Pollyanna says HI!

Pollyanna is happy to greet you again.

She is pleased to bring you all kinds of goodies and a rant as usual.

For starters, let us refer you to the Miriam Shlesinger Human Rights action blog. Now that a year has gone by without Miriam, we continue to realize what we have lost. She got us into the human rights struggle. Please act on behalf of people who are so much in need of support in their trials and tribulations at the hands of oppressive regimes and corporations.

CHARITY CORNER 

This week it is Pollyanna's turn to promote a charity. Her choice is the Womens' Media Center. This is a non-profit organization, founded by Gloria Steinem, that (we quote from the mission statement) “works to ensure women are powerfully and visibly represented in the media” and “to diversify the media in its content and sources, so that the stories and perspectives of women and girls are more accurately portrayed.” WMC convenes panels, issues reports, organizes grassroots campaigns, and meets with media outlets to address issues of women’s representation and general diversity. Women are indeed underrepresented in the media and often are given distorted images, so this is a good idea. Pollyanna recommends donating to WMC on their Web site, linked above.

Pollyanna would like to call your attention to Spike Lee.

Film Director Spike Lee looks on during the game between the New York Knicks and the Boston Celtics during Game five of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals of the 2013 NBA Playoffs at Madison Square Garden on May 1, 2013 in New York City. (Al Bello/Getty)

First she wishes to congratulate him on winning the 2013 Lillian Gish award and to call your attention to a new movie that he is coming out with. It is a remake or if you will a reinterpretation of Oldboy a Korean cult film. He discusses it in the interview linked above.. It will be released soon and we look forward to seeing it.

THE RANT 

As you all know Pollyanna rants about matters concerning women and girls. This time she is ranting in a Stentorian voice and foaming at the mouth about an issue that should make all decent people stand up and scream. She refers to female genital mutilation, a procedure common in Islamic societies, although not mandated by the Koran. As defined by the World Heath Organization,(WHO) Female genital mutilation (FGM) comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. A few descriptive details from WHO:
Key facts

    Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
    The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.
    Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth increased risk of newborn deaths.
    About 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM.
    FGM is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15.
    In Africa an estimated 101 million girls 10 years old and above have undergone FGM.
    FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

Samira Hashi, her mother Lul Musse and grandmother Faduma Ali. The older women underwent FGM in Somalia but decreed that Samira should not. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

GOOD LUCK DR. BEINART 

Peter Beinart Photo by Center for American Progress (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Peter Beinart, who has long been one of our favorite spokesmen for the liberal view of Israel and Zionism,  is moving from the Daily Beast to the Atlantic Media Co. As a result the Open Zion section of the Daily Beast will close down, but we can expect to hear from Peter Beinart in the pages of the Atlantic. He is also becoming a senior columnist for Haaretz. Pollyanna wishes him all success in his new endeavor.

THINK ABOUT YOUR STYLE 

In the last decade before retirement we had the task (actually we volunteered) of teaching scientific writing in English to Tel Aviv University graduate students. Every year we  discovered that their high schools had failed to teach them writing techniques that are language-independent. Our trusty ally was the little book on style  by Strunk and White and we worked hard to get them to write in plain language without quibbling and fancy decorations that mean nothing. Anyone who has written a paper with colleagues from MIT is familiar with "the data are not inconsistent with..." and other timid statements. We found it interesting, therefore, to learn from Judy (thank you) that nearly 70 years ago George Orwell was ranting about the same failings. As an example, he takes a well-known verse from the King James Version:

Ecclesiastes IX, 11:(Koheleth for us)

 I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

    Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Of course this is a parody, but it makes the point. Pollyanna challenges her Israeli readers to try to render the same verse from the original into modern Hebrew.
 שַׁבְתִּי וְרָאֹה תַחַת-הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ, כִּי לֹא לַקַּלִּים הַמֵּרוֹץ וְלֹא לַגִּבּוֹרִים הַמִּלְחָמָה וְגַם לֹא לַחֲכָמִים לֶחֶם וְגַם לֹא לַנְּבֹנִים עֹשֶׁר, וְגַם לֹא לַיֹּדְעִים, חֵן:  כִּי-עֵת וָפֶגַע, יִקְרֶה אֶת-כֻּלָּם.

CALAMITY IN THE PHILIPPINES 

The super typhoon Haiyan made landfall in Leyte. 

Image from Japan Meteorological Agency's MTSAT of Haiyan over the Leyte Gulf. Photograph: Zuma/rex

Path of typhoon Haiyan

 It has  winds of over 240 kph, which makes it the strongest typhoon in all history to hit land At least 100 people are reported dead at the time of this writing. As global warming continues, more and more energy will be available for super storms and we can expect the intensity of such events to continue to increase. Indeed, as a species we have fouled our nest.

ART TREASURE TROVE 

Pollyanna is amazed at the discovery of a stash of over 1,400 paintings in an apartment in Munich. These were paintings that the Nazis considered degenerate, but they were not above trying to sell them The collection includes works by Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Nolde, Renoir, Courbet, Matisse, and Chagall, including one of his paintings whose existence previously was unknown. The story of how this amassing of art came to be is also fascinating. It is told in detail by Christopher Dickey and Nadette De Visser in the Daily Beast.

SCIENCE ANYONE? 

DARK  MATTER SEARCH FAILS, ALAS. 

Experiments that purported to find the evasive material known as dark matter that pervades the universe have been show to have failed. 

WIMP DETECTOR  Photomultiplier tubes such as these should detect subtle flashes of light caused by dark matter particles striking xenon nuclei

 The search will go on, but even well-designed experiments can come up with false positives. The results of a very sensitive detector showed that previously reported detections of WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) are apparently spurious. No one doubts the existence of dark matter, but it is proving more difficult to detect than anyone had anticipated

EARTHY PLANET AHOY

A recent press conference by NASA informs us that we may safely believe that there are countless, in fact billions, of Earth size planets in the habitable zones of their primaries. An analysis of data from the Kepler spacecraft by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley shows that about 20% of the stars in our galaxy have such planets in orbits that could support liquid water. There are several caveats. Although these planets are Earth-size, nobody knows what their masses are and thus whether they are rocky like the Earth, or balls of ice or gas, let alone whether anything can, or does — or ever has or will — live on them.

There is reason to believe, from recent observations of other worlds, however, that at least some Earth-size planets, if not all of them, are indeed rocky. Last week, two groups of astronomers announced that an Earth-size planet named Kepler 78b that orbits its sun in 8.5 hours has the same density as the Earth, though it is too hot to support life. “Nature,” as Mr. Petigura put it, “knows how to make rocky Earth-size planets.” Pollyanna salutes Erik Petigura on his remarkable achievement of data analysis and physics.

THE LONE STAR

WR 102ka, shown in this WISE spacecraft image, may have been born and developed in complete isolation, which is rare but possible for massive stars.

We are not referring here to Texas but to an observation of a very massive star that is not associated with any cluster of stars. This contradicts the conventional wisdom that says that stars are born in clusters. This star is 100 times the mass of the Sun and is located in the vicinity of a black hole. It is interesting to ask whether some environments have different modes of star formation than others. Stay tuned.

NEWS FROM THE SEA

It is not common for new species of animals to be discovered nor do we often get an opportunity for study of a rare or elusive species. Pollyanna reports on both this week. A new species of Pacific humpback dolphin has been identified through both DNA and morphological studies. 

INTO THEIR OWN  Two members of a new, and so far unnamed, species of humpback dolphin leap from the blue waters off Australia’s northern coast.

Welcome to taxonomy dear friend. Soon someone will come up with a name for you. Another noteworthy ichthyological event is the finding of the bodies of two oarfish on the coast of California, a male and a female.

Marine scientists are excited about the opportunity to dissect and learn about this creature.

The body of an 18-foot male oarfish was found in the waters off Santa Catalina Island in California last month. Five days later, a 14-foot female washed up 50 miles away.

 It is the largest bony fish in the sea and very rarely found since it manages to avoid nets.

BOOK REVIEWS OLD AND NEW 

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio has just had a new translation into English by a Texas professor, Wayne A. Rebhorn.  This book, written by Boccaccio in the mid-14th century tells of a group of ten young people, seven women and three men who flee the plague-ridden city of Florence in 1348 to a pleasant retreat in the country. Over a period of ten days each of them must tell a story a day. Eventually 100 stories are accumulated, some sad, some happy, some bawdy and some moralizing. Joan Acocella reviews it in detail in the New Yorker  with much background about Boccaccio and his times. If the link does not open, there is a review in a Dallas newspaper. The stories mostly reflect the world of people of the merchant class, and the skill they most feature is the one most prized by that class, ingegno: cleverness, wit, thinking on your feet.

Here is an example summarized:

 A famous tribute to ingenuity is the story of Peronella, told by Filostrato. Peronella spins wool for a living, and her husband is a stonemason. She is pretty, and soon she has a lover, Giannello. One morning after the husband has gone to work, Peronella and Giannello are enjoying each other’s company when suddenly the husband returns. There is a barrel in the house, and Peronella tells Giannello to hide in it. When the husband enters, she begins loudly berating him:

 "What’s the story here? Why have you come back home so early like this? It seems to me, seeing you there with your tools in your hands, that you want to take the day off. If you carry on like this, how are we going to live? Where are we supposed to get our bread from?"

Calm down, the husband says. We’ve had a windfall. See that barrel over there? Well, he just sold it for five silver ducats. Call off the deal, Peronella says. She has sold the barrel for seven ducats, and the man who bought it is right now inside the barrel, checking its condition. Out pops Giannello, claiming that the inside of the barrel needs to be scraped if he is to buy it. The husband climbs in and goes to work. Peronella leans over the top of the barrel and gives him orders: “Scrape here, and here, and over there.” As she bends over, Giannello, whose business with Peronella that morning had been interrupted, lifts her skirt from behind. After the three have finished, simultaneously, Giannello pays the husband the seven ducats and, in a lovely, tart last sentence, gets him to take the barrel to his house.

Great fun was had by almost all.

SILLY TIME

What If? really gets silly this week. The question: How big of a lawn would you have to have so that when you finished mowing you'd need to start over because the grass has grown?  Thanks to Nick Nelson for this challenge to Randall's patience...

TWITTER CORRECTLY DEFINED 

This is for us oldies who remember party line telephones, although we never had one at home. People living in the country had to put up with them. For details, ask a grandparent.

CLOSING DOWN SKYPE 

We love skype, it connects with our faraway loved ones and does good things. We sometimes, however, would like to close it down and for some reason it is often like canceling an unwanted credit card. Full empathy to Alice.

INFRASTRUCTURE 

We love to complain about infrastructure especially after returning from Europe where we get around cities on light rail etc.

Pollyanna greets the autumn season

Pollyanna is back, and hopes that all have recovered from the Jewish and Muslim holidays. Now we can all have some peace and quiet until Hannuka and Thanksgiving barge in together. In the meantime, as you can see below, our colleagues in the scientific community are back at work.  Broadcasting of The Big Bang Theory resumes in Israel on Saturday night and we welcome back Sheldon and the gang.

For starters, let us refer you to the Miriam Shlesinger Human Rights action blog. Now that a year has gone by without Miriam, we continue to realize what we have lost. She got us into the human rights struggle. Please act on behalf of people who are so much in need of support in their trials and tribulations at the hands of oppressive regimes and corporations.

CHARITY CORNER
This week it is Pollyanna's turn to promote a charity. Her choice is Reporters without Borders, a France-based international non-profit, non-governmental organization that promotes and defends freedom of information and freedom of the press. The organization has consultant status at the United Nations. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has joined them in the role of "ambassador".

Reporters Without Borders has two primary spheres of activity: one is focused on Internet Censorship and the New Media, and the other on providing material, financial and psychological assistance to journalists assigned to dangerous areas. Its missions are to:

•   monitor continuously attacks on freedom of information worldwide and denounce any such attacks in the media;
•  act in cooperation with governments to fight censorship and laws aimed at restricting freedom of   information;
• morally and financially assist persecuted journalists, as well as their families; and offer material assistance to war correspondents in order to enhance their safety.

Pollyanna recommends a visit to their Web site, linked above.  She thinks it is worthy to support their causes and to donate to support their activities.

GOLDEN RICE PRO AND CON 
All over the world people, especially children in the Third World suffer and die because of vitamin A deficiency. A genetic modification in rice replaced one of the genes intended to produce beta carotene. The original gene, which makes an enzyme called phytoene synthase, came from the narcissus flower, and was replaced with one from maize that is far more efficient. It produced 20 times more beta carotene, the molecule from carrots that combines with a second molecule of itself once inside our bodies to make a molecule of vitamin A, The GMO rice has been steadfastly opposed by Greenpeace and other environmental organizations. Indeed we have long been negative about GMO mainly because of Monsanto and their foul manipulations to make farmers dependent on them. If this is a real benefit for people suffering from vitamin A deficiency, perhaps we should rethink our position on GMO and look at things on a case by case basis.. What do you think?

 THE RANT 
As you all know Pollyanna rants about matters concerning women and girls. Now she is ranting about the people, mostly women and girls, who were victims of the Rana factory building collapse and the more recent Aswad fire that killed 10 people in Bangladesh. The Guardian reports that this factory was not included in the work safety inspection plan.

The main beneficiaries of the cheap labor in unsafe conditions in Bangladesh are Western companies. Buyers of clothing made in Aswad include Wal-Mart ("George" clothing line), Gap, UK's Primark, and two Canadian companies ── Hudson's Bay Co. and Loblaws Inc., owner of Joe Fresh. Many companies have signed on to a compact to inspect work safety in Bangladesh, but Walmart and Gap have come up with something much weaker. Gap has issued a pious press release, but so far only 6% of the victims of Rana Plaza have been compensated. Pollyanna is far from glad, in fact she is furious and suggests that we all think a bit before buying brand name clothing from companies that risk the lives of their workers for filthy lucre.

LAKES ON TITAN 

Carolyn Porco brings us northern hemisphere springtime at Saturn and gives us a peek at the lake region. With northern spring in full swing, the liquid methane and ethane seas and lakes that are found in Titan's north polar region have finally come under the watchful gaze of Cassini's remote sensing instruments. Infrared images reveal new clues about how the lakes formed and about Titan's Earth-like "hydrologic" cycle, which involves liquid hydrocarbons rather than water.(Image Advisory can be found here.)  Pollyanna's brother Titan has some cool stuff.

Dark lakes on a bright landscape

BUT IN THE MEANTIME ON EARTH...
At least we do not expect the lakes and seas on Titan to be full of fish. Alas, the Pacific Ocean here on Earth is apparently equally dead. An Australian sailor saw no marine life and tons of rubbish on a 37,000 km voyage from Australia to Japan. The sea is overfished and garbage and debris make sailing an obstacle course. It is indeed tragic that we have so badly fouled our nest.

THOU SHALT NOT PHUB 
The practice of phubbing, i.e. messing with your smart phone and ignoring the real person you are with has become an epidemic. Hadass, bless her, has raised this issue in her blog (alongside) and refers us to an Australian site that deals with the phenomenon. Indeed phubbing can be quite obnoxious, but we cannot avoid thinking of people who cannot interact otherwise, such as our dear beloved Raj and his sweetheart Lucy. For them, a texting date in a library is just perfect. Of course, even they have  reached the point of speaking to one another, despite her habit of escaping via the window of the ladies' room.


STILTON CHEESE NOT FROM STILTON? 
We are great fans of Stilton cheese, one of the brands of "walking" cheeses that we love for breakfast. We are now told that the owner of a pub in the town of Stilton has been ordered to refrain from using the name of the town for the cheese he makes there. It is a technical issue having to do with EU naming rules. Stilton cheese is made in certain counties, none of which contains the town of Stilton, where it was said to have been invented in the 18th century. Weird things happen. Good luck Mr. Pubmaster McGivern.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF BACKGROUND 
We are sure that most of you have seen one production or the other of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, based on the Tevyeh story cycle by Shalom Aleichem.

Sam Falk/The New York Times

Rehearsals for the 1964 Broadway debut of “Fiddler on the Roof,” with Zero Mostel pulling the cart. He sometimes clashed with the show’s director and choreographer, Jerome Robbins, standing to the left onstage. (Both won Tony Awards for the show.)

It describes life in the late 19th and early 20th century Jewish towns in the Pale of Settlement in Czarist Russia. We saw it in 1964 in its pre-Broadway run in Washington. It was a colossal success. Thank you Richard for calling our attention to this article in the NYTimes giving a bit of the history of the production. Zero Mostel was superb as Tevyeh. Indeed he was a marvelous actor. We also saw him in the role of Pseudolus the slave in A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum. Here we see him as Tevye asking God to make him rich.


SCIENCE ANYONE?

WAKE UP CALL FOR RIP VAN WINKLE OF SPACE 
 The ESA Rosetta spacecraft is en route to a rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It was launched in 2004 and in August 2014 will meet the comet and drop a lander on the nucleus.

Rosetta mission milestones 2014-2015

 In a few months, in January, it will be aroused by a command from Earth to end its hibernation and to start warming up for its task. In the nine years that it has been in space it has executed a convoluted orbit that includes three flybys of Earth and one of Mars to get the boosts needed to make the trip. See the video in the link. Thanks to Ray for bringing these details and the link to our attention.

TOMB OF THE DOCTOR FOUND 
An ancient tomb dating back to about 2500 BCE has been found near Cairo. It appears to be that of the doctor who took care of the royal family. The region where it was found south of Cairo is a known ancient burial site for the pharaohs of the very early dynasties. We have visited Egypt and indeed the necropolis areas in which the ancient kings are buried are most impressive.

Entrance to the tomb

SILLY TIME

Samantha Harper asks What If, If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince? The answer is nice.

Dilbert discovers that courtship in the Facebook era is not easy at all:


and then there is perception : 




At the last EMMY awards ceremony, the MC opened by explaining to the younger people that television is something that you watch on your telephone. Indeed, the world is changing but also remaining the same:

Pollyanna salutes the 2013 Nobel Laureates

 Pollyanna is back with you again and would like to share some nice things with you. We are past the holiday season and are back in our routine.

Pollyanna too will be a scientist

For starters, let us refer you to the Miriam Shlesinger Human Rights action blog. A year has gone  by without Miriam, and  we continue to realize what we have lost. She got us into the human rights struggle. Please act on behalf of people who are so much in need of support in their trials and tribulations at the hands of oppressive regimes and corporations.


CHARITY CORNER
This week it is Pollyanna's turn to promote a charity. Her choice is the Mercy Corps a most worthy NGO that helps people in disaster areas or who have had traumatic experiences. They work in failing states like Somalia and Zimbabwe,  conflict zones like Afghanistan, Congo and Iraq. and countries that have endured natural disasters like Indonesia, Pakistan and Haiti. You are welcome to support their work via their Web site. Pollyanna would like to remind you why she and Titan decided in their get together on Vesta to set up this corner. They feel strongly that too much money in well-intentioned charitable donations goes to unworthy places such as NGO's that do more harm than good (vid.some of the organizations operating in Haiti), or corrupt entities such as the Israeli Army that is swimming in money but yet has the chutzpa to ask for donations from naive people who think they are helping Israel.

NOBEL LAUREATES 2013
Pollyanna, Titan and YandA are delighted to congratulate and salute this year's class of Nobel Laureates:

PHYSICS:
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

Peter Higgs (left) and Francois Englert won the Nobel Prize in Physics 50 years after theorising the field that gives fundamental particles their mass. Photograph: Getty

PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE: 
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013 was awarded jointly to James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof "for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells".

Photo: © Yale University

James E. Rothman

Photo: H. Goren. © HHMI

Randy W. Schekman

Photo: © S. Fisch

Thomas C. Südhof

 

 

 

 CHEMISTRY: 
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 was awarded jointly to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel "for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".

© Nobel Media AB

Martin Karplus

Photo: Keilana via Wikimedia Commons

Michael Levitt

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Arieh Warshel

 

 

 

At the risk of appearing provincial, we note that some of them have connections to Israel and to Israeli scientific institutions.

LITERATURE: 
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2013 was awarded to Alice Munro "master of the contemporary short story".

Photo: © shapton 09

Alice Munro

 

Peace 
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2013 is to be awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons

.
We also tip our hats to the young Pakistani advocate of education for girls for winning the Sakharov award. European lawmakers awarded their top human rights prize Thursday to Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who last year survived a Taliban assassination attempt because of her outspoken support for girls' education.



CHEERS FOR THE GOOD MUSLIM PEOPLE OF PESHAWAR 
In the wake of the dastardly attack on a church in Peshawar by Taliban thugs, hundreds of Muslim people formed a human chain around the church during Mass this last Sunday. Pollyanna and her cohorts say God (whichever if any you chose) bless you wonderful human beings. Their action helps to restore our faith in humanity
.



NONETHELESS WE NEED A RANT

Joseph Ow  for The New York Times

Bonnie Fleming, the second tenured woman in Yale’s physics departmen

As usual, Pollyanna takes her turn ranting about bad things that affect women and girls. Today she is calling your attention to a problem that concerns highly educated women in First World industrialized countries, in particular, the United States. She points at the question raised in an important NYTimes article by Eileen Pollack,  in which she asks why there still are so few women in science. Pollyanna recommends the article to you consideration. There is much food for thought there.

OFF FOR A SWIM ON MARS? 
Cheers for Curiosity and her support team for finding water on Mars. For details, if you have access, see the paper in Science.



JUNO HI
The Juno spacecraft en route to a pole-to-pole orbit around Jupiter whizzed past Earth on Wednesday for a gravity boost to the speed it needs to move the probe onward to the largest planet in our solar system.  The spacecraft went into a precautionary safe mode  shortly after completing the speed-boosting flyby of Earth. While Juno's handlers are still trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it, they are hopeful that the problem won't threaten the $1.1 billion mission.

"We believe we are on track as planned to Jupiter," Juno project manager Rick Nybakken, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told the Associated Press. He described his level of concern as "moderate."

The Juno mission launched in August 2011 and is slated to arrive at the Jovian system in July 2016. The probe is so heavy — about 8,000 pounds (3,267 kilograms) — that its Atlas 5 rocket couldn't send it all the way  by itself, so mission planners devised the Earth flyby to finish the job. The path looks like this:


The flyby, which was highlighted by a close approach that brought Juno within just 347 miles (558 kilometers) of Earth at 3:21 p.m. EDT (1921 GMT), was designed to boost the probe's speed from 78,000 mph (126,000 km/h) to 87,000 mph (140,000 km/h), mission officials said.

Once Juno enters orbit around Jupiter, it will study the gas giant's atmosphere, gravitational field and magnetic field with nine science instruments over the course of a full Earth year. Scientists hope the probe's observations will reveal insights about Jupiter's formation, structure and composition, including whether or not the planet possesses a solid core.

Pollyanna and her crew sincerely hope that Juno will survive the glitch, whatever it was. Our experiment on Cassini around Saturn went off last year because of electronic failure. We also would like to mention that a few decades back  we took part in a workshop at UCLA organized by our dear colleague Fran Bagenal to make up a wish list for Juno and to fantasize that the mission might someday be real. We wish all the best to Scott Bolton our friend and colleague, who is the   project scientist and to the entire Juno team.



HOME SWEET HOME

SMART CITIES IN ISRAEL
Pollyanna strongly approves of the idea of smart cities that conserve energy, water and other resources. A new wave of urban infrastructure technology, making inroads in Israel, will go on display at the water and waste water management conference next month in Tel Aviv. Cheers.

RENEWAL IN SOUTH TEL AVIV
The southern parts of Tel Aviv that border on Jaffa have been neglected for far too long. Recently some interest has arisen in renewal of the region and a community center is planned for the old Aliya Market. We link you to an interview with the two young architects who won the competition for the design of the community center.

Model of Ha'aliyah Market community center in south Tel Aviv. Photo by Tsionov Vikton Adar

WOMEN OF THE WALL 

Members of the Women of the Wall group take part in their monthly prayer session at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City October 4, 2013. Photo by Reuters

The women who have been struggling for years to break the Orthodox monopoly on prayer at the Western Wall have agreed to a compromise plan that involves the establishment of a separate place near the Well for egalitarian prayer. In our humble opinion, the struggle for Jewish pluralism transcends the Wall. We need recognition of alternate forms of Judaism--as you know we belong to the Reform Congregation of Natanya, Kehilath Natan-Ya. We need the same level of government support that is given to the Orthodox. We now have local government salaries for rabbis in rural regions, but not yet for cities. The struggle must go and be more focused.


SILLY TIME

What If asks If wind speed reached 500 mph(800 kph) would it pick up a human being? The asker is seven years old. The answer is interesting.

Our hearts go out to our friends and family in the US who are living without a government. Andy Borowitz informs us that now the Republicans are closing down the frontal cortex!


WE LOVE THE NFL
Yes, we waste our precious time sitting in front of a TV screen watching a bunch of millionaires bashing each other to pieces in order to make trillionaires of their billionaire bosses. We admit this in shame, but go on with our depravity. We are pleased to be informed that racism in the NFL is on its way out since the Washington Redskins have been renamed the D.C. Redskins.
The Onion also tells us that the future of the league is being insured by collecting sperm from the players. It reminds us of a reaction in Israel several years ago when the then tennis superstar Pete Sampras offered to come to Israel to train tennis coaches and players. Someone suggested that instead he send his father to stud a new generation of star players. Alas, this is supposed to be a family blog.

Pollyanna has only praise for the Ministry of Transport of Spain who have provided the La Mancha region with the most appropriate traffic signs:

AND THEN THERE WAS CYNTHIA THE SMARTASS...


Exoplanets are really exciting



POLICE INVESTIGATION
In another week we shall read in the Torah a report on two crimes. In one, a man kicked out a woman and child although the woman was his concubine and the child his. In the next chapter, the same miscreant came close to murdering the remaining son. Here is the transcript of the police interrogation of the suspect with respect to the planned murder:

 CREATIONISM 101 FOR THE BENIGHTED AMONGST US




Here is a link to the lyrics.

Pollyanna is back from the holidays

The family of satellites around Saturn

Pollyanna is back, albeit a fortnight late. In case you missed
Titan's explanation last week, she and Titan were hosting the
Jewish satellites and ring components of Saturn at their
synagogue on the shore of the methane lake and had no time to
blog. We are pleased to note that the ladies such as Dione, Rhea, Phoebe and Pandora came modestly attired in contrast to their usual appearance in art musea around Terra and on ancient Greek coins.

Pyrrhus Tetradrachm, Zeus Dodonaios, Dione with a stephanos on a throne, Basileos Pyrrou Greek Text produced probably in Italy

The succah was constructed and decorated in a cooperative effort led by Prometheus looking forward and Epithemeus looking backward with Enceladus helping by blowing off steam..

The shul is on the fjord at center right..Cassini photo

For starters, let us refer you to the Miriam Shlesinger Human Rights action blog. As the weeks and months go by without Miriam, we continue to realize what we have lost. She got us into the human rights struggle. Please act on behalf of people who are so much in need of support in their trials and tribulations at the hands of oppressive regimes and corporations.

CHARITY CORNER 
This week it is Pollyanna's turn to promote a charity. Her choice is SACH for Save A Child's Heart,  This organization supports heart surgery for children in developing countries and is most worthy of your support. You might like to watch a few videos about their activities


THE RANTS
Before we get on to the nice stuff about which Pollyanna is glad, she has a few things on her mind to rant about. No one should be glad about abuse of women and girls. You may recall the case of the brave girl from the Satmar sect in Brooklyn who mustered up enough courage to accuse Nechemya Weberman, 54, of sexually abusing her after she was sent to him for counseling as a 12-year-old. He was given a stiff prison sentence, but she, now 18 and married, and her husband, have since been suffering harassment. The head of the sect called her a "zonah" or whore and this last Rosh Hashana she was driven from her synagogue in Williamsburg. This is part of the consistent pattern in which Orthodox rabbis and their minions abuse girls and then use their power to cover up. It is of a piece with the vile record of the Catholic Church and its pedophilic priests. In Israel a well known rabbi was convicted of sexual abuse and is now awaiting sentencing. It took years to get an indictment against him. It must come as a side effect of the odor of sanctity. Pollyanna despises these people and their holier than thou posing. Pollyanna also calls for support for Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who has gone on hunger strike because of conditions at the prison camp where she is being held for the "crime" of ridiculing Putin in a church.

Pussy Riot's Nadezhda Tolokonnikova attends court in 2012. Photograph: Aleshkovsky Mitya/ Aleshkovsky Mitya/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis

ON NEUROSCIENCE 
There has recently been a rush to pillory neuroscientists as charlatans and their field as smoke and mirrors. Pollyanna is pleased to see that qualified people have come to the defense of the discipline. Good scientists are doing good work and if there are a few snake oil salespeople out there overtouting fMRI, the same can be said for other fields of scientific endeavor. In the 1980's the outer planets lined up in the sky in such a way that enabled the Voyager or Grand Tour mission to all four of them. A few shrewd planetary scientists, writing under pseudonyms, put out a book called The Jupiter Effect in which they "warned" that there would be huge tides, earthquakes and Zeus knows what else on Earth as a result of the combined gravity of these giant planets. Rank nonsense of course and we all had a good laugh except that they laughed all the way to the bank since the book sold like hotcakes to the combined morons of the world. No one thought of discrediting planetary science because of this, so please lay off brain research. Books on the subject are reviewed by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker

Pollyanna calls your attention to the banning of books by benighted authorities. The Catholic Church maintains an Index of books that the faithful must not read lest false doctrine permeate their vulnerable minds. For example, books about the motion of the Earth around the Sun were in the Index until 1822, 180 years after the death of Galileo. Here is a short list of ten banned books.


We might add that the play Twelfth Night by Shakespeare was banned from the schools of New Hampshire because of the transvestite motif. Cheers for the Enlightenment!


NO MORE COMMENTS IN POPULAR SCIENCE 
Popular Science  is an excellent magazine that has been around for over 140 years and provides good reports on scientific developments. Pollyanna is sad that the editors have  found it necessary to close down the comment section because of spam and trolls. It is also a result of the antiscience attitude in the US that interferes to the point of destruction with constructive scientific discussion. We can blame the religious right and the corporate interests that are trying to cast doubt on the reality of climate change. Sad indeed that a great nation is falling into decay because of these and other factors. Let us look at the comparison between science and pseudoscience from the Daily Kos:

CHEERS FOR A BRIGHT AND AMBITIOUS TEENAGER 
Battushig Myanganbayar from Mongolia is a 17 year old freshman at MIT. He is indeed very bright, maybe a genius and he was discovered by getting top grades in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) from MIT. Cheers to you Battushig and we all wish you success in your studies and in your goal to bring your home country into the modern world.

OUR TEENAGER 
We will take the privilege of boasting about our own talented teenager. Our grandson, Rafi, also age 17, has just won a prize for an essay by a teenager about the relevance of the Holocaust to the Jewish generation of today, i.e. his generation.We invite you to read it.

ZOOLOGY AT THE ICE CREAM STALL 

The ice cream shop staff, as they engage in ritualistic displays of courtship.

Many researchers have studied the mating rituals of various animals and indeed it is a riveting topic. The Onion reports a study carried out at a zoo of the mating rituals of the employees of the ice cream kiosk and the results are most  interesting. We are sure that you will find that these creatures differ very little  from peacocks and moose in their rutting display behaviors, which shows the universality of Nature.

ECLIPSE OBSERVATION IN A NOVEL SETTING 
As is well known, the Earth and Moon are the only planet-satellite pair in the solar system that can actually have an exact eclipse, i.e. the moon covers 100% of the Sun. We know a scientist of some renown who has claimed in print that we were created to observe perfect eclipses and that this is proof of the existence of God. We will let that rest. On the other hand, Pollyanna is glad to show you what an eclipse of the Sun by the tiny moon Phobos looks like from the surface of Mars.

Enlarge

Martian Eclipse

These three images show Mars' moon Phobos passing in front of the sun from the perspective of NASA's rover Curiosity.

JPL-Caltech/NASA, Malin Space Science Systems, Texas A&M Univ.

 WE SAY THANK YOU! 
We came across a silly blog posting in the Jewish Journal webzine in which it is claimed that it is offensive in Israel to thank anyone, be it a host/hostess, a taxi driver or any random encountered person. We wonder where this could have come from since we, who have lived almost our entire lives in Israel and socialize with Israelis,. thank and are thanked as much as we would in the US, UK or wherever. We put in a joking comment on the blog, but in all seriousness, we think this lady must be living in a country other than our homeland. Yes, drivers are rude on the road, but so are drivers in Boston (maybe not fair for Boston drivers are considered exceptional). When we drop a 10 shekel coin to a busker playing a saxophone badly on the street, he will skip a note to say "toda." The bum was right, the lady is a cheapskate and should have thrown him a 10.

LOST LINGO
It is sometimes fun to read novels cast in the past in which language of the period is used. The writer Kate Manning has some interesting comments on this topic and against the overuse of the artifice. Our Hebrew Nobel Laureate S.I.Agnon would deliberately salt a story about 19th century life in Jewish Eastern Europe with archaic expressions from the Hebrew of the Mishna, i.e. 2nd century CE. It added something to his writing especially if he used half an expression and left it to the reader to complete the association. This trick of course makes much of his writing unintelligible to high school students upon whom it is inflicted and their teachers are usually not better off. It is criminal in our opinion to create antagonism towards a great writer by making his work a school topic, but then we are guilty of much heresy.

NEW CHRONOLOGY FOR EGYPT DYNASTY I 

Archaeological digs in Egypt reveal where the First Dynasty kings of Egypt are buried - but until now a timeline has been difficult to establish

Sophisticated dating techniques have been used by British archaeologists to revise the chronology of early Egypt. The transformation from independent farmers to a functioning monarchy took only a few centuries early in the fourth millennium which is amazing in view of the major societal changes that had to have taken place. In other regions such a state of organization came about only millennia after the rise of agriculture.

THE GREAT CELIBIDACHE
Sergiu Celibidache, (1912-1996) was a famous but eccentric conductor. He was known for his demands of orchestras and his acerbic tongue which spared no one, even or especially his famous colleagues. He was quoted in the NYTimes in 1984 as saying  that Riccardo Muti was an “ignorant” and that Ormandy was incompetent. He did have reasonably good things to say about Stokowski. Remember, this is the man who when asked his opinion on big Herbie (as James Galway used to call him) went into a litany of insults, and when the interviewer reminded him that Herbert von Karajan was a household word, Celibidache replied: “And so is Coca-Cola…"

Robert Fitzpatrick who was Dean of the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia for over 20 years gives us an interesting tale of Celibidache in the US. Since he criticized almost everyone in the field, it was no surprise when Toscanini sent him a telex from heaven that you might find amusing. We present a translation of the telex that was published in Der Spiegel in German in 1989 "relayed” by the otherwise extremely publicity-shy Conductor Carlos Kleiber. Pollyanna got a kick out of it. Enjoy--we see that there is almost as much back-biting and stabbing among musicians as there is among astronomers. We believe that it was Kissinger who said that academic politics are so virulent because the stakes are so small.
In SPIEGEL No. 16 reported SPIEGEL-Editor Klaus Umbach about the conductor Sergiu Celibidache, who after the Second World War stepped in for a few years for Wilhelm Furtwangler as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra’s chief conductor, also known for some time as a follower of Zen-Buddhism. In the article was also a selection of the infamous attacks on dead and living colleagues such as: “Karajan? Terrible. ” “Either he’s a good businessman, or he can not hear,” “Hans Knappertsbusch – a scandal”, “non-music to the end.” “Arturo Toscanini – a sole note factory. ‘” . “Karl Böhm – a potato sack,” “.. has not conducted a single bar of music in his life,”
Now reached us from heaven a telex in (heavenly appropriate) English by Arturo Toscanini, “relayed” by the otherwise extremely publicity-shy Conductor Carlos Kleiber.

Telex from Toscanini (Heaven) to Celibidache (Munich)
Dear Sergiu!
We read in Der Spiegel about you. You are annoying, but we forgive you.
We have no choice: forgiveness is considered good manners up here. Potato sack – Karli * raised some objections, but as the boys’ and I have persuaded him and assured him that he was musically talented, he stopped lamenting.
Wilhelm suddenly insists firmly that he never heard your name before. Papa Joseph, Wolfgang Amadeus, Ludwig, Johannes and Anton said that they prefer the second violins on the right side and that your tempi are all wrong. But actually they don’t give shit. Up here one shouldn’t care for shit anyway. The boss does not want it.
An old master of Zen, who lives next door, says that you have understood the Zen Buddhism in a totally wrong way. Bruno almost got sick from too much laughing about your comments. I suspect that he shares your opinion on me and Karli secretly. Maybe you could for once also say something mean about him, he feels otherwise a bit excluded.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but up here everybody is fanatic about Herbert, yes, the conductors are even a little bit jealous of him. We can not wait to welcome him in about fifteen to twenty years up here. [the letter was written in spring 1989]Too bad you can not be here then. But they say that where you will go, the service is much better, and that the orchestras down there rehearse indefinitely. They even make small mistakes on purpose so you can correct them for all eternity.
I’m sure you will like it, Sergiu. Up here, the angels read everything directly from the eyes of the composers, we conductors just need to listen. Only God knows how I got here.
Have fun and with love, Arturo.

 
BOOK REVIEWS 

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

"A carnal man and very loving of his flesh and blood": Pope Alexander VI, circa 1485.

At the moment we are reading Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, the second volume of her three volume biography of Thomas Cromwell, the prime administrator at the court of Henry VIII. We have discussed her work in the past. It is worthy of note that Sarah Dunant is following a similar path with her new book, Blood and Beauty, a history of the Borgia family. It is reviewed by Liesl Schillinger in the NYTimes.


BLOOD AND BEAUTY The Borgias By Sarah Dunant 506 pp. Random House. $27.

Pollyanna also would like to call your attention to the first volume of the autobiography of Richard Dawkins, the noted scientist, philosopher and dean of atheists. It is reviewed also in the NYTimes by Janet Maslin. We  all have great respect for Dawkins and his life indeed has been interesting.

Lalla Ward

Richard Dawkins

AN APPETITE FOR WONDER The Making of a Scientist By Richard Dawkins
Illustrated. 308 pages. Ecco. $27.99.

SILLY SECTION
What If? asks how long it would take a person to die if he/she rose continuously at 1 foot/second. Not very encouraging nor even very interesting this time.


In there a worse nudnik than a teeniebopper?