That's one tough woman

Late Thursday morning, she said the problem appeared to be either an ovarian cyst or a kidney stone, and said she would seek an injection to deal with her severe abdominal pain.

"Come hell or high water, there's no frigging way I'm going to let one ovary bring the government down," Parrish told a reporter for the Canadian Press news agency.

— from CBC coverage of independent MP Carolyn Parrish, earlier today.

A certain poetry

An early transcription of Archimedes' mathematical theories has been brought to light through the probing of high-intensity X-rays.

The text contains part of the Method of Mechanical Theorems, one of Archimedes' most important works, which was probably copied out by a scribe in the tenth century. The parchment on which it was written was later scraped down and reused as pages in a thirteenth century prayer book, producing a document known as a palimpsest (which comes from the Greek, meaning 'rubbed smooth again').

Scholars discovered the text concealed in this book as early as 1906. Since then, much of the text has been read, using everything from magnifying glasses to ultraviolet light, which highlights the hidden ink.

But some of the text has been solidly obscured by some twentieth-century forgeries of medieval art that were slapped on top of a few pages. So researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, decided to use X-rays to peer through this modern ink. Iron pigment in the original ink fluoresced when hit by the X-rays, allowing researchers to see the text for the first time.

— from X-rays illuminate ancient writings in today's Nature

Back in the ancient writings file, this is really something. Follow the link for the ver' cool image of what the original writing comes up as under the synchrotron radiation.

Beyond the mere marvellousness of being able to read pieces of so significant a work for the first time in many centuries, I find a certain poetry in this. As in: someone eight centuries or so ago decided, apparently, that a prayer book (read, in this commentor's opinion: a set of incantations to an invisible sky fairy) was more worth keeping on this manuscript than Archimedes' methods (after which the insult was, apparently, repeated and magnified by a buncha mangy art forgers). But, even after all of that, some smart folk with the know-how to build such devices can win the text back anyway. Chalk one more up for enlightenment thinking.

Synchrotron radiation, by the way, as a general topic, is pretty neat stuff. Among other curiosities (including the fact that synchrotron sources don't follow a normal black body curve when you plot wavelength versus intensity), they're actually emitted by supernova remnants. Including, somewhat famously, the lovely Crab nebula (M1) remnant. Larger topic, tho', and there's lots on this elsewhere on the web anyway.

Apple blossoms

Got a house full of apple blossoms, today. The trees in the back yard needed pruning anyway; figured they'd probably survive my taking a few low branches full of flowers.

Nice. White blossoms and their fragrance everywhere.

Yeah, they do

Now the right is after Isikoff and Newsweek over an apparently inadequately confirmed story that a U.S. military investigation had uncovered evidence that Americans desecrated the Quran while interrogating Muslim prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. The disproportionate firestorm over Newsweek's stumble has less to do with the riots the story sparked in the Muslim world than with the riotous power of Republican bullies and their allies in the White House and the right-wing blogosphere. It's absurd for rightist blowhards to try to paint Clinton-critic Isikoff and his editors as part of a vast left-wing conspiracy determined to undermine our troops in Iraq. And they need to be called on their intimidation campaign.

— from Salon's Newsweek isn't the problem

The Salon article is, I'd say, a pretty good summary of the situation. Fact is, the story here isn't one slightly shakily researched piece (whose substance, from other reports, actually isn't that startling, and probably quite accurate). The story is systematic prisoner abuse and the administration's efforts to intimidate anyone covering it.

See also, in Newsweek was right, from The Nation via Yahoo:

Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo such as those described by Newsweek on 9 May 2005 are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram airbase prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it.

— from Newsweek was right in The Nation

So yeah, the facts reported are, probably, essentially correct. And as per Salon, the blowhards do need to be called on this.

And the bookies all adjust their odds...

So, moving back to some Canadian content, looks like the odds we're all a gonna be tripping over campaign signs again in a week or so went down a bit today. Seems one Belinda Stronach has switched parties.

This, too, has its ironies. But I'd have to write one helluva long post to go into that. The precis, I guess, would go something like: this is funny 'cos (i) much of the current political instability goes back to the fact that where there were once two viable national parties broadly seen as competent to govern, there is now only one, (ii) Ms. Stronach was (albeit somewhat peripherally, and well after the fact) kinda involved in the burial of the by-then-rather-dessicated remains of the other one, (iii) the remaining party has since, sans any serious national threats to its power, gone about as corrupt as its now deceased rival had gone by the time of the crushing defeat that eventually entirely broke its back (besides adopting, in de facto terms, many of the more unpopular policies its erstwhile rival championed prior to its fall)... But since the whole thing goes back, arguably, to that now deceased party doin' the mad Hayekian mambo back in the 80s, when that sorta thing was all the rage... and a woman with a closet fulla Guccis... and rumours of a shady arms deal... and this guy singing 'Irish Eyes' with Reagan... And let's not forget the separatistes in Quebec ('cos they hate that)...

Oh, forget it. It can't be done with any kinda concision. Suffice to say, it's a mess. The upshot is: we might get an election any day, 'cos it's a minority government, and two of the opposition parties think now's a pretty good time to try to improve their fortunes. But Canadians generally don't want to vote 'cos they know when they do they're gonna have to choose between (i) a buncha closet extremists whose last national leader thought the world was about 6,000 years old and (ii) the apparently (at best) sporadically corrupt centre-right party (which never, actually, calls itself that) currently in power. So I think we're probably all hoping the entire parliament will catch some really deadly disease over the summer or something, and we can just start over. An election, it just ain't gonna go where anyone wants it to, any time soon... If people really get the government (and electoral choices) they deserve, we musta done something really bad, not too long ago.

Now there's an irony

So I see the Bush administration is outraged, outraged that Newsweek (apparently) got a story wrong, and folks died.

Yep. Bad information. People dying. Guess the Bush administration would know something about that kinda thing...

What's that you say? It's different?

Oh. Right. Sorry. It is different, isn't it? I mean, if they actually got it wrong, it's technically possible Newsweek might have just made a mistake... Guess that is quite distinct from lying your asses off systematically, methodically and continually for months on end to your people, to the people of the world, to other governments, and to anyone who'll listen... With the end result that tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people would die.

Sure, that is pretty much on a different scale. My mistake. And my apologies to Newsweek for implying they're anything like the insane, hypocritical loons currently occupying the West wing.

Saying nice things about Kansas

I felt kinda bad for the actually thoughtful and intelligent people in that state after mocking the latest stupidity of Kansas' school board.

Yes, that latter bunch—the zealous morons pining for the dark ages—are about as much use to the rest of humanity as tits on a bull (hey, I was raised rural; I'm allowed to use this expression when it's appropriate to the subject), but that's not necessarily a reflection of everyone living within the state's borders. And I work with a guy from Lawrence, Kansas, and he's actually a great guy to have lunch with, knows shit from shinola, and doesn't, generally, stand around in the middle of Fifth Avenue chewing on a blade of grass, hands in the front pockets of his overalls or anything (or, at least, not when I've been watching).

So I thought I'd pass on the two actually nice things about Kansas I've read lately—one of which actually concerns my co-worker's home town of Lawrence.

First, from Bob Harris' otherwise somewhat nonplussed view of Kansas' scenery and citizenry (and yeah, okay, the title is actually Kansas, where the gene pool has no pump, but what can ya do?) we have this comment:

This said, I've actually enjoyed a lot of my time in the state. I spoke at KSU a bunch of times and always found the folks to be bright and open-minded. Manhattan and Lawrence are both pretty cool.

— Bob Harris, in Kansas, where the gene pool has no pump

And, from Pharyngula, the other day:

I've only briefly visited modern Kansas, but the Kansas of my imagination is a fiercely exotic ocean, a warm and savage sea richer than any place still extant. Try mentioning the magic word "Niobrara" to a paleontologist, or any enthusiast familiar with Mesozoic reptiles...their eyes will light up as it conjures visions of the world of 85 million years ago, a world well documented in the incredible fossil beds of Kansas. It's a powerful, evocative word that links us to a wealth of evidence and a complex, fascinating history.

— Pharyngula, Niobrara

There you have it. (i) Kansas does contain smart, cool people, and (ii) some pretty cool fossil beds. Both good things.

Rabbit Blue

But if you're awake 'round half past-two
You're sure to see my Rabbit Blue

— from Marie-Louise Gay's Rabbit Blue

Spent much of a rainy Saturday making a sizeable papier mâchè rabbit in our sunroom, with my lovely daughter.

Seemed like the thing to do. Too wet to deal with the weeds in the back lawn (got to that Sunday), the little one was at loose ends, and her mother was keeping the littler one busy. Haven't really spent a lot of quality time with her lately, either.

The rabbit we did (and are still doing) was Rabbit Blue from Marie-Louise Gay's book, for any of you who might know Canadian kidlit.

For those of you who don't, Gay's books are beautiful things. All watercolor and pencil illustration, but if, when you think 'watercolor' you think 'washed out and overly subtle', you haven't seen this woman's stuff. At once whimsical and vivid. Great stuff.

Anyway. Our paper Rabbit Blue got off to a pretty good start, in the time we had Saturday. Though, since it is a four foot tall rabbit with wings much like those of a bat (and it doesn't have a head yet), in its unfinished state it does look a bit like a scary, headless paper winged demon right now.

We'll work on that.