Monday, January 5, 2009

WEB BOHEMIAN (Monday, January 5, 2009)
(1)-TINTIN– It is one of Europe’s more startling laws. In 1949 France banned children’s books and comic strips from presenting cowardice in a “favorable” light, on pain of up to a year in prison for errant publishers. It was equally forbidden to make laziness or lying seem attractive. The law created an oversight committee to watch for positive depictions of these ills, along with crime, theft, hatred, debauchery and acts “liable to undermine morality” among the young. Taken literally, the law suggests that an ideal comic-book hero would resemble an overgrown boy scout, whose adventures involve pluck, fair play, restrained violence and no sex. That is a pretty accurate description of Tintin.

(2)-THE POPE'S VIEW-- It's not often that a science writer gets to say this, but the Pope is right. It's not as if he's always right: where scientific matters are concerned, Benedict XVI has displayed precious little infallibility. He has shown a disquieting sympathy for the rebranded creationism of intelligent design, and his views on embryonic stem cells, IVF and contraception are inimical to medical progress. But in attacking the notion that sex roles are invariably ordained by culture and not biology, the Holy Father has said something that needed saying.

(3)-BOOK REVIEW-- No one knows exactly how many Soviet citizens met unnatural deaths during the quarter-century that Stalin wielded absolute power, but adding together those who were sentenced to death and shot, died in manmade famines, or were worked to death in gulag camps like these, authoritative estimates put the total at approximately 20 million. Like the other great horror show unfolding in German-occupied Europe in the same period, the Soviet story was one of mass deaths on an almost unimaginable scale.

(4)-NANO NANO-- If you thought wiring up your speaker system was tricky, try connecting everything when the wires you're using are about 1/2000th the width of a human hair. Machines this small fall in the realm of nanotechnology; electronics that are a less than one ten-thousandths of a millimeter in size. That's really tiny. Yesterday scientists announced that they have developed a method to efficiently solder two wires together using a filament much smaller than the size of a cell.

(5)-ALLERGIES-- Almost a quarter of Europeans have some kind of allergy. Allergies are on the rise. About a third of Britain's population – 20 million - will develop an allergy some time in their lives, according to a recent government estimates. Cases of asthma, hay fever and eczema have risen between two- and three-fold in the UK over the past 20 years. Food allergies are rising fastest.

(6)-BIO-HACKERS -- At a loss for things to do this woozy New Year’s weekend? Well, if you have access to a garage or basement — or even just some extra room on your dining table — you could always take up a hobby that is exploding in popularity across the Atlantic: genetic engineering. Or, to use the more fashionable term, “biohacking”. Anecdotal evidence suggests that thousands of Americans now spend their free time consulting the internet, jerry-rigging laboratory equipment, and tinkering with the very foundations of life on Earth as we know it.

(7)-SELECTION REASONS-- A new study explains why we aren't all born with Brad Pitt’s perfectly chiseled features or Angelina Jolie’s pouty lips. A long-standing thorn in the side of biologists has been the difficulty in accounting for the enormous variation between individuals when sexual selection by females for the most attractive mates should quickly spread the “best” genes through a population.

(8)-LARGEST ICE SANTA-- China's freezing northern city of Harbin has built what organizers say is the world's largest Santa Claus ice sculpture. The giant Father Christmas, 525 feet long and 24 meters high, centers on an enormous face of Father Christmas, complete with flowing beard and hat. Its huge size and unseasonably warm temperatures have made the job especially challenging, said Tang Guangjun, one of the sculptors.

(9)-GROW NEW TEETH-- Snaggle-toothed hockey players and sugar lovers may soon rejoice as Canadian scientists say they have created the first device able to re-grow teeth and bones. The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada.
ENDIT