Monday, October 14, 2013

William Shatner is to be on the Today Show this morning. I have very fond feelings for the Star Trek crew. Their show was always entertaining and did ask some actually scientific questions. Shatner has a new album called “Ponder The Mystery,” a spoken word album with music. Apparently, he wrote the script but he doesn't read it. I missed the name of the reader. Here are a few facts about him and his work from Wikipedia. He has written a series of books about Star Trek and a series called TekWar which is science fiction. He starred as the lead attorney on two television productions called The Practice and Boston Legal, winning for these two Emmys and a Golden Globe award. He began acting in 1952, and played in a number of movies, plays and television productions. I remember him from two episodes of The Twilight Zone in which he did a creditable job. He was born in Montreal, Quebec on March 22, 1931. He is 82 years old. He looks noticeably younger than 82 today. He is still overweight, but his hair isn't completely white and his skin isn't lined. I'm glad to see that he keeps on moving along and hasn't given up.

I'm looking up Leonard Nimoy now. He, too, was born in 1931. Wikipedia lists his accomplishments as being an American actor, film director, poet, singer and photographer. The following is from the Wikipedia article.
“Nimoy began his career in his early twenties, teaching acting classes in Hollywood and making minor film and television appearances through the 1950s, as well as playing the title role in Kid Monk Baroni. In 1953, he served in the United States Army. In 1965, he made his first appearance in the rejected Star Trek pilot, "The Cage", and would go on to play the character of Mr. Spock until 1969, followed by seven feature films and guest slots in various sequels. His character of Spock had a significant cultural impact and garnered Nimoy three Emmy Award nominations; TV Guide named Spock one of the 50 greatest TV characters.[2][3] After the original Star Trek series, Nimoy starred in Mission: Impossible for two seasons, hosted the documentary series In Search of..., and narrated Civilization IV, as well as making several well-received stage appearances. More recently, he also had a recurring role in the science fiction series Fringe.
Nimoy was born in Boston, Massachusetts in the West End,[6] to Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Soviet Union (now Ukraine). Nimoy is four days younger than his Star Trek co-star, William Shatner.[7][8][9][10] His father, Max Nimoy, owned a barbershop in the Mattapan section of the city. His mother, Dora Nimoy (née Spinner), was a homemaker.[11][12] Nimoy began acting at the age of eight in children's and neighborhood theater. His parents wanted him to attend college and pursue a stable career, or even learn to play the accordion—with which, his father advised, Nimoy could always make a living—but his grandfather encouraged him to become an actor.[13] His first major role was at 17, as Ralphie in an amateur production of Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing!.[14] Nimoy took drama classes at Boston College in 1953 but failed to complete his studies,[15] and in the 1970s studied photography at the University of California, Los Angeles.[13] He has an MA in Education from Antioch College, an honorary doctorate from Antioch University in Ohio,[16] and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Boston University.[17]” He earned three Emmy awards for episodes of Star Trek. In the 1950's and 60's he appeared in numerous movie and television roles, sometimes as an hispanic or Indian role. He was in Bonanza, Rawhide, The Untouchables, Perry Mason and other shows. During the '70's and '80's he continued to act in movies and television, and received another nomination for an Emmy for best supporting actor in a television movie called A Woman Called Golda.
During this time, Nimoy also won acclaim for a series of stage roles. He appeared in such plays as Vincent, Fiddler on the Roof, The Man in the Glass Booth, Oliver!, 6 Rms Riv Vu, Full Circle, Camelot, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The King and I, Caligula, The Four Poster, Twelfth Night, Sherlock Holmes, Equus and My Fair Lady.
In 1991, Nimoy teamed up with Robert B. Radnitz to produce a movie for TNT about a pro bono publico lawsuit brought by public interest attorney William John Cox on behalf of Mel Mermelstein, an Auschwitz survivor, against a group of organizations engaged in Holocaust denial. Nimoy also played the Mermelstein role and believes: "If every project brought me the same sense of fulfillment that Never Forget did, I would truly be in paradise."[28]
Nimoy performed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in The Pagemaster in 1994. In 1998, he had a leading role as Mustapha Mond in the made-for-television production of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
He had a central role in Brave New World, a 1998 TV-movie version of Aldous Huxley's novel where he played a character reminiscent of Spock in his philosophical balancing of unpredictable human qualities with the need for control.
In 2000, he provided on-camera hosting and introductions for 45 half-hour episodes of an anthology series entitled Our 20th Century on the AEN TV Network. The series covers world news, sports, entertainment, technology, and fashion using original archive news clips from 1930 to 1975 from the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and other private archival sources.
Nimoy is also a frequent and popular reader for "Selected Shorts", an ongoing series of programs at Symphony Space in New York City (that also tours around the country) which features actors, and sometimes authors, reading works of short fiction. The programs are broadcast on radio and available on websites through Public Radio International, National Public Radio and WNYC radio. Nimoy was honored by Symphony Space with the renaming of the Thalia Theater as the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater.
Nimoy has long been active in the Jewish community, and he can speak and read Yiddish. In 1997, he narrated the documentary A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, about the various sects of Hasidic Orthodox Jews. In October 2002, Nimoy published The Shekhina Project, a photographic study exploring the feminine aspect of God's presence, inspired by Kabbalah. Reactions have varied from enthusiastic support to open condemnation.[49] Nimoy claims that objections to Shekhina don't bother or surprise him, but he smarts at the stridency of the Orthodox protests, and is "saddened at the attempt to control thought."[50]
In a 2001 DVD,[52] Nimoy revealed that he became an alcoholic while working on Star Trek and ended up in rehab.[53] William Shatner, in his 2008 book Up Till Now: The Autobiography, speaks about how later in their lives Nimoy tried to help Shatner's alcoholic wife.
He has remained good friends with co-star William Shatner (also of Ukrainian Jewish descent) and was best man at Shatner's third marriage in 1997. He also remained good friends with DeForest Kelley until Kelley's death in 1999.
Nimoy is a private pilot and has owned his own airplane.[58] The Space Foundation named Nimoy as the recipient of the 2010 Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award[59] for creating a positive role model that inspired untold numbers of viewers to learn more about the universe.
In 2009, Nimoy was honored by his childhood hometown when the Office of Mayor Thomas Menino proclaimed the date of November 14, 2009 as Leonard Nimoy Day in the City of Boston.[60]” Wikipedia gives a very long list of productions of which he was a part from 1950 to 2012, with no period in which he was totally without work.

China worries about the government shutdown – NBC News

BEIJING –With days to go before the United States debt default deadline, Beijing aired its frustrations with the shutdown Sunday, saying it was time to consider a “de-Americanized” world order.
With $1.28 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, China is easily the biggest foreign holder of American debt.
China has also funneled billions of dollars into private American investments – to the tune of an estimated $54 billion in 2012 alone.
“As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world,” according to a stinging op-ed article by state news agency, Xinhua.

"Days when the destinies of others are in the hands of a hypocritical nation have to be terminated, and a new world order should be put in place, according to which all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing,” the piece added.
Should Congress not come to an agreement by Thursday’s deadline on a new raised debt ceiling – the upper limit set by Congress on the amount of money the Federal government may borrow – China’s potential losses stand to be devastating.
Prior to Sunday’s commentary article, Chinese officials had been more measured in their analysis of the U.S. budget impasse. Last week, Vice-Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao  noted only that “we have to see that the clock is ticking.”


The Xinhua commentary may raise eyebrows in Washington, but Beijing’s frustration underscores a key point: Despite a desire to diversify its holdings, the Chinese government continues to buy U.S. Treasury bonds out of political and economic necessity.
As long as China’s domestic growth and stability are boosted by American debt, the deep ties between the two countries will likely endure.

72 year old man survives 18 days in the forest – NBC News

He was feared dead, but after 18 days alone in the Mendocino National Forest, a San Francisco resident has been found alive.
Avid hunter Gene Penaflor, 72, was located Saturday morning -- approximately 3.25 miles from where he went missing -- by a group of hunters at the bottom of a canyon. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office received a call from a member of the group around 8:30 a.m., and sent Search and Rescue units to the remote location where Penaflor was found.

"He knew that terrain like the back of his hand," Jeremy said. "He's been hunting for 25-30 years. He reads survival magazines.
"There was times as the weeks went on where it was difficult, but I wouldn't say I lost hope. It was dwindling, he's 72 years old, but I knew knowing what he knew not to give up."
Just a day after his father was found, Jeremy was even able to make light of the situation.
"He's fine," he said. "It's like he went on vacation and came back with a beard."

During the first day of his hunt, Penaflor fell, hit his head and was knocked unconscious. When he woke up, he was disoriented and a thick bank of fog had made its way to where he was. After some time spent walking around the area, Penaflor was unable to determine which direction to travel and stopped moving.
He started a fire to keep warm and on days it snowed or rained, he took shelter under a log. He remained in one spot due to a nearby water source.
Temperatures fluctuated between 25 and 70 degrees during the nearly three weeks Penaflor spent alone. He fed himself by killing and eating squirrels in the area.


Bionic Man – NBC News


The term "bionic man" was the stuff of science fiction in the 1970s, when a popular TV show called "The Six Million Dollar Man" chronicled the adventures of Steve Austin, a former astronaut whose body was rebuilt using artificial parts after he nearly died.
Now, a team of engineers have assembled a robot using artificial organs, limbs and other body parts that comes tantalizingly close to a true "bionic man." For real, this time.


The artificial "man" is the subject of a Smithsonian Channel documentary that airs Sunday, Oct. 20 at 9 p.m. Called "The Incredible Bionic Man," it chronicles engineers' attempt to assemble a functioning body using artificial parts that range from a working kidney and circulation system to cochlear and retina implants.
The parts hail from 17 manufacturers around the world. This is the first time they've been assembled together, says Richard Walker, managing director of Shadow Robot Co. and the lead roboticist on the project.
"(It's) an attempt to showcase just how far medical science has gotten," he says.


Walker says the robot has about 60 to 70 percent of the function of a human. It stands six-and-a-half feet tall and can step, sit and stand with the help of a Rex walking machine that's used by people who've lost the ability to walk due to a spinal injury. It also has a functioning heart that, using an electronic pump, beats and circulates artificial blood, which carries oxygen just like human blood. An artificial, implantable kidney, meanwhile, replaces the function of a modern-day dialysis unit.
Although the parts used in the robot work, many of them are a long way from being used in humans. The kidney, for example, is only a prototype. And there are some key parts missing: there's no digestive system, liver, or skin. And, of course, no brain.


The bionic man was modeled after Bertolt Meyer, a 36-year-old social psychologist at the University of Zurich who was born without his lower left arm and wears a bionic prosthesis. The man's face was created based on a 3D scan of Meyer's face.
"We wanted to showcase that the technology can provide aesthetic prostheses for people who have lost parts of their faces, for example, their nose, due to an accident or due to, for example, cancer," Meyer says.
Meyer says he initially felt a sense of unease when he saw the robot for the first time.
"I thought it was rather revolting to be honest," he says. "It was quite a shock to see a face that closely resembles what I see in the mirror every morning on this kind of dystopian looking machine."


He has since warmed up to it, especially after the "man" was outfitted with some clothes from the U.K. department store Harrods.
And the cost? As it turns out, this bionic man comes cheaper than his $6-million-dollar sci-fi cousin. While the parts used in the experiment were donated, their value is about $1 million.

DNA study on two prehistoric cultures – NBC News


A female from the Corded Ware culture was buried with hundreds of beads. DNA from this fossil was used to reconstruct the ancient mitochondrial heritage of Europe.


Neolithic hunter-gatherers and farmers lived side by side without having sex for more than 2,000 years, new research suggests.
Analysis of fossil skeletons unearthed in a cave in Germany revealed that the two populations remained mostly separate for two millennia, despite living in the same region.
"We thought up till now that shortly after the introduction of farming in central Europe all hunter-gatherers kind of vanished," said study co-author Ruth Bollongino, an archaeogeneticist at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany. "This is mainly because we hardly find any artifacts. We have absolutely no ongoing proof of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle after the early Neolithic," around the time when farmers were first migrating from the Middle East.

The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science. In a separate study in the same issue of Science, researchers found that by 3,500 years ago, all of the genetic makeup of modern Europe was mostly in place. [History's 10 Most Overlooked Mysteries]
Cave discovery
In 2004, archaeologists first discovered the Blätterhöhle, a long, narrow cave in Hagen, Germany, filled with more than 450 skeletal fragments that belonged to at least 29 individuals. Carbon isotope dating revealed the cave had been used in the Mesolithic period, between 9210 and 8340 B.C., and in the Neolithic period, between 3986 and 2918 B.C. The cool, dry environment provided perfect preservation conditions for the delicate DNA housed within the bones. [See Images of the Excavations]
Bollongino and her colleagues analyzed the fossils' mitochondrial DNA, genetic information carried in the cytoplasm of the cell that is passed on only from the mother, finding usable information in 25 of the individuals.
Separately, the researchers also analyzed carbon and nitrogen isotopes, or variants of the same elements with different molecular weights. Because different foods contain different ratios of heavy and light isotopes, the team was able to pinpoint the diets of the ancient people.
Fishers and farmers
Of the skeletons they analyzed, all five of the most ancient samples came from a genetic lineage associated with pre-farming hunter-gatherers. Of the Neolithic skeletons, eight had genetics consistent with farming, whereas 12 of the more modern samples had genetic lineages more consistent with belonging to a hunter-gatherer group.

Isotope analysis also revealed the latter group subsisted on a diet of mainly freshwater fish, while the farmers ate more domesticated animals. In addition, the analysis suggested people across the two groups rarely had sex with each other over a period spanning about 2,000 years.
The farmers and fishers shared the same burial place, so they must have had some contact, Bollongino said.
"I think it's very unlikely they did not know of each other or trade, but for some reason, they stayed amongst themselves," Bollongino told LiveScience.
Genetic melting pot
In the second study, researchers analyzed the mitochondrial DNA from more than 364 fossil remains found at more than 20 sites within the Saxony-Anhalt region of Germany, which dated to between 5500 and 1550 B.C.
The team concluded that the modern maternal genetic makeup of Europe was mostly in place by about 3,500 years ago, study co-author Wolfgang Haak, a molecular archaeologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, wrote in an email. The hunter-gatherers may have died out by that time or stuck around for a little while longer in isolation, but they did not contribute much of a genetic legacy to modern Europe.
Neolithic farmers were dominant for 2,500 years after the introduction of farming from the Middle East, though the new data can't reveal whether ancient Europeans truly vanished, or simply migrated to more isolated areas.
"In all likelihood (hunter-gatherers) must have retreated to areas that were less suitable for farming and where a (hunter-gatherer) subsistence could be sustained despite the (occasional) disturbance by farmers," Haak wrote.
Later, Scandinavian hunter-gatherers gradually assimilated into Neolithic farming culture, probably because the nomadic way of life became too difficult to sustain as farmers continued their expansion. Climate fluctuations may have also played a role, Haak said.

The article above from the NBC News site includes several surprises for me on prehistoric culture. For one thing, apparently there were people living in caves up into the European Neolithic period. I suppose a cave is a fairly comfortable place to live if you compare it to a tent on the open plains, especially in the winter. Also, from this article, the farmers moved up from the Middle East in a series of groups, and didn't intermarry with the hunter-gatherers, which isn't surprising. Human nature being as it is, there probably was a class division due to the differences between them. According to the article, they buried their dead in the same place, though, which sounds as though they considered themselves to be part of the same community. I had assumed up to this point that the knowledge of how to farm had been learned by all the cultures across the world during the Neolithic period from their contact with each other and adopted by all. Of course, there are still the reindeer herders in the northern parts of Europe and Asia to this day and the Ainu of Siberia. They know about “modern” ways, they just haven't given up their reindeer and hunter-gatherer lifestyles. So in the end it's not about technology, but culture.

This article is one of the twenty or more published in the Science section of the NBC News website on any given day. Some are more interesting to me than others. I don't care about most new technology. I like to read about archeology, paleontology, history, psychology, biology in general and geology. I am like a child in my interests. I like the intriguing and mysterious subjects and the always calming and encouraging area of the natural world. There are no rabid bikers rampaging around in Nature where there are almost no roads. Of course there is global warming and habitat destruction as man brings his machines in and cuts down the trees.

NBC is the only news site besides NPR that has a Science section, which is one of the main reasons I read the NBC site for daily news. They also give what I consider to be the “fair and balanced” news, as opposed to Fox. I usually end up reading NBC to supplement the television news, which never gives an in-depth story and never presents all of the available stories. I quit buying a daily newspaper many years ago when I realized that I never read the whole thing, and eventually I had to gather them all up and take them to the recycling bins, which can be a major chore.

2:36 I'm reading my new mystery novel now. A group of people have appointed themselves as Nazi hunters who choose to see to it that justice is administered without bothering the courts about it. It's one of those stories in which the main characters are amoral, but the villains are the height of evil, so you sympathize with the lesser evil. There is another group who seem to be government based but equally vicious who also are seeking war criminals, so maybe they will conflict with the mysterious Professor Mallory's group. I'll see. 3:41 I've read a little bit more. This book is not a murder mystery, but a “thriller,” in which all the characters are bad. Two groups of people without real government sanction are trying to kill the same super-villain. All these characters are “larger than life,” and it's too much like fantasy. I'm not going to finish this one.

Starting the last one, Dead Reckoning, by Charlaine Harris, with a lead character named Sookie Stackhouse. This looks like one of those light, humorous mysteries. I may not like this one either, but here goes.

This novel is told in the first person, so I assume that person is Sookie Stackhouse. She is 1/8 fairy. Her cousin Claude and her great uncle are “much more fairy,” but apparently part human. Claude, she said, runs a strip club. This won't be an ordinary story, at any rate. She works in a bar for Sam who is a “shapeshifter.” You have to read Celtic lore to find out what that is. The shamans of the Celts were thought to be “shapeshifters” –- beings who can change their physical appearance, often into something frightening like a wolf. In this story are also some vampires. All of this is set in New Orleans. I know now why I've never read any of hers before. I read the cover descriptions before, so I never took them from the library. I don't usually go for fantasy and the supernatural. I'll check this one out now that I have it, though. The prose does read smoothly. I hope I like it because I don't want to go out to the library to get more books today. The weather is cloudy and I feel like “veging out.”

This book is pretty good so far. It looks like in spite of all those fantastic characters, she is going to make an interesting story. It's 5:21. The end for today.