliez.

1950–1970s

In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy.

In 1950 he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called Calypso from Thomas Loel Guinness for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau refitted the Calypso as a mobile laboratory for field research and as his principal vessel for diving and filming. He also carried out underwater archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean, in particular at Grand-Congloué (1952).

With the publication of his first book in 1953, The Silent World, he correctly predicted the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. He reported that his research vessel, the Élie Monier, was heading to the Straits of Gibraltar and noticed a group of porpoises following them. Cousteau changed course a few degrees off the optimal course to the center of the strait, and the porpoises followed for a few minutes, then diverged toward mid-channel again. It was evident that they knew where the optimal course lay, even if the humans did not. Cousteau concluded that the cetaceans had something like sonar, which was a relatively new feature on submarines.

Cousteau won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 for The Silent World co-produced with Louis Malle. With the assistance of Jean Mollard, he made a “diving saucer” SP-350, an experimental underwater vehicle which could reach a depth of 350 meters. The successful experiment was quickly repeated in 1965 with two vehicles which reached 500 meters.

In 1957, he was elected as director of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco. He directed Précontinent, about the experiments of diving in saturation (long-duration immersion, houses under the sea), and was admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.

In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the Mediterranean Sea by the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA). The CEA argued that the dumps were experimental in nature, and that French oceanographers such as Vsevelod Romanovsky had recommended it. Romanovsky and other French scientists, including Louis Fage and Jacques Cousteau, repudiated the claim, saying that Romanovsky had in mind a much smaller amount. The CEA claimed that there was little circulation (and hence little need for concern) at the dump site between Nice and Corsica, but French public opinion sided with the oceanographers rather than with the CEA atomic energy scientists. The CEA chief, Francis Perrin, decided to postpone the dump.^[5] Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which in less than two weeks gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway tracks, and it was sent back to its origin.

A meeting with American television companies (ABC, Métromédia, NBC) created the series The Underwater Odyssey of Commander Cousteau, with the character of the commander in the red bonnet inherited from standard diving dress) intended to give the films a “personalized adventure” style.

In 1973, along with his two sons and Frederick Hyman, he created the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life, Frederick Hyman being its first President; it now has more than 300,000 members.

Three years after the volcano’s last eruption, on December 19, 1973, the Cousteau team was filming on Deception Island, Antarctica when Michel Laval, Calypso’s second in command, was struck and killed by a propeller of the helicopter that was ferrying between Calypso and the island.

In 1976 Cousteau uncovered the wreck of HMHS Britannic.

In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN International Environment prize.

On 28 June 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, his second son, Philippe, his preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969, died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon. Cousteau was deeply affected. He called his then eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to his side. This collaboration lasted 14 years.

1980–1990s

In 1980, Cousteau traveled to Canada to make two films on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, Cries from the Deep and St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea.^[6]

In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.

On 24 November 1988, he was elected to the French Academy, chair 17, succeeding Jean Delay. His official reception under the Cupola took place on 22 June 1989, the response to his speech of reception being given by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech. After his death, he was replaced under the Cupola by Érik Orsenna on 28 May 1998.

In June 1990, the composer Jean Michel Jarre paid homage to the commander by entitling his new album Waiting for Cousteau. He also composed the music for Cousteau’s documentary “Palawan, the last refuge”.

On 2 December 1990, his wife Simone Cousteau died of cancer.

In June 1991, in Paris, Jacques-Yves Cousteau remarried, to Francine Triplet, with whom he had (before this marriage) two children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Francine Cousteau currently continues her husband’s work as the head of the Cousteau Foundation and Cousteau Society. From that point, the relations between Jacques-Yves and his elder son worsened.

In November 1991, Cousteau gave an interview to the UNESCO courier, in which he stated that he was in favour of human population control and population decrease. The full article text can be found online^[7].

In 1992, he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations’ International Conference on Environment and Development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.

In 1996, he sued his son who wished to open a holiday center named “Cousteau” in the Fiji Islands.

On 11 January 1996 Calypso was rammed and sunk in Singapore harbor by a barge. The Calypso was refloated and towed home to France.

Death

Jacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997 in Paris, aged 87. Despite persistent rumors, encouraged by some Islamic publications and websites, Cousteau did not convert to Islam, and when he died he was buried in a Roman Catholic Christian funeral.^[8] He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac in France. An homage was paid to him by the city by the inauguration of a “rue du Commandant Cousteau”, a street which runs out to his native house, where a commemorative plaque was affixed.

Honors

During his lifetime, Jacques-Yves Cousteau received these distinctions:

• Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur
• Grand-Croix de l’Ordre national du Mérite
• Croix de guerre 1939–1945
• Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite Maritime
• Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
• Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia.

Defense of the environment

Jacques-Yves Cousteau superimposed the geonymic vision of the sea and Earth elaborated in the 1930s by Jacques Grob and Philippe Tailliez with a conqueror’s mentality. A cultivated explorer in the spirit of Jules Verne, he fed the public’s taste for wonder. “One protects what one likes.”, Cousteau repeated, “and one likes what enchanted us.” As Cousteau’s oceanographic and cinematographic campaigns took place over more than 50 years (1945–1997), he was able to measure the degradation of the in-situ mediums: the conqueror-explorer, sure of his technical prowess and finding it natural to drive out marine animals gradually morphed into an ardent conservationist who leveraged his worldwide notoriety to promote the idea of the Earth as a limited and fragile spaceship that needed to be preserved. He was the only non-politician to take part in the 1992 Rio Summit.

After 1975, he briefly considered founding worldwide “Cousteau Clubs” for young people, but eventually abandoned this idea in its original form (which would have involved significant work with few direct rewards) and instead published a few fanzines (Calypso Log, Le Dauphin) and made a documentary film about a trip to the Antarctic with children. Towards the end of his life, he became pessimistic and even misanthropic: An ideal planet, he confided to Yves Paccalet, would be one in which humanity is limited to 100,000 people who are both educated and respectful of nature.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s star power rested not only on his personal image, but on the image of a united team striving towards a common goal. Late in his life, however, highly-publicized intra-family conflicts, internal divisions, and consequent lawsuits chipped away at this image, and that of his successors: Son Jean-Michel and grandson Fabien on one side, and the Cousteau Team with his third wife Francine and their children of the other, do not have the public standing of the 20th century Cousteau Team.

On the other hand, the kind of underwater and adventure film that Jacques-Yves Cousteau launched has never been more popular: Each year, hundreds of increasingly beautiful documentaries are produced, thanks to improvement of photographic techniques. The idea of a fragile planet and sea has not only made its way into the public consciousness, but also affects the political class who were slower to come to environmental awareness.

Legacy

Cousteau’s legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.^[9]

Cousteau liked to call himself an “oceanographic technician.” He was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher, and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans.

His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called “divulgationism”, a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.

Cousteau died on 25 June 1997. The Cousteau Society and its French counterpart, l’Équipe Cousteau, both of which Jacques-Yves Cousteau founded, are still active today. The Society is currently attempting to turn the original Calypso into a museum and it is raising funds to build a successor vessel, the Calypso II.

In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over Jean-Michel licensing the Cousteau name for a South Pacific resort, resulting in Jean-Michel Cousteau being ordered by the court not to encourage confusion between his for-profit business and his father’s non-profit endeavours.

In 2007 International Watch Company introduced the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph “Cousteau Divers” Special Edition. The timepiece incorporated a sliver of wood from the interior of Cousteau’s Calypso research vessel. Having developed the diver’s watch, IWC offered support to The Cousteau Society. The proceeds from the timepieces’ sales were partially donated to the non-profit organization involved into conservation of marine life and preservation of tropical coral reefs.^[10]

Pop culture tributes and references

• Wu-Tang Clan member Old Dirty Bastard pays homage to Jacques Cousteau in the song Da Mystery of Chessboxin’ from Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the 36 Chambers. “Here I go, deep type flow. Jacques Cousteau could never get this low.”
• The song “Nice To Know You” from the American alt-rock band, Incubus, references Cousteau, saying the writer’s current feeling is “Deeper than the deepest Cousteau would ever go.”
• American rapper Canibus mentions Cousteau’s name in his song Bis vs R.I.P.
• American rap group Jedi Mind Tricks uses his name as the chorus, saying “I’m a get deep like Jacques Cousteau; Jacques Cousteau could never get this low”, from the song Get This Low.
• Belgian singer Plastic Bertrand made a song about Jacques Cousteau in 1981, under the title Jacques Cousteau.
• John Denver wrote a song called Calypso as a tribute to Cousteau, the ship, and her crew. The song reached the number-one position on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
• Cousteau was an inspiration to Stephen Hillenburg, creator of SpongeBob SquarePants, and the French Narrator (played by Tom Kenny) from the series was made in tribute to him.
• Director Wes Anderson has referenced Cousteau a number of times. In his 1998 film Rushmore, the main character Max Fischer finds a Jacques Cousteau quote handwritten in a library book and begins a search for the last person who checked out the book. The quote was “When one man, for whatever reason, has an opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.”
• The 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, also directed by Wes Anderson, is regarded as both a homage to and a send-up of Cousteau’s career. It includes an end credit that reads “In memory of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and with gratitude to the Cousteau Society, which was not involved in the making of this film.”
• Two New Age composers, Vangelis (who was heavily involved with Cousteau in the 1990s) and Jean Michel Jarre, released albums including original numbers honoring Jacques-Yves Cousteau: Cousteau’s Dreams (2000) and Waiting for Cousteau (1990).
• The Swedish band Bob Hund performed a tribute to Jacques Cousteau on their album Ingenting, released in 2002, with songs recorded in 1992–93. They refer to him as being “a brave aquanaut”.
• The band The Flight of the Conchords references Jacques Cousteau in their song Foux du Fa Fa, when Bret holds up a fish- referring to Cousteau’s study of the ocean.
• Andrew Bird’s song Lull, on his album Weather Systems, begins, “Being alone, it can be quite romantic/Like Jacques Cousteau underneath the Atlanic.”
• In Star Trek, the captain’s yacht of the USS Enterprise-E is named Cousteau.
• An internet rumour and disinformation which has been running since 1989 says wrongly that Cousteau became a Muslim upon seeing the Koran.^[11]
• Around 1980 a scale model of the Calypso research ship, complete with the marine helicopter was sold to children worldwide, along with leaflets calling for donations to the Cousteau foundation. These models are still being sold as toys.^[12]
• The futuristic novel The Deep Range written by Arthur C. Clarke mentions a research submarine named Cousteau.
• Gwar’s first album, Hell-O, included a song named “Je M’Appelle J. Cöusteaü”.
• The Actionslacks released a song titled “Jacques Cousteau” on their EP “Kids With Guitars.”
• The Swedish jazzband Esbjörn Svensson Trio tributed Cousteau on their album “Seven Days of Falling” with the track “Did they ever tell Cousteau?”. Esbjörn Svensson died in a scuba diving accident on 14 June 2008.
• In the Friends episode ‘The One Where Ross Gets High’, Phoebe mentions that she is ‘in love with Jacques Cousteau’.

See also

• Scuba diving
• Aqua-lung
• HMHS Britannic
• William Beebe
• Precontinent
• Conshelf Two

Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s ships

• Calypso (ship)
• SP-350 Denise (“the Diving saucer”)
• Alcyone (ship)
• Calypso II (planned)

Bibliography

Books by Cousteau

• The Silent World (1953, with Frederic Dumas)
• Captain Cousteaus Underwater Treasury (1959, with James Dugan)
• The Living Sea (1963, with James Dugan)
• World Without Sun (1965)
• The Undersea Discoveries of Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1970–1975, 8-volumes, with Philippe Diole)
  • The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea (1970)
  • Diving for Sunken Treasure (1971)
  • Life and Death in a Coral Sea (1971)
  • The Whale: Mighty Monarch of the Sea (1972)
  • Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence (1973)
  • Three Adventures: Galápagos, Titicaca, the Blue Holes (1973)
  • Diving Companions: Sea Lion, Elephant Seal, Walrus (1974)
  • Dolphins (1975)
• The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau (1973–78, 21 volumes)
  • Oasis in Space (vol 1)
  • The Act of Life (vol 2)
  • Quest for Food (vol 3)
  • Window in the Sea (vol 4)
  • The Art of Motion (vol 5)
  • Attack and Defense (vol 6)
  • Invisible Messages (vol 7)
  • Instinct and Intelligence (vol
  • Pharaohs of the Sea (vol 9)
  • Mammals in the Sea (vol 10)
  • Provinces of the Sea (vol 11)
  • Man Re-Enters Sea (vol 12)
  • A Sea of Legends (vol 13)
  • Adventure of Life (vol 14)
  • Outer and Inner Space (vol 15)
  • The Whitecaps (vol 16)
  • Riches of the Sea (vol 17)
  • Challenges of the Sea (vol 18)
  • The Sea in Danger (vol 19)
  • Guide to the Sea and Index (vol 20)
  • Calypso (1978, vol 21)
• A Bill of Rights for Future Generations (1979)
• Life at the Bottom of the World (1980)
• The Cousteau United States Almanac of the Environment (1981, aka The Cousteau Almanac of the Environment: An Inventory of Life on a Water Planet)
• Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso (1983)
• Marine Life of the Caribbean (1984, with James Cribb and Thomas H. Suchanek)
• Jacques Cousteau’s Amazon Journey (1984, with Mose Richards)
• Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World (1985)
• The Whale (1987, with Philippe Diole)
• Jacques Cousteau: Whales (1988, with Yves Paccalet)
• The Human, The Orchid and The Octopus (and Susan Schiefelbein, coauthor; Bloomsbury 2007]

Books about Cousteau

• Undersea Explorer: The Story of Captain Cousteau (1957) by James Dugan
• Jacques Cousteau and the Undersea World (2000) by Roger King
• Jacques-Yves Cousteau: His Story Under the Sea (2002) by John Bankston
• Jacques Cousteau: A Life Under the Sea (2008) by Kathleen Olmstead

Films

• The Silent World (1956)
• World Without Sun (1964)
• Journey to the End of the World (1976)
• Cries from the Deep (1981) (Jacques Gagné, director)^[13]
• St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea (1982) (co-director)^[14]

Television series

• 1966–68 The World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau
• 1968–76 The Undersea World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau
• 1977–77 Oasis in Space
• 1977–81 Cousteau’s Odyssey Series
• 1982–84 Cousteau’s Amazon Series
• 1985–91 Cousteau’s Rediscovery of the World I
• 1992–94 Cousteau’s Rediscovery of the World II

References

1. ^ Cousteau Society
2. ^ The Cousteau Foundation page about “The Captain” confirms Cousteau biography as written here.
3. ^ The Silent World
4. ^ Sevellec, E.-J.: Naissance du GERS et des premiers plongeurs démineurs, December 1, 2006. URL last accessed 2010-02-18. According to Sevellec, the Élie Monnier was an old German tugboat originally called Albatros and handed over to France as a war reparation, and then re-baptised in honor of the maritime engineer Élie Monnier who had disappeared while diving at Mers-el-Kébir on the wreck of the battleship Bretagne. See also Riffaud, C.: “La règne du scaphandre à casque“, in La grande aventure des hommes sous la mer, ISBN 2-226-03502-8.
5. ^ Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008).
6. ^ Ohayon, Albert (2009). “When Cousteau Came to Canada”. NFB.ca. National Film Board of Canada. http://blog.nfb.ca/2009/10/23/jacques-cousteau-in-canada/. Retrieved 2009-10-25.
7. ^ Widely quoted on the internet are these two paragraphs from the interview: “What should we do to eliminate suffering and disease? It’s a wonderful idea but perhaps not altogether a beneficial one in the long run. If we try to implement it we may jeopardize the future of our species…It’s terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn’t even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable”. Full interview with UNESCO Courier digital copy
8. ^ Témoignage: La “conversion” du commandant Cousteau à l’Islam (French)
9. ^ http://www.cousteau.org/jyc.html
10. ^ IWC in homage to Cousteau
11. ^ the source for this claim and its official refutation
12. ^ Calypso model ship sold on the Internet.
13. ^ “Cries from the Deep”. National Film Board of Canada Web site. 1981. http://www.nfb.ca/film/Cries_from_the_Deep. Retrieved 2009-06-20.
14. ^ “St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea”. National Film Board of Canada Web site. 1982. http://www.nfb.ca/film/st_lawrence_stairway_to_the_sea. Retrieved 2009-06-20.

Wikipedia®

The Yawalapiti are an indigenous tribe in the Amazonian Basin of Brazil. The name is also spelled Yawalapiti, and Iaualapiti in Portuguese. The current village Yawalapiti is situated more to the south, between the Tuatuari and Kuluene River.

The Yawalapiti language belongs to the Arawakan family.

The Yawalapiti live in the Upper Xingu region along with Kiabi, Yudja and Suya tribes. The ways of life of these four tribes are quite similar despite having different languages. Their villages are situated around Lake Ipavu, which is six kilometres from the Kuluene River.

Description of villages

Typical to Upper Xingu tribes, the Yawalapiti village is circular in shape and has communal houses surrounding a square (uikúka) cleared of vegetation. In the center of the square is the men’s house: frequented only by the men and where the sacred flutes are stored and played. It is in this house, or at river banks nearby, that the men congregate to talk in the twilight and where they paint themselves for ceremonies.

The men’s house is similar to the residential houses. It only has one or two doors, always smaller than those of residences, which face the center square. The flutes are hung in the beams and during the day they may be played only in the house’s interior; at night (after the women have retired) the men can play the flutes in the patio.

History

The first historical contact between the Yawalapiti and Europeans occurred in 1887, when they had been visited by Karl von den Steinen’s expedition. In this period, they were located in the high course of the Tuatuari river, in a region between lagoons and quagmires identified by the Yawalapiti as a small farm. The German anthropologist’s impression of these Indians was that of poverty, a people who had insufficient food to offer visitors.

Village and daily life

http://pib.socioambiental.org/en/povo/yawalapiti/1192

• Yawalapiti

• Introduction
• Name and location
• Village and daily life
• Language
• History
• Population
• Social organization
• Cosmology and rituals
• Shamanism
• Productive activities
• Sources of information

• ---

• Where they are: Mato Grosso
  

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• How many: 222 (Funasa, 2006)
  

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• Família linguística: Aruak
  

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Le Monde d’Avatar en vrai (video in French)

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Plus d’info en Francais => Projet ALAPI

http://www.amazonie-indienne.com/nos-actions.html

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Siret :484 422 696 000 19

Tel : +33.05.61.54.61.10
E-mail : sguiraud@club-internet.fr
Fax : 05.61.54.61.10

Dorothy Irene Height (March 24, 1912 – April 20, 2010) was an African American administrator, educator, and social activist. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

Early life

Height was born in Richmond, Virginia. At an early age, she moved with her family to Rankin, Pennsylvania, a steel town in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Height was admitted to Barnard College in 1929, but upon arrival, she was denied entrance because the school had an unwritten policy of admitting only two black students per year. She pursued studies instead at New York University, earning a degree in 1932, and a master’s degree in educational psychology the following year.

Career

Height started working as a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department and, at the age of twenty-five, she began a career as a civil rights activist when she joined the National Council of Negro Women. She fought for equal rights for both African Americans and women, and in 1944 she joined the national staff of the YWCA. She also served as National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority from 1946 to 1957. She remained active with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority thoughtout her life. While there she developed leadership training programs and interracial and ecumenical education programs.

Dorothy Height

In 1957, Height was named president of the National Council of Negro Women, a position she held until 1997. During the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Height organized “Wednesdays in Mississippi“,^[5] which brought together black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding.

American leaders regularly took her counsel, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Height also encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint African American women to positions in government. In the mid 1960s, Height wrote a column entitled “A Woman’s Word” for the weekly African-American newspaper, the New York Amsterdam News and her first column appeared in the March 20, 1965 issue on page 8.

Height served on a number of committees, including as a consultant on African affairs to the Secretary of State, the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped, and the President’s Committee on the Status of Women. In 1974, Height was named to the National Council for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published The Belmont Report, a response to the infamous “Tuskegee Syphillis Study” and an international ethical touchstone for researchers to this day.

Later life

In 2004, Height was recognized by Barnard for her achievements as an honorary alumna during its commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

The musical stage play If This Hat Could Talk, based on her memoirs Open Wide The Freedom Gates, debuted in the middle of 2005. It showcases her unique perspective on the civil rights movement and details many of the behind-the-scenes figures and mentors who shaped her life, including Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Height was the chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the largest civil rights organization in the USA. She was an honored guest and seated on stage at the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.

She attended the National Black Family Reunion, celebrated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., every year until her death in 2010.^{[citation needed]}

On March 25, 2010 Height was admitted to Howard University Hospital in Washington D.C. for unspecified reasons. Her spokeswoman issued a statement stating that at that time she was in a “very serious, but stable” condition but that they were remaining optimistic about her recovery. On April 20, 2010, Height died at the age of ninety-eight. Her funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on April 29, 2010 was attended by President and Mrs Obama plus many dignitaries and notable people.^[6] She was later interred at Fort Lincoln Cemetery.

Awards and honors

• Presidential Citizens Medal (1989)
• Spingarn Medal from the NAACP (1993)
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt Freedom From Want Award (1993)
• inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame (1993)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994)^[1]
• 7th Annual Heinz Award Chairman’s Medal (2001)^[7]
• Listed on Molefi Kete Asante’s list of 100 Greatest African Americans (2002) ^[8]
• Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush on behalf of the United States Congress (Approved, 2003) (Awarded, 2004)^[1]
• Flag Half-Staff Day for Death of Dorothy Height, observed on April 29th, 2010. Ordered by President Barack Obama on April 26th, 2010, to mourn her death.

References

Links

• National Council for Science and the Environment
• Dorothy Height – Daily Telegraph obituary
• African Events Congressional Gold Medal Award for Dorothy Height
• Dorothy Height’s oral history video excerpts, The National Visionary Leadership Project
• Dorothy Height’s Videos
• Legacy: Black and White in America, a documentary featuring Dorothy Height
• Flag Half-Staff Day Order by President Barack Obama

• Height, Dorothy. Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir.
• Tracey A. Fitzgerald, The National Council of Negro Women and the Feminist Movement, 1935–1975, Georgetown University Press, 1985.
• Judith Weisenfeld, “Dorothy Height”, Black Women in America: Profiles, MacMillan Library Reference USA, New York, 1999, pp. 128–130.
• [Legacy: Black and White in America], a documentary featuring Dorothy Height.

Thanks to Wikipedia®

In the perspective of A parliamentary election held in Iraq on 7 March 2010 and the Oscars 2010 best original screenplay for the  movie “The Hurt Locker” (which gives a perspective of the Iraq war)

Here is a comment I made back in 2007 on Mark Joyner’s

blog post:

March 13, 2007

Dear Bill O’Reilly (About The 600,000 in Iraq Bill Maher Mentioned)

A comment from Sunny Sudden FRANCE

-Earth Citizens sin- “indifference”

Thank you Mark for opening the issue on “disinformation.” Everyone seems very passionate: “O”Reilly, Maher, politics, facts, truth”… In the meantime “Earth Citizens” (God’s creatures if you believe there is a “Higher Power”) are still dying daily in Iraq. (lost Iraqi, American lives… many being innocent people= Earth Citizens)…

Is the debate about “disinformation”?...

We live in a global “fear” based society. We are becoming increasingly “indifferent”… to “others” suffering.

Gandhi said: “in the midst of death, life persists, and in the midst of darkness, light perists…We can say “no” to violence, and “yes” to life.”

If we really felt the weight of our own individual actions, and responsability… Instead of spending so much time “arguing with words.” We would strengthen our life daily by our personal “acts”…

Noone can be “neutral” and “indifferent” to what’s happening to Planet Earth, its Earth Citizens (specialy in Iraq)… certainly NOT because we’ve got 3 meals a day, a job, a fat bank account, or because we have too much responsability or are too poor to “care”…

In a fear based society, Earth Citizens are being daily bombarded by GIGABITS of “disinformation” and crippled with “information overload” In this context what should Mark Joyner have said? “For God’s sake, don’t disturb me…leave me alone…with your “true lies…Let’s keep it simple…Let me mind only Simpleology Training”…

My friend as you have a “fight with words”: “disinformation”, “white lie”, “true lie”… let me remind you that Earth Citizens are dying DAILY in Irak…

So I ask you Earth Citizen: “Are you blind”… and “is your heart made of stone”?…that you do not SEE what’s at stake (LIVES: HUMAN LIVES)…

We have right here and right now a crisis of: Truth, Honesty, Courage, and LUCIDITY…

This is not just about “disinformation”…and O’Reilly… It’s foremost about “indifference”…and “fear“… The higher we are socialy the more we seek security… no disturbance…”leave me alone”… “I have enough of my own problems”

And slowly “inertia” takes place in our lives… (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual inertia) while EVERYTHING is constantly changing in this dynamic universe…

As we are “debating” Earth Citizens in Irak give their last breath on Planet Earth…

Albert Schweitzer*, le “Grand Docteur” who fought for growth of brotherhood among races was right when he said: “Men do not think”…

In fact the last thing “WE”… YOU and I…want to face is that YOU and I are responsible for this violence...

- FIAT LUX -

*Albert Schweitzer: His whole life and all of his work are a message addressed to all men regardless of nationality or race…

Note: “In these troubled and uncertain times men are searching for something which will allow them to believe that mankind will one day enjoy the reign of peace and goodwill. “If altruism, reverence for life, and the idea of brotherhood can become living realities in the hearts of men, we will have laid the very foundations of a lasting peace between individuals, nations, and races.”

Presentation Speech by Gunnar Jah for: -Dr. Albert Schweitzer NOBEL PEACE PRIZE RECIPIENT 1952-

NOTE FROM MJ: Beautiful! Read my “constructs” and you’ll see we’re very much on the same page. It’s one thing to think it, another to do something about it. Look at “Construct One” for the first step …

“Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history”

“Sandel has opened up an important area of debate at a time when some of the unquestioned assumptions underlying economic policy and praxis of the last few decades have been exposed as fraudulent and are being questioned. What happens to the human person in a greedy society? What happens when people and values become commodities that can be traded? What happens when morality is reduced to what is technically practicable? And who is willing to take responsibility instead of just blaming others for what they don’t like?” Nick Baines

Michael J. Sandel (born March 5, 1953) is a political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University. He is best known for his critique of Rawls‘ Theory of Justice (1971) in his Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982).

Education

Sandel graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in 1975, and received his doctorate from Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where he studied under Charles Taylor.

Philosophical views

Sandel subscribes to the theory of communitarianism (although he is uncomfortable with the label), and in this vein he is perhaps best known for his critique of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls’ argument depends on the assumption of the veil of ignorance, which allows us to become “unencumbered selves.”

Sandel’s view is that we are by nature encumbered to an extent that makes it impossible even in the hypothetical to have such a veil. Some examples of such ties are the ties we make with our families, which we do not make by conscious choice but are born with them already attached. Because they are not consciously applied, these ties are impossible to separate from someone. Sandel believes that only a less-restrictive, looser version of the veil of ignorance can be possible. Rawls’s argument, however, depends on the fact that the veil is restrictive enough that we make decisions without knowing who will be affected by these decisions, which of course is impossible if we are already attached to people in the world.

Teaching

Justice

Sandel has taught the famous “Justice”^[1] course at Harvard for two decades. More than 10,000 students have taken the course, making it one of the most highly attended in Harvard’s history. The fall 2007 class was the largest ever at Harvard, with a total of 1,115 students.^[2] The fall 2007 course was recorded, and is offered online for students nationwide through the Harvard Extension School. An abridged form of this recording is now a 12-episode TV series, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, in a coproduction of WGBH and Harvard University. Episodes are available on the Justice with Michael Sandel website.^[3] There is also an accompanying book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, and the sourcebook of readings Justice: A Reader.

Click here for Other episodes -videos- of Justice by Michael Sandel

Other teaching

Sandel also co-teaches with Douglas Melton “Ethics and Biotechnology”, a seminar considering the ethical implications of a variety of biotechnological procedures and possibilities.

Authorship

Sandel is the author of multiple publications including Democracy’s Discontent and Public Philosophy. His Public Philosophy is a collection of his own previously published essays, examining the role of morality and justice in American political life. He offers commentary on the roles of moral values and civic community in the American electoral process – a much-debated aspect of the 2004 U.S. election cycle and current political discussion.

Michael Sandel gave the 2009 Reith Lectures on “A New Citizenship” on BBC Radio, addressing the ‘prospect for a new politics of the common good’ ^[4]. The lectures were delivered in London on May 18, Oxford on May 21, Newcastle on May 26 and Washington DC in early June ^[5].

Public service

Sandel served on the George W. Bush administration’s President’s Council on Bioethics.

2009 immigration commentary

In 2009, he described a controversial ’solution’ to immigration. Sandel suggested that the international community should impose annual refugee quotas on nations according to their wealth. Countries would be allowed to pay other, poorer countries to take refugees allotted under their quota.^[6]

Sandel does not endorse this view. He merely uses it as an illustration of the markets inevitably presupposing and promoting certain norms. He concludes: “There is something distasteful about a market in refugees, even if it’s for their own good, but what exactly is objectionable about it? It has something to do with the fact that a market in refugees changes our view of who refugees are and how they should be treated. It encourages the participants — the buyers, the sellers and also those whose asylum is being haggled over — to think of refugees as burdens to be unloaded or as revenue sources rather than as human beings in peril.”^[7]

Works

• Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, (September 15, 2009), ISBN 978-0374180652
• Michael J. Sandel, Justice: A Reader, Oxford University Press, (September 27, 2007), ISBN 978-0195335125
• Michael J. Sandel, The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, (January 31, 2007); paperback (September 30, 2009), ISBN 978-0674036383
• Michael J. Sandel, Public Philosophy: Essays on Morality in Politics, Harvard University Press (October 31, 2006), ISBN 978-0674023659
• Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge University Press, (March 28, 1998), ISBN 978-0521567411
• Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (February 6, 1998), ISBN 978-0674197459

Other languages

• Michael J. Sandel, Plädoyer gegen die Perfektion (German), Berlin University Press, (January 1, 2008), ISBN 978-3940432148
• Michael J. Sandel and Maria Luz Melon, El Liberalismo y los Limites de la Justicia (Filosofia del Derecho) (Spanish), Gedisa Editorial, (November 2000), ISBN 978-8474327069

See also

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

References

External links

• Harvard University Bio
• Podcast interview with Nigel Warburton on Philosophy Bites on What Shouldn’t Be Sold
• Podcast interview with Nigel Warburton on Ethics Bites on the topic of Genetic Enhancement in Sports
• The President’s Council on Bioethics
• FORA.tv The Case Against Perfection
• FORA.tv Michael Sandel on Justice: A Journey in Moral Reasoning at the Aspen Institute, one hour excerpt
• A page of links relating to the 2009 Reith Lectures
• Justice with Michael Sandel, WGBH Boston and Harvard University, complete online video with discussion guides, readings and discussion circle
• Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? on Harvard University’s YouTube channel

© Matthieu Ricard (born 1946) is a Buddhist monk who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal.

Recently the Dalai Lama Center Canada organized a Peace Summit in Vancouver with the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Prize winners and speakers. One evening the rock singer and humanitarian Bob Geldof, whose Live Aid concerts have raised 100s of millions of dollars for Africa, made this passionate plea:

“For most of us, all we can do when witnessing suffering is to put our hand in our pocket. If a million of us do that, it is a lot of people, a lot of help, and governments should take note. We need to keep children alive long enough so that they can become the doctors and engineers of tomorrow. Without that something will wither and die inside of us.

Many of these children don’t have parents because of man-made mistakes like wars. In my life I have met extraordinary people such as Mother Theresa. She would tell me that she saw the suffering of Christ on the broken backs of the poor. I don’t see that. I don’t see God. I see the malignant hand of man laid bare. And if that is so, it can be remedied, because it we have done it and we can undo it. We can say: “Enough!” All this is the symptom of poverty revealed in lack of education and in ill health.

In terms of global wealth, the need is infinitesimal if the political will would be there. How many times do we have to manifest the will of the people to the politician and say: “GET-THIS-DONE!” How many times do we have to create African children’s choirs and pop concerts in order to convince human beings to join in the glory of humanity? What are we – a circus or a society?

In truth, the real need represents only a tiny proportion of national budgets.

In the case of America, it is 0.16% of the national economy. It is not that Americans are selfish. Surveys show that when asked what percentage of their GDP do they believe goes into foreign aid, Americans say: “10%”. And when asked “it that enough”, they say “no”. But when they actually find out that it is only 0.16%, they are dismayed.”

The Commission for Africa has requested a doubling of aid by 2010 that will total 50 billion US dollars. Three months ago, one private bank in Britain was given 75 billion pounds within 30 minutes to save it from going under.

Yet a billion people will go down, and the cost is less that one private British company, in an economic system representing more than 50 trillion per annum. And one of the world’s richest economies can’t find a fraction of that.

We really are a joke.

When we break our promise to the poor, we break the most sacred promise, because breaking this promise kills people.

About Matthew Ricard

Walter Mischel

Columbia University

Paul Meehl, in one of his last public speeches, memorably noted that most clinical psychologists select their methods like kids make choices in a candy store: They look around, maybe sample a bit, and choose what they like, whatever feels good to them.

New report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, the result of a major two-year analysis that lays out the ugly truth behind this shady industry.

“Many clinical psychologists today, perhaps the majority, are deeply ambivalent about the role of science in informing their practice,” the authors write.

This report wasn’t written by some unhappy fringe or radical group looking to discredit psychology. It was written by a group of top psychologists, some of the few rays of light who see the darkness engulfing their profession.” William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

Connecting Clinical Practice to Scientific Progress

by Walter Mischel (pdf file)

Copyrights: http://www.psychologicalscience.org

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter Mischel

Walter Mischel (1930- ) is an American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. He is the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University.

Early life

Mischel was born in 1930 in Vienna, Austria, from which he fled with his family to the United States after the Nazi occupation in 1938.^[1] He grew up in Brooklyn, New York and studied under George Kelly and Julian Rotter at Ohio State University, where he received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1956.

Professional career

Mischel taught at the University of Colorado from 1956 to 1958, at Harvard University from 1958 to 1962, and at Stanford University from 1962 to 1983. Since 1983, Mischel has been in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University.

Mischel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991. In 2007, Mischel was elected president of the Association for Psychological Science. Mischel’s other honors include the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society of Experimental Social Psychologists, the Distinguished Contributions to Personality Award of the Society of Social and Personality Psychologists, and the Distinguished Scientist Award of American Psychological Association’s Division of Clinical Psychology. He is past editor of Psychological Review and past president of the American Psychological Association Division of Social and Personality Psychology and of the Association for Research in Personality.

Contributions to personality theory

In 1968, Mischel published the now classic monograph, Personality and Assessment, which created a paradigm crisis in personality psychology that changed the agenda of the field for decades. Mischel showed that study after study failed to support the fundamental traditional assumption of personality theory, that an individual’s behavior with regard to a trait (e.g. conscientiousness, sociability) is highly consistent across diverse situations. Instead, Mischel’s analyses revealed that the individual’s behavior, when closely examined, was highly dependent upon situational cues, rather than expressed consistently across diverse situations that differed in meaning.

Mischel made the case that the field of personality psychology was searching for consistency in the wrong places. Instead of treating situations as the noise or “error of measurement” in personality psychology, Mischel’s work proposed that by including the situation as it is perceived by the person and by analyzing behavior in its situational context, the consistencies that characterize the individual would be found. He argued that these individual differences would not be expressed in consistent cross-situational behavior, but instead, he suggested that consistency would be found in distinctive but stable patterns of if-then, situation-behavior relations that form contextualized, psychologically meaningful “personality signatures” (e.g., “she does A when X, but B when Y”).

These signatures of personality were in fact revealed in a large observational study of social behavior across multiple repeated situations over time (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Contradicting the classic assumptions, the data showed that individuals who were similar in average levels of behavior, for example in their aggression, nevertheless differed predictably and dramatically in the types of situations in which they aggressed. As predicted by Mischel, they were characterized by highly psychologically informative if-then behavioral signatures. Collectively, this work has allowed a new way to conceptualize and assess both the stability and variability of behavior that is produced by the underlying personality system, and has opened a window into the dynamic processes within the system itself (Mischel, 2004).

In a second direction, beginning in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Mischel pioneered work illuminating the ability to delay gratification and to exert self-control in the face of strong situational pressures and emotionally “hot” temptations. His studies with preschoolers in the late 1960s, often referred to as “the marshmallow experiment“, examined the processes and mental mechanisms that enable a young child to forego immediate gratification and to wait instead for a larger desired but delayed reward. Continuing research with these original participants has examined how preschool delay of gratification ability links to development over the life course, and may predict a variety of important outcomes (e.g., SAT scores, social and cognitive competence, educational attainment, and drug use), and can have significant protective effects against a variety of potential vulnerabilities.^[1] This work also opened a route to research on temporal discounting in decision-making, and most importantly into the mental mechanisms that enable cognitive and emotional self-control, thereby helping to demystify the concept of “willpower” (Mischel et al., 1989; Mischel & Ayduk, 2004).

References

External links

• Columbia University Department of Psychology: Walter Mischel

elected bibliography

Media reports

• Lehrer, Jonah. “Department of Science: Don’t!” May 18, 2009. The New Yorker. [1]

Scientific publications

• Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. New York: Wiley.
• Mischel, W. (1973). Toward a cognitive social learning reconceptualization of personality. Psychological Review, 80, 252-283.
• Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244, 933-938.
• Mischel, W. & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological Review, 102, 246-268.
• Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106, 3-19.
• Mischel, W., & Ayduk, O. (2004). “Willpower in a cognitive-affective processing system: The dynamics of delay of gratification”. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications (pp. 99-129). New York: Guilford.
• Mischel, W. (2004). “Toward an integrative science of the person”. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 1-22.

Autobiography

• Mischel, W. (2007). “Walter Mischel”. In G. Lindzey & W. M. Runyan (Eds.), A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Vol. IX, pp. 229-267). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2009

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA…

“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”

Photo: Pete Souza, Obama-Biden Transition Project, licensed by Attribution Share Alike 3.0
Barack Obama
USA
44th President of the United States of America
b. 1961

“His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population,” Nobel Committee.

Copyright: http://www.time.com

Courtesy of OBAMA FOR AMERICA

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1834628_1754174,00.html

OBAMA FAMILY TREE:

Supreme Court Justice

Obama’s distant cousin, Gabriel Duvall, was a member of the US House of Representatives, from the second district of Maryland. In 1811, he was appointed to the Supreme Court, where he sat until 1834. He was also a friend of Thomas Jefferson and the owner of 37 slaves

Farmers

Louisa Eliza Stroup Dunham and Jacob Mackey Dunham are the candidate’s great-great-great grandparents. A farmer in Tipton, County, Indiana in the 1870s, Jacob Dunham later owned restaurants and a confectionary in the Oklahoma Territory. He died in 1907.

Grandparents

Stanley and Madelyn Dunham pose with Obama’s mother Ann in a photograph probably taken in the 1950s. Born in Kansas, Obama’s maternal grandparents lived in four states before settling in Hawaii.

Mother

Though she has signed this sophomore yearbook photograph of herself “Stanley” — her parents named her Stanley Ann at birth — Obama’s mother was known as Ann for most of her life. After attending Mercer Island High School in Washington, she enrolled at the University of Hawaii, where she met Barack Obama, Sr.

Father

Born in Kenya, Barack Obama Sr. came to the University of Hawaii in order to study for a degree in economics. This photograph hangs on the wall of his stepmother’s house in Kogelo, Kenya.

Parents

Barack Sr. and Ann Dunham married in February, 1961 and Barack was born six months later. Their union did not last long, however. The marriage ended in divorce in early 1964.

The Young Obama

For the first six years of his life, Barack lived in Hawaii. In 1967, his mother remarried and the family moved to Indonesia.

Reunion

After the divorce, Barack Jr. only saw his father one more time, in Hawaii, in 1972, when this photograph was taken. The senior Barack then returned to Kenya, where he worked for a US oil company and the Kenyan government. He died in a car accident in 1982, at the age of 46.

Half Sister

Maya Soetoro, the daughter of Barack’s mother and her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, sits beside the young Barack, Ann and grandfather Stanley Dunham in this photograph taken in Hawaii the early 1970s. Ann came back to Hawaii to attend graduate school in 1974 and remained until 1977, when she returned to Indonesia.

Family Ties

When Ann returned to Indonesia, the young Barack remained behind in Hawaii, where he was raised by his maternal grandparents. He eventually attended Columbia University in New York, where this photo was taken in the 1980s.

Extended Family

On his father’s side, Obama has numerous relatives. He has made several visits to the home of his step grandmother, Sarah Obama, front row, second from right. He also has four half brothers through his father.

Kenya

Sarah Obama, now 86, still resides in Kogelo. In this photo, she and Obama pose together outside her home in 1995.

Michelle

Barack met his wife in the late 1980s, when the two worked at the prestigious Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin. They were married in 1992. Shortly thereafter, they spent a Christmas in Hawaii, where this photo was taken.

The Next Generation

Barack and Michelle have two children, Malia, now 10, and Sasha, 7.

The Story of Barack Obama’s Mother

By Amanda Ripley / Honolulu

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1729524,00.html#WordPress

Ann Dunham

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stanley Ann Dunham in 1960

Born     Stanley Ann Dunham

November 29, 1942(1942-11-29)

Wichita, Kansas, USA

Died     November 7, 1995 (aged 52)

Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Cause of death     Uterine cancer

Resting place     Pacific Ocean

at Koko Head, Oahu

Nationality     American

Ethnicity     White

Education     BA, MA, PhD [1]

Alma mater     University of Hawaii

Occupation     Anthropologist

Home town     Wichita, Kansas

Known for     Mother of US President Barack Obama

Indonesian anthropology

Spouse(s)     Barack Obama, Sr.

(1961–1964, divorced)

Lolo Soetoro

(1965–1980, divorced)

Children     Barack Obama (b.1961)

Maya Soetoro (b.1970)

Parents     Stanley Armour Dunham

Madelyn Payne Dunham

Stanley Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995), mother of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, was an American anthropologist who specialized in economic anthropology and rural development. Dunham was nicknamed Anna,[2][3] later known as Dr. Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro,[1] and finally Ann Dunham Sutoro.[1] Born in Kansas, Dunham spent her childhood in California, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas and her teenage years in Mercer Island, Washington, and much of her adult life in Hawaii and Indonesia.

Dunham studied at the University of Hawaii and the East-West Center and attained a bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. in anthropology

Professional life

Dunham returned to graduate school in Honolulu in 1974, while raising Barack and Maya. When Dunham returned to Indonesia for field work in 1975 with Maya, after three years in Honolulu, Barack chose not to go, preferring to finish high school in Hawaii while living with his grandparents.[29]

Having been a weaver, Dunham was interested in village industries, and she therefore moved to Yogyakarta, the center of Javanese handicrafts.[35] In 1992 she earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii, under the supervision of Prof. Alice Dewey, with a dissertation titled Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving and thriving against all odds.[36] Anthropologist Michael Dove described the dissertation as “a classic, in-depth, on-the-ground anthropological study of a 1,200-year-old industry”.[37] Dunham’s paper challenged popular perceptions regarding economically and politically marginalized groups, and countered the notions that the roots of poverty lie with the poor themselves and that cultural differences are responsible for the gap between less-developed countries and the industrialized West. According to Dove, Dunham

found that the villagers she studied in Central Java had many of the same economic needs, beliefs and aspirations as the most capitalist of Westerners. Village craftsmen were “keenly interested in profits,” she wrote, and entrepreneurship was “in plentiful supply in rural Indonesia,” having been “part of the traditional culture” there for a millennium…Based on these observations, Dr. Soetoro concluded that underdevelopment in these communities resulted from a scarcity of capital, the allocation of which was a matter of politics, not culture. Antipoverty programs that ignored this reality had the potential, perversely, of exacerbating inequality because they would only reinforce the power of elites. As she wrote in her dissertation, “many government programs inadvertently foster stratification by channeling resources through village officials,” who then used the money to further strengthen their own status.[37]

Dunham then pursued a career in rural development championing women’s work and microcredit for the world’s poor, with Indonesia’s oldest bank, the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, Women’s World Banking, and as a consultant in Lahore, Pakistan. She mingled with leaders from organizations supporting Indonesian human rights, women’s rights, and grass-roots development.[29] While at the Ford Foundation, Dunham worked with Peter Geithner, father of Tim Geithner (who later became United States Secretary of the Treasury in her son’s administration), to develop the Foundation’s microfinance programs in Indonesia.[38]

Illness and death

In late 1994, Dunham was living and working in Indonesia. One night, during dinner at a friend’s house in Jakarta, she experienced stomach pain. A visit to a local physician misdiagnosed her symptoms as indigestion.[1] Dunham returned to the United States in early 1995 and was examined at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and diagnosed with uterine cancer. By this time, the cancer had spread to her ovaries.[14] She moved back to Hawaii to live near her widowed mother and died on November 7, 1995 at the age of 52.[29][39][40] Following a memorial service at the University of Hawaii, Obama and his sister spread their mother’s ashes in the Pacific Ocean at Lanai Lookout on the south side of Oahu.[29] Obama scattered the ashes of his grandmother (Madelyn Dunham) in the same spot on December 23, 2008, weeks after his election to the presidency.[41]

Obama touched upon his mother’s death in a 30-second campaign advertisement (“Mother”) arguing for health care reform. The ad featured a photograph of Dunham holding a young Obama in her arms as Obama talks about Dunham’s last days worrying about expensive medical bills.[40] The topic also came up in a 2007 speech in Santa Barbara:[40]

I remember my mother. She was 53 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn’t thinking about getting well. She wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn’t sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a preexisting condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it’s like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it’s wrong. It’s not who we are as a people.[40]

Personal beliefs

In his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father Barack Obama wrote, “My mother’s confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn’t possess… In a land [Indonesia] where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship… she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism.”[47] In his 2006 book The Audacity of Hope Obama wrote, “I was not raised in a religious household… My mother’s own experiences… only reinforced this inherited skepticism. Her memories of the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones… And yet for all her professed secularism, my mother was in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I’ve ever known.”[48] “Religion for her was “just one of the many ways — and not necessarily the best way — that man attempted to control the unknowable and understand the deeper truths about our lives,” Obama wrote.[49]

Maxine Box, Dunham’s best friend in high school, said that Dunham “touted herself [then] as an atheist, and it was something she’d read about and could argue. She was always challenging and arguing and comparing. She was already thinking about things that the rest of us hadn’t.”[5] However, Dunham’s daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, when asked later if her mother was an atheist, said, “I wouldn’t have called her an atheist. She was an agnostic. She basically gave us all the good books — the Bible, the Hindu Upanishads and the Buddhist scripture, the Tao Te Ching, Sun Tzu — and wanted us to recognize that everyone has something beautiful to contribute.”[28] “Jesus, she felt, was a wonderful example. But she felt that a lot of Christians behaved in un-Christian ways.”[49]

In a 2007 speech, Obama contrasted the beliefs of his mother to those of her parents, and commented on her spirituality and skepticism: “My mother, whose parents were nonpracticing Baptists and Methodists, was one of the most spiritual souls I ever knew. But she had a healthy skepticism of religion as an institution.”[1]

OBAMA’S NATION OF HOPE:

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1866257_1814250,00.html

Money, Power, Wisdom:

September 20, 2009

Before you read any further, let me warn you. This blog post is not typical of what I usually write – and is DEFINITELY NOT for everyone!

If the “existential dilemma” leaves you cold (you lucky dog, you!), or your “search for meaning” rarely surfaces, and (when it does) is easily sublimated by a bar of chocolate in the fridge, then you won’t find this interesting.

I’ll go further. You may find it shocking, disturbing and scary. Stop. You have been warned!

(But no, I’m not joking!)

Still with me. Ok. Let’s start at the very beginning (the very best way to start, sings Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”, by the way!)

Late last night, I was reading a blog called TECHNIUM. It’s by Kevin Kelly, the guy who wrote the awesome “1,000 True Fans” post I reference often.

This post had the intriguing title “The Unabomber Was Right”. I started reading – and found myself instantly pulled into the narrative. And (gasp!) nodding my head in agreement with some of Kaczynski’s theory!

Look, I’m no Luddite. In fact, I work in TWO of possibly the most technologically sophisticated industries in the world today – a very specialized branch of medicine (pediatric cardiac surgery), and the cutting-edge, rapidly advancing, constantly evolving arena of Internet business.

And I love what I do, and how I do it – and realize it would be impossible to do without technology.

Yet I found myself AGREEING with some quoted excerpts of the manifesto (which, by the way, I haven’t read fully – though I might at some point, to see what else is in there).

As I wended my way through the very long post on Technium’s blog, my mind recalled a similar article (from April 2000) by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and for a long time, it’s chief technology officer and software architect. That provocative piece, published in WIRED magazine, was titled “Why The Future Does Not Need Us”.

That article moved me to deep thought, and even resulted in a letter in response that I emailed to Wired, though I’m not sure if it was ever published in the magazine. (I’ve included it below, if you’re interested in reading it)

It also led me to study the work of futurologist Ray Kurzweil, and I read his paradigm shifting book, “The Age of Spiritual Machines” which first introduced me to the concept of a “downloadable consciousness”! (And with such relentless logic, damn it!) If you want your socio-technological foundations shaken to their roots, read that book – and be prepared to be surprised.

Anyway, the parallels AND THE DIFFERENCES came to mind – because where Bill Joy ended his essay on a more or less nihilistic tone of hopelessness, Kevin Kelly chose (like me) to see the ‘positive’ – and highlighted the expanded range of choice that technology has permitted us all.

So even if technology is evil and all-pervasive to the point of killing off all alternative (non-technology based) options in the long run (and no one can say that will happen, though logically it does appear likely), at least in the process enormous advantages/benefits will have been conferred on humanity.

Today, I believe, we have already crossed the Rubicon. Realistically, we can no longer tune out technology. Tell me… can we shut down the Internet? Can we run stock exchanges without computers? Heck, most of us can’t even make our early morning brew without extensively using ‘technology’!

So are we on the slippery slope of self-annhilation and subservience to a nameless, faceless force called TECHNOLOGY, the Darth Vader of our Milky Way galaxy?

I went to bed with that thought lurking under the surface of my awareness, mildly disturbing but not too worrisome (you’ll see why if you read my reply to Bill Joy’s article below)

Anyway, what happened today was kind of cool. Events like this make me wonder about the role (and reality) of serendipity, coincidence and chance in our lives.

I’m halfway through reading the “Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”, but sought out a different book to read over dinner. We had bought seven new books a few days back at the bookstore, and the one I picked today was Isaac Asimov’s.

Now, this book has two stories – “The Caves of Steel” and “The Rest of the Robots” – and for some reason, I selected the second one to read first!

Flipping over to page 8, I read the introduction, which included this passage – and was stunned at the relevance and congruity with the line of thinking that had been occupying my mind subliminally since last night!

Here’s what Asimov says about robots (in the context of why he started writing about them in his sci-fi novels):

“In the 1930s, I became a science-fiction reader, and I quickly grew tired of this dull hundred-times-old tale. Robots were created, and destroyed their creator. As a person interested in science, I resented the purely Faustian interpretation of science.

“Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Are we prepared then to return to the ape and forfeit the very essence of humanity? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier against the danger it brings?

“In other words, Faust must indeed face Mephistopheles, but Faust does not have to be defeated!

“Knives are manufactured with hilts so that they may be grasped safely, stairs possess banisters, electric wiring is insulated, pressure cookers have safety valves – in every artifact, thought is put into minimizing danger. Sometimes, the safety achieved is insufficient because of limitations imposed by the nature of the universe or the nature of the human mind. However, the effort is there.

“Consider a robot then, as simply another artifact. It is not a sacrilegious invasion of the domain of the Almighty, any more (or any less) than any other artifact is. As a machine, a robot will surely be designed for safety, as far as possible. If robots are so advanced that they can mimic thought processes of human beings, then surely the nature of those thought processes will be designed by human engineers and built-in safeguards wil be added. The safety may not be perfect (what is?), but it will be as complete as men can make it.”

WOW!

Asimov’s philosophy regarding technological advances so closely parallels mine (as reflected in the letter below) that I cannot help but wonder if I had read this passage many years ago (and forgotten about it), and then re-surfaced it in my own paper… with the tinge of fatalism that my cultural upbringing has inculcated in many facets of my thinking.

Anyway, what are your thoughts (if any) on this subject? Read my letter below, and then (if you feel like it), leave a comment on the blog.

My email to WIRED magazine, after reading Bill Joy’s article:

THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY IS …… ‘HUMANOIDITY’ ?!

As a paediatric cardiac surgeon working with children’s heart defects, almost every issue Bill Joy brought up in this article is related what I do on a day-to-day basis. Technologic advances, ethical issues related to such developments, interfering with Nature’s course, exploring new frontiers of science, are all an integral part of my professional work. And hence, areas which I’ve thought about in depth, time and again.

Joy’s article brought up many debatable issues. Here are some of my comments and thoughts.

I agree with the basic premise. Technology will soon advance to the level where machines will become intelligent – even more so than the average human – and will do things better. Maybe someday soon, we’ll come to look upon machines as indispensible to our lives.

I also accept that such progress comes at a price, and an enormous risk. But feel the benefits derived on an everyday basis, as also on an evolutionary level, outweigh the dangers.

While the possibility that the future might see us humans get integrated with an intelligent robot is unsettling, once you get used to the concept, it becomes increasingly acceptable. Especially if, as Joy thinks, it will happen slowly, universally, painlessly. Why worry about it? Like Death, after all, it will be upon you before you realize – and then you won’t need to!

Are we constructing tools that may replace our species? Well, I’d prefer to think the tools we are working on are enhancing our species, helping it evolve into a more powerful, extinction-proof form.

As more and more computing and processing power becomes available to us, that itself will act as an impetus to unleash more of our own brain-power in a synergizing and snow-balling manner. And when you consider that barely 5% of our cerebral capacity has been tapped, you begin to realize that all isn’t lost with the human race. In fact, we might have barely scratched the surface in terms of species/intelligence evolution.

Certainly, there is the uncomfortable risk that we might destroy ourselves in the process. But isn’t that true about any revolutionary development in history?

I believe the human species is innately pre-programmed to survive – and in the process evolve to become ever better, albeit, maybe, losing what is today its essential *humanity*

Looked at in this sense, work on today’s cutting edge technology is a step in that evolutionary process that ensures survival of the fittest species – OURS.

Shouldn’t we be proceeding with caution ?

We are. Nature’s built-in safety valve makes certain that we come up with the most fascinating, innovative advances and breakthroughs ONLY when we are ready for them.

Not much has changed in the basic processes of the human brain or mind in the past century. But look at the advances it has been able to think up, create and implement over the same period. Why didn’t they happen earlier? Surely, humans *could* have thought up the same discoveries and inventions earlier than they did. I prefer to believe there is an inherent timetable that everyone conforms to, knowingly or not, which determines the speed of our evolution.

If an intelligent, self-replicating robot does indeed come into existence in 2030, it is perhaps because human-kind will then be ready for it. We will not survive an encounter with such super-human robots.

But are we sure humankind will try and engage in a battle of wits or strength with such robots? Or even if we do, isn’t it also a possibility that our own intelligence – aided by our harnessing of the *intelligence* of such robots – would have grown to the level that we can do so with a reasonable chance of success?

I’m convinced we’ll have ways to integrate the strengths of both, maybe in the process merge humans with robots in a manner hard to imagine today. The result may be, as Danny Hillis suggests, robotizing of humans. I personally feel it will be the reverse, and we’ll find ‘humanoid’ robots, humans with the processing power of robots but essentially, in all non-technical aspects – emotions, feelings, intuition – human.

And far from being dystopian, that would be utopian, wouldn’t it ? Because it would retain what is the essence of *man*, while also retaining whatever is the upside of mechanization – intellectual superiority, immortality, technical excellence, productivity.

As I see it, this scenario is infinitely preferable to the one created by dabbling in genetic manipulations. After all, how much more dangerous to mankind could a destructive, super-intelligent robot be when compared to incarnations of evil in human form, as for instance the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler?

In genetics, as in Nature, no rules are concrete, knowledge of the whole is miniscule, and dabbling with one aspect could have immeasurable effects on many others. That is a cauldron which, if stirred wrong, could throw up nightmare situations I don’t even dare imagine.

Inequality among humans is an unpleasant fact of life. Trying to correct this by genetic manipulation is not the best answer. And so, if indeed such genetic engineering results in another species with unequal groups, would we have significantly altered the status quo in its very basic sense? No.

As regards using genetic engineering, I’m worried irrespective of the purpose – military, scientific, terrorist or accident. Because we don’t have the slightest idea of the impact on the entire ecosystem, or even in isolation on a particular species alone, over time.

Any modification or manipulation of Nature can be put to the best possible use. And truly enough, this is the motivation of the scientists seeking to unlock these secrets. And just as inevitably, there is the certainty that those very developments will be perverted by a minority to suit their narrow minded needs.

In the well publicized race to decode the human genome, you see evidence of this trend. While the Human Genome Project researchers followed a plodding, methodical process, maverick geniuses like Dr.Venter short-circuited the system rushing to decode only the functional genes with commercial potential. Therein lies the danger – as the silent, non-functional codons and genes just might hold the secret of Life. And we’d never know – until it was too late.

Nature, or God if you will, has planned for such variety – and built in the safeguards that will protect humanity – or as it might become known later, ‘humanoidity’.

While we can but plan for *foreseeable* dangers of technology and evolution, how can we predict what we don’t know about? For instance, how many would have imagined, just 10 years ago, the impact of the Internet on mankind? Robotics, nanotech and bioengineering are today what the Internet was to mankind a couple of decades earlier – wonders of the future with enormous potential for good and bad, of which we know but little, and can only hope the best.

There are far too many potential situations that could wipe out humanity as we know it, many of them eerily current, and dependent on such insecure safeguards as one man’s (or a small group’s collective) ego or intelligence. A lab accident could release the small-pox virus. A temporarily unbalanced President could hit the nuclear trigger. Lazy computer programmers avoided typing four digits for a year and scared the world into believing in a doomsday as the new millenium rolled in.

Yet they didn’t happen. And – most probably – won’t ever. Why? I’d like to think because Nature ordains it that way!

Business covets a stable, peaceful environment more than does a military or government. It is more likely that a technological innovation with commercial benefits, developed by corporate enterprise, would be used for peaceful purposes than those invented by a military research lab for defensive, or as is more common, acquisitive intent.

Perhaps the marketplace, with its competitiveness and scope for enormous profits, will be the best safety check to prevent harmful application of the new technology. So let’s just ensure enormous business profitability from those technologies! And as for governments, the destructive potential itself will be the most effective deterrent against its damaging deployment, just as detente evolved as a direct consequence of the atomic bomb blasts.

While it is true that the ease of availability of this technology to the common man is disconcerting, is there any reason to believe Joe-next-door finds the prospect of annhilating human-kind any more exciting a prospect than leaders of nations?

As to the question of tampering with and altering the *awareness of Nature and the order of life*, doesn’t almost any scientific advance do just that, in a sense ?

Take for instance the treatment of a serious heart birth defect called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome or HLHS. While initial efforts at cure resulted in over 95% mortality, it is perseverance that has brought about current survival figures in excess of 90%. Naturally, left alone, these patients would ALL have died within one year of life. Now if that isn’t tampering with the *order of life*, I don’t know what is!

Yet no one today criticizes the efforts of those early pioneers. Their initial efforts were just as inefficient, the systems they built were just as fragile to begin with, as today’s efforts with robotics and software are. But over time, these systems and processes become robust, stable, effective.

Do you know what is scary about this? No one seems to condemn these efforts as strongly as they did the first nuclear explosion, or cloning, or experiments at creating intelligent robots. Why? Because, on the surface, we are restoring health to a human life. No one pauses to wonder why, and indeed if, we should try and influence Nature’s course as it affects that one patient. It is taken for granted. Indeed to REFUSE to offer this treatment would be consider unethical!

What if there were some other, hitherto unknown, yet enormously serious *other* reasons for which that particular patient wouldn’t have survived *naturally* ? And what if those very other reasons – of which we do not know anything – could be harmful to the ecosystem, in a broader sense?

There are too many unknowns in the biologic arena, much more than the relatively better controlled area of robotics and automation technology. Yet we dabble uncaringly in these bio-spheres, indeed are even encouraged to continue doing so – simply because we see no harm in the near term. The same might be true of other tech fields – nanotechnology and robotics. And the trend will continue – until disaster strikes. And then, it will be too late to worry!

Yet we talk about shielding ourselves from the terrible consequences of these exciting new technologies. But the truth is we cannot shield ourselves, or hide from them by abandoning the planet or covering it with a star-wars style barrier. There is only one sure-fire way to *protect* ourselves, and that is to abandon any efforts at developing such technologies.

And that is absurd, on the face of it. Maybe even more dangerous as well, since a lack of progress can be construed as regression, and could reduce the survival advantage our species has built up over centuries.

Indeed, many of the advances made in earlier years by our forebears might have been viewed as *threatening* by their peers, been conceived as likely to annhilate the species at the time. Yet we are still alive to tell the tale, and none the worse for wear – indeed better off in many ways.

We live in an imperfect world. Yet that world hasn’t ended. Despite many predictions to the contrary, we have survived and thrived. Yes, I believe we are pre-programmed to survive, no matter what we need to do, how we need to change and evolve to do so.

And it is naive to assume that we can hold back now. Put the genie back into the bottle and throw it out to sea. Throttle the progress that has been made already.

Maybe that was possible a few decades ago. Now that Dolly has been cloned, Venter has patented significant chunks of Man’s genetic make-up and molecular electronics has risen on the horizon of techno-research, we have embarked on a journey of no return. The only relinquishment possible will be when one or many parties have achieved their ends.

But we still hold the rudder. We can navigate within safe seas, discover new lands, explore uncharted waters, play safe and do good. Or instead we could become the Grand Pirates of the ocean of life, attacking innocent passers-by, spreading death and destruction, and ultimately pay the supreme price of self-annhilation.

As always, the choice is ours.

——————————————————————————–

A Message From My Heart..

From Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian

Reader's Digest magazine influenced my life - twice.

In 1977, with a story about a living God.  A heart surgeon
named Denton A.Cooley.  He was glamorous, a pioneer and
entrepreneur.  Operated on princes, presidents and prime
ministers.  In all, over 75,000 operations.  Founded the
world-famous Texas Heart Institute in Houston.  

I wanted to be like him.

A 1989 issue I read during my medical internship featured
a neurosurgeon named Tom Peters.  One sentence in his
interview remains burned into my mind:

"I don't accept children dying."

This time, I didn't just *want* to be like him.

I LIVED LIKE HIM.

I too won't accept a child dying.  I made myself a promise.

Anything... ANYTHING that is within my power to prevent it
happening, I will do.

   = = = = = 

1989 - It was the year I grew up.

When I realized - and accepted - that life is unfair.

1989 was when a 22-year old held my hand as his life ebbed away

1989 was when I lost a loved 8-year old niece to an untreatable
kidney ailment

1989 was when I watched helplessly as a teenager succumbed to
a terrible severe viral infection.

It hurt.  Terribly.  Deeply.

And proved beyond doubt that life isn't fair.

But that's ok.

We just need to tweak the odds - in our favor.

That's what technological advances, evolution - indeed survival
itself - is all about.

Tweaking the odds in our favor.

   = = = = = 

A child's life is precious.  VERY precious.

It's loss - crushing.  Mind numbing.

It may be Nature's law - but I don't like it.

Never will.

I won't accept a child dying.

Many forms of heart birth defects make survival impossible.

Unless they're repaired.

That's one reason I became a pediatric heart surgeon.

Apart from the challenge, the technical, intellectual and
emotional puzzles the speciality poses its practitioners.

The latter, sadly, creates robots.  Unemotional automatons
that get caught up in their craft, forgetting or ignoring
the human element.  The stress, pain, trauma, helplessness
associated with the problem.

The COST.

Heart birth defects have a unique social dimension.  Young
families, just starting out on their careers and settling
down, with little if any financial cushion, suddenly are
confronted with a daunting choice...

Raise the money - often paralyzingly huge sums - or watch
your child suffer... or worse.

Most of my work online aims to tackle this facet of the
complex problem.

I can - and do - handle the medical and emotional elements.
But alone, I can't help with the financial ones.

That's why I need YOU.

The children do.

And thanks to the heartwarming generous outpouring from a
group of amazing folks, at least 23 children will live.


Without you, they may not have.

YOU have made a difference.

YOU are special.

I'm honored to consider you my friend!

Thank you -- from my heart!

Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian

Thank you for supporting the Heart Kids Blogathon.
http://www.HeartKidsBlogathon.info

If you'd like to contribute, there's still time. Go to:


http://www.CHDinfo.com/howdonate.htm

-------------------------------------------------------

MORE ABOUT Dr. Mani:

Dr. Mani: An Internet Mogul With a Heart

Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian has been compared to Mother Theresa, especially by
poor families in India that have a child living with a congenital heart
defect.

Dr. Sivasubramanian, better known simply as "Dr. Mani," is a well known
author that handles health-related topics online. His first calling in life
was cardiology. He has performed lifesaving heart operations for numerous
children.

Already impacted by the work of heart surgeon Dr. Denton A. Cooley, founder
of the Texas Heart Institute, Dr. Mani had made a decision to become a heart
surgeon himself. In 1989 Dr. Mani read a quote in a medical journal by a
neurosurgeon named Dr. Tom Peters, who said: "I don't accept children
dying." Dr. Mani realized he didn't accept children dying either.

In fact, that same year Dr. Mani lost his own eight year old niece to kidney
disease. He regularly watched other children and young people die from
illness. He had watched as doctors that he worked with became hardened to
death and suffering. He vowed that, even though he witnessed suffering every
day, death would not become just a routine part of his job as a physician.

Dr. Mani knew he that, as a heart surgeon, he could make a tremendous impact
on the lives of children with congenital heart defects. But he wasn't
satisfied with simply staying in the hospital and wielding a scalpel. He
wanted to get involved with the families of the children, real human beings,
whose lives were turned upside-down by the misfortune of being born with a
heart defect.

So, in 2003, he launched the Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation. Dr. Mani
also became a well known and award winning Internet and business
entrepreneur. He has raised over $84,000 to provide life saving heart
operations for children whose families could not otherwise afford the
operations. The children helped by Dr. Mani's foundation would likely have
died without his intervention.

Dr. Mani continues to raise awareness about congenital heart disease around
the world. His foundation maintains a growing base of supporters, currently
at approximately 700 members. He also sponsors major fundraising events. One
of these is The Heart Kids Blogathon, an annual event which was started in
2003. He and his foundation are also an integral part of "A Day for Hearts,"
a fundraising event that falls on February 14 each year. The day is
dedicated to raising awareness of, and generating support for, congenital
heart disease.

Dr. Mani accepts that life isn't always fair. But he also knows that it only
takes a little bit of dedication to "tweak the odds in our favor."

Copyright © 2009 www.dr-mani.com inc. All rights reserved.

——————————————————————————————-

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Mani

Kersauson was the seventh child in a family of eight. While he was the only Kersauson not to have been born in Brittany, he was born on 20 July 1944 and brought up near Morlaix in a “provincial Catholic aristocracy with compulsory mass” as he calls it. Very early on, Olivier de Kersauson was to break away from his family. Without being inattentive, he was a pupil who did not settle in well to school life with the priests at boarding school. He passed through eleven schools altogether. After his final school exams and getting up to a lot of things, always on the coast, he began studying economics.

At the age of twenty-two, he met Eric Tabarly in Saint Malo. Shortly after, Eric invited him to do his military service on board. This opportunity stretched into eight years during which he was Tabarly’s mate.

Together, they put on their boots and waterproofs, swallowing up the miles aboard the Pen Duicks. Very quickly, Olivier de Kersauson developed a passion for multihulls in which he became a pioneer. He was, in particular, the first to build a multihull of composite material, Ribourel, then a trimaran with long floaters, Poulain, at the helm of which he set in 1989-1990 the single-handed round the world speed record.

From 1992 onwards, he spent his time working towards the Jules Verne Trophy, the round the world crew record. Wearing the livery of Lyonnaise des Eaux – Dumez, in 1994, he raced around the world against Peter Blake. At the helm of his catamaran Enza, the New Zealander and his six-member crew managed to go around the world in 74 days and 22 hours, while the five Frenchmen took 77 days and five hours. Remaining determined, he made some improvements to his boat and wearing the livery of Sport Elec, took off again around the world. On 8 March 1997, Olivier de Kersauson and his six-man crew left Brest. They were to return triumphant 71 days, 14 hours, 22 minutes and 8 seconds later, improving by more than a week on Peyron’s first time. In 2001, he named his giant trimaran Geronimo, “because Geronimo never gave up.” It was at the helm of this boat that Olivier de Kersauson took the Jules Verne Trophy for the second time in 2004 (63 days, 13 hours, 59 minutes).

In January 2003, Kersauson claimed that his boat was attacked by a giant squid.

Source: Wikipedia®

——————————————————————————————-

Qui est vraiment Olivier de Kersauson ?

Copyright: http://blog.breizh.bz/

Par Ronan Le Flécher, mardi 6 novembre 2007 

Il figure parmi les Bretons préférés des Français. Son humour, sa grande gueule et sa culture en font la coqueluche des médias où il campe un personnage bougon et misogyne. « J’ai la chance de pouvoir faire le con en bateau », sourit Kersau. Pourtant, le phénomène Kersauson dépasse de loin le cadre de la voile. Alors, est-il un marin à l’épais palmarès, un homme au franc parler ou un bouffon du roi ? À vous de vous faire une idée.

———————————————————-

Copyright: http://www.fralo.info

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Toutes mes émotions sont liées à la mer et mes chagrins aussi.

Portrait à la mer. En cette Bretagne dure et mystique, habituée au malheur, Olivier de Kersauson a vu des larmes glisser sur les joues parcheminées des femmes en noir qui chaque jour d’hiver venaient attendre des bateaux qui ne reviendraient plus. Il a entendu leurs imprécations rauques adressées à la mer, vu des croix nouvelles se dresser dans les cimetières marins sur des tombes symboliques. Près de la baie des Trépassés, on disait d’un homme qu’il était crevé s’il avait rendu l’âme dans son lit, on disait qu’il était mort si la mer l’avait emporté. Depuis sa tendre enfance, il aime apporter la contradiction, manifester sa singularité; rentrer dans le rang n’est pas son genre. Cela ressemble à un simulacre, mais c’est de sa part une manière quasi naturelle de s’affirmer. Originaire de milieux conservateurs, très tôt, il se trouve en rupture avec la notion de famille : ” Je trouvais ce monde ennuyeux, suffisant… sans intérêt. Je n’adhérais pas aux moeurs ni aux coutumes. Je ne souhaitais pas vivre dans ce milieu écrasé de conventions et qui en perdait son talent. ” « Dans ma petite enfance, mes parents voulaient faire de moi un pot de fleurs. Je n’ai jamais tenu en place, je me levais la nuit en pyjama et je regardais la mer. Ma mère venait me chercher: “Olivier, il faut rentrer maintenant.” » Dans les différents collèges religieux qu’il fréquente (11 au total dont un pendant 10 jours), le silence, le rêve et la lecture sont une armure qui exaspère les bons pères. ” Les propositions intellectuelles, morales et sociales ne servaient pas l’intérêt que j’accordais à la vie. J’ai été renvoyé de nombreux collèges sans avoir jamais chahuté. J’étais simplement d’une indifférence totale et ils ne pouvaient le supporter. En désaccord avec l’entourage, on subit d’abord une grande solitude puis on se retrouve dans l’obligation de s’évader par le rêve. J’ai rapidement pris conscience du monde maritime. Il m’a fasciné depuis l’enfance.” Après le Bac, Odk s’engage dans des études supérieures : “ J’ai fait de l’économie en fac, le prof avait des chaussures en crêpe et un costume pas frais, je me suis dit que c’était une arnaque totale; s’il avait compris l’économie, il ne serait pas là … ” ” J’ai décidé que c’était à moi de choisir ma vie, Ce fut le signal de la « grande dételée » qui dure depuis. J’allais pouvoir faire ce que je voulais ; personne ne me prendrait mon temps. On m’avait pris mon temps pendant dix-huit ans dans des collèges épouvantables dirigés par des maîtres stupides. Le temps allait m’appartenir. J’étais un goinfre, curieux, déchaîné, avec une envie : courir le monde. ” ” Je décide de prendre des vacances actives. À vie. Plus personne n’allait m’obliger à faire ce que je ne voulais pas faire. Jamais je ne rentrerai dans aucun système. Quel qu’en soit le prix. ” ” Pourquoi l’envie de fuite est si forte quand on a 20 ans ? Pour échapper aux mouches bleues qui se posent sur le vide-ordures à pédale. ”

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Olivier voue une admiration sans limite au navigateur Polynésien Francis Cowan : ” Avec Francis Cowan, on s’est connu en 1957 et il avait une grande connaissance du monde maritime Polynésien. C’est quelqu’un qui avait une réflexion basée sur du réel. Très souvent les réflexions dans ce milieu sont basées sur la lecture et non par le fait de naviguer. Francis avait le don de l’intelligence appliquée. Sa vie est une histoire maritime formidable parce qu’il y a des gens qui réfléchissent et d’autres qui agissent. C’est rare qu’il y ait les deux en même temps. “

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A bord, Kersauson est du genre “carré”, sinon ombrageux. Un marin formé sur le tas, à qui Éric Tabarly à dit un jour (par exemple) dans le Pacifique: “un spi, il faut qu’il soit comme il faut qu’il soit.” Point. A lui de comprendre ce que cela voulait dire. “ Éric fut dans son métier de marin un visionnaire réaliste le premier à construire un trimaran de couse, et un immense serviteur du large qui haïssait l’impudeur des émotions. L’homme raisonnable renonce souvent face à la cause qu’il sent perdue. Lui jamais. J’ai été son équipier puis son second pendant huit ans sur tous les océans quand les projets paraissaient insensés et les buts chimériques. Eric n’a jamais été inférieur à son destin. C’était mon maître. ” Olivier est intraitable avec ses équipiers : “ En course je deviens chaleureusement inhumain “, mais ne perd jamais son calme, gaspille rarement sa salive : les explications orageuses se déroulent toujours après. ” Même dans une situation dramatique, il y a toujours un moment favorable pour agir ” Il déteste les conversations oiseuses durant les veilles, qui relâchent l’attention : le barreur a ordre de ne pas parler, de ne pas fumer, de ne pas goûter au café. ” Un homme ne peut pas bien faire deux choses à la fois ” La sécurité est une préoccupation constante ” La moindre distraction sur un bateau peut aboutir à une catastrophe ” à tel point qu’il interdit à ses hommes de porter des gants : “ Supposez que lors d’une manoeuvre vous en perdiez un, la main subitement exposée au froid s’engourdit et devient inutilisable. Hors sur un navire, il faut avoir ses deux mains valides : l’une pour l’homme, l’autre pour le bateau” …/… ” Je suis un maniaque de l’ordre, je ne supporte pas que l’on bâcle. Cela peut-être dangereux ! ” …/… ” En 40 ans de navigation, j’ai vu disparaître trop de copains, ne pas être conscient de la sécurité des hommes quand on navigue est presque indécent. La mer doit rester un plaisir, pas un engin de mort. En mer, le courage et la bravoure, c’est de s’attacher pour que la mer n’ait pas le goût des larmes, comme le dit si bien la SNSM. » Olivier de Kersauson a le goût de l’excellence, de l’effort, refuse de se laisser étourdir par les propositions médiocres de la vie. Il a appris à se plier à la discipline de la mer. : ” Le chemin de l’excellence, c’est la discipline. J’aime les gens qui ont le goût de l’excellence : puisqu’il faut faire, faisons avec passion. Il n’y a pas d’intelligence sans courage. ” ” Qu’est-ce qu’un patron en mer ? C’est celui qui est capable de ramener son équipage, de porter toutes les responsabilités et d’accepter de ne pas recueillir les fruits du succès. ”

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Pour Olivier de Kersauson, la faute incombe toujours à l’homme : ” Dans le monde de la mer, une erreur se paye automatiquement, et l’on connaît le responsable. ” Il fait le détail de la procédure de l’homme à la mer à sa manière : ” Bon, le mec est à l’eau. Primo, il faut lui balancer un bout, de préférence pas sur la gueule. Secundo, dès qu’il l’a empoigné, il faut l’amener doucement près du bord. Tertio, il faut lui demander – Où est ton pognon ? Quarto, dès qu’il a craché la planque, il faut relâcher le bout : ce serait inhumain de le laisser sans rien à la mer. Quinto, il faut prendre le nom du gars et le porter sur le cahier des punitions. ” OdK explique l’utilisation des radeaux pneumatiques ainsi : “ Quand vous êtes dedans, c’est la bonne vie. Vous avez tout pour survivre : une Bible, un pot de rillettes, une photo dédicacée de Moitessier bébé, un plan de Pigalle et une cassette qui répète : tenez bon, tenez bon … ” A ceux qui lui disent “je pense que …” il répond ” Vous n’êtes pas ici pour penser. ” Dans l’action, sur le pont, il bouscule ses équipiers qui n’agissent pas suffisamment vite, les remplace, se bat comme un forcené tel un bison qui charge, ne lâche pas prise, abattant une besogne démoniaque; il possède le même courage sauvage que celui de ces patrons impitoyables qui commandaient les grands voiliers du passé. A bord il n’y a qu’un maître : lui. Un jour, peut-être le seul de sa carrière, il a proposé un choix à son équipage : ” Vous allez voter, soit la première solution, soit la deuxième. Réfléchissez, mais vite. Je veux le résultat du scrutin dans cinq minutes. Profitez-en, ce sera l’unique fois où vous voterez durant le joli voyage. … Ah ! j’ai oublié une précision : ce n’est pas certain que je tiendrai compte de ce vote ! ” (ce qu’il avait d’ailleurs fait) Un équipier qui écoutait une cassette de Vivaldi sur un magnétophone se souvient encore de l’intervention du patron : “ Je ne veux plus entendre ce mec-là, ni Beethoven, ni Mozart, ni Stivell, balancez moi tout ça à la mer. Je n’ai pas travaillé toute ma vie pour avoir un bateau transformé en maison de la culture ou en caravane, et l’Océan n’est pas un terrain de camping ! ” ” Tire-toi du pont. T’es pas assez gros pour que te casse la gueule. Et t’es trop con pour faire un mutin ” a dit OdK à Alain Labbé sur Kriter II qui avait désobéi et tenté de frapper le skipper. Il se justifie ainsi : “ Sur un bateau, seule une dictature éclairée donne des résultats positifs. Si tu ne comprends pas que la course est un sprint de plus de deux mois, si tu ne comprends pas qu’en course, seule la course compte, alors ça prouve que tu n’as rien à faire à bord. ” … ” La sagesse est l’antichambre de l’impuissance. “ Mais il sait apprécier la vraie amitié manifestée au large par un équipage heureux, la satisfaction d’une manoeuvre difficile et judicieusement orchestrée : ” Je pense aux hommes qui m’ont accompagné et qui ont servi la mer et le bateaux avec abnégation, intelligence, amour du métier et professionnalisme. Notamment Yves Pouillaude et Didier Ragot, fidèles et droits. De grand marins. ” Olivier de Kersauson n’est pas prêt d’accepter une femme à bord mais il sait reconnaître les qualités des (quelques) meilleures d’entre elles : ” Il n’y a jamais de femmes sur mes bateaux, c’est un rapport de masse musculaire: 15 femmes font le poids de 11 hommes. J’aime bien les bonnes femmes, beaucoup plus que vous ne l’imaginez sans doute. Je ne veux pas rajouter la pulsion sexuelle en plus de tous les soucis qu’on a à bord. J’aurais beaucoup de mal à naviguer avec une bonne femme sous les yeux. “ “ Il y a quelques femmes qui sont des marins exceptionnels: Florence Arthaud a du vrai génie maritime, il n’y a pas beaucoup de mecs capables de faire ce qu’elle a fait. Karine Fauconnier dans la nouvelle génération a quelque chose d’extraordinaire. ”

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Après son échec dans l’Oryx Quest en 2005, Olivier raconte : … ” On rentre à Sydney, nous jetons l’éponge. Je suis sur le quai, mon fils est là, je sais que nous devons rentrer à Paris car sa mère va mourir. Mon monde professionnel explose, je vois aussi le monde de mon fils qui explose. C’est un bombardement. Je rentre en Europe pour suivre le cercueil de Caroline, la mère d’Arthur. Une semaine après l’enterrement, je reviens à Sydney pour « terminer ce qu’on a échoué » … Grosse fatigue ! Didier qui a pris la direction des réparations, et l’équipage me disent : « Casse-toi, va prendre l’air, casse-toi en Polynésie. » ( …) Je vais à Moorea chez un copain polynésien et je vais acheter des clopes au tabac du coin. La fille qui vend des cigarettes me dit qu’elle a un bouquin sur lequel figure une photo de moi. Je regarde. Je suis dans la baie de Cook en 1969 avec Tabarly, Moitessier, Colas. Tabarly, Moitessier et Colas sont morts. Je réalise que le temps a passé. C’est un signal qui arrive. Je suis le seul survivant. Je me dis que je ne vais pas mourir sans avoir vécu en Polynésie… ça devient une évidence, une décision. Je vais dès lors passer tu temps sur la mer ici, beaucoup de temps. Je sais que je vais habiter ici. ” (ndlr : en 2008, Olivier de Kersauson est locataire d’une maison située en bordure de mer, dans la baie de Cook)

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Pourquoi la mer ? : ” Prendre la mer, c’est tout sauf une fuite, c’est au contraire une discipline et une contrainte. Décider d’aller chevaucher les vagues, c’est une conquête et, pour conquérir, il faut partir. C’est l’extraordinaire tentation de l’immensité. La mer, c’est le cœur du monde. Vouloir visiter les océans, c’est aller se frotter aux couleurs de l’absolu. Il m’a toujours semblé indécent de ne pas aller voir partout dans le monde. Il me fallait partir sur tous les océans, découvrir tous les ports… Pour moi, c’est vital : puisqu’on est dans le monde, il faut le courir. “ Il sait faire partager son amour de la mer : ” Regarder la mer, c’est se balader dans le temps, elle n’est jamais monotone. Quand je monte sur le pont, j’ai la sensation d’être un berger qui va surveiller son troupeau de vagues. ” En mer, tout est différent, le reste du monde disparaît, la notion de temps est déformée, ” En mer, la solitude est la compagne la plus sûre du navigateur. Elle chasse les chimères, fait tomber les illusions et, amplifiant tout avec une impitoyable acuité, elle vous entraîne dans un voyage au bout de soi souvent des plus révélateurs. Quand on passe un mois en mer, on ne se rend compte qu’on était parti que lorsque l’on revient “. Il sait rester humble devant cette nature à la fois généreuse et cruelle : ” La mer m’a bien rendu l’amour que je lui ai donné. Je suis heureux dans ce monde maritime qui me passionne, il est jouissif. ” La mer est sa vie :” J’ai toujours été prêt à mourir pour la voile. D’autres se contentent d’en vivre. “- ” Dès que je suis loin de la mer, la vie ne m’intéresse plus, j’ai l’impression que je suis stupide, comme un type qui fait la queue à la caisse d’un supermarché avec un cabas vide. ” – ” Si on m’enlevait la mer, il ne reste plus rien. ” … ” La fin du voyage en mer, c’est la fin de la fête. Ce n’est pas parce que je vais retrouver « des gens que j’aime » – car tout ceci n’est que des contes pour les journaux – que je n’abandonne pas avec amertume une conquête tant désirée. C’est terrible de quitter ce rythme de la mer, ce monde de force brute tant aimé et redouté mais qu’on ne se résout pas à abandonner. C’est une sorte de dissolution de la beauté. Tout à coup, on souffle la grande flamme qui brûlait en nous depuis deux mois et demi de mer. Puis on éteint la petite veilleuse de la douceur en sortant du bateau. On ferme derrière soi la porte du souvenir dans le sinistre grincement des huisseries. C’est pour toutes ces raisons que je n’ai pas de souvenirs mais juste des impressions. ”

Ses amis parlent de lui …

Copyright: http://www.fralo.info/

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Olivier de Kersauson -Audio file - (in French)

(Entretien avec Jacques CHANCEL – 57′16”).

Radioscopie – 17/12/1976

Hans Rosling:

Global health expert;

data visionary

© Gapminder Foundation

As a doctor and researcher, Hans Rosling identified a new paralytic disease induced by hunger in rural Africa. Now he looks at the bigger picture of social and economic development with his remarkable trend-revealing software.

Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.

TED and Reddit’s 10 questions to Hans Rosling

Posted September 11, 2009

10 questions to HansThe Internet community Reddit.com got to ask questions to Hans Rosling. Here is his answers.

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TED-talk: Let my dataset change your mindset

Posted September 11, 2009

TED-talk at the US State Department, summer 2009.Global trends over the last 200 years, the development of the HIV/AIDS-epidemic and how China is catching up.

 

 

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Crisis narrows China-UK gap

Posted June 2, 2009

200 years ago, United Kingdom was a leading nation of the world. See UK’s journey to present time – and how China is closing in.

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HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals

Posted May 13, 2009

25 years of the HIV epidemic in easily understood graphics.Showing the big differences within Africa.

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Swine flu alert! News/Death ratio: 8176

Posted May 8, 2009

News/Death ratio for Swine flu and TB. Shows media hype and neglect, respectively!

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Human rights & democracy statistics

Posted May 8, 2009

Human Rights & Democracy statisticscorrelates poorly with progress in Health and Wealth.

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200 years that changed the world

Posted May 7, 2009

200 years of history in 4.5 minutes.Let Hans Rosling guide you through the developments of the last two centuries.

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Lung Cancer Statistics

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Iceland “leading” march towards gender equity in lung cancer.

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Prostate Cancer Statistics

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Prostate cancer most common in the US. Overdiagnosis or not?

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Breast Cancer Statistics

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Breast Cancer increases with incomeBut so does the chances of saving women with cancer.

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Liver Cancer Statistics

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Vaccination, but not high-income,can prevent liver cancer.

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Colon Cancer Statistics

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High-income ’cause’ and may cure colon cancer!

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Stomach Cancer Statistics

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Stomach cancer highest in middle income countries.

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Cervical Cancer Statistics

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Cervical Cancer can be prevented and treated.Today it is most common among women in low-income countries.

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Shanghai, New York, Mumbai

Posted April 2, 2009

Is Shanghai healthier than New York?And how do Washington D.C. and Mumbai rank?

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Yes they can!

Posted February 16, 2009

Swedish students say: “They can never live like us”Time to rethink!

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Poor beat rich in MDG race

Posted February 16, 2009

See how Bangladesh, Brazil, and Egyptreduce child mortality faster than Sweden!

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What stops population growth?

Posted January 25, 2009

Poor children may as well die?Watch this presentation to learn what population growth really is.

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Debunking myths about the “third world”

Posted November 14, 2008

You’ve never seen data presented like this. Hans Rosling’s presentation at the TED-conference in 2006 has been seen by millions over the internet.

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The seemingly impossible is possible

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Hans Rosling’s 2007 TED-speech makes the seemingly impossible possible. See complex global trends turned into lively animations.

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Reducing Child Mortality

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Nearly 10 million children under five die every year.How can child mortality be cut by two thirds by 2015?

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Chimpanzees know better?

Posted October 16, 2008

An acclaimed lecture from Google Zeitgeist 2007.Hans Rosling uses Gapminder World to shed light on differences in the way we live around the world.

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A Slum Insight

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Urbanization will continue, can slum be made history?Insight into the needs of slum dwellers.

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Carbon dioxide (Energy)

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CO2 emissions in USA and China compared.How to produce electricity cheaper than from coal.

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Public services

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To have a fair chance in life, everyone needs public services.Good information is needed in order to provide good public service.

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Turkey meets France

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Turkey is definitely catching up in a public health perspective.See how it compares to France.

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Maternal mortality

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How many women die every year during pregnancy and childbirth? Do we even know?

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Chile, a developing country?

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What’s the difference between Chile, Cuba and the USA?Another reason why “developing/developed” is an outdated concept.

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10 Years In, 10 Years Out

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OIL, HIV, CO2, USD.Four topics, four acronyms.

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Bangladesh Miracle

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Have you heard about the miracle that has happened in Bangladesh?Watch the video to find out.

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Globalization

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The eradication of poverty is within human range.The percentage of people living in “extreme poverty” has gone down.

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Human Development Trends

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Human Development from 1960 to 2001.In focus: Life Expectancy and Income

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Urbanization

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The urban challenge. Hans Rosling shows the last 40 years of development of urbanization.

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Health, Money & Sex in Sweden

Posted June 26, 2007

300 years of Swedish history.How economic growth, public health and sexual rights have changed.

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About

We are a modern “museum” that helps making the world understandable, using the Internet. Gapminder was founded in Stockholm by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on February 25, 2005.

Gapminder is registered as a Foundation at Stockholm County Administration Board (Länstyrelsen i Stockholm) with registration number (organisationsnummer) 802424-7721. (The constitution can be found here) Economic administration Gapminder Foundation c/o Ekonomi Klara Papper AB (att: Johanna Englund) Box 22 312 SE-104 22 Stockholm Office c/o Karolinska Institutet, Division of Global Health Nobels väg 9 SE- 171 77 Stockholm Sweden Organisation number 802424-7721 Gapminder does not award any grants.

It is an operating foundation that provides sevices as defined by the board, sometimes as collaborative projects with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations.

The initial activity was to continue development of the Trendalyzer software. This software unveils the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics. The current version of Trendalyzer is available since March 2006 as Gapminder World, a web-service displaying time series of development statistics for all countries.

n March 2006 Google acquired Trendalyzer from the Gapminder Foundation and the team of developers who formerly worked for Gapminder has joined Google in California since April 2007. (History of Gapminder) Gapminder Foundation now fills the Trendalyzer with statistical content and use the resulting animations to fulfill our aim by: Making time series freely available in Gapminder World and Gapminder Countries.

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Discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging society, argues the former US president.

o Jimmy Carter
o CopyrightThe Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
o Article history

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status …” (Article 2, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when th e convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief – confirmed in the holy scriptures – that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths.

Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries. The male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with, and reinforce, traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant and damaging examples of human rights abuses.

At their most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in Britain and the United States. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for everyone in society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and out-dated attitudes and practices – as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive area to challenge.

But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy – and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights. We have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.

Although not having training in religion or theology, I understand that the carefully selected verses found in the holy scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place – and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence – than eternal truths. Similar Biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

At the same time, I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted holy scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

I know, too, that Billy Graham, one of the most widely respected and revered Christians during my lifetime, did not understand why women were prevented from being priests and preachers. He said: “Women preach all over the world. It doesn’t bother me from my study of the scriptures.”

The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions – all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

• Jimmy Carter was US president from 1977-81. The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity.

A Tribute to My Friend, Michael Jackson by Dr. Deepak Chopra (En Français plus bas, dedicated to “a loving soul” Grace) Michael Jackson will be remembered, most likely, as a shattered icon, a pop genius who wound up a mutant of fame. That’s not who I will remember, however. His mixture of mystery, isolation, indulgence, overwhelming global fame, and personal loneliness was intimately known to me.  For twenty years I observed every aspect, and as easy as it was to love Michael — and to want to protect him — his sudden death yesterday seemed almost fated.

——————————————————————————————————————–

Dr. Chopra thank you for the love and support you and your family are bringing to Grace.

Here is the French Translation of your magnificent Tribute to MJ (to be used as you see fit), that is the least I could do for an old time AUC friend and one of the sweetest souls: Grace.  

Above and beyond I will keep the word “love” and “joy” what a powerful lesson.

merci.

Joel    

——————————————————————————————————————–

Dr Chopra merci pour l’amour et le réconfort que vous et votre famille apportez à Grace.

Voici la traduction française de votre vibrant hommage à MJ (à utiliser comme vous le souhaitez), c’est le moindre que je puisse faire pour une amie de longue date à l’Université d’AUC et une des âmes les plus douces: Grace.

Et par dessus tout je garderai les mots “amour” et “joie,” quelle leçon extraordinaire.

merci

Joel

——————————————————————————————————————– 

Un hommage à mon ami, Michael Jackson 

 par Dr. Deepak Chopra

On se souviendra de Michael Jackson, très certainement, comme une icône brisée, un génie de la pop musique, qui est devenu un mutant de la célébrité. Cependant, ce n’est pas ainsi que je m’en souviendrai. Son mélange de mystère, d’isolement, d’indulgence, son immense renommée mondiale, et sa solitude personnelle, tout cela j’en avais une connaissance intime. Depuis vingt ans, j’ai observé tous ces aspects, et aussi facile qu’il était d’aimer Michael – et de vouloir le protéger – sa mort subite hier semblait prédestinée.

Deux jours auparavant, il m’avait appelé dans un élan d’optimisme, tout excité. Le message du répondeur disait: “J’ai de très bonnes nouvelles à partager avec vous.” Il écrivait une chanson sur l’environnement, et il voulait que je l’aide de manière informelle avec les paroles, comme nous l’avions fait plusieurs fois auparavant. Cependant quand j’ai essayé de le rappeller, la ligne téléphonique était déconnectée. (effrayé au plus haut point par l’attitude de la presse, il changait souvent son numéro de téléphone.)

Donc, je n’ai jamais pu lui parler, et la démo de musique qu’il m’avait envoyé est là sur ma table de chevet comme un symbole poignant d’une vie inachevée. Lorsque nous nous sommes rencontrés pour la première fois, vers 1988, j’ai été frappé par la combinaison de charisme et de fragilité qui entouraient Michael. Il était assaillit par la foule à l’aéroport, puis faisait un show exténuant de trois heures, puis passait en coulisses, comme nous l’avions fait une nuit à Bucarest, et buvait de l’eau, jetant un coup d’oeil à une poésie soufie alors que j’entrai dans la salle pour méditer.

Cette personne, que je considère (au risque d’être traité de ridicule) très pur, et l’est resté – lisait des poèmes de Rabindranath Tagore, lorsque nous avons parlé pour la dernière fois, il ya deux semaines. Michael illustre le paradoxe de nombreux artistes célèbres, étant essentiellement timide, un introverti, qui venait chez moi et passait la plupart de son temps seul dans un coin le soir avec ses jeunes enfants. J’ai toujours vu un père aimant lorsqu’ils étaient ensembles (et me demande maintenant, comme toute personne proche de lui, ce qui va leur arriver).

L’hésitation de Michael à grandir fait aussi parti du paradoxe. Mes enfants l’adoraient, et en retour, il répondait d’une manière enfantine. Il déclare souvent, comme les ex-enfants stars le font, qu’on lui a volé son enfance. Compte tenu de la valeur exagérée que porte notre société à la célébrité, dont Michael a été encensée sans répit, le public a été sans pitié vis à vis de sa douleur réelle et personnelle. Il devint une autre partie du tabloïd tape à l’oeil dans le style “Jacko,” décrit comme une créature changeante, étrange et comme quelque chose de bien plus sinistre.

Ce n’est pas à moi de faire des commentaires sur les troubles dont Michael souffrait, qui venait  de son passé, et qui ont été amplifiés par ses choix malencontreux dans la vie. Il a été entouré par des “facilitateurs,” y compris un grand nombre de médecins honteux à Los Angeles et ailleurs qui lui ont fourni des médicaments sur ordonnance. De nombreuses fois, quand il avouait franchement qu’il avait un problème, la conversation se terminait toujours par une diversion ou un déni.

Alors que j’écris ce paragraphe, les rapports d’abus de drogues se répandent à travers les médias et chaînes d’information. A l’instant où j’ai appris sa mort cet après-midi, j’ai eu le pressentiment que les médicaments avec ordonnance joueraient un rôle capital. Notre plus grand rapprochement, peut-être, c’est lorsque Michael avait besoin de vendre un livre  surtout comme un souvenir pour un concert. Qui contiendrai des images de ses fans, et aussi un court texte composé de fables.

Je m’assayais avec lui pendant des heures, alors qu’il révait de contes sembables aux Fables d’Esope sur les animaux, mélangés de mots sur la musique et de son amour pour toutes les choses musicales. Ce projet est devenu, après avoir arrangé le texte pour lui, “Dancing the Dream,” ceci fait strictement par amitié.C’est ce moment ensemble qui m’a convaincu du modus vivendi que Michael avait conçu pour lui-même: pour contrer la vague de stress qui accompagne le fait d’être une méga-star, il avait construit un refuge privé dans un monde fantastique où les nuages roses voilent l’angoisse intérieure et où Peter Pan était un héros, pas une pathologie.

Ce compromis avec la réalité est progressivement devenue insoutenable. il fit beaucoup d’efforts pour le préserver. Les privilèges sans bornes sont devenus une autre force toxique qui le conduisit à sa perte. Ce qui a commencé comme une manie, la timidité et la vulnérabilité ont été ravagés par des obsessions sur la santé, la paranoïa de la sécurité, et un isolement qui devint de plus en plus malsain. Quand Michael m’a passé la musique de cette dernière chanson , celle sur mon chevet en attente des mots appropriées, la procédure pour me faire parvenir le CD rivalisait avec les opérations secrètes de couverture par la CIA.

Mon souvenir de Michael Jackson restera aussi complexe et confus que pour la plupart des gens. Ses amis les plus proches vont serrer les rangs pour essayer de préserver le meilleur après lui. Allons-nous réussir à le sauver après tant d’années de distorsion des médias? Nul ne peut le dire. Je voulais juste mettre quelques détails dans le dossier en son nom. Mon fils Gotham a voyagé avec Michael comme technicien sur son “Dangerous” tour quand il avait treize ans. Cela aura t’il de l’importance que Michael se soit comporter avec discipline et de manière impeccable avec mon fils? (J’ai des frissons en me rappelant quelque chose qu’il a dit à Gotham: “Je ne veux pas partir comme Marlon Brando. Je veux partir comme Elvis.” Ces deux icônes étaient les obsessions de cet icône.)

La “nanny” de ses enfants, Grace Rwaramba, est comme une fille pour moi. Je l’ai présenté à Michael quand elle avait dix-huit ans, une jolie fille, au coeur chaleureux, du Rwanda, qui est maintenant adulte. Elle a gardé un oeil sur lui pour moi et m’appelait quand il était en baisse de forme ou trop proche du précipice. Combien déchirant pour Grace que personne n’ai eu l’instinct de protection et de véritable amour pour éviter cette journée tragique. Il ya une heure, elle était en sanglots au téléphone à Londres.

En conséquence, je n’ai pas pu m’empêcher d’écrire ce bref hommage dans la tristesse. Mais quand le choc sera passé et que des milliers de voix raconteront la trajectoire de Michael: brillante, joyeuse, conflictuelle, énigmatique, trajectoire bizarre, j’espère que le mot “joie” sera celui qui s’élevera des cendres et brillera comme par le passé.

In the early 1980s, he became a dominant figure in popular music and the first African American entertainer to amass a strong crossover following on MTV. The popularity of his music videos airing on MTV, such as “Beat It“, “Billie Jean” and “Thriller“—widely credited with transforming the music video from a promotional tool into an art form—helped bring the relatively new channel to fame. Videos such as “Black or White” and “Scream” made Jackson an enduring staple on MTV in the 1990s.

With stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of physically complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced many hip hop, pop and contemporary R&B artists.

Jackson donated and raised millions of dollars for beneficial causes through his foundations, charity singles, and support of 39 charities. Other aspects of his personal life, including his often changing appearances and eccentric behavior, generated significant controversy which damaged his public image. Though he was accused of child sexual abuse in 1993, the criminal investigation was closed due to lack of evidence and Jackson was not charged.

The singer had experienced health concerns since the early 1990s and conflicting reports regarding the state of his finances since the late 1990s. Jackson married twice and fathered three children, all of which caused further controversy. In 2005, Jackson was tried and acquitted of further sexual abuse allegations and several other charges. One of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, his other achievements include multiple Guinness World Records—including one for “Most Successful Entertainer of All Time”—13 Grammy Awards, 13 number one singles in his solo career, and the sale of 750 million albums worldwide.^[4]

Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009,^[5] apparently after suffering a cardiac arrest.^[2] Jackson had intended to return to live performance. At the time of his death he was in the middle of preparations for This Is It, a series of 50 concerts that would have been held in London.^[6]

Michael Jackson performing

MJ says in…”Man in the Mirror”

live at the 1988 Grammy Awards with a Gospel Choir.

“IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE
TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF THEN MAKE THE CHANGE.”

POUR UN RESUME SUR MJ PAR MALLIKA CHOPRA:

http://www.intent.com/intenteditor/blog/intentcom-remembers-michael-jackson

In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion.

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
by Steven Pinker
Introduction

Once again, Steven Pinker returns to debunking the doctrine of the noble savage in the following piece based on his lecture at the recent TED Conference in Monterey, California.

This doctrine, “the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset (“War is not an instinct but an invention”), Stephen Jay Gould (“Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species”), and Ashley Montagu (“Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood”),” he writes. “But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.”

Pinker’s notable talk, along with his essay, is one more example of how ideas forthcoming from the empirical and biological study of human beings is gaining sway over those of the scientists and others in disciplines that rely on studying social actions and human cultures independent from their biological foundation.

—JB

STEVEN PINKER is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. His most recent book is The Blank Slate.

Steven Pinker’s Edge Bio Page
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/pinker.html

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, “[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized.” Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species’ time on earth.

In the decade of Darfur and Iraq, and shortly after the century of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the claim that violence has been diminishing may seem somewhere between hallucinatory and obscene. Yet recent studies that seek to quantify the historical ebb and flow of violence point to exactly that conclusion.

Some of the evidence has been under our nose all along. Conventional history has long shown that, in many ways, we have been getting kinder and gentler. Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. But, today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West, far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur, and widely condemned when they are brought to light.

At one time, these facts were widely appreciated. They were the source of notions like progress, civilization, and man’s rise from savagery and barbarism. Recently, however, those ideas have come to sound corny, even dangerous. They seem to demonize people in other times and places, license colonial conquest and other foreign adventures, and conceal the crimes of our own societies. The doctrine of the noble savage—the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions—pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like José Ortega y Gasset (“War is not an instinct but an invention”), Stephen Jay Gould (“Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive specie”s”), and Ashley Montagu (“Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood”). But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.

To be sure, any attempt to document changes in violence must be soaked in uncertainty. In much of the world, the distant past was a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it, and, even for events in the historical record, statistics are spotty until recent periods. Long-term trends can be discerned only by smoothing out zigzags and spikes of horrific bloodletting. And the choice to focus on relative rather than absolute numbers brings up the moral imponderable of whether it is worse for 50 percent of a population of 100 to be killed or 1 percent in a population of one billion.

Yet, despite these caveats, a picture is taking shape. The decline of violence is a fractal phenomenon, visible at the scale of millennia, centuries, decades, and years. It applies over several orders of magnitude of violence, from genocide to war to rioting to homicide to the treatment of children and animals. And it appears to be a worldwide trend, though not a homogeneous one. The leading edge has been in Western societies, especially England and Holland, and there seems to have been a tipping point at the onset of the Age of Reason in the early seventeenth century.

At the widest-angle view, one can see a whopping difference across the millennia that separate us from our pre-state ancestors. Contra leftist anthropologists who celebrate the noble savage, quantitative body-counts—such as the proportion of prehistoric skeletons with axemarks and embedded arrowheads or the proportion of men in a contemporary foraging tribe who die at the hands of other men—suggest that pre-state societies were far more violent than our own. It is true that raids and battles killed a tiny percentage of the numbers that die in modern warfare. But, in tribal violence, the clashes are more frequent, the percentage of men in the population who fight is greater, and the rates of death per battle are higher. According to anthropologists like Lawrence Keeley, Stephen LeBlanc, Phillip Walker, and Bruce Knauft, these factors combine to yield population-wide rates of death in tribal warfare that dwarf those of modern times. If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million.

Political correctness from the other end of the ideological spectrum has also distorted many people’s conception of violence in early civilizations—namely, those featured in the Bible. This supposed source of moral values contains many celebrations of genocide, in which the Hebrews, egged on by God, slaughter every last resident of an invaded city. The Bible also prescribes death by stoning as the penalty for a long list of nonviolent infractions, including idolatry, blasphemy, homosexuality, adultery, disrespecting one’s parents, and picking up sticks on the Sabbath. The Hebrews, of course, were no more murderous than other tribes; one also finds frequent boasts of torture and genocide in the early histories of the Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Chinese.

At the century scale, it is hard to find quantitative studies of deaths in warfare spanning medieval and modern times. Several historians have suggested that there has been an increase in the number of recorded wars across the centuries to the present, but, as political scientist James Payne has noted, this may show only that “the Associated Press is a more comprehensive source of information about battles around the world than were sixteenth-century monks.” Social histories of the West provide evidence of numerous barbaric practices that became obsolete in the last five centuries, such as slavery, amputation, blinding, branding, flaying, disembowelment, burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel, and so on. Meanwhile, for another kind of violence—homicide—the data are abundant and striking. The criminologist Manuel Eisner has assembled hundreds of homicide estimates from Western European localities that kept records at some point between 1200 and the mid-1990s. In every country he analyzed, murder rates declined steeply—for example, from 24 homicides per 100,000 Englishmen in the fourteenth century to 0.6 per 100,000 by the early 1960s.

On the scale of decades, comprehensive data again paint a shockingly happy picture: Global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the twentieth century. According to the Human Security Brief 2006, the number of battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from more than 65,000 per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this decade. In Western Europe and the Americas, the second half of the century saw a steep decline in the number of wars, military coups, and deadly ethnic riots.

Zooming in by a further power of ten exposes yet another reduction. After the cold war, every part of the world saw a steep drop-off in state-based conflicts, and those that do occur are more likely to end in negotiated settlements rather than being fought to the bitter end. Meanwhile, according to political scientist Barbara Harff, between 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians decreased by 90 percent.

The decline of killing and cruelty poses several challenges to our ability to make sense of the world. To begin with, how could so many people be so wrong about something so important? Partly, it’s because of a cognitive illusion: We estimate the probability of an event from how easy it is to recall examples. Scenes of carnage are more likely to be relayed to our living rooms and burned into our memories than footage of people dying of old age. Partly, it’s an intellectual culture that is loath to admit that there could be anything good about the institutions of civilization and Western society. Partly, it’s the incentive structure of the activism and opinion markets: No one ever attracted followers and donations by announcing that things keep getting better. And part of the explanation lies in the phenomenon itself. The decline of violent behavior has been paralleled by a decline in attitudes that tolerate or glorify violence, and often the attitudes are in the lead. As deplorable as they are, the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the lethal injections of a few murderers in Texas are mild by the standards of atrocities in human history. But, from a contemporary vantage point, we see them as signs of how low our behavior can sink, not of how high our standards have risen.

The other major challenge posed by the decline of violence is how to explain it. A force that pushes in the same direction across many epochs, continents, and scales of social organization mocks our standard tools of causal explanation. The usual suspects—guns, drugs, the press, American culture—aren’t nearly up to the job. Nor could it possibly be explained by evolution in the biologist’s sense: Even if the meek could inherit the earth, natural selection could not favor the genes for meekness quickly enough. In any case, human nature has not changed so much as to have lost its taste for violence. Social psychologists find that at least 80 percent of people have fantasized about killing someone they don’t like. And modern humans still take pleasure in viewing violence, if we are to judge by the popularity of murder mysteries, Shakespearean dramas, Mel Gibson movies, video games, and hockey.

What has changed, of course, is people’s willingness to act on these fantasies. The sociologist Norbert Elias suggested that European modernity accelerated a “civilizing process” marked by increases in self-control,long-term planning, and sensitivity to the thoughts and feelings of others. These are precisely the functions that today’s cognitive neuroscientists attribute to the prefrontal cortex. But this only raises the question of why humans have increasingly exercised that part of their brains. No one knows why our behavior has come under the control of the better angels of our nature, but there are four plausible suggestions.

The first is that Hobbes got it right. Life in a state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short, not because of a primal thirst for blood but because of the inescapable logic of anarchy. Any beings with a modicum of self-interest may be tempted to invade their neighbors to steal their resources. The resulting fear of attack will tempt the neighbors to strike first in preemptive self-defense, which will in turn tempt the first group to strike against them preemptively, and so on. This danger can be defused by a policy of deterrence—don’t strike first, retaliate if struck—but, to guarantee its credibility, parties must avenge all insults and settle all scores, leading to cycles of bloody vendetta. These tragedies can be averted by a state with a monopoly on violence, because it can inflict disinterested penalties that eliminate the incentives for aggression, thereby defusing anxieties about preemptive attack and obviating the need to maintain a hair-trigger propensity for retaliation. Indeed, Eisner and Elias attribute the decline in European homicide to the transition from knightly warrior societies to the centralized governments of early modernity. And, today, violence continues to fester in zones of anarchy, such as frontier regions, failed states, collapsed empires, and territories contested by mafias, gangs, and other dealers of contraband.

Payne suggests another possibility: that the critical variable in the indulgence of violence is an overarching sense that life is cheap. When pain and early death are everyday features of one’s own life, one feels fewer compunctions about inflicting them on others. As technology and economic efficiency lengthen and improve our lives, we place a higher value on life in general.

A third theory, championed by Robert Wright, invokes the logic of non-zero-sum games: scenarios in which two agents can each come out ahead if they cooperate, such as trading goods, dividing up labor, or sharing the peace dividend that comes from laying down their arms. As people acquire know-how that they can share cheaply with others and develop technologies that allow them to spread their goods and ideas over larger territories at lower cost, their incentive to cooperate steadily increases, because other people become more valuable alive than dead.

Then there is the scenario sketched by philosopher Peter Singer. Evolution, he suggests, bequeathed people a small kernel of empathy, which by default they apply only within a narrow circle of friends and relations. Over the millennia, people’s moral circles have expanded to encompass larger and larger polities: the clan, the tribe, the nation, both sexes, other races, and even animals. The circle may have been pushed outward by expanding networks of reciprocity, à la Wright, but it might also be inflated by the inexorable logic of the golden rule: The more one knows and thinks about other living things, the harder it is to privilege one’s own interests over theirs. The empathy escalator may also be powered by cosmopolitanism, in which journalism, memoir, and realistic fiction make the inner lives of other people, and the contingent nature of one’s own station, more palpable—the feeling that “there but for fortune go I”.

Whatever its causes, the decline of violence has profound implications. It is not a license for complacency: We enjoy the peace we find today because people in past generations were appalled by the violence in their time and worked to end it, and so we should work to end the appalling violence in our time. Nor is it necessarily grounds for optimism about the immediate future, since the world has never before had national leaders who combine pre-modern sensibilities with modern weapons.

But the phenomenon does force us to rethink our understanding of violence. Man’s inhumanity to man has long been a subject for moralization. With the knowledge that something has driven it dramatically down, we can also treat it as a matter of cause and effect. Instead of asking, “Why is there war?” we might ask, “Why is there peace?” From the likelihood that states will commit genocide to the way that people treat cats, we must have been doing something right. And it would be nice to know what, exactly, it is.

[First published in The New Republic, 3.19.07.]

Thanks to: THE EDGE§ THE THIRD CULTURE
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html

His Royal Highness Prince Hassan Bin Talal about a new global Mega Project:

“More than 40 years ago the Apollo Space Program was launched to fulfill the
old dream of taking man into outer space. Today, we have a bigger dream, to
restore balance between man and his home planet, Earth. With the political
will, EUMENA countries could now launch an Apollo-like “EUMENA-DESERTEC”
Program, to bring humankind back into balance with its environment, by
putting deserts and technology into service for energy, water and climate
security. This would be an important step towards creating a truly
sustainable civilization.”

Summary of the Desertec
Concept up to 2050

We want to act as “awareness raiser”, “catalyst” and “barrier remover” to
pave the way for DESERTEC developments. One of the most useful things we can
do is to work with national governments and political bodies like the EU and
similar bodies all over the world, to create the right framework of laws and
regulations, and to ensure that there is a good framework of incentives for
DESERTEC developments. Since the DESERTEC Concept can serve as key part of
any scenario for sustainable development in a world with 10 billion people,
it will be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders. An important
function of the DESERTEC Foundation will be to serve as a think tank and
forum for the exchange of ideas and for discussion of relevant issues.

Marhaba Africa!

CNN trailer about the vision of Dr. Gerhard Knies and the science network
TREC who developed the DESERTEC Concept for energy, climate and human
security.

DESERTEC RED PAPER

“In the coming decades, global developments will confront mankind with
unprecedented challenges: climate change, a population growth far beyond
Earth‘s present carrying capacity, the global striving for prosperity, and
increasing demands for energy and water, are the core problems we are faced
with. 200 years of global industrialization has resulted in an unparalleled
standard of living and an increased life expectancy for part of the world’s
population. However, all this has been and is still being achieved at a
price: alarming environmental destruction as well as climate change which
can no longer be ignored. These things will mean dramatic changes to life on
Earth in the future.”
 

Download it now:
 English
- 
French

Concept Summary The DESERTEC Concept describes the perspective of a
sustainable supply of electricity for Europe (EU), the Middle East (ME) and
North Africa (NA) up to the year 2050. It shows that a transition to
competitive, secure and compatible supply is possible using renewable energy
sources and efficiency gains, and fossil fuels as backup for balancing
power. A close cooperation between EU and MENA for market introduction of
renewable energy and interconnection of electricity grids by high-voltage
direct-current transmission are keys for economic and physical survival of
the whole region. However, the necessary measures will take at least two
decades to become effective.

Therefore, adequate policy and economic frameworks for their realization
must be introduced immediately. The role of sustainable energy to secure
freshwater supplies based on seawater desalination is also addressed. In
order to find a viable transition to an electricity supply that is
inexpensive, compatible with the environment and based on secure resources,
rigorous criteria must be applied to ensure that the results are compatible
with a comprehensive definition of sustainability. A central criterion for
power generation is its availability at any moment on demand.

Today, this is achieved by consuming stored fossil or nuclear energy sources
that can provide electricity whenever and wherever required. This is the
easiest way to provide power on demand. However, consuming the stored energy
reserves of the globe has a high price: they are quickly depleted and their
residues contaminate the planet. With the exception of hydropower, natural
flows of energy are not widely used for power generation today, because they
are not as easily stored and exploited as fossil or nuclear fuels.

Some of them can be stored with a reasonable technical effort for a limited
time-span, but others must be taken as provided by nature. The challenge of
future electricity supply is to find a mix of available technologies and
resources that is capable of satisfying not only the criterion of “power on
demand”, but all the other criteria for sustainability too. The DESERTEC
WhiteBook describes a scenario of electricity demand and supply
opportunities by renewable energy in the integrated EUMENA region up to the
middle of the century, and confirms the importance of international
cooperation to achieve economic and environmental sustainability. You can
download various summaries of the DESERTEC Concept and the studies by
clicking to following link:


DOWNLOAD THE WHITEBOOK

Follow DESERTEC on  Twitter and
Facebook

Public Health Advisory: Mobile Phone-Brain Tumour

Vini G. Khurana, MBBS, BSc(Med), PhD, FRACS

Key messages of this work:

http://www.brain-surgery.us/about_the_author.html

http://www.brain-surgery.us/mobilephone.html

* Mobile phones are convenient and frequently invaluable, yet exposure to their electromagnetic radiation is invisible. Therefore, any danger this exposure poses may be easily dismissed.

* Exposure is long-term and its effects on the body, particularly its electrical organ, the brain, are compounded by numerous other simultaneous long-term exposures including continuous waves from radio and TV transmitter towers, cordless phone base stations, power lines, and wireless/WiFi computing devices.

* A malignant brain tumour represents a life-ending diagnosis in the vast majority of those diagnosed. There is a significant and increasing body of evidence, to date at least 8 comprehensive clinical studies internationally and one long-term meta-analysis, for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours.

* Taken together, the data presented below compellingly suggest that the link between mobile phones and brain tumours should no longer be regarded as a myth. Individual and class action lawsuits have been filed in the USA, and at least one has already been successfully prosecuted, regarding the cell phone-brain tumour link.

* The “incubation time” or “latency” (i.e., the time from commencement of regular mobile phone usage to the diagnosis of a malignant solid brain tumour in a susceptible individual) may be in the order of 10-20 years. In the years 2008-2012, we will have reached the appropriate length of follow-up time to begin to definitively observe the impact of this global technology on brain tumour incidence rates.

* There is currently enough evidence and technology available to warrant Industry and Governments alike in taking immediate steps to reduce exposure of consumers to mobile phone-related electromagnetic radiation and to make consumers clearly aware of potential dangers and how to use this technology sensibly and safely.

* It is anticipated that this danger has far broader public health ramifications than asbestos and smoking, and directly concerns all of us, particularly the younger generation, including very young children.

* Scientists and physicians from some academic centres worldwide came together in mid-2007 to propose safer standards regarding public exposure to electromagnetic fields (Click the link for details).

The Web-based publication of this independent e-paper on March 20, 2008, follows 15 months of objective research by the author, involving the critical review of scores of sources in the recent medical and scientific literature, in addition to Press reports and Internet content. This e-paper represents a systematic and concise yet comprehensive review of this area to date and its findings highlight an emerging global public health concern. The decision to publish the entire paper on this single Webpage was made to centralise the data for the reader’s convenience.

The e-Paper (C) 2008, G. Khurana

CONTENTS:

Abstract

Disclaimer and conflict of interest statement

Aims and scope of this project

Hypothesis

Introduction

* Popular Press and Internet

* About electromagnetic radiation (EMR)

* About mobile phones and base stations

* About brain tumours

* About the rising incidence of brain tumours

* Look’s good but is it safe (Safety tips)?

* A matter of susceptibility?

Methods

Results

Clinical studies

Laboratory studies

Critiques of the clinical studies

Conclusions

Precautionary recommendations

References (Bibliography)

Images and information concerning acoustic neuroma, glioma/astrocytoma & brain tumour surgery

1. ABSTRACT:

The Abstract is a summary of this e-paper. It conveys the “take home” message of this report.

Mobile phones are an integral part of Society, with billions of users worldwide across a wide age spectrum. Although the availability of a mobile phone can contribute to the convenience and safety of an individual’s Life, the question arises as to whether “excessive” usage of a mobile phone can pose a health risk through exposure of the “heavy” user to low but repeated and eventually prolonged levels of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) at a relatively close proximity (“near-field“) to the brain, our key electrical organ. Given the widespread use of mobile phones by children and adults alike, the presence of any health risk posed by long-term near-field radiation will inevitably set the stage for the emergence of a global public health problem.

The key aim of this paper was to scientifically and objectively review data suggesting (“positive”) or refuting (“negative”) a relationship between mobile phone usage and the occurrence of malignant brain tumours. Following fourteen months of research involving a comprehensive review of over one-hundred sources in the recent medical and scientific literature in addition to the Press and Internet, the author concludes that there is a growing body of statistically significant evidence for a relationship between the overall length of use of a mobile phone and the delayed occurrence of a brain tumour on the same side of the head as the “preferred side” for mobile phone usage. The elevation of risk (increased odds) appears to be in the order of 2 – 4 fold. It is postulated that some individuals may be more susceptible to developing a malignant brain tumour when compared to others exposed to similar durations and strengths of electromagnetic radiation. The effects of this kind of radiation are likely to be cumulative and long-term and susceptibility to these effects may be genetically predetermined.

In the context of the fact that widespread mobile phone usage commenced in the mid-1980s (earliest in Northern Europe), with the first 10 years of widespread usage ending in the mid 1990s, and the fact that solid tumours may take several years to trigger and form, it seems plausible to expect that if no appropriate changes are made by Industry and consumers alike, in the next 5-10 years the aforementioned concerning associations will likely be definitively proven in the medical literature. Given this calculated “incubation time” and the commencement of mobile telephony’s mass deployment in Sweden, it is no surprise that Swedish researchers were among the first to report a positive association between cell phone use and brain tumour risk (see studies quoted below). A 2007 Swedish meta-analysis of the international long-term follow up data confirms this growing concern.

At this time, precautionary but strong recommendations for members of the General Public include (whenever feasible or possible): (i) using a regular “land-line” in preference to a hand-held mobile or cordless phone; (ii) using a hand-held phone on “speaker phone” mode held > 20 cm away or “in-vehicle hands-free speaker” mode as opposed to the typical “mobile phone-to-ear” use; (iii) minimising the use of current Bluetooth devices and unshielded headphone accessories for mobile phones; (iv) minimising the amount of time spent using mobile and cordless phones for all adults; and (v) restricting the use of mobile and cordless phones by children to emergency situations. For members of the Telecommunications Industry, the author recommends expediting the development and promotion of safe, practical and ubiquitous EMR/radiofrequency shielding devices for mobile and cordless phones and their Bluetooth and headset accessories, and further refinement of the hands-free “speaker phone” option. For members of the Health and Scientific Communities, the author recommends the objective reanalysis of all previous large-scale population studies that reported finding “no link between mobile phones and brain tumours”, particularly from the perspectives of whether those “apparently negative or inconclusive studies” examined: (i) groups of “heavy” mobile phone users followed for greater than 10 years; (ii) the occurrence of the key mobile telephony-associated brain tumours, namely acoustic neuroma (vestibular Schwannoma) and astrocytoma, in the study population; and (iii) the relationship between the side of the brain tumour and the “preferred side” for mobile phone usage among “heavy” users in whom a brain tumour developed. Further large-scale studies taking all of these perspectives into account are recommended and encouraged by the author in order to definitively validate or refute the conclusions of this e-paper. Finally, the aforementioned precautions should be communicated to all at-risk persons using mobile phones.

2. DISCLAIMER & CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT:

The Disclaimer denotes the responsibilities of the author and readers alike regarding the findings and recommendations of this work. The Conflict of Interest Statement discloses any specific relationship, financial or other, between the author and other persons, organisations or companies that can potentially detract from the independence and objectivity of this work.

Disclaimer:

* Findings, conclusions and/or opinions communicated by the author of this e-paper are based on his independent research. This communicated material represents the evidence-based conclusions and opinions of the author alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of other individuals or third parties. No institutional or company support or endorsement is intended by this communication, and none was received by the author for this work prior to this publication. Any recommendations made by the author should be independently and appropriately evaluated by the reader. The author accepts no responsibility and no liability for any negative actions of any person or group pertaining to the contents or recommendations of this paper.

* It should be clearly understood that this paper in no way intends to defame or detract from the many positive contributions made by the Telecommunications Industry and its potential regulators. The author himself relies upon wireless technologies, although uses them with due caution; see safety tips. This paper should be regarded as a timely, objective and scientific marker for immediately improving the technological safety, while enhancing Public awareness and regulatory monitoring of these devices and their dissemination.

Conflict of Interest Statement:

* The author declares that there is no financial or other conflict of interest in the research and communication of this unfunded and independent body of work.

3. AIMS & SCOPE:

The Aims and Scope of this work relate to the reasons this paper was written and its intended audience and impact.

Aims:

* To scientifically and objectively review data supporting or refuting a causal relationship between mobile phone usage and the occurrence of malignant brain tumours

* To explore the concept of individual “susceptibility” to developing a malignant brain tumour

* To provide appropriate recommendations based on the present evidence-based findings

Scope:

* The General Public

* Members of the Telecommunications Industry

* Members of the Health and Scientific Communities (including Government health regulatory officials)

4. HYPOTHESIS:

The Hypothesis represents the central claim being tested by this work.

The hypothesis of this work is that malignant brain tumours can be caused by “excessive” and prolonged mobile phone use.

5. INTRODUCTION:

The Introduction covers views expressed by the Popular Press and on the Internet regarding the topic of “mobile phones and brain tumours”. Background information concerning electromagnetic radiation (EMR), and mobile phone and base station systems is also given in this section. Data regarding brain tumours and their rising incidence/occurrence are also presented. Finally, the concepts of mobile phone safety tips and brain tumour susceptibility are introduced here.

Popular Press and Internet:

* In early May, 2006, journalists for two leading Australian newspapers, namely The Age (May 12, 2006; Adam Morton & David Rood) and The Australian (May 13, 2006; Lisa Macnamara), reported that the top floors of a Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology building were closed after a seventh worker in as many years was diagnosed with a brain tumour. An official investigation found no causal link between the presence of mobile phone towers on the roof of that 17 storey building and this apparent “cancer cluster”. It was reported that five of the seven affected occupants of the building worked on its top floor, immediately under the mobile phone transmission towers.

* In January, 2007, The Jerusalem Post (January 26, 2007; Judy Siegel-Itzkovich) reported that “an important study by epidemiologists from five European countries…has found a nearly 40 percent increase in a type of brain tumour among those who had used a cell phone for a decade or more.” [This study by A. Lahkola, et al. (2007), subsequently published in the International Journal of Cancer, is reviewed in Section 7, below]. This press release goes on to state that: “The increase in gliomas [a very frequently malignant type of brain tumour], which was found to be statistically significant, was accompanied by a trend showing that the brain tumour risk increased with years of use…The new retrospective study is based on the data collected in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the UK and included 1521 glioma cases and 3301 controls.” The article goes on to highlight the emerging concern among senior members of the US public health community regarding the need to put precautionary measures in place to limit non-ionizing radiation exposure particularly in children.

* Journalist Bellinda Kontominas (Sydney Morning Herald, January 26, 2007, and with the Telegraph, London) added the following in her review of the same Lahkola, et al. (2007) study reported by the Jerusalem Post: “Before separating out long-term users or looking at the different risks of developing tumours on the side where users held the phone, the scientists found no link between mobile use and gliomas. But when they focused only on those who had used a mobile for 10 years or more they found that they were 39 per cent more likely than those in the general population to develop a glioma on the side of their head where they held their handset. Kontominas’ article further states that: “The Chief Executive of the Cancer Council of Australia, Professor Ian Olver, said the study was not conclusive as it had only found the link when it looked at a much smaller sample. While any dangers of short-term use had been all but disproved, there might still be effects of long-term use, he said. “The best that I can say about this study is that it warrants a bigger study on the effects of mobile phones on long-term users.”"

* An on-line article from www.EMF-Health.com (MSN, June 7, 2004) entitled “Brain Tumours: The Silent Killer” quotes a pre-eminent Australian neurosurgeon, Dr Charlie Teo, as follows: “When patients come in with a brain cancer, I often say to them, “your cancer was on the right side of the brain, it is in the area just above your ear, can you tell me if you feel that you have had more exposure than most people to mobile phones,” and I am surprised that most people say, “yes I have used my phone continuously for the last seven years and it is always stuck to my ear on this side…” well that is where the cancer is.”

* The Website “Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure” states that brain tumours are the leading cause of death from childhood cancers among persons up to 19 years, the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in males ages 20-39, and the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in females ages 20-39. In 2005, based on a US population of 287 million people, approximately 44 thousand people would be diagnosed with a brain tumour yearly in the US alone. This reflects an annual brain tumour incidence of 15 people per 100,000 population (i.e., in the US every year, 15 new brain tumour patients should be expected to be diagnosed in each group of 100,000 people).

* As reported in the Sun-Sentinel in October 2005, lawsuits have been filed by attorneys representing individuals with brain tumours claiming they were caused by their mobile phone usage. Such suits are awaiting trial dates. Brain tumour patient Ms. Sharesa Price, through a Californian attorney, won the first law suit against cell phone companies. A popular press report relating to this can be viewed on YouTube by clicking here. This was also reported in a documentary entitled “Cell Phones: An Industry on Trial”.

* An article written by an eminent British physicist, Dr Gerald Hyland, is quoted at www.cancer-health.org. The original article, entitled “Physics and Biology of Mobile Telephony”, describes the thermal effects and the non-thermal effects of mobile telephony through both electromagnetic radiation and pulsed microwave radiation. Interestingly, the brain is recognised as an electrical organ. Per Dr Hyland: “To deny the possibility yet admit the importance of ensuring electromagnetic compatibility with electronic instruments by banning the use of mobile phones in aircraft and hospitals (a prohibition driven by concerns about non-thermal interference) seems inconsistent.” In other words, if cell phones interfere with aircraft and hospital electrical equipment (even at quite a distance), how can it be that they don’t interfere with the electrical equipment of the head (i.e., the brain, when held for extended periods of time right next to this organ)?

* A registered supplier of equipment to the US Dept. of Defence, Aegis Corporation, produces shielded equipment that the company claims makes the use of wireless technology safer. Their Website details the risks associated with unshielded equipment. According to the information posted on their site, both wireless (Bluetooth) and wired (unshielded) headsets pose significantly high amounts of cell phone radiation exposure to users.

About electromagnetic radiation (EMR):

* What is electromagnetic radiation? The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines electromagnetic fields on its Webpages dedicated to the concerns regarding the increasing presence of this form of radiation. In essence, an electromagnetic field is comprised of two components, one being an electric field generated by differences in voltage and another being a magnetic field generated by the flow of current. The field propagates at the speed of light (300,000 kilometres per second or 186,000 miles per second) in waves of a certain length that oscillate at a certain frequency (number of oscillations or cycles per second). In the electromagnetic range, gamma rays given off by radioactive materials, cosmic rays, and X-rays are all dangerous to humans and other organisms because of the relatively high energy “quanta” (packets) they carry (high frequency or short-wavelength waves). Such rays lead to “dangerous radiation” (ionizing; i.e., with an ability to break bonds between molecules). Mobile phone systems also act in the electromagnetic range (sometimes referred to as “microwave” or “radiofrequency”), however, the frequency (energy “quanta”) of the longer-wavelength waves associated with this technology is lower (and therefore safer to humans) and regarded as “non-ionizing” (of “insufficient energy to break molecular bonds” — however, this statement has been contested in the scientific literature; see Section 7 below).

* What constitutes mobile phone technology? Mobile phone technology, incorporating mobile phone base stations (antennae/transmission towers) and mobile phone units themselves, is associated with the production and propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. The radio waves emitted by modern GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication; 900 & 1800 MegaHertz or MHz) handsets can have a peak power of up to 2 watts (2W), while other digital mobile technologies such as CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access; 800 and 1900 MegaHertz) and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access; 800 and 1900 MegaHertz) have power outputs under 1 watt, levels generally regarded as being “safe” by most international governing authorities. The power generated by the handset can vary according to the amount of interference with the signal, a feature referred to as Adaptive Power Control (APC; see below).

* Are cordless phones emitters of radiation? As reported by Schuz and colleagues (J. Schuz, et al., “Radiofrequency electromagnetic fields emitted from base stations of .. cordless phones and the risk of glioma and meningioma (Interphone Study Group, Germany)”; Radiation Research (2006) Volume 166; pages 116-119), one important source of low-level continuous exposures to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF EMFs) is base stations of cordless phones that are located indoors, e.g., the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (..) standard, operating at about 1900 MHz. These devices (both handset and base station) operate with 250 mW maximum power output, with their base stations continuously emitting pulsed radiofrequency radiation irrespective of the handset being in operation or not, and often with the base station being kept close to the bed head at night. Measurements of these base stations’ electromagnetic fields reveal power densities (defined below) between 4 and 170 mW/m2 for distances up to 3 metres from the base station (maximum permitted by law is 450 mW/m2); this magnitude is comparable to power densities measured in residences in the main beam of nearby cell phone base station antennae or in the vicinity of broadcast towers.

* What about “walkie-talkies” or “CB (Citizens’ Band) radios”? Unfortunately, these devices emit at relatively very high power outputs (e.g., 3-4 W) compared to mobile and cordless phones, even though their frequency bands may be lower. They are considered to be the worst offenders of all the mainstream hand-held “wireless” two-way communication devices in terms of electromagnetic radiation exposure. They are widely used by our emergency services, armed forces, construction sites, trucking industry airports and rural communities. Children use them without any knowledge of the potential dangers associated with such devices. Click here to view their relative electromagnetic “plumes”.

* What is the Inverse Square Law and how is it relevant to mobile telephony? The intensity of electromagnetic radiation varies with the distance from the source according to the Inverse Square Law. This means that the radiation’s intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the source and the exposed object. Applying this concept to mobile telephony, the further one holds a mobile phone from the head, the less the (intensity) exposure of the head and brain to electromagnetic radiation. This accounts for the relative safety of a hands-free speaker phone mode and, in cars, the use of hands-free car speaker/microphone kits (where the car’s roof acts as the antenna) instead of the mobile phone itself or an unshielded headset. Regarding car speaker kits for hands-free mobile telephony, The Australian Government Environmental Protection Agency states that due to the increased separation between the antenna (now the car roof) and the user’s head, exposure to electromagnetic radiation is reduced by about 100 times when compared to normal mobile phone use.

* What effects can mobile phones have on body tissues? The potential effects of mobile phone-associated electromagnetic radiation on tissues include “thermal” and “non-thermal”. Thermal effects are due to tissues being heated by rotations of molecules induced by the electromagnetic field. In the case of a cell phone, the head/ear surfaces close to the phone may be induced to heat. This heating has been thought to cause molecules within cells called “heat-shock proteins” to become activated and repeated activation of such proteins by microwaves/electromagnetic radiation can lead to cellular events culminating in cancerous transformation of the cell (C. Jolly & R.I. Morimoto, “Role of heat-shock response and molecular chaperones in oncogenesis and cell death”; Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2000) Volume 92; pages 1564-1761). Non-thermal effects are due to low-frequency (but long-term) “pulsing” of the carrier signal. Non-thermal effects from microwaves similar to those generated by mobile phones have been implicated in genetic (DNA) molecule damage. This remains contentious and is elaborated in Section 7, below.

* What is the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR)? The Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) measures the rate at which radiation is absorbed by the human body. For the head, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC; USA) has set a SAR of 1.6 W/kg. The SAR is 0.08 W/kg averaged over the body as defined by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) guidelines. The averaging volume (e.g., “head” versus “whole body”) must be specified in order to make meaningful and less ambiguous interpretations of stated SAR values between emitters and between receivers. Note that the human head weighs about 9 pounds or 4 kg, while the average adult male weighs around 180 lbs or 80 kg). A SAR of 4 W/kg is associated with a 1 degree temperature rise in humans. Although current mobile phones operate with power outputs that fall within “acceptable government-set limits”, local thermal or heating effects on the head may still be quite apparent to users after prolonged usage. The underlying brain is also heated as depicted on an Australian Government Webpage. In mobile telephony, the specific absorption rate or SAR depends on several factors, including the antenna type and position, the distance between the phone and the head, and the power output of the phone (which through “adaptive power control” can change during the conversation; see below).

* What is Adaptive power control (APC) and how is it relevant? The level of electromagnetic radiation a user’s head may be exposed to during mobile phone telephony can vary during the conversation, according to the variable power output of the phone. The operator’s network controls and adjusts the output power of each connected mobile phone to the lowest level compatible with a good signal quality. This is obtained by scaling the power from the maximum (1 or 2 W at 1800 MHz and 900 MHz, respectively) down to as low as 1 milliW. Such “adaptive power control” takes place continuously, with the selected power level depending on several factors, including the distance from the base station, the presence of physical obstacles (such as tall buildings), whether the phone is used indoors or outdoors, and “handovers” between linked base stations (during handovers, the output power of the phone is generally set to the highest level; S. Lonn, et al., “Output power levels from mobile phones in different geographical areas; implications for exposure assessment”; Occupational and Environmental Medicine (2004) Volume 61; pages 769-772). In other words, deep in a building or in a moving elevator, the handset’s power output increases temporarily in order to pick up a base-station’s signal so that the phone users can continue to communicate effectively. During this higher power transmission, the user’s head is subjected to more than the usual amount of electromagnetic radiation from the mobile phone.

* What is magnetic flux density? The term magnetic flux is used to describe the field that results when a magnetic field is present in any material. The unit of magnetic flux is the Weber (Wb), being that flux which, when linked with a single turn, generates an electromagnetic field of 1 volt in the turn, as it decreases uniformly to 0 in 1 second. When the magnetic flux (in Wb) is averaged over an area of a square meter, the magnetic flux density is known. The unit of magnetic flux density is the Tesla (T), being Wb/square metre. As stated by Petrucci (N. Petrucci, “Exposure of the critically ill patient to extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields in the intensive care environment”; Intensive Care Medicine (1999) Volume 25; pages 847-851), “the value of 0.20 microTesla of magnetic flux density has been empirically defined as a safety threshold for exposure of the whole body to extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields, considering that nervous tissue has the lowest tolerance.”

* What is magnetic power flux density? The rate of flow of electromagnetic energy per unit area is used to measure the amount of radiation at a given point from a transmitting antenna. This quantity is expressed in units of Watts per square meter (W/m2) or milliWatts per square cm (mW/cm2). The maximum exposure level for members of the Public exposed to electromagnetic radiation at 900MHz is 0.45 W/m2. This figure can be compared with the amount of heat radiated by the human body at room temperature of about 2W/m2. Although this level of permitted exposure to mobile telephony-related electromagnetic radiation is low, it is nonetheless constant in our environment, and compounded to by the use of multiple other wireless technologies at any given time.

* What about “exposure” to electromagnetic radiation? Exposure to the radiation emitted from mobile phones varies according to several factors, including: (i) the power output of the phone at any given time; (ii) the type of phone and the type and location of its antenna; (iii) the distance between the head and the telephone; (iv) a young child user’s versus an adult user’s head; (v) urban versus rural location during usage; (vi) the pattern of usage, i.e., the length and number of calls.

Mobile phones and base stations:

* The basics of mobile phone technology are detailed on an Australian Government Website maintained by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPNSA).

* Brief history of mobile phone systems (Sweden): Mobile phones and their networks were first deployed in Sweden in 1981 via the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) System (analogue; 450 MHz bandwidth; 1st Generation or 2G). Mass deployment was present in Sweden by 1985. The analogue 900 MHz system started there in 1986, but was closed in Sweden by 2000. The digital system (Global System for Mobile Communication; GSM) started in 1991, representing the second generation of mobile phone systems or “2G”. The latest system currently in mass deployment is based on adaptations of CDMA and TDMA (Code and Time Division Multiple Access, respectively; 800-1900 MegaHertz; “3G”).

* About providers and users: Mobile phone technology consists of two main components, namely, the provider and the user. On the side of the provider are the base stations (the antennae on the earth’s surface which communicate with the phones). On the side of the user are the mobile phones themselves. Base stations emit electromagnetic radiation continuously, and at far greater power than mobile phones which emit electromagnetic radiation continuously only during calls. At all other times, i.e., between calls or “at rest” (with the “screen asleep” but the power still on), mobile phones emit a regular pulse of electromagnetic radiation in order for base stations to continuously keep track of the geographic position of the phones in their “cellular network”. Modern 2nd generation (2G) antennae are associated with transmitter powers of 20 – 100 Watts, although the latest 3rd generation (3G) antennae use less power, on average 3 Watts in urban areas. In rural areas, the base station power output is much higher because of the vast areas needed to be covered between base stations placed in remote regions.

* Why “Cellular”? The mobile phone system is referred to as “cellular” because, owing to the limitation of available radiofrequencies, it is divided up into cells. In the GSM system, cells consist of base station antennae emitting at specified frequencies, and a group or network of users whose mobile phones communicate at those specified frequencies. Geographically adjacent cells have different frequencies to prevent interference. The more users in a cellular network using their phones simultaneously, the greater the antenna power output. In the CDMA system, all cells use the same radiofrequency spectrum and interference is prevented by transmitting a code which repeats at constant time intervals. These time intervals vary from one base station to another and thus enable interference to be prevented. Transmitted power levels are kept to the minimum necessary to maintain good communications.

* About “dead spots”: In general, base station antennae must be elevated and located clear of physical obstruction to ensure wide coverage and reduce the incidence of “dead spots”. These “dead spots” represent areas where there is no signal due to obstruction from, say, tall buildings. Such “dead” regions are covered by “microcells” whose antennae have much lower power outputs of around 1 Watt, but are densely concentrated in urban areas. In general, the radiation from mobile phone antennae is beamed horizontally at the horizon with a slightly downward tilt which causes the maximum exposure to occur at a distance of about 100 metres.

* The urban sprawl: As technology progresses and data demands have increased on the mobile networks, the numbers of towers has increased tremendously, with little or no effort being made between companies to share such towers. Smaller but more numerous antennae throughout our urban environments have allowed for clear cell phone reception within moving elevators, in the centres or even basements of large buildings, and other previously “reception-poor” locations. The ability of a cell phone user to be “found” by a base station in an instant at almost any location on earth should be startling, and indicative of the widespread, now almost all-pervasive generation and propagation of mobile telephony-related electromagnetic radiation via microcellular networks.

About brain tumours:

* This Website contains pages dedicated to providing information about brain tumours. In order to avoid repeating that information on this particular Webpage, click any of the links below for further information and images regarding brain tumours. Note that, more recently, well conducted clinical studies have shown a significant link between long-term mobile phone usage and two classes of brain tumours, namely, acoustic neuroma (aka vestibular Schwannoma) and glioma (in particular, the malignant forms of “astrocytoma”).

About the rising incidence of brain tumours: In 1990, Grieg and colleagues (N.H. Grieg, et al., “Increasing annual incidence of primary malignant brain tumours in the elderly”; Journal of the National Cancer Institute (1990) Volume 82; pages 1621-1624) reported a 7% – 23.4% annual percentage rate increase in the diagnosis of malignant brain tumours in persons greater than 75 years of age, over the years 1973-1985. The reported incidence among younger persons varied little over the same period of time, suggesting a true incidence increase in the older population. This time frame predates the introduction of widespread mobile phone technology (which was beginning to take off widely first in Sweden in the mid-80’s), and the increase may partly have been explained by the more extensive use of imaging technology (computerized tomography or CAT scanning) during that time period. However, a true increase in incidence could not be ruled out but, during the time period studied by this particular group, was likely not due to mobile phone technology.

In 1998, Smith and colleagues (M.A. Smith, et al., “Trends in reported incidence of primary malignant brain tumours in children in the United States”; Journal of the National Cancer Institute (1998) Volume 90; pages 1269-1277) reported a 35% increase in the incidence of primary malignant brain tumours among children during the period 1973-1994, with a step-like increase noted in the mid-1980s. The authors suggested this increase was likely the result of better (or earlier) radiological detection and/or reporting trends concerning brain tumours in children during this time. Again, a true increase in incidence from some other yet-unidentified cause could not be ruled out.

Researchers in Sweden looked at the incidence of childhood malignant diseases in that country between the years 1960 – 1998. As reported by Dreifaldt and colleagues (A.C. Dreifaldt, et al., “Increasing incidence rates of childhood malignant diseases in Sweden during the period 1960-1998″; European Journal of Cancer (2004) Volume 40; pages 1351-1360), significant changes were found. Of the tumours of the brain, an increasing incidence of between 2-4% per year was found; the study included data from over 2,500 children with brain tumours. They concluded that changes in diagnostic criteria and better diagnostic tools may have contributed to these results. However, an argument against this conclusion is that their study found that lower grades of malignant brain tumours had increased during this time over and above the unchanged incidence of higher grade malignant brain tumours in the same population of children. As a result, a true increase in incidence (i.e., not related to better detection and reporting trends) could not be ruled out.

Further worrisome data was reported by Jikich and colleagues in 2001, who studied data from over 16,000 brain tumour patients. This group (P.J. Jukich, et al., “Trends in incidence of primary brain tumours in the United States, 1985-1994″; Neuro-Oncology (2001) Volume 3; pages 141-152) found when analysing the type of brain tumour (histopathological classification) and the age-group of brain tumour patients that the incidence of high-grade brain tumours had increased by over 5% per year in patients aged 20-64 years, but the incidence of low-grade brain tumours in persons in this age group had decreased during this time by the same amount annually. They also found that the incidence of nerve sheath tumours increased almost 6% per year in males during 1985-1994. Again, no specific cause for this increase was suggested by these authors, however they concluded: “Taken together, the results obtained in this study do not support diagnostic changes as the full explanation for changes in incidence over the last decade.”

Nelson and colleagues examined the incidence of acoustic neuroma (vestibular Schwannoma) in the UK population between 1979-2001. They noted that cell phone usage commenced in the UK in 1985, with a sharp rise in the registered number users between 1998 onwards. In their paper (P.D. Nelson, et al., “Trends in acoustic neuroma and cellular phones: Is there a link?”; Neurology (2006) Volume 66; pages 284-285), compared with the numbers of these tumours diagnosed in 1979, a greater than three-fold rise in cases was found by 1997, however only a 2.5 fold increase by 2000 when compared with the 1979 data. From this data, despite the increased incidence or detection rate of this kind of brain tumour, the increases preceded the widespread use of cell phone technology in the US, and the authors concluded that “the trends in acoustic neuroma are most likely explained by changes in reporting and diagnosis. However, given the long latency [i.e., the approximate 10-year time course for such solid tumours to grow and manifest neurologically], we are still at an early stage in observing possible health effects associated with cellular telephones.”

A large study looked at a change in death rates from brain tumours among mobile phone users in Switzerland from 1987-2002, compared with brain tumour death rates in Switzerland from 1969-1987. The authors (M. Roosli, et al., “Cellular telephone use and time trends in brain tumour mortality in Switzerland from 1969 to 2002″; European Journal of Cancer Prevention (2007) Volume 16; pages 77-82) concluded that mobile phone use was not a strong risk factor in the short term for mortality from brain tumours. Mobile phones were introduced into Switzerland in 1992. However, they recognised the obvious limitations of their study, namely, that it: (i) focused on death rates from brain tumours rather than brain tumour incidence rates; (ii) did not look at brain tumour histopathological subtypes (known from other studies to have marked changes in incidence rates over time; see above); (iii) didn’t perform any subgroup analysis on so-called “heavy” and/or “long-term” cell phone users; (iv) only had reached the cusp of long-term usage (10 years), whereas following tumour trends out to 15-20 years (to around 2008-2012) seems more likely to yield definitive results.

The Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States (CBTRUS) has recorded an approximately 15% increase in the incidence of primary brain tumours between the period 1998-2002 compared with the period 1990-1994. This increase has all been in the “MRI” age of the USA, a fact that suggests that the increase is not due to “better detection” or “earlier reporting”, since MRI was widely available in the US during this period of time. Visit the following URL for details of CBTRUS and its findings:

http://www.cbtrus.org/reports/reports.html

Look’s good but is it safe?

Safety tips: The following important points regarding mobile phone safety should be kept in mind:

Bluetooth ear-piece devices are NOT safe. Microwaves generated by the mobile phone are wirelessly transferred and directly transmitted into the ear canal and surrounding head region via the coupled blue tooth device.

Wired ear-pieces are NOT safe unless they are specifically shielded against electromagnetic radiation. Wearing an ear-piece connected by a wire to a mobile phone in essence converts the user’s head into an antenna for the base-station.

Home-based cordless phones do not emit as much electromagnetic radiation as conventional mobile phones, however they are NOT to be regarded as being safe owing to the longer usage time (typically cheaper calling rates) associated with home-based calling plans. Using such phones for less time and on “speaker-phone” mode with the cordless phone held at least 20 cm from the head is a safer alternative to holding them close to the side of the head.

The desktop base stations associated with cordless phones emit a constant electromagnetic radiation plume of up to 3 metres in diameter, and so are best not kept close to the head for prolonged periods of time such as overnight.

“Walkie-talkies” are NOT safe. They emit very high levels of electromagnetic radiation, up to 50 times more than a mobile phone.

Keeping a mobile phone close to one’s head overnight is NOT safe. Even “at rest”, the mobile will regularly emit a pulsed microwave signal to its closest base station in order for the mobile phone’s position to be tracked in order to maintain its expected service.

A regular landline IS safe, in fact this remains one of the safest forms of electronic verbal communication.

Using the “speaker phone” option on a mobile phone, with the phone held at least 20 cm from the head is a safer alternative (inverse square law for radiation fall-off), however, this naturally compromises the privacy of the communication to some extent.

Using a mobile phone via hands-free car kit (where the car speakers and car microphone are used instead of the mobile phone being held to the side of the head) IS safe. Here, the car roof acts as the antenna, and the user’s head is at an acceptable distance from both the roof and the phone (inverse square law for radiation fall-off).

A child’s brain is structurally developing well into adolescence, has a greater relative water content and lower volume compared with an adult’s brain, and subject to more “plasticity” (structural and functional reprogramming) at a microscopic level. It is logical to expect that exposing a child’s brain to cell phone radiation is likely to cause cellular damage that, in due course, may lead to brain cancer. Children should NOT use mobile or cellular phones unless in an emergency.

About Dr George Carlo: This section is adapted from an apparently well researched article written by Don Maisch and published in the Journal of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine in 2001 (D. Maisch, “Mobile phone use: it’s time to take precautions”; Journal of the Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (2001) Volume 20, pages 3-10).

* As a result of a widely publicised court case in the early 1990s in America, where it was claimed a fatal brain tumour was caused by extensive mobile phone use, the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) set up the Wireless Technology Research (WTR) research program in 1993. This research program was funded to the tune of $27 million to identify and solve any problems concerning consumers’ health that could arise from the use of these phones. A well-recognised scientist, Dr George Carlo, was invited by the CTIA to head the WTR’s research program. However, in February of 1999, George Carlo, who had previously maintained the Industry line that mobile phones were safe, stunned the industry with a report that he presented to the annual convention of the CTIA in California.

* Specifically, Dr. Carlo reported to the industry convention that, based on his research:

o The rate of death from brain cancer among handheld phone users was higher than the rate of brain cancer death among those who used non-handheld phones that were away from their head;

o The near-field electromagnetic plume of seven or eight inches around the antenna of the cell phone caused leakage in the blood brain barrier, a key anatomical and physiological regulator of