ropellers in such a way that they
could generate enough force to move an otherwise cumbersome machine more
efficiently in the fluid environment of the sea.
While the two swimming styles of
jellyfish appear to allow for the breadth of sizes seen in jellies today,
scientists such as Allen Collins of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration seem more struck by the fact that Dabiri's equations predict the
limits on jelly bell shapes that are manifest in nature.
"They can't seem to get beyond what
is theoretically possible," says Collins, who is also curator of the
Smithsonian Institution's jellyfish and glass sponge collections at the
National Museum of Natural History.
Before choosing betwixt jet and
paddle, jellies had to become free-floating beasts, a first for their lineage.
Jellyfish belong to a larger group of animals known as Cnidarians, united by
their ability to make stinging, poisonous barbs, a feat they presumably
inherited from a common, ancient ancestor (knidï is Greek for "stinging
nettle"). Corals and anemones are part of this group, as are critters
known as sea fans and sea pens. Like jellyfish, most Cnidarians have a tubular
body with a mouth on one end surrounded by tentacles. But many of these
creatures are anchored to sand or rock. They can't move, by jet or by paddle.
Young jellies are also limited in
terms of purposeful movement. They begin life as small larvae dispersed by
currents and eventually settle on the bottom of the sea. The majority then grow
into polyps, small finger- or pear-shaped lumps. Some species have polyps that
can crawl around a bit, but mostly they stay put, waiting for something tasty
to stumble into their tentacles. This was life in the 'burbs for Cnidarians,
until the day, roughly 550 million years ago, that a polyp ancestor of today's
jellies grew a little bud that broke off and got into the swim of things.
Called medusans, these free jellies are the adult jellyfish that marinelife
fans know and love (or fear). Almost all of today's jellies still begin as
larvae, become polyps, and eventually medusans, free to roam the seas.
It's likely that the first
free-floating jellies were the only swimmers in the ancient seas, says Collins.
There would have been algae and coral larvae and such floating around, and
eventually ancient versions of lobsters and other marine arthropods. But the
highways were basically clear. No sharks. No fish. Certainly no people. The
jellies had the pool to themselves.
But what stroke the earliest jellyfish
used isn't as clear. When Dabiri and his colleagues realized that the same
swimming styles cropped up in distinct groups of jellies, the researchers
wondered whether the first ancient swimming jelly blasted from place to place
via jet pack or gently paddled around. So the researchers looked up the most
recent version of the jellyfish family tree. (The tree was generated using
molecular data by Collins and colleagues published in Systematic Biology in
2006.)
When Dabiri's team plotted swimming
strategies onto the tree, it appeared that both swimming styles have been
invented again and again in jellyfish evolution. But Collins cautions that
jellyfish are understudied beasts. Without surveying all of the species in
every group it is difficult to say if jets or paddles emerged first. Scientists
often look to the fossil record for answers to what-came-first kinds of
questions. And while some fossilized jellies have been found, the record
remains murky.
It is clear that some groups tend to
favor one mode of motion. Among the box jellies (Cubozoans), which are known
for their fierce venom and distinct cube shape, bell size has been restricted
and many of these jellies are small, jet-propelled species. The hydrozoans, a
sister group of the box jellies, show more variation. Hydrozoans called
Trachymedusae have diminutive bells and belong to the jet set. Other hydrozoans
called siphonophores include species like the Portuguese man-o-war that may
grow up to several feet long, but are actually colonies made up of many smaller
bells chained together. While technically too large to jet, siphonophores pull
off jet propulsion through the coordinated thrusts of the individual bells.
The leisurely paddle propulsion also
appears more than once in the greater jellyfish family tree, and different groups
have made use of various body parts to enhance the paddlelike edges of their
bells. Thimble-shaped hydrozoans have a velum, a sort of muscular shelf at the
inner edge of the bell, that boosts propulsive power by providing a stiff
collar through which to blast the water. The larger, flatter paddling
hydrozoans known as Narcomedusans sport a tweaked velum—a flapping paddlelike
appendage—that helps generate the second vortex.
Some of the wispy creatures' body
plans fall between the extremes, or switch as teens, going from UFO-shaped
juveniles to rocket-shaped adults. But it appears that it isn't advantageous to
take the middle road. Examining dining preferences hints at why, say Dabiri and
his colleagues in an upcoming issue of Invertebrate Biology.
Jet-propellers tend to be what
ecologists call ambush predators—they lie in wait for a small creature to swim
by, then ensnare it in a stinging mass of tentacles. Like Agent 007, most of
these jellies appear to employ the jet pack to escape from an enemy rather than
to attack. On the other hand, what's known of the paddling jellyfish suggests
that they are largely cruising foragers—they amble along, capturing
soft-bodied, slow-moving prey such as drifting eggs or tadpole-like creatures.
Of course, jellies may have done it
first, but most animals have since figured out how to generate force by
contracting muscles, points out Edwin DeMont of St. Francis Xavier University
in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. But many creatures use two muscles where jellies
use one. Human biceps and triceps, for example, pair up so that when one
contracts, the other pulls back to rest. The equivalent in jellies is the
springy, postsqueeze expansion of their goo.
"They can't increase that rate—it
is passive," says DeMont. "They've had to capture the fluid processes
in the environment."
From Dabiri's perspective, the ability
to harness these fluid processes is one of the marvels of these graceful ghosts
of the sea. He hopes to do something similar with air currents. Inspired by the
flow dynamics employed by the jet-paddling jellies, he has begun investigating
how to capture the energy of winds whipping through a city. Because this wind
can quickly change direction and strength as it slides down buildings, turns
corners, or blasts down streets, taking advantage of it requires thinking more
like a jelly than a tuna. Dabiri recently received funding from the National
Science Foundation to explore the energy conversion that happens when eddies
and vortices are generated by animals like jellyfish.
"Whether water or air,"
Dabiri says, "it all comes back to the same equations."
Strong though the temptation is to
call the bearded charioteer pictured on the front cover "Ben Hur of
Ur," it would not be quite accurate to do so. For the little statuette
comes not from the famous Chaldean city but was dug up at Tell Agrab, near
Baghdad. Probably, though, Ur's warriors drove to battle in just such jolting
war-chariots behind teams of four scampering donkeys.
Notable are the big copper studs that
circled the wheels, tire fashion, and the driver's not-too-comfortable position
astride a continuation rearward of the chariot pole. It is to be noticed
especially that he is shown standing on the floor of the chariot—he probably
didn't sit down much.
This interesting find, which dates
from about 2800 B.C., was made by an expedition of the Oriental Institute of
the University of Chicago.
Many an American family that would not
buy second-hand furniture or wear second-hand clothes is eating a third-rate
diet. This is apparent from a survey of typical food expenditures made by Dr.
Hazel K. Stiebeling of the U.S. Bureau of Home Economics. The survey included
25,000 representative city, village, and rural families.
Size of the family pocketbook was not
the only or perhaps even the chief factor responsible for the poor nutritional
quality of the family's diet. At every expenditure level above $100 per person
per year, some families were able to provide themselves with very good diets.
The reason more families do not get good diets is chiefly because they do not
know how to select the most nourishing foods for the money.
As might be expected, the tables of
the well-to-do families were more frequently and more liberally supplied with
milk, butter, eggs, fruits, and green and leafy vegetables. These are classed
by nutritionists as the "protective foods" because they protect
against such serious ills as rickets, beriberi, and scurvy and also against
numerous minor degrees of ill health and undernutrition. Families spending less
than $85 per year per person for food, as might be expected, got very poor
diets.
At the median expenditure level,
however, which is $130 per person per year, almost one-half were eating a
third-rate diet and nearly another fifth a very poor diet. At this expenditure
level a little over one-fifth of the families had a first-rate diet.
Three-fourths of the families were at
$100 or more expenditure level, but less than one-third of them were selecting
very good diets.
Ruins of an ancient American trade
town, where Indians turned out cheap pottery bowls for traveling salesmen to
handle, have been unearthed in the tropics in northeast Honduras, by a
Smithsonian-Harvard University joint expedition. The Smithsonian Institution
has just issued a report of the expedition, which took place in 1936.
The town unearthed sheds light on
industrial life of aboriginal America. Evidence that mass production was tried
in those days is found in quantities of broken pottery, some decorated in the
"factory" method of stamping the design.
Indian businessmen of the town lived
well, judging by two house floors unearthed by the expedition. The plastered
floors were stained red. Fragments of plaster, apparently from walls, show
redecoration in successive layers of red, yellow, red, blue-gray, and red.
The town is identified as Naco,
visited by Spanish explorers in 1526. Spaniards found it a flourishing place of
2,000 houses and about 10,000 natives, with Aztec traders from Mexico
bargaining for goods in the shady city square. Ten years later, Naco was
reduced to a pitiable handful of 45 Indians, the rest having been killed,
enslaved, or driven into the hills.
So I’m at Peet’s coffee a while back — Pirillo loves it, and talked me into it —
and I want to buy some beans. They look good, oily and dark. I move over to the
counter, and the barrista looks up at me and asks if she can help me.
As I’m about to open my mouth, I notice she’s wearing an unusual
necklace. It’s a simple thing, wire with small beads on it. The shape is odd,
though. The wire has been bent into a pattern, a hexagon with some radial bits
coming out at the vertices.
It’s obviously a molecule. It looks familiar, but I can’t place
it. Suddenly, though, I get a flash of insight.
Where am I
standing?
I smile. I already know the answer… "Is that a caffeine
molecule?" I ask.
Over the course of two seconds her expression changes from open
and helpful to one of surprise and amazement.
"That’s right!" she exclaims. "You’re the first
person to get it!"
Just like that, we bonded. Turns out she’s a biochem major, and
working at Peet’s to make ends meet. We chatted for a while — we scientists
tend to stick together — and she told me she made the necklace herself, which
is cool.
Finally, though, I have to leave. As I turn to go, she tells me
to wait. She reaches down and grabs something. Smiling broadly, she passes it
to me.
It’s a coupon for a free cup of coffee, next time I come in.
Science, babies. It pays.
Some people call Venus our sister planet, but if it is, it’s the
sister that went very, very bad.
The atmospheric pressure at the surface is a
crushing 90 atmospheres. The surface temperature is 470 Celsius (about 900 F).
The atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide, and it rains sulphuric acid.
To paraphrase Chekov, it’s not exactly a garden spot.*
Through a telescope (and by eye for that matter) Venus is
beautiful and bright, but featureless. In visible light, the best you can see
are very subtle patches on the disk of the planet. The atmosphere is far too
thick to see the surface.
But there’s still a lot to learn from the planet. The European
Space Agency’s Venus Express orbiter arrived at the
hellish planet in April 2006 and set up shop. It’s equipped with an ultraviolet
camera, and when viewed in UV Venus is a whole ‘nuther place. The chemicals in
the atmosphere reflect or absorb UV from the Sun ,creating beautiful global
weather patterns reminiscent of Earth’s. Here’s a recent UV shot:
As you can see, the story is different in UV than in visible.
Things is, scientists aren’t exactly sure what they’re seeing. The bright
stripes are due to sulphuric acid droplets in the air (yikes… I mean seriously,
yikes). But they’re not sure what’s
causing the darker regions; something is absorbing UV, but it’s unknown exactly
what it is.
And the weather on Venus is weird, too. The science team was recently amazed to see
a bright haze form over the south pole of Venus, then, over the course of
several days, grow to cover the southern half of the planet. Then, just as
quickly, it receded. What could cause such a thing? No one knows. There are
very small amounts of water vapor and sulphur dioxide in Venus’s atmosphere,
located deeper down (below 70 km in height). If this wells up, the ultraviolet
from the Sun can break the molecules apart, which would reform into sulphuric
acid, creating the haze. But why would those two molecules suddenly well up to
the top of the atmosphere in the first place? Again, no one knows.
The only thing to do is keep looking. Venus Express has been
orbiting the planet for nearly two years now, and that allows the long view, so
to speak. By examining the data taken over long periods of time, scientists can
investigate global properties of the planet and look for trends, connections,
cause and effect. Venus has the same mass, size, and density of Earth, but at
some point in its past it took a very different path than we did. Studying it
carefully will reveal more about the Earth and why things turned out so well
for us.
Sure, when you look into the abyss, sometimes it looks back into
you. But that can be pretty helpful when you want to learn more about the abyss
as well as yourself.
The U.S. faces an unwelcome
combination of looming recession and persistent inflation that is reviving
angst about stagflation, a condition not seen since the 1970s.
Inflation is rising. Yesterday the
Labor Department said consumer prices in the U.S. jumped 0.4% in January and
are up 4.3% over the past 12 months, near a 16-year high. Even stripping out
sharply rising food and energy costs, prices rose 0.3% in January, driven by
education, medical care, clothing and hotels. They are up by 2.5% from the
previous year, a 10-month high.
The same day brought a reminder of
possible recession. The Federal Reserve disclosed that its policy makers
lowered their forecast for economic growth this year to between 1.3% and 2%,
half a percentage point below the level of their previous forecast, in October.
They blamed a further slowdown on the slump in housing prices, tighter lending
standards and higher oil prices. They warned the economy's performance could
fall short of even that lowered outlook.
Stocks fell on the Labor Department's
morning inflation report. But shares rallied after the afternoon release of the
minutes of the Jan. 29-30 meeting of Fed policy makers and their latest
forecast for the economy. That's because investors took the Fed's darker
outlook on growth to mean that it intended to cut its short-term interest rate
next month at its next scheduled meeting.
A simultaneous rise in unemployment
and inflation poses a dilemma for Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. When the Fed wants
to fight unemployment, it lowers interest rates. When it wants to damp
inflation, it raises them. It's impossible to do both at the same time.
Stagflation, a term coined in the
United Kingdom in 1965, defined the years from 1970 to 1981 in the U.S.
Inflation rose to almost 15%. The economy went through three recessions.
Unemployment reached 9%. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker finally conquered inflation,
but only by dramatically boosting interest rates, causing a severe recession in
1981-82.
Today's circumstances are far from
that. Inflation is lower. Unemployment has risen, but only to 4.9%. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
Yet there are similarities. As in the
1970s, surging commodity prices are leading the way. Crude oil rose to $100.74
a barrel yesterday, a new nominal high and close to its 1980 inflation-adjusted
high. Wheat prices have hit a record. And, as in the 1970s, the rate at which
the U.S. economy can grow without generating inflation has fallen, because of
slower growth in both the labor force and in productivity, or output per hour
of work.
The biggest difference is that in the
1970s, the Fed was unwilling, or thought itself unable, to bring inflation down.
The Fed today sees achieving low inflation as its primary mission.
"The reason we're so unlikely to
see a repeat is we're not adding irresponsible policy," says Christina
Romer, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and a historian
of Fed policy. That means if the Fed is wrong in thinking inflation's recent
rise is temporary, it will tolerate economic weakness in order to get inflation
down again. "They'd have to let us suffer for a while."
Indeed, in minutes to officials' Jan.
29-30 meeting, released yesterday with the customary three-week lag, some
officials noted it was important not to lose sight of controlling inflation.
They argued that "when prospects for growth had improved, a reversal of
[some rate cuts], possibly even a rapid reversal, might be appropriate."
But that does not seem imminent.
Officials said keeping interest rates low "appeared appropriate for a
time," implying Fed officials felt little urgency to reverse recent cuts.
Even after the January meeting's half-point rate cut, to 3%, "downside
risks" to the economy remain, they said.
The inflation picture makes steep rate
cuts a riskier way to rescue the economy than when former Fed Chairman Alan
Greenspan delivered them in 2001. Stephen Cecchetti, an economist at Brandeis
University, said the Fed is now torn between its dual responsibilities of
keeping unemployment down and prices stable. "The primary objective has to
be to shore up the financial markets" to protect the economy, he said.
"Then, once you're finished, come back and start worrying about
inflation."
Members of the Federal Open Market
Committee, the Fed's policy committee, raised their forecasts for both the
overall inflation rate and the "core" rate, which excludes food and
energy, by 0.3 percentage points from October, their latest forecast revealed.
Yet they dialed back their rhetorical concern. The officials pronounced risks
on inflation to be "balanced" -- in other words, they felt inflation,
should it differ from their forecast, was as likely to be lower as it was
higher. In October, by contrast, they suggested that, if inflation was to
differ from their forecast, they expected it to be higher. That's principally
because they see unemployment remaining higher for longer than they did in October,
and expect that to help contain price increases.
Higher inflation is still a
possibility. Food and energy costs could keep rising, instead of flattening out
as futures markets currently anticipate. Companies could succeed in passing
those costs onto consumers.
Sara Lee Corp. this week told analysts
it expects to recoup rising raw-material costs in part by raising prices,
especially on bread. Company spokesman John Harris said Sara Lee's significant
competitors had matched the increases, with consumers showing no sign of
trading down to lower-cost brands. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/"With
commodities reaching unprecedented levels," Mr. Harris said, "it is
quite likely we will take pricing up again."
Goodyear Tire & Rubber raised the
price of replacement tires 7% on Feb. 1, on top of two increases totaling 11%
last year. Chief Financial Officer Mark Schmitz told analysts last week that
the hike was the result of rising prices of key raw materials, according to a
transcript by Thomson Financial. Mohawk Industries Inc. raised carpet prices in
December and again in January because of rising material costs, even though
sales have been hurt by the slumping housing market.
The declining dollar, while boosting
U.S. exports, is adding to inflation pressure, as goods priced in foreign
currencies become relatively more expensive. Prices for imports from China
jumped 0.8% in January, the largest monthly increase since the Labor Department
began reporting the data in 2003.
British Parliamentarian Iain Macleod
is credited with first using the word stagflation in 1965. "We now have
the worst of both worlds -- not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on
the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of 'stagflation'
situation."
In the U.S., stagflation scares are
more common than actual stagflation. Core inflation rose after the start of
recessions in both 1990-91 and 2001, but then trended down as unemployment kept
rising.
The only generally agreed period of
stagflation in the U.S. came in the 1970s. Its seeds were planted in the late
1960s, when President Johnson revved up growth with spending on the Vietnam War
and his Great Society programs. Fed Chairman William McChesney Martin,
meanwhile, failed to tighten monetary policy sufficiently to rein in that
growth.
In the early 1970s, President Nixon,
with the acquiescence of Fed Chairman Arthur Burns, tried to get inflation down
by imposing controls on wage and price increases. The job became harder after
the Arab oil embargo dramatically drove up energy prices, and overall
inflation, in 1973. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
Mr. Burns persistently underestimated
inflation pressure: In part, he did not realize the economy's potential growth
rate had fallen, and that an influx of young, inexperienced baby boomers into
the work force had made it harder to get unemployment down to early-1960s
levels.
As a result, even when he raised
rates, pushing the economy into a severe recession in 1974-75, inflation and
unemployment didn't fall back to the levels of the previous decade. Mr. Burns
and his colleagues wrongly concluded inflation no longer responded to the
condition of the economy, said Ms. Romer, the Berkeley economist. "They
didn't know how the world worked," she said.
In a speech in 1979, a year after he
stepped down, Mr. Burns blamed his failure on a political environment that
wouldn't tolerate the high interest rates necessary to rein in inflation. As
the Federal Reserve tested how far it could raise rates, he said, "it
repeatedly evoked violent criticism" from the White House and Congress.
Such political risks are smaller but
not entirely absent for Mr. Bernanke in this election year. On Sunday, the
likely Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, told ABC's
"This Week": "I would have liked to have seen faster rate cuts
and earlier than they were done by him." Asked if he would reappoint Mr.
Bernanke when his term expires in 2010, Sen. McCain said, "I would have to
consider that at the time."
Still, Mr. Bernanke has reiterated the
importance of not repeating the 1970s. He and his colleagues believe a
persistent escalation of inflation is likely only if workers and firms come to
expect the elevated inflation rate to persist, and set their wages and prices
accordingly.
"Any tendency of inflation
expectations to become unmoored -- or for the Fed's inflation-fighting
credibility to be eroded -- could greatly...reduce the central bank's policy
flexibility" to support growth with lower interest rates, he told Congress
last week.
That credibility could be endangered
by the Fed's recent track record. Yesterday's forecasts show that FOMC members
define price stability as inflation of 1.5% to 2%, measured by an index that
differs slightly from the commonly cited consumer-price index. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/
By that measure, inflation has averaged 2.8% since mid-2004, when oil began a
multiyear surge. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, has averaged
2.2%.
Thus far, Fed officials have taken
comfort that surveys and bond-market behavior suggest the public expects the
inflation rate to fall. But expected inflation, as measured by trading of
inflation-protected Treasury bonds, has jumped since the Fed declared in early
January that supporting growth would be a more important focus than holding
down inflation. (Fed officials believe technical details in the way the bonds
trade may explain some of the jump.) And professional forecasters surveyed by
the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia recently nudged up their expected
inflation rate for the next 10 years to 2.5% from 2.4%, where it had stood all
last year.
On the other hand, surveys of consumer
predictions about inflation show no corresponding jump. And most important,
wage gains have not accelerated. Since labor is the largest component of
business costs, a wage-price spiral would likely be a prerequisite for
stagflation.
"We're a very, very long way from
the 1970s," former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said in an
interview yesterday. A hit to overall spending, as has resulted from the
current tightening of lending conditions, first affects production and
employment, and only later inflation, he said. "But obviously, inflation
figures need to be monitored very closely."
Six nights a week, Guo Bairong takes
the stage at the Xanadu Lounge at the Sands Macau casino. As players place
their bets at nearby tables, he opens with a popular love song in Mandarin,
closing his eyes as he sways with the music. Slipping effortlessly into
Cantonese, he launches into another number.
Crowds gather not only to hear his
singing, which is mellifluous, but also to gape: Guo Bairong is also known as
Barry Cox, a Caucasian, former waiter and supermarket cashier from Liverpool,
England, whose only formal study of Cantonese was at a British community
center.
Mr. Cox's quirky act -- sandwiched
between cabaret dance performances like the scantily clad Glamour Girls in
glittery outfits and red elbow-length gloves and authentic Chinese crooners
such as Hua D, is among the spectacles on Macau's emerging entertainment scene.
Macau's clutch of new casinos has
quickly outpaced the Las Vegas strip in gambling revenue, raking in some $10
billion last year. But the former Portuguese colony has to up its game to
compete with its American counterpart as an all-around tourism destination. Key
to that growth is the territory's entertainment scene, which pales in
comparison to the A-list performers in Las Vegas, such as Bette Midler and
Cher, who have regular gigs.
A few years ago, Macau was a sleepy
coastal town. Visitors came for the fresh fish and Vinho Verde, the cobblestone
streets and musty antique shops -- and for the gambling. The city became a
special administrative zone when it was returned to China in 1999, making it
the only place in China where casinos are legal.
It all began to change after 2002,
when the Beijing-backed Macau government ended local tycoon Stanley Ho's
monopoly on the territory's gambling by issuing licenses to other companies,
including the Vegas casino Wynn Resorts. MGM Mirage, Crown Ltd. from Australia
and others soon piled in.
Around the same time, China began to
ease its restrictions on individual travel to Hong Kong and Macau. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
A flood of tourists poured in from the
mainland to try their luck. About 10.5 million visited Macau in 2005; that
figure is expected to jump to nearly 15 million next year, according to the
Pacific Asia Travel Association, a trade group.
But how to entertain this growing
crowd? When the new casinos began opening in 2004, the prevailing logic among
casino executives was that the Chinese visitors mostly come to gamble. Some
operators are still unsure what entertainment to offer, especially performances
that guests would have to pay for as opposed to the complimentary shows
available on the gambling floors.
"This is a very new market,"
says a Wynn Macau spokeswoman, adding that "we're not sure how the market
would respond" to big global acts that visitors would have to shell out
for.
Wynn casino's current entertainment
options are limited to a five-minute water and light show set to music, and an
attraction known as the Tree of Prosperity. The 11-meter tall golden tree,
which Wynn Macau says is an auspicious symbol, sits in the casino's atrium.
At the Crown Macau, "we're
focusing on offering a six-star experience," says Charles Ngai, a Crown
spokesman. Apparently that doesn't include entertainment; the hotel-casino has
a spa, eight restaurants and two bars, but no performances on offer.
It's a different story at Mr. Ho's
Grand Lisboa, where there are two shows: a free, daily "Crazy Paris"
performance -- a can-can-style dance act performed by Western women, and
"Tokyo Nights," performed by a troupe of Japanese dancers, which
costs $31.
"No one really knows what people
are looking for here," says Jennifer Welker, the Macau-based author of
"The New Macau." "They're still in that testing phase of trying
to suss out what people really like." Many of the guests at the Sands, for
instance, she says, seem most interested in gambling and aren't willing to pay
for a show. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/"The Venetian might need to host more Chinese acts to appeal
to the mainland tourists," she adds.
Macau's entertainment limitations
aside, the territory already is giving neighboring Hong Kong a run for its
money. Many big-name acts have chosen to play in Macau rather than Hong Kong
recently. Last October, for instance, the U.S. National Basketball
Association's Orlando Magic, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the China Men's
National Team played at the Venetian Arena, the 15,000-seat stadium at the
Venetian resort and casino. The same month, hip-hop stars the Black Eyed Peas
brought a crowd of more than 10,000 to its feet there. The Police performed in
Macau in early February, and Celine Dion arrives next month for a
one-night-only show as part of her world tour.
Hong Kong has the facilities to
compete: In addition to the cavernous convention center hall in the Wanchai
area that big-name acts traditionally use, the territory has the newer
AsiaWorld-Arena, a 13,500-seat concert venue next to the airport. But economics
may play a role in the migration of big acts to Macau. Min Yoo, a Shanghai- and
Hong Kong-based concert promoter, says it is cheaper to put on a large event in
Macau than in Hong Kong.
In any case, Macau still has a few
wrinkles to iron out. For starters, it isn't always easy to know what events
are on.
Strict rules against advertising by
casinos in mainland China make it impossible to promote events there. Even in
Hong Kong, says Mark Brown, president of the Sands Macau and Venetian Macau,
advertising for events has to be planned carefully, considering the potential
sensitivity around the idea of gambling.
What's more, Macau's transportation
infrastructure is lacking. A taxi shortage means fans arriving on the ferry
from Hong Kong often have to wait in long lines for a shuttle bus to the Venetian
Arena.
For now, the Venetian and its sister
property, the Sands, are where the serious entertainment action is. This
summer, the Venetian plans to bring Cirque du Soleil, the acrobatic show that's
a fixture in Las Vegas, to Macau as a permanent show with 10 performances a
week. Cirque will perform in a 1,800-seat theater that is still under
construction. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/That's only the beginning. "Every top U.S. name you can think
of, we have an offer out there," says Mr. Brown. "Every top Asian
artist, we have an offer out there. Every type of sport you can think of...we
have an offer out there."
Meantime, acts like Mr. Cox's are
filling the gap.
As a high-school student, Mr. Cox
watched Jackie Chan movies and fell in love with the Canto-pop soundtracks. He
took a few Cantonese lessons and discovered he had a flair for Asian languages
-- he's never studied Mandarin formally, though he considers himself fluent in
both.
So he quit his job as a salesman in a
Liverpool electrical store and started waiting tables in a Chinese restaurant
to hone his language skills. Eventually, he began performing at Chinese
gatherings in Liverpool. His renditions of popular Canto-pop classics such
"Kiss Under the Moon" and "Love Once More" won over the
immigrant crowds there, turning him into a local celebrity.
But all along, his dream was to make
it big in Asia. And so in 2002, he moved to Hong Kong, where he sang at
corporate events and Christmas parties. He even traveled in mainland China
doing a few performances in discos in places like Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Then, six months ago, Mr. Cox, whose
Chinese name was given to him by his Chinese-language headmaster, left Hong
Kong for the lights of Macau. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/"It's good for what I'm doing," he says, in his
Liverpudlian accent. I'm "partly living the dream," he adds.
On a chilly Saturday night, as the
Black Eyed Peas warmed up at the Venetian Arena, Mr. Cox, dressed entirely in
black down to his pointy-toed shoes, was warming up his audience. Gamblers at
nearby slot machines had fallen still, their jaws slack at the spectacle of a
foreigner singing Canto-pop. A woman was dancing in her chair.
"This one's for you," he
said in Mandarin to a Chinese couple in the crowd, as he launched into a number
by Deng Lijun, a Taiwanese singer popular in the 1970s and '80s. The lounge,
filled with mainland and Taiwanese tourists, exploded into applause.
Dates of the Old Kingdom of Ancient
Egypt: The Old Kingdom ran from about 2686-2160 B.C. It started with the 3rd
Dynasty and ended with the 8th (some say the 6th).
* 3rd: 2686-2613 B.C.
* 4th: 2613-2494 B.C.
* 5th 2494-2345 B.C.
* 6th: 2345-2181 B.C.
* 7th and 8th: 2181-2160 B.C.
Before the Old Kingdom was the Early
Dynastic Period, which ran from about 3000-2686 B.C.
Before the Early Dynastic Period was
the Predynastic which began in the 6th millennium B.C.
Earlier than the Predynastic Period
were the Neolithic (c.8800-4700 B.C.) and Paleolithic Periods (c.700,000-7000
B.C.).
* Predynastic Egypt http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
* Pharaohs of the
Predynastic Period, Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom
Old Kingdom Capital: During the Early
Dynastic Period and Old Kingdom Egypt, the residence of the pharaoh was at
White Wall (Ineb-hedj) on the west bank of the Nile south of Cairo. This
capital city was later named Memphis.
After the 8th Dynasty, the pharaohs
left Memphis.
Turin Canon: The Turin Canon, a
papyrus discovered by Bernardino Drovetti in the necropolis at Thebes, Egypt,
in 1822, is so-called because it resides in the northern Italian city of Turin
at the Museo Egizio. The Turin Canon provides a list of names of the kings of
Egypt from the beginning of time to the time of Ramses II and is important,
therefore, for providing the names of the Old Kingdom pharaohs.
For more on the problems of ancient
Egyptian chronology and the Turin Canon, see Problems Dating Hatshepsut.
Step Pyramid of Djoser: The Old
Kingdom is the age of pyramid building beginning with Third Dynasty Pharaoh
Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the first finished large stone building in
the world. Its ground area is 140 X 118 m., its height 60 m., its outside
enclosure 545 X 277 m. Djoser's corpse was buried there but below ground level.
There were other buildings and shrines in the area. The architect credited with
Djoser's 6-step pyramid was Imhotep (Imouthes), a high priest of Heliopolis.
* Imhotep
* Step Pyramid - Archaeology Guide
* Step Pyramid Tomb Robbers
Old Kingdom True Pyramids: Dynasty
divisions follow major changes. The Fourth Dynasty begins with the ruler who
changed the architectural style of the pyramids.
Under Pharaoh Sneferu (2613-2589) the
pyramid complex emerged, with the axis re-oriented east to west. A temple was
built against the eastern side of the pyramid. There was a road running to a
temple in the valley that served as entrance to the complex. Sneferu's name is
connected with a bent pyramid whose slope changed two-thirds of the way up. He
had a second (Red) pyramid in which he was buried. Sneferu's son Khufu (Cheops)
built the Great Pyramid at Giza.
About the Old Kingdom Period: The Old
Kingdom was a long, politically stable, prosperous period for ancient Egypt.
Government was centralized. The king was credited with supernatural powers, his
authority virtually absolute. Even after death the pharaoh was expected to
mediate between gods and humans, therefore preparation for his afterlife, the
building of elaborate burial sites, was vitally important.
Over time, the royal authority
weakened while the power of viziers and local administrators grew. The office
of overseer of Upper Egypt was created and Nubia became important because of
contact, immigration, and resources for Egypt to exploit. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
Although Egypt had been
self-sufficient with its bountiful annual Nile inundation allowing farmers to
grow emmer wheat and barley, building projects like the pyramids and temples
led the Egyptians beyond its borders for minerals and manpower.
The sun god Ra grew more important
through the Old Kingdom Period with obelisks built on pedestals as part of
their temples. A full written language of hieroglyphs was used on the sacred
monuments, while hieratic was used on papyrus documents.
Although their lifetimes span billions
of years, galaxies age, just like people. As rambunctious young’uns, they
undergo bursts of star formation that create hot blue orbs out of the simple
elements hydrogen and helium. As galaxies grow older, they settle down. Not
only do their stars cool and become redder, but they eventually burn out and
die, releasing into the galaxy heavier elements that formed in the stellar
furnaces.
So astronomers have been repeatedly
baffled by a peculiar, developmentally challenged galaxy called I Zwicky 18.
When they first sighted it about 40 years ago, they thought it was a not-quite-billion-year-old
toddler brimming with hot young stars, full of hydrogen and helium and
possessing very few heavy elements, called metals. Finding such a young galaxy
near others that are at least 7 billion years old thrilled—and perplexed—the
scientists. But new observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have
revealed ancient stars mingled with the young ones, proving the galaxy as a
whole is in fact as old as its neighbors.
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below
Astronomers don’t know why this galaxy
is so low on metals, or why it’s forming so many new stars so late in the game.
It’s possible that this relatively light galaxy has too little mass—or
gravitational pull—to retain the metals, and that a rush of gas called a
galactic wind swept them away. Or maybe the galaxy’s relatively isolated
position caused it to develop slowly: There are few other galaxies around to
help seed star formation.
They also don’t know why it’s not
happening in all dwarf galaxies. “It’s possible that there are more out there
like this,” says Francesca Annibali, http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in
Baltimore, who worked on the project. “If they are more common, then that means
that some process is inhibiting star formation in small, low-metal
environments.” Whatever the cause of I Zwicky 18’s strange history, its close
resemblance to primordial galaxies offers a unique opportunity to study how
stars acted in the early universe, something that normally cannot be observed
at such close range.
For astronauts toiling in the close
quarters of the International Space Station or on a shuttle to Mars, an
ordinary germ would be risky enough. But a recent experiment published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that a microbe can
turn even more dangerous in space than on Earth. In that study, a bacte–rium particularly nasty for
humans—salmonella—was shown to become more virulent after just 83 hours of
growing in space.
The experiment on the space shuttle
Atlantis was designed to explore how a lack of gravity affects disease-causing
microbes in space. Astronauts aboard the space shuttle grew the salmonella, and
back on Earth researchers used it to infect a group of mice. For comparison,
bacteria grown in a laboratory on Earth in normal gravity infected another
group of mice. The mice infected with the space-grown germs had a mortality
rate almost three times higher than that of mice given germs grown in normal
gravity.
Researchers noticed that while on
board the space shuttle, the salmonella encased themselves in a biofilm, a
protective coating that is notoriously resistant to anti–biotics. Several follow-up experiments
on space http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/shuttle flights over the next few years will look to see whether
other bacteria undergo similar changes in virulence in microgravity.
By now you’ve probably heard about the lunar eclipse tomorrow
night. Lunar eclipses are great; they last a long time, so there’s no hurry,
you don’t need crystal clear skies (the clearer the better, of course), and you
don’t need a telescope! Just your eyes will do, though having binoculars is
better. I actually prefer them over using a telescope.
The event will be visible pretty much everywhere in the US,
Canada, South America, and western Africa and Europe. Orbiting Frog has a ton of info, including
a nice animation of what to expect. Sky and Telescope has info as well
(including a diagram with times listed for the west coast of the US, if that
helps). But here’s the rundown:
The show starts for real around 01:43 Universal Time
(CAREFUL HERE! That’s 1:43 a.m. on Thursday morning in England, but that’s
Wednesday night for the United States. Check to see what your local offset is
from Universal Time; for example, in Boulder we are UT - 7, so the eclipse
starts here at 1:43 a.m. UT - 7 hours = 6:43 p.m. local time Wednesday night. http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
But don’t trust me– do this math for yourself!).
You may read that the eclipse starts an hour or so before that,
but if you look you probably won’t see anything. Earth casts a dark shadow
surrounded by a much lighter one, called the umbra and penumbra, respectively.
When the Moon enters the penumbra you’ll hardly notice, but when it enters the
umbra at 01:43 it’ll look like a bite is taken out of it.
1 hour 20 minutes later (03:00 UT) the Moon will be totally
engulfed in the Earth’s shadow. It may take on a brown or reddish appearance,
depending on various factors like pollution in our atmosphere. Sometimes the
Moon turns blood red, and it’s really amazing. I have found that the Moon appears
to really be a globe when this happens; I assume it’s an illusion of some kind
but the effect can be overwhelming.
The totality phase of the eclipse will last for about 51
minutes, and then it will start to leave the umbra, and you’ll see a bright crescent
begin to form. By 05:10 UT it’ll all be over, and the Moon will look normal
again.
I plan on being at The Little Astronomer’s school, since they’re
hosting a party in the parking lot to see it. There are no doubt viewings all
over the place, so call your local astronomy club, museum, or even news station
to see what’s going on in your area.
This is the last total lunar eclipse for the US until very late
in 2010, so I hope you get a chance to see it!
The Code of Hammurabi is one of the
earliest known law codes and was probably compiled at the start of the reign of
the Babylonian king Hammurabi (1792–1750 B.C.). The Code of Hammurabi is famous
for demanding punishment to fit the crime (the lex talionis, or an eye for an
eye) with different treatment for each social class. The Code is thought to be
Sumerian in spirit but with a Babylonian inspired harshness. Its laws cover
land tenure, rent, the position of women, marriage, divorce, inheritance,
contracts, control of public order, administration of justice, wages, and labor
conditions. (See LOC article on Iraq.) The prologue of the Code give a glimpse
of the relationship between the Babylonian gods and kings.
A 2.3 m high diorite or basalt stele
of the Code of Hammurabi was found at Susa, Iran, in 1901. At the top is a bas
relief image. The text of laws is written in cuneiform. This stele of the Code
of Hammurabi is at the Louvre.
Source: James A. Armstrong
"Mesopotamia" The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Brian M. Fagan,
ed., Oxford University Press 1996. Oxford Reference Online.
Go to Other Ancient / Classical
History Glossary pages beginning with the letterSilbury Hill, a 4,400-year-old,
130-foot-high mound of chalk and dirt about 80 miles west of London, has
finally yielded its ancient secrets. It is not the tomb of the long-forgotten
King Sil nor the resting place of a golden knight. And it is not, despite the
folklore, a dumping ground for the devil’s dirt, forced to drop there by the
magic of priests. The story behind the mysterious hill is much less colorful. http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/Silbury
Hill is a shrine filled with rocks that, for Stone Age Britons, probably
represented the spirits of ancient ancestors.
The physical excavation (video) of
Silbury Hill, along with studies using ground-penetrating radar and seismic
sonar equipment, has shown that there is not a single human bone in the mound.
Instead, dozens of sarsen stones, a type of sandstone that is also used for
Neolithic stone circles like Stonehenge, are buried there.
Local geologists think that during the
Stone Age, the landscape around Silbury Hill contained hundreds of thousands of
sarsen stones. Because the area is made mainly of chalk, prehistoric people
would have seen no apparent natural origin for the stones. Archaeologists think
the locals endowed these rocks with a spiritual importance that Silbury Hill
still embodies. The area itself is considered sacred by modern pagans, who
still make offerings at a nearby spring. Due to conservation laws, the
prehistoric holy hill is out-of-bounds to pagans and tourists alike.
Kosovo won the recognition of the
United States and its biggest Western European allies Monday, while earning
rebukes and rejections from Serbia, Russia and a disparate mix of states the
world over who face their own separatist movements at home.
One day after the tiny Balkan province
declared its independence, the world had its chance to choose sides. While some
countries had made their decisions months in advance, that did not diminish the
drama of whether a newly birthed nation would be welcomed into the fold or
rejected.
Major European powers, including
France, Germany and Britain, along with the United States, officially
recognized Kosovo, even as officials took pains to point out that it should not
serve as an invitation or precedent for other groups hoping to declare
independence. That is because one of the biggest unknowns remains whether
Kosovo’s declaration could rekindle conflicts elsewhere, including in
ethnically divided Bosnia.
As a result, the reverberations were
felt from Russian-backed enclaves in Georgia to the Taiwan Strait. Spain, a
member of the European Union and one of the countries with soldiers in the NATO
force in Kosovo, refused its recognition. Yet Turkey, despite its history of
conflict with Kurdish separatists, chose to support Kosovo’s independence.
In a letter to Kosovo’s president,
Fatmir Sejdiu, President Bush wrote: “On behalf of the American people, I
hereby recognize Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state. I congratulate
you and Kosovo’s citizens for having taken this important step in your
democratic and national development.”
In an apparent conciliatory gesture,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in her own statement, “The United
States takes this opportunity to reaffirm our friendship with Serbia, an ally
during two world wars.”
But Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica
of Serbia, which has regarded Kosovo as its heartland since medieval times,
vowed that Serbia would never recognize the “false state.” http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
Mr. Kostunica recalled Serbia’s
ambassador to Washington, wire services reported. The State Department had no
comment on those reports on Monday evening.
At the United Nations, Boris Tadic,
Serbia’s president, told the Security Council that the declaration of
independence “annuls international law, tramples upon justice and enthrones
injustice.” He asked that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon direct the United
Nations mission chief in Kosovo to declare the action “null and void” and to
dissolve the Kosovo Assembly, which adopted the declaration on Sunday.
Addressing the Council before Mr.
Tadic spoke, Mr. Ban said the United http://louis-j-sheehan.info/
http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.us/Nations
administration, approved by the Council in 1999, would continue to run Kosovo
until a formal transition could be arranged.
European foreign ministers meeting in
Brussels appeared to reach a minimal common position, acknowledging that Kosovo
had declared independence and allowing those nations that wanted to recognize
it formally to do so.
Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign
minister, said the declaration was “a victory for common sense,” and pointed to
what he hoped would be future reconciliation between Serbia and Kosovo. “I
don’t know at what date, in which year, but Kosovo and Serbia will be together
in the European Union,” he said.
However, the foreign minister of
Spain, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, told reporters that the declaration did not
respect international law and that Spain would not recognize Kosovo. “The
government of Spain will not recognize the unilateral act proclaimed yesterday
by the Assembly of Kosovo,” Reuters quoted him as saying.
Among European Union members, Cyprus,
Romania and Slovakia have also been reluctant to recognize Kosovo.
Diplomatic recognition is more than
just a popularity contest for Kosovo, a desperately poor, predominantly Muslim
landlocked territory of two million. It needs the help and support of
international institutions if it expects to improve its dire economic
condition. A United Nations protectorate since 1999, it is policed by 16,000
NATO troops and has an unemployment rate of around 60 percent and an average
monthly wage of $250.
“We will be working with the
government to try to help it politically as well as economically,” said R.
Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, in a
conference call with reporters on Monday, pointing out that the United States
gave $77 million in aid to Kosovo in 2007 and would raise that amount to
roughly $335 million in 2008.
Mr. Burns, who said he had consulted
by phone with European counterparts after the meeting of European Union foreign
ministers, said there would be a donor conference in Europe in the coming
months to encourage additional aid, and hoped there could be debt relief for
Kosovo as well as strong regional trade opportunities.
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