Pollyanna post holidays

Pollyanna has survived the holiday season and welcomes all to the normal world, such as it is in our place.  

There are some things to be glad about this week.  Last week, Titan had the privilege of welcoming Gilad Shalit home and we wish to join in the good wishes.

As you can see from the image Pollyanna is in nursery school mode and will introduce you to some really tiny moons of Saturn. These are moons that orbit inside the main ring system and were first discovered by the gravitational effects that they have in the surrounding ring matter.  They orbit inside gaps in the rings, Pan in the large Encke gap and Daphnis in the narrow Keeler gap.   We start with Daphnis (S/2005 S1)

 

Source Credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute Range about 853,000 km

 Note the wavelets casting shadows on the ring.  This blows Pollyanna's mind and she enjoys sharing it with you.  

Stats for Daphnis:  

Size: Roughly 7 kilometers

Orbital radius: 136,500 kilometers - 2.26 Saturn radii - within the Keeler gap in the A ring

Orbital period: 0.594 days - about 1/27 of Titan’s

Discovery: 2005 by C. Porco et al

PAN (S/1981 S13)

The Encke Gap Moon 

+ Play Quicktime (2Mb)
Saturn's small, walnut-shaped moon, Pan, embedded in the planet’s rings, coasts along in this movie clip from the Cassini spacecraft.

Stats:

Size: Roughly 20 kilometers

Orbital radius: 133,583 kilometers - 2.22 Saturn radii - within the Encke gap in the A ring

Orbital period: 0.575 days - about 1/28 of Titan’s

Discovery: 1990 by Mark R. Showalter

In mythology Pan is the shepherd god who played on the pipes and Daphnis is a young man who is beloved by Pan and many others.  Homosexuality was a norm among the ancient Greeks and thus was a practice of the gods as well.

Pan and Daphnis

For those who prefer a straight version there is also the legend of Daphnis and Chloe.  Take your choice.

Daphnis and Chloe

Pollyanna  would like to share a beautiful picture of the rings of Saturn serving as a sundial of the seasons. This was a NASA picture of the day some time ago.

Saturn: Shadows of a Seasonal Sundial
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Saturn's rings form one of the larger sundials known. This sundial, however, determines only the season of Saturn, not the time of day. In 2009, during Saturn's last equinox, Saturn's thin rings threw almost no shadows onto Saturn, since the ring plane pointed directly toward the Sun. As Saturn continued in its orbit around the Sun, however, the ring shadows become increasingly wider and cast further south. These shadows are not easily visible from the Earth because from our vantage point near the Sun, the rings always block the shadows. The above image was taken in August by the robotic Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. The rings themselves appear as a vertical bar on the image right. The Sun, far to the upper right, shines through the rings and casts captivatingly complex shadows on south Saturn, on the image left. 

GOODIES OF THE WEEK

Pollyanna has several things to be glad about this week.  She is glad over the progress made in developing a  vaccine for malaria and has high hopes that this scourge can soon be eliminated.  She is also pleased that the silly talk on risk of brain cancer from cell phone use has been laid to rest, as our colleague Bob Park  has been shouting about for years.  She believes that the danger to the brain from cell phones is from the content of the typical cell phone conversation.  We reached this conclusion from riding trains between Natanya and Tel Aviv and being a captive audience to the cell phone talk around us.  In Germany, there are cell phone cars and quiet cars on trains and we think that it would be an excellent idea to adopt something like that here.

VLA NEEDS A NEW NAME

Pollyanna is also very glad the the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico has undergone major upgrades and is ready to probe even deeper into the mysteries of the universe.  Click for details and participate in the naming of the new complex. 

RELEASE OF PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE IN MYANMAR

Pollyanna, Titan and YandA are all pleased to hear of the release of three Prisoners of Conscience in Myanmar.   We join Amnesty International in calling for continuation of the releases and amnesties of political prisoners and congratulate Zarganar, Su Su Nway and Zaw Htet Ko Ko on their freedom.  Human rights activists have campaigned for the people arrested after the great cyclone and the "Saffron Revolution" for years and we all  hope to see more positive results.

CONGRATULATIONS JULIAN BARNES  

Pollyanna is delighted that one of her favorite writers, Julian Barnes has been awarded the   Booker prize for 2011 for his novel The Sense of an Ending.  We have read many of his books over the years and think not only that the Booker was overdue, but that some thought should be given to the Nobel.

Write stuff: Julian Barnes has won this year's Booker Prize with The Sense of an Ending, with judges taking just 31 minutes to make their decision

SCIENCE AND REASON

One thing that Pollyanna is not glad about is the absence of rational thinking from public discourse.  In fact, there is far too much fantasy and superstition masquerading as belief and religion floating around and the degree of ignorance caused by the failure of education systems is appalling.  The rejection of science as a means of evaluating phenomena is used by unscrupulous politicians and corporations as a way of justifying just about anything.  We now have  definite proof of climate change, ironically from a study funded by the Koch brothers, the oil tycoons.  The study was conducted by Richard Muller, a respected physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who used to dismiss alarmist climate research as being “polluted by political and activist frenzy.” Frustrated at what he considered shoddy science, Muller launched his own comprehensive study to set the record straight. Instead, the record set him straight. We also have  unequivocal confimation of the predictions and analysis of evolution in biological systems.  Yet the right wingers prefer to have people believe in the Biblical narrative.  Too much thinking is bad for you, right?

It is not confined to Christian fundamentalists.  I recently received an email from a respected member of my Reform congregation with a story of how Rabbi Gamliel in the 2nd century knew the exact period of the Moon.  How did he know this?  First because Jews are smarter than anyone else and second the wisdom was handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai along with the rest of the Torah and all human knowledge.  This from a woman who drives a car and knows how to manage her bank account, presumably!  I referred her to Babylonian and Greek astronomy and  in particular to  Thales of Miletus who correctly predicted the year of a solar eclipse that took place on May 28, 585 BCE and thus saved the town from panic.  He formulated the mantra of modern science that every phenomenon in nature has a natural cause.  The Chinese and Koreans were doing similar calculations and studies centuries before Rabbi Gamliel without even hearing that Moses had gone up a mountain.

Pollyanna apologizes for ranting and sounding like her brother Titan, but sometimes even she can lose her cool.  She definitely loses it when it comes to the rights of women and girls and their abuse by established power.  She refers you to a blog describing a UN Report on abuse of women and girls..  Read it and fume!  She is also upset  about what happens to  women in Norway , where 10%  experience rape and spousal rape is not a crime.  For the record, the Talmud forbade spousal rape 2000 years ago.  The punishment was 40 lashes.  Women are not property.

Pollyanna, Titan and YandA all plan on attending the social protest rally in Tel Aviv Saturday night.  This rally is of extreme importance.  The social protest that began this summer must not be allowed to fade away. Let Gideon Levy lay it right on the line.

We are sorry to hear that Andy Rooney is in serious condition at a hospital.  “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” wrapped up the 60 Minutes news magazine for decades and his comments were always interesting and to the point.  He retired from the show recently and will be missed sorely.  We wish him a full and speedy recovery  Fortunately, a replacement is being offered,   Gene Weingarten is applying for the job.  I wonder if Gene, a lad of 60,  is not too young for this--you need a grumpy crotchety old man, such as myself.  Pollyanna agrees, impudent little twerp that she is.

Pollyanna is certainly not glad that the Javan rhinoceros has been hunted to extinction  in Vietnam because of the ridiculous demand for rhino horn based on quack medical superstition.  This kind of poaching is connected to the extreme levels of poverty in the Third World.

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Okay, says Pollyanna, let us get on to more fun things.  Speculations about the original language spoken by humans have long dealt with the question of how our ancestors formulated their thoughts.  Now it appears that they spoke more or less like Yoda, the little Jedi in Star Wars who had a unique style and word order in his speech. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Merritt Ruhlen and Murray Gell-Mann, co-directors of the Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages, argue that the original language used Subject Object Verb ordering ("I you like") instead of the Subject Verb Object order we use in English.

SPEEDING NEUTRINOS REDUX

We reported in the past of the finding that neutrinos had been caught exceeding the speed of light which is a big no-no in physics.  It is nice to report that the experiment is to be repeated  in light of the speeding tickets issued by many eminent physicists.

Recently a famous American jazz harpist Park Stickney visited Israel for the Jaffa Harp Festival organized by our friend the famous Israeli  harpist  Sunita Staneslow.  She and her spouse Fred Schlomka arranged a visit for him to the West Bank where he had a  workshop with music students at the Salem village Music Center near Nablus.   Pollyanna is glad and thinks this was really cool.

Workshop in Salem Music Center

The work of Leonardo Da Vinci has long captivated Pollyanna and most of us--he was a genius of incredible ability.  We hope to see an exhibit of his work in San Francisco in December including the analysis of the Mona Lisa.

Images of the Mona Lisa reveal hidden details in infrared and visible light.
CREDIT: PRNewsFoto/RYP Australia.

View full size image

It may be that a painting of his was  sold for a piddling sum because of lack of proper attribution, but the matter is still under debate.

A recreation of what La Bella Principessa would have looked like as a page in the Sforziad.
CREDIT: Martin Kemp, Pascal Cotte and Lumiere Technologies

View full size image

A few years ago I saw an exhibit of his "failed" works in Atlanta.  I suspect that many active artists would be quite happy to have such failures in their portfolio.

Our  book review for this week  is of the book Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives, by Dean Buonomano.  This  review also contains an NPR interview with the author which is worthy of your time.

Let us wind up with some comments from XKCD for those of us who own or are owned by smartphones,

and some quotes from  famous authors by Andy Borowitz.

Pollyanna joins world Blog Action Day re Food

This week Pollyanna

Pollyanna goes shopping for food

is taking part in Blog Action Day which is why we are out on Sunday 16.10 instead of our usual Friday.  She still, however, wants to share the Succot holiday,

 
Saturn and its moons and a bit of humor with you as well.

As you all know, Pollyanna undertakes to introduce you to the family of moons of Saturn, since her brother, Titan, is only interested in showing himself in his blog.  Here is an example that shows that the Solar System was created with some humor in mind.  Hyperion is a small moon. It has an irregular shape and surface appearance, chaotically rotates, and tumbles along its orbit.   The shape is irregular because its self-gravity is insufficient  to crush its materials together and eliminate gaps in its interior. Its strange, spongy texture, its dark-floored craters, and its landslide morphology are very difficult to explain.

Crescent Hyperion Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI / mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla

It orbits outside of Titan in a 4:3 resonance, i.e. it completes a revolution around  Saturn four times in the time that Titan does the same three times. Whenever Titan comes by it gives Hyperion a gravitational shove and changes its rotation axis, which causes it to tumble.  Pollyanna and I think this is cool. 
Stats:
Size: Irregular, 410 x 260 x 220 kilometers - 8th largest moon of Saturn
Orbital radius: 1,464,100 kilometers - 24.3 Saturn radii
Orbital period: 21.3 days - 4/3 of Titan’s
Discovery: 1848 by George Phillips Bond and William Lassell
In Greek mythology, HYPERION was the Titan god of light, one of the sons of Ouranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), and the father of the lights of heaven--Eos the Dawn, Helios the Sun, and Selene the Moon. His wife was Theia, lady of the aither--the shining blue of the sky. Hyperion's name means "watcher from above" or "he who goes above" from the Greek words hyper and iôn.

NOW ON TO OUR TOPIC, FOOD
FOOD is something that we well-fed people in industrialized countries who happen to be reasonably well-off take for granted, in fact consume too much of and then worry about our weight.  Obesity is a First World epidemic whereas in the Third World acute food shortages are the order of the day.  Indeed, even Pollyanna,who tries to find something to be glad about everywhere, says that something must be drastically wrong. In every industrialized country of course you can poison yourself very effectively by patronizing fast food restaurants.  Andy Borowitz tells us how fast fast food can really get.
This is really fast food. 

Jokes.com
Andy Borowitz - Faster Food
comedians.comedycentral.com
Jokes Joke of the Day Funny Jokes

 FAMINE
Let us start with Somalia.  The famine there is something unbelievable, but alas it is very real.  I cannot begin to describe it, but  Save the Children UK has posted some blogs and we are linking you to one of them  in the hope of conveying some idea of the immensity of the humanitarian disaster.

A starving child in Somalia.  Credit New York Times

Image from http://newsone.com/world/associatedpress2/somalia-famine/

The efforts made by the world community are to a large extent being thwarted by the Islamist militias that control large parts of the country.  How can one reconcile religious belief with the infliction of starvation on innocent people?   In the US, Republicans  are holding up aid and to our great shame, Israel is refusing asylum to refugees from Somalia in defiance of UN guidelines.  I cannot avoid thinking of people in Madrid in 1943 objecting to Jews infiltrating into Spain through the Pyrenees.   Collective memory can be very short.

I have no idea what the Quran has to say about starving people, but in synagogue on Yom Kippur, just last week, we read the words of a prophet (Deutero-Isaiah, Is. 58,6-7) who told us what God really expects from people who fast for forgiveness of sins:
הֲלוֹא זֶה, צוֹם אֶבְחָרֵהוּ--פַּתֵּחַ חַרְצֻבּוֹת רֶשַׁע, הַתֵּר אֲגֻדּוֹת מוֹטָה; וְשַׁלַּח רְצוּצִים חָפְשִׁים, וְכָל-מוֹטָה תְּנַתֵּקוּ.  ז הֲלוֹא פָרֹס לָרָעֵב לַחְמֶךָ, וַעֲנִיִּים מְרוּדִים תָּבִיא בָיִת:  כִּי-תִרְאֶה עָרֹם וְכִסִּיתוֹ, וּמִבְּשָׂרְךָ לֹא תִתְעַלָּם.
For the Hebrew-challenged:
6 Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
 Note the coupling of human rights to freedom and justice in verse 6 to the economic human rights in verse 7.  If I were a Hindu believer I would strongly suspect the soul of the author of the above to have been reincarnated as  Peter Benenson

Peter Benensen credit AI Canada

who founded Amnesty International in 1961, just fifty years ago.

FOOD AND POPULATION
Another issue linked to food is the projected inability of the planet to support our ever increasing population.  This was understood by Thomas Malthus in the late 18th century, but the paying of the bill has been staved off repeatedly by advances in agricultural technology.  Eventually, the bill will have to be paid.  We are told that the most ecologically responsible thing is to start  eating insects

not exactly an appetizing prospect.  Nonetheless, the question of availability of sufficient food supplies is inextricably linked with the need to reduce population growth. This in turn brings progressive looking people, who want to confront this looming danger, into conflict with almost all religious establishments all over the world.  The Abrahamic religions all hew to the line of "be fruitful and multiply" although therein lies the danger of the ultimate demise of life on this planet.  Public opinion is, alas, very poorly informed on these issues but the blogosphere can make noise where the corporate media chose to remain silent.

FOOD AS A WEAPON
We see countless examples of food being used as a weapon in addition to the dire example of Somalia mentioned above.  We saw how it was used in the civil war in Sudan and to maintain control of the population in Zimbabwe, to mention a few examples.  There will be a meeting of the leaders of the rich countries in November.  Please  raise your voice to call upon them to put an end to the  most obscene f-word of all, FAMINE.

FOOD SCIENCE
Pollyanna likes to include matters of science in her biweekly blog. This week she is referring you to a source of information about food science where you can see where the struggle to keep us going is taking place. These efforts are admirable but cannot be expected to replace population control in the long term as a means of maintaining our viability as a species.

Pollyanna does not want this post to be all doom and gloom so she is sharing a discussion from XKCD of the expiry date of yogurt.

Pollyanna says Shana Tova and Best Wishes

Pollyanna

 took Rosh Hashana off and is thus a day late. 

She wishes all a Shana Tova and a G'mar Chatima Tova that is roughly translatable as "may you be inscribed for good in the Book of Life."  Pollyanna is not extremely religious, but we did go to synagogue these last few days and will go on Yom Kippur that is coming up in a week.  It does no harm to take a moment and think about our lives, our actions and as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy put it, Life, the Universe and Everything.   If religion helps people be better and more moral, enhances social justice and contributes to peace and well being, we are all for it.  Alas, historically, it has often done the opposite.  We refer you to some insight on the God/god question from  Wes Nisker in the Huffington Post.  It smacks of satire, but there is some substance as well.
A FAMILY OF MOONS
This week we look at Tethys, the satellite of Saturn, and its coorbitals Telesto and Calypso.

Meet Tethys battered and bruised, credit Cassini Imaging Team

                                                                          
 Like Mimas, Tethys has an enormous impact crater on one side, named Odysseus. But Odysseus is a very different crater from Herschel (the big crater on Mimas). While Herschel has very steep scarps, the floor of Odysseus is quite smooth in its topographic profile; the surface of Tethys has "relaxed" so that the crater floor follows the shape of the moon. All of the features on Tethys draw their names from Homer's Odyssey. Curling across Tethys' surface is a gigantic canyon system called Ithaca Chasma. Views of Ithaca Chasma during a close flyby by Cassini show that it has been battered with impact craters, indicating that it is extremely old.
Size: 1,072 x 1,056 x 1,052 kilometers - 5th largest moon of Saturn
Orbital radius: 294,660 kilometers - 4.88 Saturn radii
Orbital period: 1.888 days - about 1/8 of Titan’s
Discovery: 1684 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini
It shares its orbit with Telesto which is a tiny moon that orbits in Tethys' leading  Lagrange point  (L4). That is, Telesto orbits Saturn on the same circular path that Tethys does, but ahead of Tethys, and the centers of   Tethys, Saturn, and Telesto form an equilateral triangle.    

Saturn's moon Telesto
This raw image was captured by Cassini during its closest planned encounter with Telesto, on October 11, 2005. Credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

Size: Irregular, 34 x 28 x 36 kilometers
Orbital radius: 294,660 kilometers - 4.89 Saturn radii - within the E ring - at Tethys’ leading Lagrange point (L4) - co-orbital with Tethys and Calypso
Orbital period: 1.8878 days - about 1/8 of Titan’s
Discovery: 1980 by Brad Smith, Harold Reitsema, Stephen Larson, John Fountain                                           

Tethys also has a follower, Calypso a tiny moon that orbits in Tethys' trailing Lagrange point (L5). That is, Calypso orbits Saturn on the same circular path that Tethys does, but behind Tethys, and the centers of Tethys, Saturn, and Calypso form an equilateral triangle.  
Size: Irregular, 34 x 22 x 22 kilometers 
Orbital radius: 294,660 kilometers - 4.89 Saturn radii - within the E ring - at Tethys’ leading Lagrange point (L4) - co-orbital with Tethys and Telesto 
Orbital period: 1.8878 days - about 1/8 of Titan’s 
Discovery: 1980 by Dan Pascu, P. Seidelmann, William Baum, D. Currie

Saturn's moon Calypso
This is the best view that Cassini will likely ever produce of Calypso. It was captured on September 23, 2005 from a distance of 101,000 kilometers. It is shown here magnified by a factor of three. Source: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

In mythology TETHYS was the Titan goddess of the sources of  fresh water which nourished the earth. She was the wife of Okeanos, the earth-encircling, fresh-water stream, and the mother of the Potamoi (Rivers), Okeanides (Springs, Streams and  Fountains) and Nephelai (Clouds). Tethys was imagined feeding her children's streams by drawing water from Okeanos through subterranean aquifers. Her name was derived from the Greek word têthê, "the nurse" or "grandmother."  TELESTO was one of the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys  while CALYPSO was a nymph, who lived on the island of Ogygia, where she detained Odysseus for a number of years.   She is generally said to be the daughter of the Titan Atlas.                            
SAVE THE AMAZON
Usually Pollyanna does not get into politics etc. which she leaves to her ranting brother Titan.  She does, however, have strong feelings about ecological issues and would like to ask you to help stop the paving of a highway in the Amazon regions of Bolivia.  Avaaz asks you to sign the petition and Pollyanna supports it.

WOMEN'S RIGHTS She goes orbital about abuse of women, such as seen in  Saudi Arabia that has long been a country about which she has never been glad.  It is therefore good news that women there have been given the right to vote for the first time in history.   It would be even nicer if they could drive to the polls.                                                                                                                  
CERVICAL CANCER
Pollyanna is very glad about advances in the early detection and treatment of cervical cancer that are saving lives, especially in Thailand.   Thanks to Yosefa for pointing this story out to us.  This killer disease can be fought if efforts are made.

Anuree Talasart, a nurse provider in Roi Et Province, Thailand, teaches a group of women about the female reproductive system. Credit New York Times

Pollyanna also says cheers for the people at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem who have come up with a cheap and effective way of fighting deadly mosquitoes by means of poison nectars that can be placed as bait and serve to eliminate them. This is a major contribution to the fight against malaria.
“You can’t move flowering trees around,” said Yosef Schlein, a parasitologist at the university’s medical school. “So you have to use movable bait. That’s how we came up with fruit juice.”  Supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Schlein and his research partner Günter C. Müller concocted an array of nectar poisons known as Attractive Toxic Sugar Baits that are easy to make, environmentally friendly and inexpensive.

MALARIA VECTOR Anopheles sergenti sips the nectar of the Nile tamarisk. Credit Josef Shlein

                                                                                    
TOO FAST NEUTRINOS
Pollyanna was quite concerned about the report of neutrinos making the trip from CERN to the OPERA detector in the Gran Sasso Laboratory faster than light. The group reports that the travel time of the ultrarelativistic neutrinos is about 60 ns less than expected as described last week by Titan.. 
We are grateful to Bob Park in his What's New blog for pointing us at the paper by  Cohen and Glashow that shows that the neutrinos could not have done what was attributed to them because of Cherenkov energy loss via electron-positron pair production.  Physics can relax and go on.

DINOSAUR FEATHERS
We think it is cool that very ancient  feathers have been found from 79 million years ago that offer an unusually wide-ranging view of what late dinosaurs and early birds were wearing.

A cluster of small barbs (shown), which once branched off a main feather upright, show remains of pigment but not interlocking hooks. The barbs might have come from the ends of the outermost layer of body feathers. Science/AAAS

SCIENCE NEWS TIDBITS
Here are a few goodies from  Science News magazine.  I recommend subscribing to it.  You get the latest gossip of what is going on in science around the world, especially from fields outside your own.   You  will probably find this article interesting as well.

OUR BOOK REVIEW
This weeks book review is of Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science by Jim al-Khalili reviewed  in the Guardian by Tim Bradford..

llustration by Clifford Harper/agraphia.co.uk

 It deals with a period of total intellectual darkness in Europe.  During these times the  Muslim world had discovered the works of the Greeks and Byzantines and was busy expanding upon them.  Of course, Jews and Christians in these countries participated, vid. Maimonides and many others.  If the subject interests you, you can sign up for a Webinar involving the author.  Registration is required.From the blurb of the Webinar.

We learn at school that Newton is the father of modern optics, Copernicus heralded the birth of astronomy, and Snell deduced the law of refraction. But what debt do these men owe to the physicists and astronomers of the medieval Islamic Empire? What about Ibn al-Haytham, the greatest physicist in the 2000-year span between Archimedes and Newton, whose Book of Optics was just as influential as Newton’s seven centuries later? Or Ibn Sahl, who came up with the correct law of refraction many centuries before Snell? What of the astronomers al-Tusi and Ibn al-Shatir, without whom Copernicus would not have been able to formulate his heliocentric model of the solar system? In this lecture, Jim Al-Khalili recounts the stories of these characters and more from his new book Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science.

From the review we have a quote from an 11th century Persian polymath  Al-Biruni, who measured the height of a mountain and the angle of dip of the horizon to calculate the circumference of the planet  to within an accuracy of 1%.   He warned that the extremist "would stamp the sciences as atheistic and would proclaim that they led people astray, in order to make ignoramuses of them, and to hate the sciences. For this will help him conceal his own ignorance, and to open the door to the complete destruction of the sciences and the scientists." He might have been talking about the mullahs of modern Tehran, or the ranters of the US religious right.

BRAIN SURGEONS VS ROCKET SCIENTISTS
Since Titan, Pollyanna and I belong to the rocket science community, we keep a close watch on what our competitors the brain surgeons are up to.  Before giving you the Andy Borowitz take on this, let us tell you a true story from San Francisco passed on to us by Ray Goldstein and his spouse Jane. They were on their way to have dinner with us in SFO but were held up by a police cordon protecting the King of Jordan.  While waiting, they got into a conversation with a policeman who, when hearing that they were in town for the American Geophysical Union meeting, told them the following tale:  In the pre-computer era when they would scoop up the comatose drunks off the street, they had to fill out a form which included the occupation of the scoopee.  Since these characters were beyond speech and the police were required to complete the booking form, they would write in either rocket scientist or brain surgeon.   With that in mind, we pass on to you the latest communique.