Category: Science & technology

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Environment Science & technology

[1768] Of rethinking about invasive species

When one speaks of invasive species, what does come to mind?

Almost inevitably for me, it meant disaster for the local ecosystem. It meant having a sledgehammer hitting a pillar supporting a particular food chain down, collapsing the entire local environment down. A slippery slope fallacy I admit but that was the frame of thoughts whenever I came across the term “invasive species”.

I considered nonchalant introduction of foreign species into a local environment as irresponsible. This perspective was nurtured through countless reading of effects of invasive species on local ones.

In a magnificent University of Michigan’s natural science museum which I loved to frequent in Ann Arbor, there was an exhibition dedicated to lampreys. With the University being one of the only 30 sea-grant institutions, it is only right for the University to having at least something on lamprey.

A certain kind of lamprey, especially the one which devastated the trout population in Lake Michigan, looked like a giant leech to me. Attacked fishes would have deep noticeable and disgusting scare on their body. The lampreys were introduced to Lake Michigan after the canals which connect the Great Lakes was completed in the 19th century.[1][2][3]

Another example of invasive species which adversely affect the indigenous species is the snakehead fish. Unlike the lamprey which originated from Lake Ontario which is really not far of Lake Michigan, the snakehead fish came from Asia. Its creepy name matches its seemingly out of this world ability to breathe and walk over land. Its aggressiveness is likely to phase out indigenous species from the local ecosystem.[4]

The introduction of these species always brings about unknown consequences. The fear of the unknown consequences convinced me to subscribe to precautionary principle, a principle which demands scientific proofs to be presented to alleviate concerns for the unknown.[5]

Truth be told, in retrospect, placing all invasive species in a bad light takes a simplistic view of the world. It ignores some of the benefits which foreign species may bring to the local environment. I do believe I have to a large extent mastered over tendency to make sweeping generalization but I never actually gave my preconception of invasive species much thought, until the New York Times published an article about the matter recently.[6]

The article highlights invasive species contribution to diversity. Again in retrospect, surely that is the case if the introduced species do not compete with indigenous ones. Yet, my first reaction to the article was that of shock. The assumption that I held was easily disproved but yet, I overlooked such flimsy assumption.

Nevertheless, this neither mean that I would suddenly take a diametrically opposing viewpoint nor would I abandon the precautionary principle. What the article teaches me is to be more careful of assumptions in matter concerning invasive species in particular and other matters in general. What it really teaches me is to observe the context as well as the individualized effects of the introduction of any invasive species to specific ecosystems.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — [The Lampreys Of Michigan. Michigan Natural Resources (Reproduced by The Native Fish Conservancy). Sidney B. Morker. July/August 2008. (Accessed September 9 2008)]

[2] — See Great Lakes: Ecological Challenge at Wikipedia. Accessed September 9 2008.

[3] — See Lamprey: Relation to human as pest at Wikipedia. Accessed September 9 2008.

[4] — The snakehead fish, a voracious Asian invader that’s been known to breathe out of water and scoot short distances over land, has reappeared in Maryland, state authorities announced yesterday. [A creepy catch of the day. Washington Post. David A. Fahrenthold. April 29 2004]

[5] — See precautionary principle at Wikipedia. Accessed September 9 2008.

[6] — It sounds like the makings of an ecological disaster: an epidemic of invasive species that wipes out the delicate native species in its path. But in a paper published in August in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dov Sax, an ecologist at Brown University, and Steven D. Gaines, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, point out that the invasion has not led to a mass extinction of native plants. The number of documented extinctions of native New Zealand plant species is a grand total of three.

Exotic species receive lots of attention and create lots of worry. Some scientists consider biological invasions among the top two or three forces driving species into extinction. But Dr. Sax, Dr. Gaines and several other researchers argue that attitudes about exotic species are too simplistic. While some invasions are indeed devastating, they often do not set off extinctions. They can even spur the evolution of new diversity. [Friendly Invaders. New York Times. Carl Zimmer. September 8 2004]

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Books, essays and others Science & technology Society

[1490] Of The God Delusion

I am finally done with the Dawkins’ The God Delusion which I bought last year. Yes, I finished it just over a year after I picked it off the shelf at some bookstore.

It is filled with too much polemics and I was caught off guard on how fierce Dawkins argues against religion in The God Delusion despite being familiar with his well-publicized opinion. I should have braced myself when I read this paragraph:

A widespread assumption, which nearly everybody in our society accepts — the non-religious included — is that religious faith is especially vulnerable to offence and should be protected by an abnormally thick wall of respect, in a different class from the respect that any human being should pay to any other. [The God Delusion. Richard Dawkins. Page 20]

The first chapters are dedicated to discrediting religion. Ignoring the polemics — sometimes, it is hard; I couldn’t help but smile at one point or another; simply too amusing and entertaining — reading for me was easy and I breezed through it. The one point which I stopped and pondered for awhile amid the polemics concerned the Pascal’s wager. I really think I should thank Dawkins for solving the puzzle for me.

The rhythm goes a pace higher at midpoint where he explains, to a certain extent, how evolution affected religion and — more interestingly — moral. I have read earlier on how moral might be dictated by genetics but I am convinced of it only until I read Dawkins’.

From the same idea, he insists that moral and religion are independent of each other. I have reached the same conclusion before and I could only nod in agreement with him. Dawkins goes further by stating that moral precedes religions. To strengthen that, he shows how there are commonalities of morality across most religions despite the fact that many of these religions developed separately. To answer the puzzle of commonalities, he returns to genetics and evolution, his forte.

For those unfamiliar with Dawkins, he is a biologist at Oxford. Wikipedia, as usual, has a great article on him.

What surprises me, given the Malaysian authority’s tendency to ban the most innocent of all books such as Anthony Burgess’ Malayan Trilogy and Karen Amstrong’s A History of God, is that The God Delusion escapes censorship. The escape, of course, is absolutely fine by me.

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Science & technology

[1466] Of random find

I am sleepy but this is too cool for me to be selfish: check out Wikisky.org.

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Kitchen sink Science & technology Society

[1404] Of intentional misinterpretation?

Compare this blog entry:

For those who have been screaming off their heads about the so-called “Islamization” imposition (I call it a resurgence) on the country in the last few decades, they certainly would not be able to deny that because of Islam, Malaysia has seen much scientific progress and currently as it stands, are among the top seven most scientifically productive Islamic nations in the world today, according to this blog post.

Fair use. Copyrights by Physics Today.

Granted that we still have a far way to go where science is concerned and I am not going to just sit back and be satisfied with what we have. But compared to the state the nation was in when secularism was thriving in the late 50s and 60s (also having failed this country time and time again but that is besides the point), the Islamic resurgence has given us the much need scientific progress that we have been striving for. To deny otherwise is to shut out evidence of the research that we see before our very eyes. Its too bad that those who advocate for the secularism project to remain alive are most certainly behind current times. [Malaysia among top scientifically productive Islamic nations. He That Shall Not Be Named. October 6 2007]

…with this article that the previous blog entry eventually refers to:

Religious fundamentalism is always bad news for science. But what explains its meteoric rise in Islam over the past half century? In the mid-1950s all Muslim leaders were secular, and secularism in Islam was growing. What changed? Here the West must accept its share of responsibility for reversing the trend. Iran under Mohammed Mossadeq, Indonesia under Ahmed Sukarno, and Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser are examples of secular but nationalist governments that wanted to protect their national wealth. Western imperial greed, however, subverted and overthrew them. At the same time, conservative oil-rich Arab states—such as Saudi Arabia—that exported extreme versions of Islam were US clients. The fundamentalist Hamas organization was helped by Israel in its fight against the secular Palestine Liberation Organization as part of a deliberate Israeli strategy in the 1980s. Perhaps most important, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the US Central Intelligence Agency armed the fiercest and most ideologically charged Islamic fighters and brought them from distant Muslim countries into Afghanistan, thus helping to create an extensive globalized jihad network. Today, as secularism continues to retreat, Islamic fundamentalism fills the vacuum. [Science and the Islamic world—The quest for rapprochement. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy. Physics Today . August 2007]

Why does He That Shall Not Be Named draw different conclusion from the original article and gives the picture as if the article offers the same conclusion as his?

He That Shall Not Be Named should stop and think, and read before he speaks, lest he would make a fool out of himself, which he has so profoundly. Unless, it was his intention to mislead in the first place.

He probably just read the table (and made awful mistake of correlating and then committing the fallacy of correlation is causation) without reading the article.

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Science & technology Society

[1403] Of investment in space is beyond instant gratification

There was a period in my life, when I was younger, I admired the unreachable diamonds in the sky. At one time when I was older, I gazed into the clear night sky and witnessed the celestial heaven in all of its majesty from within the Grand Canyon of Tuolumne, under the clear Californian night sky. It was so full of stars, untainted by intrusive city light that characterizes human civilization. So far away from trouble, so near to the heaven above.

That love allowed me to recognize some of the constellations with little effort; Orion, Ursa Minor and Major, Draco and my own star Gemini, among others. In that canyon, amid the peaceful continuous music of water gushing through nearby rapids, I smiled alone, reliving that childhood preoccupation. Lying on my back, I connected the stars with each other, making constellations of my own, in hope to amuse myself before I succumbed to fatigue, partly due to the hiking I did earlier in the day, partly due prolonged withdrawal from my virtual world.

It was only natural for the love of stars to nurture interest in space exploration. That was exactly the case when I was a kid. I remember that when I was 6 or 7, I had to list down three trades which I would like to practice; in that tiny boxes with that bad handwriting of mine, I wrote “astronaut”. But that childhood interest died out, like too many good things in exchange for maturity. The reality of life has the knack of pulling one down to earth; there are issues that require urgent attention at the expense of greater things. Since then, I have not thought much of stars, of constellation, of space exploration until lately. The Malaysian space program, if one could call it as such with a straight face, entices me to revisit that childhood dream of mine.

On Liberty Street in Ann Arbor, from State towards Main, just beyond the first Borders store in the world is a quaint bookstore that I used to visit every semester, looking for inexpensive books to fill whatever time I had, whatever space I had on my shelf, as partners during many of my cold lonely nights. It was there where I finally got my hands on Blue Mars, the last novel of the Martian trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The trilogy on colonization of Mars is one of few widely celebrated science fiction novels of the 1990s.

Believe it or not, I had searched for that novel for almost 3 years and only found it after I had crossed the Pacific Ocean. It was amazingly hard to find the novel in Kuala Lumpur and I practically had given up looking for it. I remember very vividly, my muscles froze upon the unexpected discovery of Blue Mars in the store. Only after full realization of what hit me sunk in did I grab the book and decide immediately to purchase it, lest the serendipity turned into regret.

That same year, the Bush administration was cutting NASA budget and that news was greeted by many with deep murmur of protest. The person behind the counter was one of many individuals that strongly disagreed with the decision, adding on to whatever resentment he already had from the ongoing war in Iraq.

The title of the book probably betrayed my interest in space exploration and science fiction to him because he decided to start a conversation with me by saying, politely paraphrased, that the President is shortsighted. I smiled back, agreeing with him. But Blue Mars awaited and I had no time for idle talk! So I paid the cashier and made a dash from Liberty to Thompson and East Madison, up to the third floor and jumped on my bed to hurry to explore the first sentences of Blue Mars.

In the Martian trilogy, it took a Malthusian disaster to go to Mars. In the second half of the 20th century in the real world, it took a cold war to go to space. For the US, it took a charismatic Kennedy to go to the moon.

For Malaysia, it is much less inspiring for it takes a dish of roti canai to go to space.

Well, not quite, but you get the idea.

The Malaysian space program has been derided as space cab and unfortunately, it is not without merit. This is especially so when many are under the perception that the Malaysian government is paying the Russian to send a Malaysian up to space. The truth is that the Malaysian government paid almost nothing for the program because the deal was part of the Malaysian purchase of a fleet of Russian-designed jet fighters. In other words, the opportunity to taxi a Malaysian to space was merely a matter of sweetening the pot. The purchase went through and so was the deal. Therefore, in relative term, practically no public money was spent, unlike the downright misused of public funds at recent by-elections at Ijok and Manchap. On whether the purchase of the jet fighters itself was a waste of money, or how the jet fighters were purchase, that is another matter altogether.

The truth however does not rally total support from the public, especially after the Malaysian authority announced — no, stressed is a better verb — that the Malaysian astronaut, cosmonaut, spaceflight participant or whatever one wishes to call it, was going to introduce roti canai in space, among other things. They probably thought it was amusing but many were and still are disturbed at how precious resources are being spent when there are so many matters of bread and butter left unattended on the ground.

While I am dismayed at the celebration of roti canai in space, I am excited at the prospect of Malaysian presence in space. Yet, I feel the government is not embarking on the program for the sake of space exploration or the developmental benefits that entails it but rather, is more interested in shallow achievement that have been characterized with the spirit of “Malaysia Boleh“. Needless to say, the term Malaysia Boleh has been polluted with the penchant for the largest cake, the largest flag, the tallest tin structures, or whatever superlatives of superficiality that suit ridiculous efforts. This is perhaps to add to the grandness of the number 50 and within a larger context, to encourage a feel good atmosphere for the anticipated general election. By the way, the atmosphere is turning increasingly sore on the economic and the social fronts.

Sure, there are experiments to be conducted by the Malaysian “angkasawan” but those experiments were announced only after the outcry against the roti-canai-in-space announcement. That made me, and probably many others too, suspicious of the sincerity of the experiments and the space program itself. It is, as if, the experiments are organized in an ad hoc manner just to avoid further criticism.

It is sad for Malaysia to take the journey to space so lightly. I do not mind Malaysia hitching a ride through the Russian space program as part of our learning curve. There is a lot to learn from the Russian; what Malaysia could learn from the Russian during the launch is this: the way the Russian organizes its spaceflight. In my humble opinion, any soft assets obtained will be at least as valuable as any hard investment related to spaceflight. I do hope that the realization of this opportunity is not lost upon the Malaysian space authority, amid the euphoria, of having a Malaysian in space.

Ventures into space require great investment and its benefits do not bare fruit immediately, just like any other earthly investment. Amid competing demands for limited resources, it is easy to ignore the final frontiers in favor of more earthly businesses; a larger return on investment is being overlooked for a large initial investment required. Detractors of the Malaysian space program deride the ventures as costly national pastime but the benefits the US, Russian and European space programs brought to the global community have proven these detractors wrong. Yet, these myopic detractors ignore that and employ instead selective reasoning on space program: they demand return on investment from the space program immediately. These myopic suffer from instant gratification.

For Malaysia to have the same success as those programs, Malaysia needs to stress on the future benefits of this space venture, instead of the novel idea of consuming roti canai in space. Only through this would the myopic be soundly defeated.

Alas, the way the angkasawan program is marketed to the public may have granted the opponents of any space program the victory they seek, much to the chagrin of those that sincerely hope for a credible and sustainable space program, national or otherwise, for advancement in science. For the next bout, the same mistake must not be repeated. Any future venture into space must stress on its return on investment, not as a joy ride.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — this entry was first published in Bolehland, as indicated here.