Tibbets obit

Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., the commander and pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in the final days of World War II, died today at his home in Columbus, Ohio. He was 92.

His death was announced by a friend, Gerry Newhouse, who said General Tibbets had been in decline with a variety of ailments. Mr. Newhouse said General Tibbets had requested that there be no funeral or headstone, fearing it would give his detractors a place to protest. . .

The crews who flew the atomic strikes were seen by Americans as saviors who had averted the huge casualties that were expected to result from an invasion of Japan. But questions were eventually raised concerning the morality of atomic warfare and the need for the Truman administration to drop the bomb in order to secure Japan’s surrender.

General Tibbets never wavered in defense of his mission.

From today's NY Times. The Enola Gay was named after Tibbets' mother.

New discoveries, old remedies

We recently posted on the ability of natural aromatherapy oils to kill off antibiotic-resistant bacteria; and now, garlic is being touted as well:

The ingredient which gives garlic its distinctive smell is the latest weapon in the battle to beat the hospital "superbug" MRSA.

University of East London researchers found allicin treated even the most antibiotic-resistant strains of the infection.

Over at Scribal Terror the question is reasonably asked, does this mean that we've been too quick to dismiss the use of oil-scented handkerchiefs, pomanders, and masks in the pre-antibiotic era as laughable and "medieval"? Time will tell.

Not that we should all be abandoning modern medicine quite yet. Though many traditional folk remedies have now been found to be effective, that shouldn't alter our understanding that overall, premodern medicine never permitted anything like the length and quality of life we expect today. The problem back then was that premodern remedies were never subjected to rigorous analysis by the scientific method. Now, we can carry out those studies -- if only we can get beyond our instinctive dismissal of treatments that don't fit our picture of how diseases work.

Which leads to another recent story, this from the New York Times:

Dr. Rubin, director of the Center for Biotechnology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is reporting that in mice, a simple treatment that does not involve drugs appears to be directing cells to turn into bone instead of fat.

All he does is put mice on a platform that buzzes at such a low frequency that some people cannot even feel it. The mice stand there for 15 minutes a day, five days a week. Afterward, they have 27 percent less fat than mice that did not stand on the platform -- and correspondingly more bone.

"I was the biggest skeptic in the world," Dr. Rubin said. "And I sit here and say, 'This can't possibly be happening.' I feel like the credibility of my scientific career is sitting on a razor's edge between 'Wow, this is really cool,' and 'These people are nuts.'"

It is hypothesized that low-level vibrations caused by repeated muscle contractions are the main reason why athletic people retain more bone mass as they age than the sedentary -- high-magnitude impacts perhaps having less proportionate effect than hitherto believed. How this might fit the observation that resistance training is better for bone preservation than other forms of lighter exercise I'm not sure. Perhaps the muscles have to contract with a certain minimum level of force to gain measurable benefits. In any event, it may be time to reconsider the listing of vibration therapy as quack medicine, even if many past implementations might have been ineffective. In fact, a quick Google search suggests that there are some aggressively-marketed vibration platforms out there already, though it seems they differ from the system described in the NY Times article in giving a perceptible buzz, as opposed to a vibration frequency so low as to border on the imperceptible.

Giant hyenas' pot luck

Giant hyenas, sabretoothed cats, giraffes and zebras lived side by side in Europe 1.8 million years ago.

The creatures' remains were among a vast fossil hoard unearthed at an ancient hyena den in the Granada region of south-east Spain.

The area appears to have been a crossroads where European animals mixed with species from Africa and Asia.

About 4,000 fossils have been found at the unique site. They also include gazelles, wolves, wild boar and lynx.

From the BBC.

Into the Wild

Saw Penn's adaptation of Krakauer's book a few nights back.
Too much Penn, not enough Krakauer.

Looming disaster in Mosul

And nothing to do with the war, this time:

The largest dam in Iraq is at risk of an imminent collapse that could unleash a 20m (65ft) wave of water on Mosul, a city of 1.7m people, the US has warned . . .

Iraq says it is reducing the risk and insists there is no cause for alarm.
However, a US watchdog said reconstruction of the dam had been plagued by mismanagement and potential fraud. . .

The dam has been a problem for Iraqi engineers since it was constructed in 1984.

It was built on water-soluble gypsum, which caused seepage within months of its completion and led investigators to describe the site as "fundamentally flawed".

In September 2006, the US Army Corps of Engineers determined that the dam, 45 miles upstream of Mosul on the River Tigris, presented an unacceptable risk.

"In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world," the corps warned, according to the SIGIR report. "If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely."

Bloody hell -- and with nearly 2 million people downstream. From the BBC.

More on the dam (formerly "Saddam Dam") at Wikipedia, which notes that a collapse could also inundate Baghdad to a depth of 15 feet. The largest dam in Iraq, its construction flooded an area extending northwards to the Turkish and Syrian borders, necessitating a host of hasty salvage excavations of important archeological sites.

English dental horror

Some English people have resorted to pulling out their own teeth because they cannot find -- or cannot afford -- a dentist, a major study has revealed.

Six percent of those questioned in a survey of 5,000 patients admitted they had resorted to self-treatment using pliers and glue, the UK's Press Association reported.

England has a two-tier dental care system with some dentists offering publicly subsidized treatment through the National Health Service and others performing more expensive private work.

But more than three-quarters of those polled said they had been forced to pay for private treatment because they had been unable to find an NHS dentist. Almost a fifth said they had refused dental treatment because of the cost.

From CNN. The figure commonly cited is 108 million without dental insurance in the USA (a bit over a third of the overall population), but what a mess in the UK if their promised 100% coverage turns out to be more like 25%, or less.

Harry Potter

Went to see the latest Harry Potter movie a couple of weeks back. I don't get out that much, and what sold me on it was the prospect of seeing it at our local IMAX theater in 3D. The big screen was no disappointment, but describing the film as 3D was nothing less than fraud: the 3D portion is only at the very end, and for the most part not very effective -- a postproduction conversion.

As for the recent flap over Rowling and Dumbledore, it nicely highlights the slippery matter of authorial intention. Once a book is written, are we bound to interpret it as its author commands? Many would say not: think how many artworks are now meaningful in ways their creators never envisioned, perhaps were incapable of forseeing.

This column from the Dallas Morning News puts it well, in commonsensical terms..

Black pudding ice cream

An ice cream company has unveiled its latest mouth watering flavour - made with black pudding. . .

"Most people think we are a bit wacky but with the advent of bacon and egg flavour down south, it shows there is a market," said John Gardner of Dowson's.

The ice cream has small pieces of black pudding like chocolate chip ice cream. . .

The company had experimented adding black puddings to their basic ice cream mix but found a base with mustard added made a better flavour.

From the BBC. If you don't know what black pudding is, Wikipedia to the rescue:

Black pudding or less often blood pudding is a sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. . .

Pig or cattle blood is most often used; sheep and goat blood are used to a lesser extent. Blood from poultry, horses and other animals are used more rarely. Typical fillers include meat, fat, suet, bread, sweet potato, barley and oatmeal.

And the BBC Food site further notes:

Black pudding, as made in the UK, is a blend of onions, pork fat, oatmeal, flavourings - and blood (usually from a pig).

Further noted:

The humble black pudding even has a festival dedicated to it in northern England. In Ramsbottom, outside Manchester, hundreds compete annually in the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships. The bloody sausages are encased in ladies' tights and contestants hurl them at a 20ft-high stack of Yorkshire puddings. Whoever knocks the most Yorkshire puds off the stack is declared the winner, in a contest said to date back to an incident in battle between the armies of the Houses of Lancaster and York during the Wars of the Roses.

PS Previous posts on strange ice creams here, here, and here.

O venerable quahog

A clam dredged up off the coast of Iceland is thought to have been the longest-lived animal discovered.

Scientists said the mollusc, an ocean quahog clam, was aged between 405 and 410 years and could offer insights into the secrets of longevity.

Researchers from Bangor University in north Wales said they calculated its age by counting rings on its shell.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the longest-lived animal was a clam found in 1982 aged 220.

Unofficially, another clam - found in an Icelandic museum - was discovered to be 374-years-old, Bangor University said, making their clam at least 31 years older.

From the BBC. More on ocean quahogs here:

Growth of ocean quahogs is fairly rapid during the first 20 years of life but lessens greatly thereafter (Murawski et al. 1982). Ocean quahogs of about 100 years and older are common; a maximum shell length of 140 mm (5.5 inches) and a maximum longevity estimate of 225 years have been reported (Ropes 1985).

On quahogs as food, more here and here. Not to be confused, note, with coastal quahogs, Rhode Island favorites.