Category: Science & technology

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Environment Science & technology

[1040] Of glacial retreat at Puncak Jaya

I am familiar with glacial retreat. To many, the most famous retreat is probably the one occurring at Mount Kilimanjaro of Kenya, Africa. On whether this is a proof of global warming, I will leave you to decide on it.

Kilimanjaro however is perhaps too far away for average Malaysians like me to relate to. Worry not however because there is a closer example of glacial retreat: Puncak Jaya. Puncak Jaya is the highest mountain in Indonesia with the height of 4,884 m. That means it is higher than Mount Kinabalu of Malaysia. It is located in West Papua.

Wikipedia has an animation that illustrates the glacial retreat at Puncak Jaya:

Public domain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:137.13211E_4.05959S.gif

Nothing less than dramatic, yes?

The entire glacier is expected to melt by 2016, less than 10 years from now.

Where exactly is Puncak Jaya? Thanks to Google, here it is:

Fair use. Copyright by Google.

I hope the familiar features of Borneo and Australia is enough for many to recognize the location of the mountain.

For more similar animations, please visit the provided link to a page at Wikipedia, just before the animation.

If you are wondering what the hell is the hole in the middle of the 2003 picture, it is a copper mine.

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Science & technology

[1029] Of ghosts and the electrical brain

I do not believe supernaturals and superstitions ever since I embarked on a silent journey towards liberalism. In the NYT today, a person writes about an article in Nature on how “phantom effects” could be induced by stimulating the human brain with electrical current:

THE human brain is, in surprising part, an appliance powered by electricity. It constantly generates about 12 watts of energy, enough to keep a flashlight glowing. It works by sending out electrical impulses — bursts of power running along the cellular wires of the nervous system — to stimulate muscles into motion or thought into being. We’re mostly aware of this when the machine falters, when it short-circuits into epilepsy or frays into the tremors of Parkinson’s disease.

So when scientists wrote in a recent issue of the journal Nature that they could induce phantom effects — the sensation of being haunted by a shadowy figure — by stimulating the brain with electricity, it made perfect neurological sense. One could even argue that the existence of such sensations explains away the so-called supernatural. In fact, as The Times reported, the researchers promptly concluded that ghosts are mere “bodily delusions,” electrical misfirings and nothing more.

It seems that we are coming closer to explaining ghosts; ghosts are merely beings inside our mind and unreal.

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Environment Science & technology

[990] Of incorporating wildlife-friendly designs into our highway system

If a person is a member of the Malaysian Nature Society — any green for that matter — this piece of news is especially depressing:

SHAH ALAM: A tapir was killed and two cars were badly damaged in an accident in Puncak Alam early yesterday.

The adult female tapir was crossing the road about 6am when it was hit by a Proton Wira driven by an army personnel.

The impact caused the animal to be flung to the opposite side of the road where it was hit by another car.

Below is the tapir in question:

Fair use. By New Straits Times, December 6 2006.

The Malayan tapir is the icon of MNS.

Construction of highways across biologically diverse ecologies disrupts wildlife movement. It effectively divides a single ecology into two, much like how the Berlin Wall once divided Germany into two. The division is unnatural and adversely affects wildlife. For any pragmatic nature lover that seeks to conform to both modernity and conservation, any freeway crossing through natural wildlife habitat should have barriers to prevent “jaywalking” and special underpasses or over-crossings specially built to allow animals to cross such highway safely.

The idea of constructing crossings for animals in the wild is not new. It has been tested in North America. An MSNBC article, “More wildlife getting helped across the highway“, shows how such crossings enables the free flow of human and wildlife alike, while guaranteeing the safety of both. Below is a visual example of such crossings:

Fair use. By Anthony P. Clevenger, Western Transportation Institute

As mentioned in the MSNBC article, the picture was taken at Banff National Park, Canada.

It’s time we incorporate green designs into our highways and prevent future accident, in memory of the tapir. Life, regardless of species, is too precious to waste.

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Science & technology Society

[940] Of morality is genetic?

From the NYT:

Who doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong? Yet that essential knowledge, generally assumed to come from parental teaching or religious or legal instruction, could turn out to have a quite different origin.

Primatologists like Frans de Waal have long argued that the roots of human morality are evident in social animals like apes and monkeys. The animals’ feelings of empathy and expectations of reciprocity are essential behaviors for mammalian group living and can be regarded as a counterpart of human morality.

Marc D. Hauser, a Harvard biologist, has built on this idea to propose that people are born with a moral grammar wired into their neural circuits by evolution. In a new book, “Moral Minds” (HarperCollins 2006), he argues that the grammar generates instant moral judgments which, in part because of the quick decisions that must be made in life-or-death situations, are inaccessible to the conscious mind.

Also, a statement related to my assertion that morality is independent of religion:

Both atheists and people belonging to a wide range of faiths make the same moral judgments, Dr. Hauser writes, implying “that the system that unconsciously generates moral judgments is immune to religious doctrine.” Dr. Hauser argues that the moral grammar operates in much the same way as the universal grammar proposed by the linguist Noam Chomsky as the innate neural machinery for language. The universal grammar is a system of rules for generating syntax and vocabulary but does not specify any particular language. That is supplied by the culture in which a child grows up.

If morality is genetic, our understanding of morality — and of ourselves — will be greatly challenged.

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Politics & government Science & technology This blog

[930] Of YouTube, WordPress, Michael J. Fox and Rush Limbaugh

I’ve just realized that YouTube doesn’t quite work with WP. Inclusion of Youtube’s code turns my blog upside down.

The reason I wanted to post a clip from YouTube is Michael J. Fox ad on stem cell research.

In response to the ad, Rush Limbaugh later accused Fox of acting:

The Fox ad has triggered a backlash, with some criticizing it as exploitive. Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh claimed Fox was “either off his medication or acting,” though he later apologized.

The lack of decency exhibited by Limbaugh is amazing.