Pollyanna greets you

Pollyanna hopes that all her US readers are having a happy Thanksgiving holiday and would like to share a lovely image with all. It is a study of interactions on two very different levels: at one level, these gigantic galaxies are interacting through collisions over immense distances (in both time and space); on another level, the image represents the interaction between NASA's Great Observatories (Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer), which have joined forces to bring us this amazing view.

As usual, we link you to our Miriam Shlesinger Human Rights Action blog.  Please take a minute to act on behalf of people whose rights are being infringed.

Before getting into the fun stuff, Pollyanna would like to sound off about a few feminist issues.  One is the good news that the blasphemy charges against a young, possibly retarded, Christian girl in Pakistan have been thrown out of court.  Her accusers are facing a perjury indictment.  We cheer the judiciary and hope that the girl and her family can return to a normal life.

Rimsha was taken to a secret location after being released on bail

The other is the sexist side of the sordid soap opera being played out in real life in the US security and intelligence establishment.  All too often the system manages to blame the women involved for everything. We refer you to a transcript of a good feminist rant on this subject by Robin Morgan that was broadcast on the Women's Media Center show.

On the local scene, Pollyanna adds her own rant about religious freedom for women in Israel. Again we have arrests for the wearing of a talit (prayer shawl) in Jerusalem.

One of the Women of the Wall being arrested in Jerusalem. Photo by Emil Salman

 

International Day for the Elimination
of Violence against Women
25 November

We quote:
Violence against women and girls takes many forms and is widespread throughout the globe. […] On this International Day, I urge governments and partners around the world to harness the energy, ideas and leadership of young people to help us to end this pandemic of violence. Only then will we have a more just, peaceful and equitable world.”
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Message for the International Day for the
Elimination of Violence against Women
25 November 2011

HEDY LAMARR INVENTOR

"Any girl can be glamorous," Hedy Lamarr once said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid."

 Most of our readers are too young to remember the famous film star of the 1930's and 1940's Hedy Lamarr.   Although she was an Old Hollywood sex symbol, she most definitely  had a brain. It's a fact that may be nearly as overlooked as her wartime creation: a landmark technology that was a precursor to Bluetooth.

It's not surprising that she's known best for her sultry persona, given her film role that made everyone sit up and take notice. In 1933's "Ecstasy," a Czech film, she raised eyebrows and drew condemnation around the globe when she appeared nude in one part of the film and simulated an orgasm in another.

Lamarr is seen going skinny-dipping and, still without a stitch on, chasing a runaway horse. The orgasm scene comes later, and, yes, she does smoke a cigarette afterward. "Ecstasy" is considered the first theatrically released movie to feature an actress simulating an orgasm on screen.
Take that, Meg Ryan.

From Wikepedia  we learn that she was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the only child of assimilated Jewish parents. Her mother, Gertrud (née Lichtwitz), was a pianist and Budapest native who came from the "Jewish haute bourgeoisie", and her father, Lemberg-born Emil Kiesler, was a successful bank director.
In addition to making movies and being the sex symbol of her era, she invented a device for frequency jumping to enable guided torpedoes to avoid jamming. It was rejected by the brass hats during the war, but used later and is also a basis for Bluetooth.

We applaud the life of Hedy Lamarr and point you to a biography.

FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS 
From a smart and lovely lady we move on to the idiots in our midst.  We are sure that the Darwin awards site will pick up on the drunk Australian who tried to ride a huge crocodile.  From this genius we move on to the Republican party and the understanding of science by its leaders.  We present their twelve most egregious goofs on science and  must admit that President Obama was a bit off base himself in 2008 when discussing autism and the spurious claim that it is related to vaccines. Hilary Clinton did not do any better on that score.  In general, we have ranted often about the vast ignorance and irrationality that clouds up public discussion. Perhaps we should be encouraged by the news from Andy Borowitz that math and science people are welcome in the Republican party despite their strange beliefs.

KUDOS TO THE CITY COUNCIL OF SANTA MONICA AND THE COURT 
Pollyanna is pleased that the display of nativity scenes that has long stood around Xmas time along the beach park ridge in Santa Monica will vanish.  The rule of the court was that the interest of the city in preventing a divisive event was legitimate.  The city tried to be fair and raffled off the slots.  Last year an atheist coalition won most of them and put up an anti-religion display.  We were there last year and photographed it.

Here's to separation of Church and State.

GLAD ABOUT SCIENCE 
We have a few nice discoveries to share with you.

FOSSILS IN BOOKS 
We usually think of fossils as associated with rocks.  In fact, a fossil record has been found in medieval woodcuts in Europe.  The holes left by beetles gnawing their way out of the wood show up in the prints and provide information about the distribution of insect species in Europe during the period 1400-1800.  Cool indeed.

The 1541 woodcut "De Rijke Man" (The Rich Man) by Cornelius Anthonisz. White circles reveal where furniture beetles gnawed through the wood block before printing.
CREDIT: © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

View full size image

VAGABOND PLANET 
A planet-sized non-stellar object has been found relatively close to Earth.  These objects which do not orbit a star wander around the galaxy and have been known for some time.  This one, known to its buddies as CFBDSIR2149, is only about 115 to 160 light-years from Earth. It will be useful to study the object in detail,  since investigation of exoplanets is always complicated by the presence of the primary star, the light from which overwhelms everything around it.

SOS CORALS 
It has long been known that trees are capable of warning one another  of insect attacks and other dangers by means of chemical signals.  It is interesting to note that coral reefs in danger of being overwhelmed by algae or seaweed send out a call for help to fish which come and feast on the parasites.  Nature is indeed wonderful.

The broad-barred goby (Gobiodon histrio), that lives among coral branches will react to a chemical cue released by its sheltering coral if the coral is touched by a brilliant green, toxic seaweed (right).  The fish will nip back the encroaching foliage. Credit: Danielle Dixson

What If? generates an interesting answer to a weird question. 

BOOK REVIEW
This week Pollyanna calls your attention to The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Kevin Dutton

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in the 2000 film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho. Photograph: Moviestore Collection/Rex

 reviewed in The Guardian/Observer by Tim Adams.

Finally, we close with a warning to Web addicts

and some sympathy for nerds

 

Pollyanna congratulates the President

Pollyanna Forster - CEO, owner and wine director

Pollyanna is back and is lifting a glass of wine in honor of the victory of President Obama in his campaign for reelection. (she has many incarnations under the same name and herself is underage for drinking...)Normally she abjures politics, but this is just too good to pass over.  Congratulations, mazal tov dear Mr. President and we look forward to the next four years with the firm belief that you will do great things.



Before we get on with the blog, we first refer you to our Human Rights action blog.  Please click and act on behalf of people whose human rights are being violated.


ELLA (Cherubino,) ALLA VITTORIA, ALLA GLORIA MILITAR

Eighteenth birthday party

Our granddaughter Ella is going off to her military service this week and we wish her all the best.  We even give her a musical send off straight from Mozart:
>

Ella's enlistment into the army resolves a security lacuna that has existed since our grandson Joey got out a few weeks ago.

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
One of the exciting results of the US  election that makes Pollyanna very glad is the role played by women and the achievements of women.  The results show more women in more important elective positions than ever before. Check out this impressive list of victories for women.

There are many other exciting results of the election, but Pollyanna will leave them to her dear brother Titan who handles the political matters of the family.

RELIGIOUS APPOINTMENTS 
Pollyanna is pleased to note two major religious appointments made this week.  Bishop Tawadros has been chosen as the new pope of Egypt's Coptic Christians, becoming leader of the largest Christian minority in the Middle East.

Blindfolded boy takes a name from a bowl to chose the new pope

Justin Welby has been named as next Archbishop of Canterbury the Head of the Anglican Church.

The Rt Rev Justin Welby: ''To be nominated to this post is both astonishing and exciting.''

Pollyanna, together with Titan and YandA, wishes both of them success in their new and challenging tasks.

IDIOTS MARKED
Pollyanna would like to commend the Cleveland OH judge who ordered a woman who drove on a sidewalk to avoid a loading schoolbus to stand on a corner with a sign warning about idiots!!  Right on, Your Honor.

CREATIONISM

This is something that Pollyanna has always regarded as troubling, the unwillingness of many people, possibly a majority, to accept the findings of modern science with respect to cosmology and biological evolution.  This obscurantism is  common in the US, but can be found worldwide, a rejection of rational thought and discussion and a grasping at mystic ideas that have no basis in any objective evidence.

Bill Nye discusses this and indeed is worried that there will not be a generation of rational people in the future to run the world.  Here is a discussion that you might find to be interesting.






No one claims that science has all the answers, but it is an ongoing process of finding reasonable answers to questions in nature.  Many antiscience advocates point to the changes in paradigm as a failure of science compared to the "eternal truths" offered by religion. The truth is just the opposite.  The replacement of the Ptolemaic model of the solar system by the Copernican is an example of the success of the scientific method. Similarly, a model of matter called SuperSymmetry or SUSY to its friends is awaiting the judgement of experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  SUSY, is now a critical part of theoretical physics. It resolves many inconsistencies in other theories and holds them together in a neat and beautiful mathematical framework. Yet SUSY has no experimental evidence so far.

Large Hadron Collider

Physicists were hoping that the LHC would throw up particles that would validate supersymmetry, but it hasn't happened so far. People have also worked for decades developing string theory that is supposed to provide the link between quantum mechanics and gravity.  They include some of the greatest mathematical minds on the planet.  Nonetheless, if string theory fails experiment, then away it goes.  In all these cases, we wait and see and have no difficulty changing the paradigm if that is called for.


SOME SCIENCE TIDBITS
FOOD FOR THOUGHT 
A new theory in paleontology posits that the growth of the brain of our ancestor Homo Erectus derived from the fact that H.Erectus knew how to cook. Cooked meat provides more energy at a lower cost in digestion than raw meat and thus the growth of the brain that passed on to H. Sapiens was phenomenal. The theory is neat, but the confirmation by hearth relics at the time of H. Erectus is missing and so the discussion goes back and forth.  It is certainly an interesting idea, although some say that the time of H. Erectus 1.6 million years ago was too early for fire.  Hearths date from 250,000 years ago whereas  burnt seeds etc. indicate that about 800,000 years ago is the earliest date for first controlled use of fire. While we are with paleontology, we note that a new and quite convincing explanation  for the existence of the rear wings in four-wing flying dinosaurs attributes their use to fine tuned navigation around tree branches and other obstacles.

THE BIRTH OF SANDY 
The huge storm that both devastated the east coast of North America and claimed 69 lives  along with causing untold damage in the Caribbean was not an immigrant from the West Coast of Africa.  It appears that Sandy herself was born in the Caribbean .  On the evening of October 19, a trough of low air pressure drifted slowly in the Caribbean Sea, east of Costa Rica and south of Haiti. The U.S. National Hurricane Center gave this tropical wave only a 20 percent chance of strengthening into a named storm. As it happened, however, a combination of meteorological circumstances that rarely come together gave birth to Sandy and drove her to major hurricane status.

Enlarge Image

What's left of Hurricane Sandy exits over the Great Lakes in this image taken in the wee hours of October 31. To better predict any future superstorms, scientists are working to understand exactly how Sandy was born, grew and died. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

For those of us who are interested in these things, the sequence of events creates a fascinating story. It should be noted that the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts predicted Sandy’s sharp westward turn days before the U.S. equivalent did. The European model uses higher-resolution data, farther in advance, than the leading American model does, which indicates greater computing power. Our Yankee friends sometimes tend to be penny wise and pound foolish.

NEW PLANET 
A blogging period never seems to go by without a new planet popping up in someone's telescope.  We are now informed of a super-Earth orbiting the star HD 40307 that was known to host three planets, all of them too near to support liquid water. Now a Super-Earth that may support liquid water has been found.  Read all about it.!

 SMOKING IS BAD FOR YOU
We have long been considered pests for our unwillingness to tolerate smoke injected to our lungs without our consent. We have one relative who claims he is preventing lung cancer by drinking copious amounts of orange juice.  Yes, he has a responsible job and manages to cross the street without being run over.  In any case, it is nice to get further confirmation that preventing smoking in the public arena has positive effects. 

BOOK REVIEW.
We call your attention to
On Politics
A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present
Alan Ryan (Author, New College, Oxford University)Book One:
A History of Political Thought:
Herodotus to Machiavelli

Book Two:
A History of Political Thought:
Hobbes to the Present
.
First the publisher's blurb:
Three decades in the making, one of the most ambitious and comprehensive histories of political philosophy in nearly a century.  Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton’s dictum that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” or explicating John Stuart Mill’s contention that it is “better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied,” Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes reading about them a transcendent experience. Whether writing about Plato or Augustine, de Toqueville or Thomas Jefferson, Ryan brings a wisdom to his text that illuminates John Dewey’s belief that the role of philosophy is less to see truth than to enhance experience. With this unparalleled tour de force, Ryan emerges in his own right as one of the most influential political philosophers of our time

OK, what do the reviewers say? The New Yorker review is for subscribers, but we can quote: "Ryan shows how the assumptions behind many theories of politics are as much metaphysical as they are political: in most cases, a thinker’s views of politics are indecipherable without his views of man, nature, and God. Among the dangers facing democracies today, he focuses on the likelihood that individuality will shrink before the onslaught of mediocrity and conformity, and on the possibility that we will settle for a “Persian” prosperity instead of demanding a “Greek” politics of active participation. One of the valuable functions of a history like “On Politics” is to show how narrow a slice of the intellectual spectrum American politics currently fights over."

Read more if you can open it.

We also link you  to an excellent review in the Los Angeles Times.  Ryan deals with problems of the evolution of democracy. He draws the dichotomy of Greece and Persia very well. The Persian subject lived under a competent government, as noted by Herodotus, but had few if any individual rights. The Greek had both rights and the responsibilities that came with them, but lived under the rule of Law rather than the whim of a King. This reminds us of a conversation with the Chinese ambassador in Tel Aviv who assured us that the Chinese people were happy and that people do not really want democracy. They would rather be looked after by a strong and competent leadership. The speech delivered this week by the outgoing leader Mr. Hu Jintao at the Communist Party congress in Beijing tells us what the problem of that is.

RIDICULOUS COMMERCIAL SEXISM 
Pollyanna thanks Yosefa for calling to her attention to this gross but funny commercial exploitation of women. Imagine a pink laptop, presumably all dumbed down for the weak female brain.  Take a look and join the laughter.  Seriously it is sad that women are still regarded as weak-minded silly creatures.

WHAT IF? This question was asked two days before the US election.  We like the answer.


OLD CURMUDGEON DEPARTMENT

Pollyanna is glad to chat with you

Pollyanna is glad to be back and to chat with you. As usual, for starters we call your attention to our Human Rights Action blog and ask you to click and extend a hand to those who are in such great need of help.

All of us, Pollyanna, Titan and YandA, join in wishing our Muslim friends, Eid Mubarak, for the Eid el Adha holiday coming up at the end of this week.

IN MEMORIAM 
George McGovern, 1922-2012

George McGovern was an American liberal-Democrat politician who ran unsuccessfully for the Presidency against Richard Nixon in 1972. He ran on a liberal, peace proponent platform at the height of the Vietnam War and was roundly defeated. He served in the Senate and was instrumental in carrying through important legislation of the liberal agenda. In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Mr. McGovern ambassador to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. He moved to Rome, and he worked on plans for delivering food to malnourished people around the world. In 2000, Mr. Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
He was of the breed of Midwestern Progressives who stood for human values, social justice and peace. He opposed the war in Iraq and called for a phased withdrawal to end in 1977. In his final book, “What It Means to Be a Democrat,” released last November, he despairs of an “insidious” political atmosphere in Washington while trying to rally Democrats against “extremism” in the Republican ranks.

“We are the party that believes we can’t let the strong kick aside the weak,” Mr. McGovern wrote. “Our party believes that poor children should be as well educated as those from wealthy families. We believe that everyone should pay their fair share of taxes and that everyone should have access to health care.”
Rest in Peace Senator McGovern. Let us hope to be worthy of your legacy. We append an obituary from the  New York Times.

Arlen Specter 1930-2012.
Former Senator Arlen Specter, a  Jewish Republican, the last of the moderates in that party, died this week of cancer. Though he began and ended his Senate years as a Democrat, Specter represented the state of
Pennsylvania in Congress as a Republican for most of his 5 terms in the highest legislative chamber.

Speaking at the AFL-CIO convention

His political platform was always moderate centrist, but his party affiliation was born of expediency and rooted in ideological pragmatism. A Jewish pro-choice Republican, Specter was first and foremost a political survivor whose wit and sharp tongue cut whichever way was most electorally prudent. Near the end he switched to the Democrats, but lost in their primary. Liberals never forgave his treatment of Anita Hill that paved the way for the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, although he did block Bork. He tried to broker piece between Israel and Syria, but despite many friendly meetings with Hafez Assad, his efforts came to naught. We append an obituary from both the Washington Post and JTA.

POLLYANNA RANTS AND RAVES 
While Pollyanna usually leaves the rants and the raves to her brother Titan who is a highly skilled ranter, she is totally outraged over the arrest of Anat Hoffman for wearing a talit (prayer shawl) and singing the Shema out loud at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, while marking the centenary of Hadassah with visitors from abroad on Rosh Hodesh Heshvan. We have placed the protest petition on the Human Rights Blog. We also append the a Web site with updates on the Anat Hoffman issue. This is not going to go away.

The offense of Anat Hoffman consisted of singing in public, in fact she sang a prayer. Orthodox Jews believe, as stated in the Talmud, that the voice of a woman is part of her genital equipment, or in Hebrew, "Kol b'isha erva." In the Army, orthodox soldiers have walked out of ceremonies when female voices were raised in song. The youth movements in the country at their annual convention cut out solo singing by girls. Everyone surrenders to orthodox terror. This is of course a curtailment of free speech levied specifically at women, which is why Pollyanna is ranting about it. We refer you to a recent blogpost by the Heresiarch (on the side here) in which he deals with jail for wearing what was admittedly a very offensive tee shirt.

Freedom of speech allows one to be offensive and if someone's feelings are hurt, too bad. Consensus in society about what is acceptable should work and the law should not be invoked. The slope towards repression is too steep and too slippery. The ruling in 2003 that women cannot pray in public out loud or hold a Torah scroll or wear a talit, all by the High Court in Israel, is a prime example of the lack of courage, integrity and commitment to democracy of this body. As Adam Wagner writes 
"The problem is that once the state starts policing speech and thought, this tends to be the thin end of the wedge. People become frightened to say what they feel and instead say what they think they ought to say. Such a climate would undoubtedly place a chill on the wonderful, bizarre, entertaining, sometimes concerning but always interesting world of social media. And that would be bad for everyone." 
Here in Israel we have a combination of  repression of both freedom of religion and of freedom of
expression. .

 HOW STUPID CAN ONE BE? MADONNA BELONGS IN THE GUINNESS BOOK FOR INSENSITIVIY
As we all know 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai a Pakistani schoolgirl attended school until Oct. 9, when a Taliban gunman shot her in the head for her outspoken public advocacy of women’s education. Madonna who is supposed to be astute as a business person and smart as an artist performed a striptease in Los Angeles that culminated with Malala's name on her back, between the bra and the thong.

Idiocy of the highest order

One can well imagine the reaction in Pakistan or in any Muslim country. This is hardly support or help for Malala.

NO ONE CAN PREDICT AN EARTHQUAKE 
This fact is apparently not understood by the judiciary of Italy. Six Italian scientists and an ex-government official have been sentenced to six years in prison over the 2009 deadly earthquake in L'Aquila. The court ruled that the seismologists had been "too reassuring" by telling the press that they did not expect the small tremors observed to be precursors of a major earthquake. The seismologists were wrong and the Richter 6.3 quake killed over 300 people. Nonetheless, there is no way that anyone other than God can predict an earthquake. The precedent is chilling and we can be sure that people will be wary of predicting. In fact, there will be many false warnings and unnecessary evacuations because no one wants to go to jail for being wrong. We quote David Rothery, of the UK's Open University, who said earthquakes were "inherently unpredictable". The best estimate at the time was that the low-level seismicity was not likely to herald a bigger quake, but there are no certainties in this game."
Italy has apparently reverted to the Middle Ages and its judges hand down voodoo verdicts. Nature magazine has delivered a scathing judgement on the trial and sentence. Let us hope this ridiculous verdict is reversed on appeal. The head of Italy's disaster body, Luciano Maiani, has resigned in protest at the prison sentences passed on seven colleagues.

RAIN FORECASTS 
Unlike earthquakes, weather can be predicted fairly accurately these days since the advent of the supercomputer. We did weather forecasting eons ago in the army and it was clear that the forecaster could never be brought to trial for failure to predict, as long as negligence was not involved. We would like to call your attention to five day rain intensity and distribution forecasts for Israel now available on line. The color coding is self-explanatory. Pollyanna is bookmarking this link and recommends it to you.
NEWLY DISCOVERED PLANET NEIGHBOR
We are pleased to welcome to our neighborhood (actually it has been there for billions of years) a newly discovered planet at Alpha Centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor. It is only a paltry 4.4 light-years (about 42 trillion(British billion) kilometers) away. Hold it with the packing, the planet is not habitable, but still the discovery by the European Southern Telescope is a notable achievement. We cannot but mention that the congratulatory press release from NASA had a few lines about the discovery and then a bloated description of what NASA will do in the future in this area.  Poor taste to say the least.

STONEHENGE IN SWEDEN

Archaeologist Björn Wallebom clears the northern brim of the dolmen, or several upright stones with a horizontal boulder on top in which a body would be placed.
CREDIT: Annika Knarrström, Swedish National Heritage Board.

View full size image

A 5,500-year-old tomb possibly belonging to a Stone Age chieftain has been unearthed at a megalithic monument in the shape of a ship called the Ale's Stenar (Ale's Stones). The tomb, in Sweden, was likely robbed of stones to build the Viking-era ship monument. The tomb was investigated by ground penetrating radar followed by the digging of a trench and found to be round and to have a rectangular structure inside the circle. It may well be older than Stonehenge. Read more.

FARE FORWARD VOYAGER 
Our beloved Voyager 1 spacecraft may or may not be about to leave the solar system and cross the heliopause into interstellar space.

It is not, of course, a farewell to Voyager. Indeed as our project scientist Ed Stone said at the party at the end of the planetary phase of the mission:
"So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna 
On the field of battle. Not fare well, 
But fare forward, voyagers".-T.S. Eliot.
Now 18 billion kilometers away, Voyager 1 is the most distant spacecraft flung from Earth. Voyager 2, launched two weeks earlier but on a longer path, is trailing its twin by about 3.4 billion kilometers.

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. Four of its original instruments (labelled in yellow) are still returning data on conditions at the edge of the Solar System.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

 The instruments on board that are still operating (launch was in 1977 and we joined the Plasma Science Team in 1979) show two of the three required criteria for passage through the heliopause, as stated by our friend Ed Roelof, a space scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, (where we spent a sabbatical in 1996-97).  Ed, who works with Voyager 1 data, said that, in any model of the heliopause, an object exiting through it should experience three changes: a sharp rise in the number of collisions with cosmic rays (high-energy particles from space), a dramatic drop in the number of collisions with charged particles from the sun, and a change in the direction of the surrounding magnetic field. We seem to have experienced the first two, but the magnetic field change is lacking. In fact, as stated  in a Nature paper, by Bob Decker, also a space scientist at APL and his colleagues, at the current location of Voyager 1, the average velocity of solar particles has dropped to nearly zero. Nobody seems to understand this and as Tom Krimigis (we are quoting many friends his week) says “There no longer exists any guidance on what constitutes getting out of the Solar System and into the Galaxy." There are of course dissenting voices and we advice you to read the link to Ron Cowan's excellent popular review and think about it yourself.

EDWARD HUBBLE, 1889-1953, as we all know or should know, was the discoverer of the red shift that proved that the universe was and is expanding.

He laid the foundations of modern observational cosmology. Obviously his car had the mirror shown here (cartoon xkcd).

What If deals with a question of nutrition of cows. We could not help but be reminded of a few Ogden
Nash gems on the subject of cows:
The cow is of the bovine ilk, 
one end is moo, the other milk,
to say nothing of the deep thought in
Brown cow softly mooing, 
No bull, nothing doing.

DIVINE RAPE
Normally we stay out of politics, but the statement of an American politician that pregnancy resulting from rape is the will of God led us to decide to share with you the take of The Onion on this issue.

Did God rape Mary?

Pollyanna congratulates the Nobel Laureates and salutes girls everywhere

Maya as little Pollyanna

Pollyanna is glad to be back with you. The holiday season is behind us and we can now get back to the real world, such as it is. As usual, for starters we call your attention to our Human Rights Action blog and ask you to click and help those who are in such great need of support.

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE GIRL 
Pollyanna calls your attention to the International Day of the Girl, October 11, 2012. For this occasion, the blog is coming out on Thursday instead of the usual Friday. She together with Titan and YandA invite you to the Because I Am a Girl site and ask you to join up and support the initiative to empower girls everywhere.  Abuse is rampant in far too many countries.
Please meet Urmila:

Urmila is a 22 year old former Kamlahari (a child servant) and a women’s activist from Nepal. Urmila comes from a family of bonded, landless farmers. Her family was so poor that they sold her to work as a Kamlahari for 40 dollars a year when she was 6 years old.

Like so many other girls of Urmila’s Tharu ethnic group, she was forced to leave her community and work in conditions of often extreme exploitation without any personal compensation in the house of a rich and prosperous family in the capital of Kathmandu. Urmila remained in the Kamlahari system of forced child servitude for 11 years.

In 2007, and at the age of 17, Urmila was finally freed. Then, with the help of international and local NGOs, Urmila’s dream finally came true: she was able to start school. Urmila is now attending ninth grade of a private English high school.

From the moment she gained freedom, Urmila decided she had to fight for the many Kamlahari girls, who still live in slavery. In December 2007, she was elected the first president of the Common Forum for Kamlahari Freedom (CFKF), an organization founded by girls and women to fight for their own rights. Urmila and a delegation of girls travelled several times to see the President, the Prime Minister and other important people in Kathmandu to claim financial support for the education of the ex-Kamlahari girls.

POLLYANNA RANTS AND RAVES 
While Pollyanna usually leaves the rants and the raves to her brother Titan who is a highly skilled ranter, she is totally outraged over the attack on Malala Yousafzai, a 14 year old campaigner for girls' rights, who was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen. Surgeons have removed a bullet from her head and she is reported to be in stable condition.

Pakistani hospital workers carry injured Malala Yousafzai, 14, on a stretcher at a hospital following an attack by gunmen in Mingora on Oct. 9, 2012. (Mohammed Rehman - AFP/Getty Images)

  Malala Yousufzai rose to fame because of her innocent but courageous desire to attend school, which translated into a one-girl campaign of resistance when Taliban captured Swat valley in 2009 and ordered girls' schools closed. Several hundred in Swat and neighbouring Bajaur and Mohmand were destroyed. Only a few in urban areas have been rebuilt. Her blog came to the attention of BBC Urdu and she became known worldwide. She was just 11 when she started her diary, two years after the Taliban took over the Swat Valley and ordered girls' schools to close. Writing under the pen-name Gul Makai for BBC Urdu, she exposed the suffering caused by the militants. Her identity emerged after the Taliban were driven out of Swat. She later won a national award for bravery and was nominated for an international children's peace award.

There are protests in Pakistan, but this brave girl's life will remain in danger. The police arrested 40 suspects, but released them all on bail. Pollyanna weeps for such girls and calls for action by all enlightened people. If there is a Pakistani embassy in your country, you can start by calling them and making your opinion known to them.

VANDALISM IN THE MUSEUM 
Pollyanna is anything but glad that some idiot decided that he could improve a painting by Mark Rothko in the Tate Modern in London. We know that set of paintings, the Seagram Murals and sincerely hope that the restoration experts will succeed in undoing the damage.

CONGRATULATIONS NOBEL LAUREATES 
Pollyanna is delighted to congratulate this year's Nobel Laureates in science:

PHYSICS: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2012 was awarded jointly to Serge Haroche

Photo: © CNRS Photothèque/Christophe Lebedinsky

  and David J. Wineland

Photo: © NIST

 "for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems".

CHEMISTRY: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2012 was awarded jointly to Robert J. Lefkowitz

Photo: Stewart Waller/PR Newswire. © HHMI

 and Brian K. Kobilka        

Photo: © Stanford University

"for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors".

PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE:
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to Sir John B. Gurdon

Photo: Creative Commons Attr. 2.0 Generic license

and Shinya Yamanaka

Photo: Creative Commons Attr. 2.0 Generic license

 "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent".

Now let us go into these awards more deeply.

PHYSICS:
Serge Haroche of France and American David Wineland opened the door to new experiments in quantum physics in the 1990s by showing how to observe individual atoms and particles of light called photons while preserving their quantum properties. These results are seminal and will eventually lead to great technological advances, such as much faster computers. It is amazing to us that, as a physicist once said to Yakir Aharonov of Tel Aviv University, people can do quantum physics in vivo. . We like the quote on Yakir's Web page, "How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress", Niels Bohr
CHEMISTRY
Brian K. Kobilka and Robert J. Lefkowitz won the Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday, receiving the honor for their work unveiling how an important group of signaling molecules works in the body.  The molecules, called G-protein-coupled-receptors, or GPCRs, are embedded in the membrane of cells and cause important chemical cascades when a target molecule attaches to them. That target could be anything from a hormone such as adrenaline to neurotransmitters such as dopamine.
Read more in the Washington Post.
It is worthy of note that this is the first time that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to  two medical doctors, which indicates that basic science and medicine are drawing closer to one another.
We add a quote courtesy of the Science Media Center from Mark Sansom, professor of molecular biophysics at Oxford University:
"G-protein coupled receptors have for a long time been the holy grail of membrane protein research. They are fundamental to regulation of many physiological processes, from the nervous system to taste and smell. They are also a major class of drug target and are incredibly important to the pharmaceutical industry. In particular Kobilka's work in determining the structure of G-protein coupled receptors has revolutionized our understanding of how they work as small 'molecular machines' and will lead to enormous advances in drug design."
PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE: 
In a testament to the revolutionary potential of the field of regenerative medicine, in which scientists are able to create and replace any cells that are at fault in disease, the Nobel Prize committee on Monday awarded the 2012 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine to two researchers whose discoveries have made such cellular alchemy possible.
The prize went to John B. Gurdon of the University of Cambridge in England, who was among the first to
clone an animal, a frog, in 1962, and to Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan who in 2006 discovered the four genes necessary to reprogram an adult cell back to an embryonic state.
Read more:
The implications of this work are mind-boggling. There has been controversy over the use of embryonic stem cells in this research. It is encouraging that the courts in the USA have ruled that the use of stem cells is legal. The source of these cells is embryos that are left over in fertility clinics and would normally be trashed. These cells which have not yet made a job choice can be used to replace diseased or faulty tissues in the body. Pollyanna at 99 and Titan at 4.6 billion are both aware of the frailties of aging, in particular the loss of cartilage that causes osteoarthritis. It is thrilling to see that stem cell research is making major progress in replacing cartilage.

Glassy, resilient bone-capping cartilage has long eluded tissue engineers trying to grow it in the lab.

Biophoto Assoc./Getty Images

The blue sky version of the stem cell approach goes like this: Stem cells are extracted from a patient, geared up to become chondrocytes, wrapped in a favorable mix of compounds and then inserted into damaged joints. The cells take it from there. Voilà: neo-cartilage. This is not yet routine clinical practice, but it is on the way.




NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Chinese writer Mo Yan,  the first Chinese author ever to win the Nobel prize in literature.

China Daily, via Reuters

Mo Yan in Beijing in 2009.

“Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition,” the citation for the award declared, striking what seemed a careful balance after campaigns of vilification against other Chinese Nobel laureates.
 Pollyanna, Titan and YandA all applaud the new Nobel Laureates in science and literature.

Pollyanna, along with the rest of us,  wishes to to fire a blast at the Jerusalem Post.   This rag of a tabloid masquerading as a real newspaper hit a new low in provinciality and stupidity with its headline "NY Jewish doctor wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry."  The item appeared not as an item of science news, but as part of the Jewish World section, as if the fact that Lefkowitz happens to be Jewish has any relevance to the research and that his contribution to the research was more important than that of  Kobilka who is just a trivial goy from a small town in Minnesota. This sort of behavior shows up often in our country. In 2006 the Chemistry Laureate was Roger Kornberg of the USA, who is married to an Israeli woman. This led the local press to anoint him as an honorary Israeli and to claim the prize for all of us. We have ten perfectly legitimate Nobel Laureates in Israel, four of them in Chemistry and one in literature, and there is no need to hitchhike on the laurels and achievements of others.
RELIGIOUS NEWS
Pollyanna strongly approves of the fact that at dozens of Conservative (Masorti) synagogues around Israel, congregants celebrating Simhat Torah carried the flag of egalitarianism and pluralism. Literally, that is to say.

One of Rabbi Graetz's daughters posing with new Masorti flag Photo by Courtesy of Tzvi Graetz

A brand new Simhat Torah flag conceived by the Israeli branch of the world Conservative movement offers a fresh take on the traditional scenes depicted on this popular holiday accessory (particularly when topped with an apple): Rather than bearded men dancing with Torah scrolls - the women standing in the background, if present at all - this flag has men and women dancing together with the Torah scrolls, joined by members of other marginalized groups of society. Reform movement, pick it up.

HOLY HOAXES
Last week Titan delivered the opinion of all of us on the stupid and harmful film made by an idiot of an
Islamophobe. We find it of interest, however, to note that Live Science has compiled a list of seven major religious hoaxes in history. Some, such as the nefarious Protocols of the Elders of Zion are purveyors of hate. We saw the Protocols for sale at book stalls on the streets of Cairo and we are told that when the new Alexandria Library was opened, the contributions of various faiths were marked by the Quran, the New Testament and the Protocols rather than the Old Testament. The latter were removed after an Israeli government protest and a worldwide Jewish outcry. Other hoaxes are funny or simply tricks to relieve the faithful of some of the burden of their worldly wealth for the benefit of holy men. There are modern hoaxes such as Scientology that are doing very well.
CASEY AT THE GREEN 
Many of us know the great American poem about Casey at the Bat.

We were reminded of it when we read that a well known English golfer named Paul Casey, on the green in two on a par five, had his ball stolen by a dog. After due restitution and some delay, he made his birdie.

What If is not really up to par this week. Apparently there were not any really good questions. Randall had to revive Schroedinger's cat or invoke his own cat to make it interesting. C'est la vie. On the other hand, Letitia shares a problem with many of us.

We recall a struggle to cancel an American Express card many years ago. Dilbert's company also has a successful business model: