The Daily Reel
The Daily Reel
Fairness Is Good • Tuesday, 31 July 2007
A remarkable article in Scientific American pretty much turns everything you ever believed about greed slap on its ear. According to a study by economists at the University of Cologne in Germany, financial decision making is as often driven by altruism as rational selfishness:
It turns out that humans do not always behave as if their sole concern is their personal financial advantage—and even when they do, they consider social motives in the profit-making equation. As Ockenfels has discovered, a sense of fairness often plays a big role in people’s decisions about what to do with their money and possessions, and it is also an essential part of what drives trust in markets full of strangers such as eBay.
I’d be willing to bet Ayn Rand is spinning in her grave.
Good.
Posted at 09:19 PM | Comments [0] | Trackbacks [0]
Beasties in the News • Sunday, 29 July 2007
It has been a huge week for animals in the news, even barring stories about Oscar the Death Kitty.
On the plus side, there were surprises. The Great Bustard, a 40-pound flyer with an 8-foot wingspan, has laid its first eggs in Great Britain in 175 years as part of a program by conservationists to reintroduce the world’s heaviest flying bird into the wild from Russia. Bustards became extinct in Britain in the 1940s because of hunting.
In Greece, the discovery of mastodon remains, including 16.5-foot tusks, was called “spectacular” by Dick Mol, a Dutch scientist at the site. No wonder: they are “the longest tusks ever found on a prehistoric elephant-like animal.” Scientists are hoping the find will help explain why mastodons died out in Europe millions of years before they disappeared in North America.
Speaking of spectacular, two Siberian tiger cubs, one of the world’s most endangered species, were born in captivity in a Romanian zoo, according to breeders. The baby tigers were born in May, but their mother has kept them in an indoor den out of the public view until this month. The chief of the Galati Zoo in Bucharest called their birth “a miracle.” A few hundred cats remain in parts of southern Russia, northern China and North Korea; the breed is on the brink of extinction in the wild due to poaching and loss of habitat.
Apparently miracles abound in the animal kingdom if you’re looking for them. Just ask Don Bryant of Penn State University and David M. Ward of Montana State University. The two have discovered a new bacterium that is capable of photosynthesis. The light-eating microorganisms live in colorful microbial mats around three of Yellowstone Park’s hot springs: Mushroom Spring, Octopus Spring, and Green Finger Pool—not far from Old Faithful Geyser. Mr. Bryant called it “the discovery of a lifetime.” He said, “I wouldn’t have been as excited if I had reached into that mat and pulled out a gold nugget the size of my fist.”
While the discovery that a decongestant rub prevents meerkats from fighting might not be as important to human science, it probably means a lot to the meerkats living at Paultons Park in Romsey, Hampshire in England. The staff at the family theme park was concerned when their two existing meerkats attacked three new arrivals from zoos in Bristol and Norfolk. That’s when veterinarian Kate Chitty decided to apply a little VapoRub to the animals’ noses. She realized the little animals distinguish one another by scent. With the rub on their snoots, they were all one happy family. Makes me wonder if might should anoint the noses of everyone currently in Iraq.
National Geographic offered a brief photo album of exotic animals rescued at Los Angeles airport, including a pair of lorises discovered in a man’s underwear, and clarion angelfish, which were mixed in with similar-looking legal imports.
Several fish were mentioned in this week’s news. Of note were a rare coelacanth caught the off the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia by Justinus Lahama in a dugout canoe. His catch was about four feet long and weighed 110 pounds.
Speaking of big fish, LiveScience.com says if an angler spins a wild tale about the “big one that got away,” he might well be telling the truth, especially if the lake or pond he trolls is overfished. A new study “suggests that harvesting only large fish knocks out the food competition for the remaining adults, allowing the adults to gorge on smaller fish and inflate to gigantic proportions.... A Eurasian perch growing in such a situation, for example, can become more than four times as big as an adult fish the same age in a body of water not heavily fished.”
I’ve seen catfish that would fill the trunk of a car—in fact, my uncle once caught a catfish that big on a trotline—and we’ve talked about “noodling” for catfish in the past, but I never expected to see the sport covered by the New York Times. But there it is—with a couple of pretty decent photographs as well. A line in the story made me laugh aloud: “Sticking one’s hand in the mouth of a catfish, which can weigh more than 100 pounds, carries a significant risk of physical injury.” No kidding. And I’ve heard stories from Cajuns in Louisiana of noodlers who stuck their hands in the mouths of snapping turtles and lost a finger or two in the process. I wouldn’t outlaw the skill—it has been practiced since the days of the first American Indians—but don’t ask me to participate. I’ll stick with my rod and reel.
Not all the news from the animal world was as adventurous—or as good. According to National Geographic, the giant Chinese paddlefish, the world’s largest freshwater fish, is feared extinct. At 23 feet in length and half a ton in weight, hauling in the monster would be the fish story of a lifetime, but no young paddlefish have been seen since 1995—and none have been caught in the Yangtze River since 2003.
Four mountain gorillas—including an alpha male silverback—were shot and killed in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo last week, prompting UNESCO to send a mission to the site as soon as possible. The group led by the male—named Rugendo—numbered 12 before the four were killed. Six of the group were found safe, but two are still missing. The loss of four gorillas may seem insignificant, but given the rarity of gorillas in the wild, Fauna and Flora International have called the statistic “horrifying.” Just over 700 mountain gorillas exist in the wild. Seven have been killed in Virunga in the past seven months—a one percent decrease in mountain gorilla population (as a comparison, if the United States lost one percent of its population, it would mean the death of 3,011,399 individuals).
Taiwan is seeking to preserve the island’s rare green turtle population, once harvested for their meat and eggs, but authorities say local efforts aren’t guaranteed to strengthen the species’ numbers. “Shiue Jie-yin of the Penghu County Conservation and Protection Division said the efforts have clearly prevented a recurrence of mass killings, but was unable to promise that the turtles’ numbers will ever grow substantially. ‘The effects of the conservation efforts can be seen only after a while,’ he said.”
Meanwhile lions in Uganda are sparking a dispute between herdsmen and authorities managing the Queen Elizabeth II Park, Uganda’s second largest national park. It’s another example of the constant tension between commercial and conservation interests.
Sadly, a bottlenose whale that swam into the Orwell River in Ipswich, England, had to be put down after operations to lure it back into open water failed.
And finally, in weird animal news (which pretty much brings us full circle), a New York SPCA peace officer found an unusual gift in a moving pillowcase on Long Island’s Overlook beach: a 30-inch-long alligator. Officials said someone had written “Live Gator—Please find him a home” on the pillowcase.
[fishNote: Postings have been light for the past several days because I have been switching back to a Mac system from a PC. The system is now fully functional, and we should be back in form beginning tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.]
Posted at 07:19 PM | Comments [1] | Trackbacks [0]
Iraq’s “Regional Actors” • Friday, 27 July 2007
For the sake of intellectual clarity (and because the White House is more adept at spinning the truth than Tokyo Rose was on her best day), let’s have a brief history lesson:
Of the nineteen al Qaeda-trained terrorists who crashed commercial airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, fifteen were from Saudi Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon. None were from either Iraq or Iran.
The man believed to have masterminded the attack, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was born in Pakistan, spent at least part of his formative years in Kuwait, was educated in the United States, and fought against the Soviet Union during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan before joining al Qaeda. His personal history at Wikipedia contains one brief reference to Iran, none to Iraq.
Osama bin Laden is a Saudi Arabian; he was raised (and apparently remains) a devout Sunni Muslim. During the ‘80s, he formed a mujahideen army to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. (While an often-repeated myth suggests the CIA armed and trained Mr. bin Laden’s troops, there is no concrete evidence of contact between Mr. bin Laden and the CIA. In fact, given his animosity for the United States, it seems unlikely.) When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Mr. bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia with 12,000 armed men (apparently there was no love lost between him and Saddam Hussein); the government turned him down. He sharply criticized the Saudis in the 1990s for allowing the United States to deploy troops during the first Gulf War, and was further enraged when troops remained there after the war ended. His nationalism, driven by the understanding that Saudi Arabia is the guardian of the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina, is fervent, despite the government revoking his citizenship in 1994.
When the United States began targeting terrorist nonprofit organizations, among those with the closest ties to al Qaeda was the Benevolence International Foundation, based in Saudi Arabia.
Of the 135 foreign fighters in U.S. detention centers in Iraq, nearly half are Saudis. Half of all Saudi fighters come as suicide bombers, according to a U.S. military official; in the last six months, suicide bombings have killed or injured 4,000 Iraqis.
The majority government in Iraq, led by Nuri al Maliki, is Shiite; most Iranians are Shias. It seems to me that Iran would have a vested interest in seeing a Shia government succeed in the border nation. Most Saudis are Sunnis. Is it likely they would favor the success of a Shia government?
Lately, when referring to al Queda in Messopotamia, military officials have frequently said they were fleeing Baghdad north toward the border of Iran, leaving the open-ended impression that Iran would harbor and shelter them. Al Qaeda fighters are, for the most part, Sunnis intent on toppling the al Maliki government. Is the suggestion that they will be welcome in Iran likely? In fact, al Qaeda has no official friends on either border, as the Saudi princes oppose the terrorist organization.
But it seems to me entirely appropriate that the New York Times, under the headline “Saudis’ Role in Iraq Frustrates U.S. Officials” says “Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war.” A telling paragraph in the article is this:
One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”
Oxford Analytica agrees with the assessment, and says:
As the United States looks to regional actors for support on Iraq, Iran and Israeli-Palestinian issues, it will find that Riyadh is not going to play its assigned role. While President George W. Bush’s administration faces long odds on these issues already, the Saudi position makes the prospect for success even less likely.
Guardian Unlimited is more blunt in their lead:
The extent of the deterioration in US-Saudi relations was exposed for the first time today when Washington accused Riyadh of working to undermine the Iraqi government.The Bush administration sent a warning to Saudi Arabia, until this year one of its closest allies, to stop undermining the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki.
The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates, are scheduled to visit Jeddah next week. A diplomat in Washington said of the two governments: “There is a lot of bad blood between the two.”
What this means to the success of the American war effort is up in the air. The administration made a fateful decision when it chose to back the Shia majority in Iraq and when it “de-Baathified” the military, one that is being played out in public on a regional basis. While we might hope the tensions created by backing Mr. al Maliki will be defused through negotiation, thus far the White House hasn’t shown a great degree of diplomatic skill. Perhaps more than anywhere else, diplomacy will be tested in the dynamic between Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Posted at 09:16 PM | Comments [0] | Trackbacks [0]