James Watson's Resignation

James Watson recently made some stupid and offensive comments about race that have now led to his resignation from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

The key paragraph from "The Elementary DNA of Dr Watson" by Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe in the Sunday Times of October 14th, 2007:

He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

The legend of Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA and their subsequent influence on the development of the biological sciences inspired me, like many others, to follow through on my early dreams of becoming a biologist. Thus I studied biochemistry and molecular biology at university and travelled far down the path of a scientist, before eventually changing track to enter the world of medicine.

To hear Watson say such things is disappointing for me at a personal level. Although he has always been outspoken and opinionated (his comments on Rosalind Franklin in "The Double Helix" spring to mind), and for me, never had the mana of the late Francis Crick, his comments on the intelligence of Africans are simply ridiculous, irresponsible, and embarrassing. There is no scientific basis for his statements. I can only wonder about the health of this 79 year-old man and whether the constant assault of old age has lead to an undignified deterioration in his mental faculties.

Prior to his resignation from the famous laboratory he had led for so long, Watson apologised and claimed he was "mortified":

"I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said. I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have."

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

It certainly sounded like that's what he meant....

James Watson once apparently made this strange comment (quoted in an article in Nature, 302, 21 (April 1983): 652. April 1983):

"But I guess I owe most of all to Francis, who really did look after me, and who often tried to keep me from being silly. I wasn't as silly as he thought, but he was so sensible that I had occasionally to say things I didn't believe, to see if I could trap him. And I sometimes did."

It's a shame Francis isn't around to look after him anymore. Nevetheless, I expect sales of his new book, "Avoid Boring People", to sky-rocket.

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To find out more, read: Wired Science - The Watson Debacle

A Change in Condition - A Zambian Flashback

I spent three months working in a mission hospital in Zambia during my final year as a medical student. My time there changed my life, and turned me into a doctor. Strangely, it was the return home to New Zealand that was the biggest culture shock I have ever experienced - life seemed frivolous and patients seemed too healthy - but eventually I adjusted back to normality.

What follows is an excerpt from my elective report, which I wrote at the time, way back in 2002. As I reread my old words I can't help but marvel at how earnest my younger self seems, but then the memories flood back I begin to understand myself again.




"A Change in Condition"

Every medical officer at SFH inevitably encounters a tap on the shoulder from a nurse, quietly echoed by the whispered words, “Doctor, there has been a change in condition”. Usually, this means a patient has died. Sometimes they are still in the last throes of trying to die. Almost invariably, you find that there is very little that can be done. They may have been dead for sometime, and an over-worked nurse has only just noticed their lack of response. Otherwise, you may find that suction is not available or the bag and mask has gone missing, thus robbing the dying patient of a last breath. Woven together such experiences form the grim reality of life in the “developing” world. Only when thrust into such situations, as has now happened to me on many occasions, does this awful reality truly hit home.

The phrase “a change in condition” also aptly describes how my experiences in Zambia have affected me. Many times I have felt a chill and imagined myself a naïve Charlie Marlow journeying to the Heart of Darkness . At times the dying words of the maniacal Kurtz have resonated in my thoughts – “he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath – The horror! The horror!”. It is quite fair to say that I too have undergone a change in condition.

I remember my first ward round on a Sunday morning, two days after arriving in Lusaka. I was still jet-lagged but in a state of agitation fueled by curiosity and enthusiasm. The ward round covered all of the surgical and obstetrics/ gynaecology patients in the hospital. This equated to approximately seventy or eighty patients (I couldn’t keep up with the fast pace of the count), and lasted barely two-and-a-half hours. My eyes could hardly adjust to the darkness of the wards, and when they did, they were barely prepared for what they saw. I was struggling to keep my head above water in an ocean of dripping pus, sunken eyes, and protruding ribs.

Soon after I arrived at SFH I paid a visit to SCBU – the special care baby unit. The room was filled with stifling heat and the walls were lined with boxes with large windows. Through each window one could see a skeletal newborn staring back with eyes wide. A disturbing image entered my mind, an image of a department store filled with microwave ovens; each containing assorted leftovers waiting to be re-heated. Actually I was fortunate - my arrival had followed the eradication of most of the cockroaches that once infested the SCBU. It was said, if one looked closely, that nibbled bite marks left by the cockroaches could still be seen on the tiny toes of the undernourished newborns.

Images are one thing, smells are another. My first walk through the SFH wards took me back to my childhood. As a youngster I used to hand-rear birds and kept an aviary. The background scent of the hospital had the same agricultural flavour. As one circulates the hospital, many other scents – none are pleasant – also come to the fore. These smells are representative of all the bodily functions of which human beings are capable, plus all the products of the fermentation of countless micro-organisms. Sometimes the odours were so strong, I was forced to consider carefully whether a gasp of air was less harmful than death by asphyxiation.

My introduction to working on the male medical ward included admitting and treating a prisoner from the local jail. The man was in his early thirties. He was debilitated by a chest infection and chronic diarrhoea, which compounded his severe malnutrition and suppressed immune system. He had the appearance of a skeleton lightly clothed, in part, with a thin layer of dark skin. Pus gushed out of a wound an inch long upon lifting his right forearm, and the crackle of bacterial gas beneath the skin was palpable. The prisoner had sustained the injury by defending himself with a raised arm against the swing of a farmer’s hoe. The wound then shared the usual fate of a breach in the skin’s defence in Africa – it became infected. I helped the patient to lean forward, thus allowing his back to be examined. I was hit instantly by the surge of an insipid wave of ammonia that rose from his urine-soaked clothes. Across his back stretched a thick line of bleeding flesh, perhaps the only clean wound on his body (and probably an indication of the antiseptic quality of urine). His left ankle was a gaping purulent crater. Chronic osteomyelitis had eaten away at both his bony and soft tissues. Elsewhere, his body bore the numberless punctured impressions of human jaws. As time passed his leg wound teemed with hungry maggots that ate at the dead flesh, baring the ruptured tendons and decaying bones of his left foot. The surgeons eventually took over the man’s care. Last I heard, the poor man was accused of keeping himself sick to avoid a return to prison. Who could blame him?

…“The horror! The horror!”…

After my first day at SFH, I wondered to myself how long it would be before I become desensitised to the enormity of my surroundings. Only a week later, it seemed almost normal to see a room of thirty quite young men, cachexic, with sunken eyes, and mouths filled with the white curd of candidiasis.

Initially, I felt that medicine in Zambia was virtually a hopeless enterprise. However, I soon learnt to value the things that could be done. Treating candidiasis to allow a man to swallow with some comfort, or giving analgesia to relieve the bone pain of multiple myeloma are brief examples. While there seems to be a strong palliative component to medicine on the wards, many conditions are curable. There are few occasions in life as rewarding as helping a fitting child to fight off cerebral malaria, bringing a young man back to consciousness with the treatment of life-threatening bacterial meningitis, or hearing a man offer his thanks after the spasms of tetanus have subsided.

At SFH I have experienced the fullest range of human emotion. I have experienced the greatest challenges of my short medical life. I have had my eyes opened to a world I had never before seen. The time I have spent at SFH has been beyond value and will serve me well for the rest of my personal and professional life.

Notes:
(1) “Heart of Darkness” is the classic novella written by Joseph Conrad in 1902. It tells the tale of Marlow as he travels up the Congo river in colonial times. Captain Marlow’s journey leads him to the notorious Kurtz, and to unimaginable horrors that are inconceivable to a civilised mind.

Spiders on drugs

I mentioned the effect of caffeine on the architecture of spider webs in a previous post. The following film shows what happens when you give other drugs to spiders…

Failings of the Kyoto Protocol

"Kyoto, 11 December 1997...
...a legally binding Protocol under which industrialized countries will reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2%...
...Compared to the emissions levels that would be expected by 2010 without emissions-control measures, the Protocol target represents a 30% cut."
- excerpts from a UN press release

There is an excellent commentary in this week’s issue of Nature on the Kyoto Protocol and global climate policy.

I have tried to look at the Kyoto Protocol in a positive light, as an expression of commitment to the battle against climate change. I have hoped that, as with the reductions imposed on CFCs that ultimately led to their eradication and replacement with HFCs, that the Kyoto Protocol would snow-ball into a stronger global commitment and ultimately the development and adoption of new technologies.

However, I admit to having had serious reservations about the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol. In particular I’ve been sceptical of the proposed benefits of relatively modest restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions. I’ve also felt baffled by the expectation that stable carbon pricing will develop globally, and that buying and selling emissions will somehow save the world.

Mind you, it was perversely reassuring that Bush and Howard did NOT sign up to the protocol - my knee-jerk response was “well then, maybe the protocol would work after all!” - such is my confidence in these men as leaders of the “free world”.

Writing in Nature, Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner suggest that the current climate change crisis is too complex to be successfully combated by a simple one-track restricted emissions policy. They argue that adoption of Kyoto Protocol has led to the neglect of other approaches; approaches that are sorely needed as the top-down Kyoto approach shows little cause for optimism.

The development and adoption of adaptive strategies, rather than purely mitigative approaches, looks more promising. I had hoped that this would evolve from the initial global commitment to Kyoto. But Prins and Rayner argue that Kyoto led to a “with us or against us” mentality (we all know how useful that is…) and made cutting CO2 emissions “the only game in town”.

I like their suggestion that the climate crisis needs massive public investment into research and development of sustainable energy technologies “on the scale of the Manhattan Project”. That seems like a better way to spend money than killing Iraqis, Afgans, American and allied soldiers, waging an unwinnable war on drugs, or the countless other money sinks for no-net-gain that Western governments are committed to... given that we show little interest in putting the money into giving the world clean water, food, or freedom from the global burden of disease).

Prins and Rayner quote $US 480 million as the annual budget for military research investment by the United States. That is just sickening.



Photo: Not everything about Kyoto makes sense...

Finally, some relevent links:

RealClimate: How much CO2 emission is too much?

"Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more. In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year."
- Stern Review on the economics of climate change

A Probable Case of Commotio Cordis in Rotorua?

I feel like I may have been temping fate with my recent discussion of precordial thumps and commotio cordis.

This week there was a report from Rotorua, where I lived and worked for 18 months a few years ago, detailing a probable case of commotio cordis resulting from a rugby tackle - fortunately, thanks to early life support measures, the young victim survived.

Pthiris pubis.... Endangered?

Two quick questions:

Will the rampant destruction of natural habitats resulting from the ever-growing popularity of the "Brazillian" lead to the extinction of pubic lice?

Can you donate pubic lice to a museum in the Netherlands?

These questions are being asked here...




Photo: Phthirus pubis (left), nasty looking scrotum (right).

Court Identifies Eleven Inaccuracies in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

This is a link to an anti-liberal news site called "NewsBusters" breaking the news about 11 'inconvenient truths" for Al Gore.

A cut-and-paste from this article lists Al Gore's erroneous claims as the following:

1. The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming.
   The Government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
   
   
2. The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years.
   The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
   
   
3. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming.
   The Government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
   
   
4. The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming.
   The Government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
   
   
5. The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice.
   It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
   
   
6. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age:
   the Claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
   
   
7. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching.
   The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
   
   
8. The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously.
   The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
   
   
9. The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting,
   the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
   


10. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people.
    In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
    


11. The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand.
    The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

I agree that Gore has over-emphasized some of the things he has stated, and has perhaps not fully appreciated the strength of evidence supporting some of his claims. But the above criticisms of Judge Burton are far from the final word. Many of them are "straw man" claims, like error 3 - Gore does not actually say that Hurricaine Katrina was directly caused by global warming. The important message is that storms have been more destructive over the past 30 years and big, bad storms are expected to become even more frequent. (See Huricanes in a Warmer World).

As for error 2, the ice core data requires complex interpretation (largely beyond my meagre capabilities). Nevertheless, this is my understanding: the ice core data suggests that at the end of each ice age there is a period of warming lasting about 5000 years. The warming seems to be initiated by orbital forcing: variations in the earth's orbit called Milankovitch cycles alter the total amount of sunlight reaching the earth, acting as the pacemaker for the ice ages. The increase in sunlight causes ice to recede, thus decreasing the albedo (capacity to reflect light) of the earth. This orbital forcing is thought to account for the first 800 years of the warming cycle. Then CO2 takes over - the inital warming from orbital forcing leads to the release of CO2 from the oceans, which then traps heat by preventing it's escape from the earth's atmosphere. A "positive feedback" effect on the increase in the earth's temperature results as more heat trapping leads to more ice recession and more CO2 release - which drives the rise in temperature for the next 4200 years!

Thus the temperature rise precedes the CO2 rise because CO2 plays an amplifying, rather than an initiating, role in the natural warming cycles that mark the end of ice ages. Numerous other climactic and geophysical factors may act to modulate these effects. However, it is clearly an error to think that because temperature rises do not follow CO2 rises in the ice core record, then CO2 does not contribute to global warming. The ice core data says nothing about cause-and-effect, but does show the correlation between rising temperature and rising CO2 levels.

If your head isn't hurting too much, the whole "CO2 lags not leads" issue is discussed further at: A Few Things Ill Considered and RealClimate.

But wait, there is more...

Look at error 11, which probably relates to an agreement between Tuvalu islanders and the New Zealand Government. There are already 4000 people from Tuvalu living in New Zealand, after they decided to abandon their island due to rising sea levels. About 10,000 people remain on the tiny atolls. In Tuvalu the sea level is rising at greater than 5 mm per year - the highest point in the country is only about 4m.



Photo: Funafuti Atoll, Tuvalu (2004)

And, finally, I've found a defence of Al Gore called "Smearing Al Gore: Here We Go Again ". If I find the time I may look more closely at some of Al Gore's other "inconvenient errors".

The Precordial Thump

A precordial thump is simply a short sharp blow to the front of the chest. Professionals trained in advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) may give a precordial thump at a monitored cardiac arrest if it will not cause a delay in the time until shocks from a defibrillator can be applied. The technique is not very effective, which is why the indication for it's use is now limited to such strict criteria. Technically speaking, the monitor must show ventricular fibrillation (VF) or pulseless ventricular tachycardia (VT) - these are both fatal abnormalities of the heart rhythm if not reverted urgently.

However, when a precordial thump does work, it sure is dramatic. I have had one particular colleague who never tired of telling his Precordial Thump Story - how he ran breathlessly to a patient's bay in CCU after seeing the ominous squiggly line of VF on their monitor... and then... with fist clenched... struck the patient's chest with his Healing Hand. Apparently, and understandably, this action caused an uproar among the family members who were quietly sitting by the bedside.... More than one sceptic has since suggested that perhaps there might just have been an ECG lead loose, resulting in an artefactual trace on the monitor that can closely resemble VF. The important thing, of course, is to quickly check the patient before you do anything drastic. Regardless of what the monitor says, if the patient is smiling at you, they don't need a precordial thump!

So, how do you perform a precordial thump? The blow is given sharply with the flat, bottom end of the fist from a height of 30 cm. The target for contact is the mid-point of the breastbone (or sternum) of the patient's chest. It is only indicated in the first 15 seconds after the arrest, and the likelihood of success rapidly dwindles with time.



As you might expect, it is very difficult to design and perform clinical trials on humans to test the effectiveness of the precordial thump. From case reports and case series, we know that people can revert to normal sinus rhythm from VF/ VT after a precordial thump. But we also know that the chances of that happening are very low, and that defibrillation is much more effective. For instance, one study of 80 patients who developed VF/ VT during electrophysiological studies of the heart or the insertion of a pacemaker showed only a 1% success rate for the precordial thump. Most importantly, there must be no delay in "shocking" the patient, because defibrillation is also much less effective the longer a patient is in VF/ VT. The hackneyed heart attack slogan, "time is muscle", most definitely applies here as well.

The precordial thump sometimes works because the blow generates a low-voltage electric shock that can lead to depolarisation of heart muscle, and flick the heart out of it's abnormal rhythm into a normal one. There is a related technique called "fist-pacing", also of limited efficacy, that can be used to speed up a patients heart rate when they have a life-threatening bradycardia ("brady" means "slow", "tachy" means "fast"). Fist-pacing essentially involves a rhythmic series of repeated precordial thumps, and may be attempted until a pacing device (i.e. pacemaker) is ready for use.

Only trained professionals are advised to perform a precordial thump, but not if the patient has had recent chest trauma or surgery. The main reason lay people are NOT told to give a precordial thump is because of the risk of causing "commotio cordis". This condition occurs in a structurally normal heart when the electrical depolarisation caused by chest trauma causes the heart to jump out of it's normal rhythm into VF/ VT. The condition is fatal unless treated rapidly, or unless the heart, for some reason, miraculously flicks back into normal sinus rhythm (perhaps, from a second blow to the chest!).

The danger of commotio cordis makes it very hard to argue with the sending off of Zinedine Zidane in the final of the last FIFA World Cup. As you can see in the YouTube clip, he gives a very good demonstration of a precordial thump... using his head!



Other links:
Australian Resuscitation Council Guideline 11.3 on Precordial Thump (pdf)
Commotio cordis on Wikipedia

Al Gore Marches On...

Al Gore goes from strength to strength.

I used to think of him as something of a forlorn figure. He seemed to acknowledge this at the start of his "Planetary Emergency" talk at TED, when he introduced himself as the man who "used to be the next President of the United States of America". Having won Oscars for "An Inconvenient Truth", he now shares the Nobel Prize for Peace with the IPCC. Some of his supporters are now calling for him to change his mind and enter the race for the next US presidency. I hope he does - I can't think of anyone more deserving or more suited to be the next US president, nor any American politician who provides a greater contrast with the feeble-minded incumbent, George W. Bush.

Awarding the Nobel Peace prize for work on climate change is clearly a political act. It gives a further boost to those trying to combat this impending global disaster. It is also interesting that the Nobel commitee has decided to recognise efforts aimed at maintaining the prerequisites for peace, rather than "just" efforts to resolve conflicts.

"An Inconvenient Truth" has an important message for the survival of our civilisation. Yet it does have flaws, and clearly some biases. These have been recently recognised by a British High Court judge, Mr Justice Burton, after a parent wanted the film banned from schools. Others, such as the controversial Bjorn Lomborg, question the claim of priority for the climate crisis compared to other problems facing humanity. However, the overall truth of Gore's message withstands criticism, and none of the other threats to humanity (AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, etc.) have quite the same capacity to end civilisation.

Congratulations to Al Gore.



Photo: The streets of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy in 1974.

Other links:
Channel 4's "Al Gore: The Climate Crisis" (2006)
BBC's Q&A on Climate Change
IPCC publications
Tim Flannery's "The Weather Makers"

Did the All Blacks Choke, or did they Panic?

There is a tradition in New Zealand of plunging into a nation-wide depression every four years. This coincides with the failure of the All Blacks, perennially the best rugby side in the world, to deliver the goods at the Rugby World Cup. Yesterday the usually all-powerful and utterly dominant All Blacks suffered yet another improbable defeat at the hands of the French. Despite a 13-0 lead at half-time, the All Blacks crumbled under pressure and lost 20-18. The French hardly touched the ball in the last 10 minutes, but the closer the All Blacks came to scoring, the more mistakes they made.

So, did the All Blacks choke or panic? Malcolm Gladwell's article on "The Art of Failure" distinguishes the two phenomena in a highly readable and entertaining fashion. I think the All Blacks may have suffered from the "stereotype threat" - having faltered in the knock out stages so many times previously they were stereotyped to do so again, by the public and themselves. This made them too self-conscious when the heat was on, and instead of "just doing it" they felt like they had to be careful, so as not to "blow it" (again)...

The world's media seem to agree, having labelled the All Blacks the world's greatest chokers. Ironically, and unfortunately, the label itself seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. In order to get better at handling pressure, one must try to mimic pressure situations in training. But how do you mimic the pressure of the World Cup?

Finally, before we pass judgement on the All Blacks, we should consider the following quote from Gladwell's article (originally in the context of student test performances):

"We have to learn that sometimes a poor performance reflects not the innate ability of the performer but the complexion of the audience; and that sometimes a poor test score is the sign not of a poor student but of a good one."

Kia kaha, All Blacks!

Other links:
WHY DO WE "CHOKE" UNDER PRESSURE?

Homeopathy, Science, and James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge

I've just stumbled across a documentary called "Homeopathy - The Test" that I originally saw a few years ago. It tests the scientific validity of homeopathy. It makes fantastic viewing for many reasons. Firstly, it exams the claims of, and possible explanations for, the effectiveness of homeopathy. It takes scientific reports for the effectiveness of homeopathy seriously, and then puts them to the test. The film provides an excellent introduction to the "double-blind randomised controlled trial". This study design is the "gold standard" because it removes confounding factors and accounts for the placebo effect. Brilliant arch-skeptic and debunker James Randi plays a key role in the story; his presence adds colour and a sense of fun combined with the enjoyment of finding things out - he also puts his money (one million dollars) where his mouth is.

This documentary shows why proving the effectiveness of therapeutic medicines is both elusive and difficult, and how even respected scientists can be fooled by their own flawed experimental designs. The commitment to such rigorous testing is critical to modern medicine, and distinguishes it from quackeries such as homepathy and other untested or unproven alternative medicines.





Visit Stage6 to see the "Homeopathy - The Test" in divx format. The photo is of James Randi at TED.

The documentary has been criticised for "going easy" on homeopathy and for the way it builds suspense. Ultimately, we need to remember it is just a TV programme - an entertaining starting point for further study.

"Another victory for Che Guevara"

You have to love the recent propaganda coming from the Cuban Communists. Much is being made of the fact that Cuban doctors are restoring eyesight to Mario Teran. Forty years ago he was the Bolivian soldier who drew the shortest straw to see who would have to perform the grisly job of executing Che Guevara.

As reported by the BBC, the Cuban Communists, through their newspaper Granma, have claimed another victory:

"Four decades after Mario Teran attempted to destroy a dream and an idea, Che returns to win yet another battle"...

Che was a complex character, a medical doctor willing to kill for an idea. His memory makes him a powerful symbol and propangada tool. He is an incongruous chimera of angel and demon.

Some relevant, and suitably contradictory, quotations (from various sources):

"To be willing to die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture." - Anatole France

"To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!" - H. L. Mencken

"It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die." - Steve Biko

"1984" in Burma

A friend of mine has recently returned to the UK from Burma, where she was working with MSF. Her depiction of the police state in Burma is chilling. There is a vicious irony in that Burma has turned into the modern day archetype of the "Big Brother" nightmare that George Orwell warned us of in "1984". As pointed out in a review of "Finding George Orwell in Burma" by Emma Larkin, one suspects the Burmese military junta of plagiarising "1984" with their 1989 government statement that “truth is true only within a certain period of time. What was truth once may no longer be truth….”. George Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police in Burma as a teenager in 1922. His time there was the basis of his book "Burmese Days", and helped form his later ideas about totalitarian states.

Recent events in Burma have been distressing, particularly now that there has been indiscriminate cruelty to the pacifistic monks. I have heard that hopes have been awakened amongst the Burmese after the recent public demonstrations and I truly hope that, with the help of the international community, one day in the future we will all look back upon recent events as the begining of the end for their monstrous regime.

I know where I'd want to commit to an international intervention, and it wouldn't be Iraq. Unfortunately, there is no oil in Burma.

Other links:

Amnesty International - Myanmar profile

BBC Burma Protests FAQ

BurmaNet News

Words from Burton

Quotations from various sources that have been attributed to Sir Richard Francis Burton:

"All Faith is false, all Faith is true:
Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes
His little bit the whole to own."

"Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
From none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies
Who makes and keeps his self-made laws."

"Friends of my youth, a last adieu!
Haply some day we meet again;
Yet ne'er the self-same men shall meet;
The years shall make us other men."

"Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail;
Enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink,
But is the dance less full of fun? "

"One death to a man is a serious thing: a dozen neutralize one another."

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."

"Support a compatriot against a native, however the former may blunder or plunder."

"The dearest ambition of a slave is not liberty but to have a slave of his own."

"Broke is a temporary condition, poor is a state of mind."

"I was surrounded at the time by about a dozen of the enemy, whose clubs rattled upon me without mercy, and the strokes of my sabre were rendered uncertain by the energetic pushes of an attendant who thus hoped to save me. The blade was raised to cut him down: he cried out in dismay, and at that moment a Somali stepped forward, threw his spear so as to pierce my face, and retired before he could be punished."

"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
- Thomas Jefferson