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Commemorating the escape from Nazi-occupied Denmark to Sweden 70 years ago

September 30, 2013

image Pierre Mens

The Öresund Bridge connecting Copenhagen with Malmö will be lit up on Tuesday night to commemorate the escape of 7,800 Jews from occupied Denmark to Sweden. They were evacuated by an armada of Swedish and Danish fishing boats with the help of the Danish resistance. The Nazi’s had planned to have a Great Arrest on the night of the Jewish New Year on 1st October, 1943 and transfer the Danish Jews to concentration camps. But their targets largely disappeared. The Gestapo succeeded only in arresting some 450 people.

Wikipedia: Only around 450 Danish Jews were captured by the Germans, and most of these were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German occupied Czechoslovakia. After these Jews’ deportation, leading Danish civil servants persuaded the Germans to accept packages of food and medicine for the prisoners; furthermore, Denmark persuaded the Germans not to deport the Danish Jews to extermination camps.

The Local:The light manifestation will be focused on the man-made island Peberholm in the middle of the Öresund straight and along the bridge itself.

“Öresund was the route to safety in October 1943. It is a beautiful idea, to use the foundation of the fixed link over the Öresund, which rests on Peberholm, as a platform for all the lanterns we want to light in the October darkness,” said Ingeborg Philipsen at the Museum Amager in Denmark.

Some 700 lanterns will be lit on Peberholm to symbolize that “October 1943 was a light in the darkness”.

One of those who escaped was Nils Bohr and Lubos Motzl describes his story which I reblog here. His reference to 60,000 Danes who escaped to Sweden must include all Danes during the II World War and not just the Jews. I am also not sure if his reference to the help provided by the Swedish aristocracy is entirely accurate. The Swedish King, Gustav V was an alleged Nazi sympathiser – even if not a fanatic. He is “credited” with blackmailing the Swedish Government into permitting the transit of German troops through Sweden by threatening abdication. He certainly had great admiration for Hitler’s actions against Russia and even sent a congratulatory letter to Hitler – privately – against the wishes of his government:

Bohr’s dramatic escape: 70 years ago

Exactly 70 years ago, on September 29th, 1943, the Danish underground movement received the message. Brothers Niels and Harald Bohr – who had a Jewish mother but that wasn’t the only sin – would have to be arrested and transferred to Germany.

So far, Bohr would be often invited to emigrate but he would be refusing it with words resembling Zeman’s “Why should I leave? They should leave!”

But the new situation was way too serious so both brothers and all of their offspring and families had to escape Denmark. So Bohr and his wife Margareta are suddenly walking on a Copenhagen street and meet a biochemistry professor they know. He is a part of the resistance movement and gives them a secret sign, everything is fine.

They go to a Copenhagen dwellers’ popular recreational beach with fancy buildings outside of the capital. Harald, his wife, and children are there in a moment, too. The boat needs two hours. The fishermen, also belonging to the underground, know the schedule of German patrols so they may optimize the trajectory. On Thursday, September 30th, they finally reached a Swedish village.

Margareta stays in the village. Niels Bohr has some extra work to do. He takes an express train to Stockholm. There he meets with the secretary of state and other officials. Ultimately, he has a meeting with the king, too. Bohr has almost certainly contributed to the official October 1943 publicly declared decision of Sweden to accept all refugees. Thanks to the friendly and courageous Swedish aristocratic reaction, about 60,000 Danes escape a German prison during October 1943.

Sweden is not quite safe for Bohr, either. Germany could send secret agents or soldiers to silence him. Britain and America are safer; they seem like a more practical place for Bohr to help the Allies to kick the German bastards into their socialist balls (or, in the leader’s case, ball).

Bohr agrees with the British proposal. His condition is that his son Aage, a physics student, must accompany him. Now, the main technical task is to transfer Bohr from Sweden to Britain. In between these two countries, you find Norway which is occupied just like Denmark.

The solution is a British combat aircraft, a bomber called Mosquito. The model is fast and can reach great heights – and escape from most German aircraft into the clouds. At some points, it’s actually crucial for the height to be above 10 kilometers to be mostly safe; this also requires the British pilots to teach Bohr to use the oxygen mask. Where would Bohr sit? Well, in the bomb bay! Aage would fly in another aircraft.

A small technical glitch forces Niels Bohr’s aircraft to return. He wants to take the first yellow cab. The Swedish agents are pulling their guns. But OK, they force him to sleep at this airport and nervously await the invasion of some Germans who could just find out where Bohr is and make a “friendly visit” at every moment.

Mosquito’s average speed is about 600 km/h which means that 1,200 km to Britain is a 2-hour trip. Things went fine and the Mosquito landed in Northern Scotland. The pilots immediately go to see Bohr in the bomb bay. A sleeping and tired man didn’t hear any instructions because the helmet wasn’t large enough for his quantum skull. Also, he failed to use the oxygen mask so he fainted somewhere in the clouds but survived. “Next time, it will be better,” he promised.

A more luxurious commercial aircraft took the co-father of quantum mechanics to London. He met some similarly active British physicists like Chadwick. Niels Bohr was impressed by the progress made by British on their tube alloys project (British nuclear bomb). In December 1943, he would fly to the U.S. As guests of the Manhattan Project, Niels and Aage would be renamed as Nicholas Baker and James Baker, respectively, for security reasons. I doubt that this secret name enabled Aage Bohr to become Reagan’s Secretary of State.

Bohrs would only spend some time in Los Alamos. Oppenheimer credited Bohr for contributing to modulated neutron initiators and for his being an inspiring role model for younger physicists like Feynman – although Feynman himself wasn’t exactly obsessed about authorities of any kind.

Incidentally, Enrico Fermi started the nuclear age 10 months before Bohr fled Denmark. It just happens that Fermi would celebrate his 112th birthday today. Enrico Fermi was born on September 29th, 1901.

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Posted in 2nd World War, Behaviour, Denmark, Physics, Sweden | Comments Off on Commemorating the escape from Nazi-occupied Denmark to Sweden 70 years ago

FIFA promoting and condoning slave labour

September 27, 2013

FIFA are “going to investigate”.

It would seem a little too little and much too late.

Brazil is resorting to extraordinary means to get ready for the World Cup next year.

BBC: 

Construction workers employed on a project in Brazil ahead of next year’s World Cup face “slave-like” conditions, officials say.An investigation into the expansion of Sao Paulo international airport found that 111 workers were living in poor accommodation near the building site.

They were approached in poorer states and some had to pay more than $220 (£140) to secure a job, the Labour attorney general’s office says. The promised wages were $625 a month.

The workers, among them six ethnic Pankaruru indians, were reportedly lured in the country’s north-east with promises of work in Sao Paulo. However, many were not immediately employed and had to stay in one of 11 makeshift camps near the airport which is being expanded in preparation for next year’s World Cup. The Labour attorney general’s office says it found the workers living in “conditions analogue to slaves” and has 30 days to present legal action against the contractors.

According to Brazilian legislation, companies must contract migrant workers in their hometown before transferring them to other cities. 

Similar investigations were under way in other World Cup-related building sites, attorney Cristiane Nogueira, from the Labour attorney general’s office in Sao Paulo, told Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo.

But it would seem to be even worse in Qatar for their World Cup in 2022 – undeserved and where the voting was clearly bought. FIFA have been falling over themselves to ensure their share of Qatar money and where they – for the first time ever and in conflict with most football seasons – are going to hold the World Cup in winter. Here at least 44 Nepalese construction workers have died in just 3 months and the World Cup is still 9 years away. At the rate they are going thousands could die before the World Cup is held.

The Guardian: 

Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar’s preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.

This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022.

According to documents obtained from the Nepalese embassy in Doha, at least 44 workers died between 4 June and 8 August. More than half died of heart attacks, heart failure or workplace accidents.

The investigation also reveals:

• Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project.

• Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away.

• Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens.

• Some labourers say they have been denied access to free drinking water in the desert heat.

• About 30 Nepalese sought refuge at their embassy in Doha to escape the brutal conditions of their employment.

The allegations suggest a chain of exploitation leading from poor Nepalese villages to Qatari leaders. The overall picture is of one of the richest nations exploiting one of the poorest to get ready for the world’s most popular sporting tournament.

“We’d like to leave, but the company won’t let us,” said one Nepalese migrant employed at Lusail City development, a $45bn (£28bn) city being built from scratch which will include the 90,000-seater stadium that will host the World Cup final. “I’m angry about how this company is treating us, but we’re helpless. I regret coming here, but what to do? We were compelled to come just to make a living, but we’ve had no luck.” 

Of course FIFA is shocked and distressed and will investigate! Not as distressed as the workers are in Qatar or as distressed as the families of the dead.

The Telegraph: 

Britain’s most senior Fifa member said he was “appalled and distressed” by allegations made in an expose of construction practises in the Gulf State as it readies its infrastructure to stage the 2022 tournament.

Boyce told the Telegraph Sport: “Fifa must fully investigate all the facts contained in the article and hopefully report back to the executive committee.”

The Northern Irishman also insisted the matter would be discussed at next week’s Fifa executive committee meeting.

That meeting had initially been expected to confirm that the tournament would move from the summer but is now in danger of being hijacked by a “slavery” scandal. …

 

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Posted in Behaviour, Corruption, Football, Politics | 1 Comment »

Marc Hauser publishes on “Evil”

September 27, 2013

Following in the footsteps of other fraudsters (Diedrik Stapel for one), Marc Hauser has published a new book on “Evil”. Since he left Harvard he has been involved with “brain training“  (brain-washing?) of children at risk.

I suppose that a transgressor cannot be said to have no practical experience of morality though to say that he is particularly qualified to write about “Evil” is perhaps pushing it a bit. What constitutes “Evil” is of course rather subjective. Just as with Stapel there is no shortage of his advocates and apologists now rushing to praise his book. Just as with Stapel the New York Times (Nicholas Wade) appears to be providing some free promotion. Good Luck to him though I shall not be acquiring a copy.

Boston.com: 

Marc Hauser, the former Harvard University psychology professor who was found by federal officials to have fabricated and manipulated data, is publishing a book on the nature of evil, “Evilicious: Desire + Denial = Cruelty.”

The former professor, who has worked with at-risk youth on Cape Cod since leaving Harvard, announced on Twitter his book would be available October 15. On his blog, he said that the book will be available through Kindle Select, as an audio book, or as a print-on-demand book. ….

At the blog Retraction Watch, two who blurbed the book—Nicholas Wade, a New York Times science reporter and science writer Michael Shermer—said that they believe in second chances.

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IPCC still cooking it’s books to cover-up the inconvenient truths

September 27, 2013

The 95% probability/certainty of global warming being due to human activity is based on a show of hands and not on any evidence or statistical analysis of data. What it actually says is that 95% of all global warming believers, believe.

Late last night the IPCC delegates in Stockholm were still messing around preparing their 30 page political summary of their AR5 report to be released today.

The political summary of AR5 is primarily a CYA effort to protect the posteriors of the policy makers (mainly political figures, bureaucrats and activists) in the face of a long row of broken models and broken hypotheses. The IPCC has forgotten that natural variability is a euphemism for unknown mechanisms which cannot be calculated or predicted. It is going to be interesting to see just how the summary report will cover-up, deny or ignore the long string of inconvenient facts:

  • Global temperatures have not risen for 17-18 years while CO2 has kept on increasing. 
  • Global temperatures have been declining for the last 11 years. 
  • None of the IPCC’s computer models have predicted the warming hiatus or the cooling over the last decade.
  • Global wildfires are lower than normal. 
  • Rainfall patterns (and the Indian monsoon) continue within the bounds of known natural variability. 
  • Food and grain production is at an all-time high. 
  • Flood frequency and flood levels have not been at unprecedented levels. Just more people live in flood-plains today than before. 
  • CO2 in the atmosphere reached the magic level of 400 ppm (albeit for just a few hours) and nothing happened.
  • How much of the CO2 concentration increase is due to carbon dioxide from fossil fuel. combustion is unclear but fossil fuel emissions are only 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. 
  • The absorption and release of carbon dioxide by the oceans is unknown and the error margin is greater than the total amount released by fossil fuels.
  • CO2 absorption mechanisms do not care where the CO2 being absorbed came from.
  • The sensitivity of global temperature to CO2 concentration has been grossly exaggerated by the computer models.
  • Carbon dioxide concentration is more likely to follow global temperature (due to subsequent changes in emission and absorption rates) than to lead it.
  • Sea ice levels are increasing at both poles with the Antarctic at record high levels.
  • Polar bear populations are thriving and increasing.
  • Sea levels are continuing to rise at just the historical levels due to the recovery from the last glacial and are not accelerating due to industrialisation or the use of fossil fuels.
  • Oceans are still strongly alkaline and any increase in acidity is within known natural variability.
  • Coral reefs have shown themselves to be self-healing when damaged and are not showing any signs of ocean acidification.
  • Climate models have grossly underestimated solar effects because the mechanisms are unknown.
  • Sunspot activity in SC24 is well down from SC 23 and is not unlike the period of the dalton minimum during SC5 and SC6.
  • Clouds and moisture in the atmosphere have a much bigger impact on global warming and cooling than CO2 in the atmosphere.
  • Cloud formation is linked to sunspot activity and cosmic rays.
  • Global warming and cooling follow solar effects via the oceans in long decadal cycles.
  • The number of hurricanes and tornadoes are at historically low levels.
  • Heat released from the earth’s interior by tectonic and volcanic activity is not known.
  • A Little Ice Age is more likely than further Global Warming and a global cooling cycle lasting 20-30 years may have begun.
  • This interglacial is due (within c. 1000 years) to come to an end.

There is more we don’t know that we don’t know about the climate than the IPCC would like to admit. And for policy makers, activists and bureaucrats who have followed misguided policies for the last 25 years it is no longer possible to admit that they have been making “certain” predictions in an ocean of uncertainty. They have replaced scientific objectivity by “consensus science” where the validity of a hypothesis is based on how many believe and not on evidence. The 95% probability/certainty of global warming being due to human activity being touted by the IPCC is based on a show of hands of believers, and not on any evidence or statistical analysis of data.

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Climate, Clouds, Politics, Scientific Fraud, Solar science | Comments Off on IPCC still cooking it’s books to cover-up the inconvenient truths

Will the UK Lib-Dems go the way of the German FDP?

September 26, 2013

Last Sunday’s election results were an unmitigated disaster for the FDP in Germany. Historically – and going back to 1949 – it was unprecedented. They have no seats in the Bundestag for the first time. Sharing power in government has not helped them.

(All charts from Wikipedia)

FDP seats won

FDP vote percentage

There is a parallel to be drawn with the UK though the German proportional representation system has generally been kinder to the FDP than the UK “first past the post” system has been to the Liberal Democrats. But when times are bad the PR system of Germany is also more ruthless. The FDP dropped from an all- time high of 14.6% of the vote in 2009 to 4.8% last Sunday. The Lib-Dems were at 23% in 2010 and are currently at 10%.

File:LibDem vote-seat percent.PNG

Votes and seats won by the Lib-Dems

Today’s modern Lib-Dem party is not quite the Liberal party of old. In my youth I read about the great days of the Liberal party of Gladstone and Lloyd George (and even the young Winston Churchill). I thought quite highly of Jo Grimond and David Steele. But the merger of the Liberals – proposed by David Steele – with the break-away Social Democrats  from the right of the Labour party in 1988 has created a strange animal which has no true identity of its own. Like the ancient chimera with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a snake the Lib-Dems today try to combine mutually repellent ideologies and produce rather confused, fascistic do-gooders. With figures like Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne (now disgraced), Vince Cable and Ed Davey in their ranks they are enjoying their moment in the sun but are suffering from the twin fantasies that the tail wags the dog and that they know best what is good for others.

That their time in government supporting the Tories will be to their electoral detriment in the next general election seems very likely. Whether they will be wiped out like the FDP is unlikely in the British system but a comprehensive collapse is not inconceivable. Like the FDP which participated in a government dominated by Angela Merkel, the Lib-Dems are propping up but are totally dominated by Cameron’s conservatives.

Like the FDP, the Lib-Dems now run the risk of forcing their normally middle-of-the-road base towards the left or the right.  Like in the FDP, their traditional supporters in academia and the education system and the welfare services are going to move leftwards as the Lib-Dems give in to the Tories (with student tuition fees for example and for Helath Service cuts). The Lib-Dems have been the “green” face of this government but Cameron has been quite adept at using them for cover (as Angela Merkel has also done with the FDP). The disastrous cost of the renewable energy policies in Germany and the UK are seen as being more the fault of the Greens/FDP in Germany and of the Lib-Dems in Britain. Their ususal support among the environmental “do-gooders” is likely to shift leftwards for the moderates and greenwards for the more extreme. The traditional support from small shop keepers and small businesses is likely to shift rightwards.  The NSA scandal has hit the civil liberties image of the FDP as being a colluding party within the ruling government and so also for the Lib-Dems.  The support of The Guardian for the Lib-Dems can be compared to that of Die Zeit and Der Tagesspiegel for the FDP.

The general election in the UK is due in May 2015 (Scotland independence referendum intervening in 2014) and this gives the Lib-Dems 18 months to demonstrate that they have an agenda of their own. But this requires them to repudiate much of what they have agreed to while in government and will lead to a level of schizophrenia.

My guess is that the Lib-Dems will be reduced to less than the 10% they are currently polling at (from the 23% they had in the 2010 election). Philipp Rösler has just resigned as the FDP chairman. Nick Clegg will need to do the same in 2015 – though one could argue that the Lib-Dems might do better if they got rid of him before the election. They could do with a leader who is not as light-weight as Clegg or tainted as being Cameron’s poodle (but who?).

They will probably slip behind UKIP who are also at about the same 10% level but seem to be imploding. 2015 then will be a straight Tory-Labour fight. Neither Cameron or Milliband are particularly impressive as leaders. And so it will be a battle to see who is better at losing. And Milliband may be the more prone to losing an election.

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No compensation for woman raped by UN soldiers in Mali

September 25, 2013

UN troops have raped a woman in Mali. What sticks out is the UN spokesman specifically rejecting financial compensation while offering legal support to the victim. As if any legal action by a woman from Mali is likely to succeed against the UN rapists protected by UN immunity and anonymity. The rapists can only face disciplinary action from their own country – and I am quite sure there will be none.

Sexual misconduct by UN troops (Congo, Cambodia, Ivory Coast and Haiti for example) is nothing new. Of course the UN can only mirror its member countries but UN staff – whether bureaucrats or soldiers – are pampered, grossly overpaid and are just not accountable for their negligence or their incompetence or for deliberate misconduct. No UN staff ever received any strictures for bringing cholera to Haiti. At least the Dutch courts accepted their Government’s liability for the killings of those expelled from the UN compound by Dutch troops at the Srebrenica massacre. It was a little late for the victims though.

BBC: 

The United Nations says at least four of its peacekeepers were involved in the rape of a woman in Mali. The soldiers have been identified as being among 1,500 Chadian troops serving under the UN force, Minusma.

The UN says it wants Chad to investigate the incident and take disciplinary action against the men.

Minusma took over security duties in July after the withdrawal of French forces, which led an operation to oust Islamist militants from the north.

The assault is believed to have happened on Thursday in the northern city of Gao.

The woman is thought to have come forward seeking medical help from the UN immediately after the attack. This triggered the UN force to launch an investigation. ……

The BBC’s Alex Duval Smith in Bamako says it is not known exactly how many Chadians were involved, but the victim identified four soldiers as having assaulted her.

At the time, 165 Chadian soldiers were stationed in Gao, our correspondent adds. They had defied the orders of their superiors and left their base in Tessalit after a dispute over pay and conditions.

A Minusma spokesman in Bamako said it was for the Chadian army to decide on what disciplinary action they should take against the men.

He said the victim would be offered medical, psychological and legal support but not financial compensation.

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Europe does not like it’s Roma

September 25, 2013

Freedom of movement in Europe is much touted. European nations like to think of themselves as being in the vanguard of civil rights. But gender equality (for those of the correct ethnicity) and the rights of ethnically correct minorities clearly take precedence over the rights of Europe’s Roma populations. The harassment of Roma – who don’t make much effort to change their way of life to fit in with the rest of society – is evident across most of Europe.

The Roma today constitute a second, lower class of Europeans.

They are walled off in communities in Romania, are forcibly sterilised in Slavakia, and confined to ghettos in Bulgaria. They are an easy target for the neo-Nazis of Hungary and Germany and the Czech Republic and Greece and Italy. They are currently being expelled from Germany, Sweden, Denmark and France – often to Kosovo. Their ways are too strange. They dress strangely. They resort to begging far too often. They are feared and disliked by the majority of Europeans.

In just the last few days they have been much in the news.

Greece Street Musician

Roma girl being kicked in Greece (via Greek reporter)

  1. Sweden: The Skåne police force has become embroiled in a fresh controversy over the Roma registries after it emerged they didn’t admit the records were on file when asked by the Swedish Commission on Security and Integrity Protection last year.
  2. France: Interior Minister Manuel Valls on Wednesday insisted he stood by a controversial call for tens of thousands of ethnic Roma to be kicked out of France. Valls has triggered an outcry from human rights groups, the European Commission and some of his government colleagues by saying any Roma not working should be “delivered back to the borders”, describing their way of life as “extremely different from ours,” and claiming they will never integrate into French society.
  3. Greece: A photograph of a female shop owner pushing a little Roma girl street musician on a pedestrian walkway under the Acropolis to send her away has taken off on the Internet and set Greek authorities to investigate the apparent abuse. 
  4. UK: Nigel Farage will vow today to put the expected influx of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants to Britain from January at the heart of the UK Independence Party’s campaign in next year’s European elections.

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When the law is an ass and the law-makers are donkeys then judges have to be mules

September 24, 2013

A horse is a vicious species apparently.  I am not sure what the legal definition of a “naturally vicious species” might be, but if it includes a horse then the definition is an ass and any judge applying such a definition would be a mule. The law-makers who put such a definition in place would of course then be donkeys.

Connecticut Post: 

The owner of a horse farm on Wheelers Farms Road in Milford said he will be in Hartford on Tuesday when the state Supreme Court hears arguments about whether his horses — and all horses in Connecticut — should be classified as a “naturally vicious species.”

The court case dates to 2006, when one of Timothy Astriab’s horses at his Glendale Farms operation bit a toddler on the cheek. Astriab says he is not sure which of his half-dozen horses bit the child. 

“The horse is still here,” Astriab said Monday afternoon at the farm. “The parents couldn’t identify which horse did it.”

As Astriab describes it, the incident happened when a father, visiting the farm to buy plants, held his 1½-year-old son up to the horse, which was on the other side of a fence. The boy, at the urging of his parents, might have been attempting to feed the animal some grass, Astriab suggested.

“I wasn’t here at the time,” said Astriab, but the signs are clearly visible on his property: “Do not feed or pet the horses.” …..

…. Astriab said he posted the warning signs before the boy was bitten. But he said none of his horses could be considered vicious, adding that a ruling by the state Supreme Court that all horses are vicious “would open up a whole new ball game” of increased insurance costs for horse owners.

“We would be the only state in the nation that would define horses as vicious,” Astriab said, noting that horses have been working alongside humans for more than 5,000 years.

Horse owners and farmers have indicated they plan to mobilize Tuesday to get the state Supreme Court to overrule a lower court ruling that defined National Velvet, Flicka, Trigger and their ilk as vicious creatures.

And if a horse is to be considered vicious, how then would we classify humans? Especially humans addicted to horse meat!

But perhaps common sense will prevail at the Supreme Court even if it was noticeably absent in the lower court which determined the natural viciousness of horses.

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Posted in Behaviour, Law | Comments Off on When the law is an ass and the law-makers are donkeys then judges have to be mules

A parasite which makes for fearless mice

September 22, 2013

A new paper about the effects of the toxoplasma parasite.

Wendy Marie Ingram, Leeanne M. Goodrich, Ellen A. Robey, Michael B. Eisen. Mice Infected with Low-Virulence Strains of Toxoplasma gondii Lose Their Innate Aversion to Cat Urine, Even after Extensive Parasite Clearance. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (9): e75246 DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0075246

Abstract: Toxoplasma gondii chronic infection in rodent secondary hosts has been reported to lead to a loss of innate, hard-wired fear toward cats, its primary host. However the generality of this response across T. gondii strains and the underlying mechanism for this pathogen-mediated behavioral change remain unknown. To begin exploring these questions, we evaluated the effects of infection with two previously uninvestigated isolates from the three major North American clonal lineages of T. gondii, Type III and an attenuated strain of Type I. Using an hour-long open field activity assay optimized for this purpose, we measured mouse aversion toward predator and non-predator urines. We show that loss of innate aversion of cat urine is a general trait caused by infection with any of the three major clonal lineages of parasite. Surprisingly, we found that infection with the attenuated Type I parasite results in sustained loss of aversion at times post infection when neither parasite nor ongoing brain inflammation were detectable. This suggests that T. gondii-mediated interruption of mouse innate aversion toward cat urine may occur during early acute infection in a permanent manner, not requiring persistence of parasite cysts or continuing brain inflammation.

Science Daily writes:

Researchers found that mice’s lack of fear of cats persisted even when inflammation markers or cysts could not be detected in mice. (Credit: Wendy Ingram and Adrienne Greene)

The Toxoplasma parasite can be deadly, causing spontaneous abortion in pregnant women or killing immune-compromised patients, but it has even stranger effects in mice. 

Infected mice lose their fear of cats, which is good for both cats and the parasite, because the cat gets an easy meal and the parasite gets into the cat’s intestinal track, the only place it can sexually reproduce and continue its cycle of infection.

New research by graduate student Wendy Ingram at the University of California, Berkeley, reveals a scary twist to this scenario: the parasite’s effect seem to be permanent. The fearless behavior in mice persists long after the mouse recovers from the flu-like symptoms of toxoplasmosis, and for months after the parasitic infection is cleared from the body. ….

“Even when the parasite is cleared and it’s no longer in the brains of the animals, some kind of permanent long-term behavior change has occurred, even though we don’t know what the actual mechanism is,” Ingram said. She speculated that the parasite could damage the smell center of the brain so that the odor of cat urine can’t be detected. The parasite could also directly alter neurons involved in memory and learning, or it could trigger a damaging host response, as in many human autoimmune diseases. …..

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Angela Merkel triumphs – could even govern without the FDP?

September 22, 2013

Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU have made a very strong showing at over 42% and the exit polls are predicting that both the FDP and AfD (Alternative for Germany) will both miss the 5% threshhold and get no seats. But the FDP and the Greens are the big losers and the AfD are sending a clear anti-European message even if they get no seats.

Angela Merkel is only 2 or 3 seats away from having her own majority without any coalition partners.

The SPD are around 26% and the Greens are down to 8%.

This could give the CDU/CSU around 298 seats in the Bundestag. With the SPD at around 185 seats and the Greens at about 57 seats it is even conceivable that Angela Merkel could govern without any coalition partner dragging her down. It is highly unlikely that the SPD/Greens would call upon the 59 or so seats of the Far Left.

The tactical voting to help the FDP that I was half-expecting does not seem to have taken place.

The Greens will have little leverage.

The way is now clear for a slow reversal of the disastrous nuclear policy pushed by the Greens though Angela Merkel will have to be very dainty on her feet to make this U-turn.

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