LONDON — A team of scientists has set sail on a voyage to examine why a huge chunk of the earth’s crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean — a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how the earth works. The 20-strong team aims to survey an area some 3,000 to 4,000 metres deep where the mantle — the deep interior of the earth normally covered by a crust kilometres thick — is exposed on the sea floor. Experts describe the hole along the mid-Atlantic ridge as an ‘open wound’ on the ocean floor that has puzzled scientists for the five or so years that its existence has been known because it defies existing tectonic plate theories of evolution. ‘We know so little about it,’ said Bramley Murton, a senior research scientist at Southampton’s National Oceanography Centre. ‘It’s a real challenge to our established understanding of what the earth’s surface looks like underneath the waves,’ he told Reuters by telephone from the brand new, hi-tech research ship RRS James Cook. Mid ocean ridges are places where new oceanic crust is born, with red-hot lava spewing out along the seafloor. What scientists are keen […]
Justice Thomas talks about the lasting influence of the man who guided him through his years at Holy Cross and why he’s not a beneficiary of affirmative action Of all the influences in the life of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, little attention has been paid to the Reverend John E. Brooks. During his time at Holy Cross and in the years since, the Jesuit priest has been, in Thomas’ words, ‘a combination of friend, uncle, priest, father, saint, Good Samaritan.’ In this exclusive interview with BusinessWeek senior writer Diane Brady, Thomas reflects on racial politics, his job, his college crowd, and the influence of Brooks on his life. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation: Thank you for meeting with me. Father Brooks asked me to do it. One of the reasons I don’t do media interviews is, in the past, the media often has its own script. One reason these stories are never told is that they are contrary to the script that people play by. The media, unfortunately, have been universally untrustworthy because they have their own notions of what I should think or I should do. Why is Father Brooks such an important […]
OKLAHOMA CITY – Cherokee Nation members voted Saturday to revoke the tribal citizenship of an estimated 2,800 descendants of the people the Cherokee once owned as slaves. With all 32 precincts reporting, 76.6 percent had voted in favor of an amendment to the tribal constitution that would limit citizenship to descendants of ‘by blood’ tribe members as listed on the federal Dawes Commission’s rolls from more than 100 years ago. The commission, set up by a Congress bent on breaking up Indians’ collective lands and parceling them out to tribal citizens, drew up two rolls, one listing Cherokees by blood and the other listing freedmen, a roll of blacks regardless of whether they had Indian blood. Some opponents of the ballot question argued that attempts to remove freedmen from the tribe were motivated by racism. ‘I’m very disappointed that people bought into a lot of rhetoric and falsehoods by tribal leaders,’ said Marilyn Vann, president of the Oklahoma City-based Descendants of Freedmen of Five Civilized Tribes. Tribal officials said the vote was a matter of self-determination. ‘The Cherokee people exercised the most basic democratic right, the right to vote,’ tribal Principal Chief Chad Smith […]
A member of Britain’s special forces told me recently that in 2006, he had been on operations something like 269 days out of 365,’ said Adam Holloway, Conservative MP for Gravesham and a member of the Commons defence committee. ‘People like him have been incredibly busy ever since the build-up to the Iraq war more than four years ago, but they can’t do it forever. Not surprisingly, his marriage has cracked up.’ The past fortnight has seen a rush of announcements which emphasise the far-flung nature of Britain’s military commitments since the start of the century. Tony Blair – who had earlier stayed away from a Commons debate on Iraq – told Parliament that the long-awaited withdrawal from the south of the country would begin with the departure of 1,600 troops this spring. A day and a half later, Des Browne, the Secretary of State for Defence, announced that 1,400 more troops would be sent to southern Afghanistan, where British forces had to fight desperately last summer to avoid being overwhelmed by the Taliban. Mr Holloway, a former army officer, said his old regiment, the Grenadier Guards, was in the process of returning from Shaibah logistics base, […]
NEW YORK — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed hope Thursday that the ‘active debate” in the U.S. administration and Congress on global warming will spur the United States to take a leadership role in combatting climate change. The U.N. chief was addressing a student conference on global warming that brought hundreds of high-schoolers from around the world to the U.N. General Assembly hall. One student asked what Ban thought about the rejection by President Bush’s administration of the Kyoto protocol, a 1997 pact that requires 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming gases by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. ‘I have a sense of active discussion within the U.S. government and Congress regarding the Kyoto protocol,” Ban said. ‘And this kind of active debate has helped raise its profile and public interest in climate change.” Ban also said that climate change poses as great of a danger to the world as war. ‘The majority of the U.N.’s work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict,” Ban said. ‘But the danger posed by war to all of humanity - and to our planet - is at least matched by the climate crisis and […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
