A new proposal by the American Academy of Pediatrics would have doctors assisting families in the ritual of female circumcision, but activist and Nomad author Ayaan Hirsi Ali says they’d just be complicit in perpetuating a grave injustice. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently put forward a proposal on female genital mutilation. They would like that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or ‘nick on girls born into communities that practice female genital mutilation. Female circumcision is a custom in many African and Asian countries whereby the genitals of a girl child are cut. There are roughly four procedures. First there is the ritual pinprick. This is what Pediatrics refers to as the ‘nick option. To give you an idea of what that means, visualize a preteen girl held down by adults. Her clitoris is tweaked so that the circumcizer can hold it between her forefinger and her thumb. Then she takes a needle and pierces it using enough force for it to go into the peak of the clitoris. As soon as it bleeds, the parents and others attending the ceremony cheer, the girl is comforted and the celebrations follow. The majority […]
When scientists say the planet is warming, they usually point to rising air temperatures as proof. That’s reasonable enough, especially since the warmth of the air temperature affects us directly so we feel the change the scientists are measuring. But it’s also misleading: while the lower atmosphere has been gradually warming over the past 50 years, it happens unevenly, rising sharply for a year or two or even ten, then flattening out. That stutterstep pattern is due to relatively short-lived effects on top of the general warming – an El Nino current in the Pacific making things warmer, for example, or a volcanic eruption like 1991’s Mt. Pinatubo producing a cloud of dust that makes things cooler. Over time, these cancel out, but it can be tempting – though incorrect – to think a temporary flattening means global warming has stopped. To get a measure of what’s truly going on, scientists look to the oceans – slow to heat up, slow to cool down, and thus less prone to short-term variations. Indeed, says John Lyman an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, ‘about 80 or 90 percent of the extra heat absorbed by the planet is absorbed into the […]
Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first synthetic living cell. The researchers constructed a bacterium’s ‘genetic software’ and transplanted it into a host cell. The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species ‘dictated’ by the synthetic DNA. The advance, published in Science, has been hailed as a scientific landmark, but critics say there are dangers posed by synthetic organisms. The researchers hope eventually to design bacterial cells that will produce medicines and fuels and even absorb greenhouse gases. The team was led by Dr Craig Venter of the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Maryland and California. He and his colleagues had previously made a synthetic bacterial genome, and transplanted the genome of one bacterium into another. Now, the scientists have put both methods together, to create what they call a ‘synthetic cell’, although only its genome is truly synthetic. Dr Venter likened the advance to making new software for the cell. The researchers copied an existing bacterial genome. They sequenced its genetic code and then used ‘synthesis machines’ to chemically construct a copy. Dr Venter told BBC News: ‘We’ve now been able to take […]
America is leaving Iraq. We already itch to forget. The U.S. media gave more coverage to the elections in Zimbabwe than those held in March across Iraq. We award Oscars to films about Iraq, but don’t particularly care to watch them. The seventh anniversary of the U.S. invasion passed recently, with little notice. Another regrettable anniversary recently passed, one from which U.S. President Barack Obama might take heed. The fall of Saigon 35 years ago marked the end of the Vietnam War and the beginning of a seismic refugee crisis. An eleventh-hour request for $722 million to evacuate the thousands of South Vietnamese who had assisted the United States went unfunded by a war-weary Congress. What ensued in those early morning hours on the rooftops of Saigon, as desperate Vietnamese clamored beneath departing helicopters, would be the war’s final image seared into the American conscience. Al Jazeera rebroadcast these scenes of abandonment throughout 2005, when I worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Baghdad and Fallujah. My Iraqi colleagues who risked their lives to help us were demoralized by the footage, and constantly worried about what would happen to them when we left. Since my […]
Google Inc. is attempting to answer the increasingly difficult question posed by television viewers faced with hundreds of programming choices: What should I watch? At the company’s developer conference Thursday in San Francisco, Google predicted it would ‘change the future of television’ with an effort to bring order to programming chaos in the same way that it organized the fire hose of information on the Web. Known as Google TV, the new television platform would allow viewers to access Internet content on their televisions in addition to traditional broadcast and cable programming. Despite bringing even more choice to the mix, Google is pitching the initiative as an easier way for audiences to find television shows and Internet content through a single search box instead of fumbling with remotes and clumsy on-screen programming guides. The first television sets, Blu-ray players and companion set-top boxes will go on sale this fall through partnerships with chipmaker Intel Corp., electronics giant Sony Corp. and device-maker Logitech. ‘As other technologies have evolved and changed, TV has remained the same,’ Rishi Chandra, the project leader, told 5,000 developers gathered for the conference. ‘Video should be consumed on the biggest, best and brightest […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
