"Tono-Bungay"...the feel good elixir

Snake oil products have been around a long time, are still here, and probably will never go away. Why? Well, there is money in the marketing of such items that claim cures and "feel good" experiences. I guess it's all in the mind. H. G. Wells wrote about such a product--"Tono-Bungay"...the fake product that opened an avenue to riches and finally a downfall.

Wikipedia...

Tono-Bungay..."is narrated by George Ponderevo, a science student who is drafted in to help with the promotion of Tono-Bungay, a harmful stimulant disguised as a miraculous cure-all, the creation of his ambitious uncle Edward. The quack remedy Tono-Bungay seems to have been based upon the patent medicines Carter's Little Liver Pills and Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People, marketed by John Morgan Richards. As the tonic prospers, George experiences a swift rise in social status, elevating him to riches and opportunities that he had never imagined, nor indeed desired.

The novel displays Edward's social climbing satirically, and also George's discomfort at rising in social class. The hero's personal life is also narrated with unusual frankness for an Edwardian novel, from his unsuccessful marriage to Marion, to his affair with the liberated Effie to his doomed relationship with the Hon. Beatrice Normandy, whom he had known since childhood.

True to its name ("Ton o' Bunk, Eh?"), the Tono-Bungay empire eventually over-extends itself and then collapses. George tries to prop up his uncle's finances by stealing the radioactive compound quap from an island near Africa, but the expedition is unsuccessful. He helps his uncle escape from England in the aeroplane that he has invented, but Edward dies in France of fever. The novel ends with George finding a new occupation: designing battleships for the highest bidder.

"Uncle Ponderevo" is shown as an ingenious promoter, constantly finding new ideas for promoting Tono-Bungay and new conditions that he claims it will cure. "'George, whad'yer think of T.B. for sea-sickness?... No harm trying, George. We can but try.... It 'ud give 'em confidence, George.'" Wells shows us Ponderevo's sketch for an advertisement which claims that Tono-Bungay can fight influenza by "acting as a sort of Worcester Sauce for the phagocyte, [giving] it an appetite, [and making] it a perfect wolf for the Influenza Bacillus.""

Text...Project Gutenberg

Radio dramatization by the NBC University Theater [March 5th, 1950]

Deceased--Alenush Terian

Alenush Terian
November 9th, 1920 to March 4th, 2011

On her 90th birthday...

November 20th, 2010

Azad-Hye

The 90th birth anniversary of the first Iranian female astronomer and physics professor, Alenush Terian, was celebrated at the Ararat Club in Tehran.

The ceremony was attended by some Iranian MPs and over 100 Armenian people to pay tribute to Iranian mother of astrology and the establisher of the solar observatory of the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Tehran.

At the ceremony, the Tehran MP Hassan Ghafurifard made a short speech about his acquaintance with Terian who was his professor at the university. He said that he had visited her at the elderly house once. She used to say she had a son called sun and a daughter called moon, he said.

The representative of northern Tehran Armenians in the Majlis (Iranian Islamic Consultative Assembly) Vartan Vartanian called Terian as one of the luminaries which Iranian Armenians are proud of her. “The presence of luminaries like Terian is a witness to Armenian relationship with Iranians throughout history,” he added.

The message of the Primate of Tehran Armenians Archbishop Sabouh Sarkisian on the occasion of Terian’s birth anniversary was read out at the ceremony.

Born in an Armenian family in 1920 in Tehran, Alenush Terian graduated in 1947 from the Science Department in the University of Tehran and began her career in physics in the same university and was elected as the chief of laboratory operations in the same year.

She graduated in 1956 in atmospheric physics from Sorbonne University. She returned back to Iran and became an assistant professor in thermodynamics physics at the University of Tehran.

She was granted a four months solar physics scholarship by the German government, following which she became the first female professor of physics in Iran in 1964.

In 1966 she became member of the geophysics committee in the University of Tehran and in 1969 finally was elected as the chief of the solar physics studies in that university and began to work in the solar observatory which she was one of its founders. She was retired on 1979.

Deceased--James Ludlow Elliot

James Ludlow Elliot
June 19th, 1943 to March 3rd, 2011

"James Elliot, 67; eminent astronomer helped students discover their potential"

by

Emma Stickgold

March 7th, 2011

The Boston Globe

Back when Pluto was a planet, and Saturn was considered unique for its rings, James Ludlow Elliot could be found peering through powerful telescopes and collecting data that helped make him one of the greats among modern observational planetary astronomers.

Aboard an airborne observatory in 1977, Dr. Elliot was part of the team that discovered that Uranus has rings. In 1988, he flew to a remote section of the Pacific Ocean to observe a celestial phenomenon known as occultation and discovered evidence that Pluto has an atmosphere.

And as director of MIT’s Wallace Astrophysical Observatory, he was an inspiration to many students, encouraging women in particular to pursue a field long dominated by men.

Dr. Elliot, a professor of planetary astronomy and physics at MIT, died Thursday at his home in Wellesley of complications of cancer. He was 67.

Dr. Elliot kept a white index card in his pocket and carried his favorite blue mechanical pencil with him so he could mark down notes to help keep his research on track.

“He was an observant person — very observant, very interested in the world around him, interested in how things works,’’ said his daughter Lyn of State College, Pa. “He was a very curious person, always interested in seeing things from many different sides, someone who was good at seeing multiple perspectives of a situation.’’

One of the top experts in his field, he was adept at explaining complex and often technical subjects in terms his audience could understand, said his daughter, who recalled many hours the two spent poring over her physics homework in high school.

“He was very generous with his time,’’ she said.

Longtime colleague Amanda Bosh said she left a note on the door of his MIT office when she was a student, asking to meet with him so she could discuss her interest in his field.

She received a quick response.

“He had a real special ability of recognizing and nurturing enthusiasm,’’ she said.

She took one of his signature courses on observational astronomy and later worked with him on several projects.

Dr. Elliot had a knack for helping students understand how to analyze their data, she said.

“I was in awe of all the things he could do,’’ she said.

Bosh recalled him speaking about the privilege it was to be an astronomer and the responsibility it carried.

Astronomy had no direct impact on people’s lives, he said, yet “we get grant money to pay for it — taxpayers help us to pay for it — so we had a real responsibility to learn new things and pass that on as well,’’ she said.

Heidi Hammel said she was the only undergraduate student in the first course Dr. Elliot taught at MIT, observational astronomy. She had signed up for it as an elective.

She considered dropping the course, but he encouraged her to stay, and she went on to become a renowned astronomer.

“He made you part of his team, working shoulder-to-shoulder, and he invested in us this trust,’’ she said.

At a time when not many women were enrolled at MIT, she said, “Jim would always say, ‘You can do this,’ ’’ Hammel said. “I didn’t get that from a lot of my other professors, I’ll tell you.’’

Dr. Elliot was born in Columbus, Ohio, and earned a bachelor’s in 1965 from MIT. He earned a doctorate in astronomy from Harvard University in 1972 and joined Cornell’s faculty in 1977. While at Harvard, Dr. Elliot met his wife, Elaine, a Tufts graduate student who was working at a Harvard office, his daughter said.

In 1977, aboard the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, he and his team used telescopic equipment to observe Uranus as it crossed in front of a star. They watched the pattern of the planet passing across the star, dimming its brightness, and observed symmetric dips that were the result of rings encompassing the planet.

Dr. Elliot was awarded a NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, according to an obituary posted on the MIT website.

He returned to MIT in 1978, and became director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory.

With the Uranus discovery behind him, he looked for another challenge.

“We wanted to do something hard and the only thing left was Pluto,’’ he told the Globe in 1988.

Uncommon celestial events were among his specialties, in particular occultation, which occurs when one object is hidden by another that travels between it and the observer, allowing for measurements and analysis that are hard to otherwise come by.

In 1988, Pluto was expected to pass in front of a faint star, causing a shadow to sweep across Earth at a rate of more than 11 miles a second, and those were the conditions Dr. Elliot needed to learn more about this celestial body, whose exact size was still a matter of speculation.

Fourteen years later, Dr. Elliot and his team packed up cameras, telescopes, and computerized equipment and boarded the NASA jet Kuiper Airborne Observatory to travel to an area of the Pacific roughly 3,000 miles south of Hawaii to catch Pluto’s shadow in optimal viewing conditions.

Using eight telescopes, Dr. Elliot and his team observed the dimming of the star when Pluto passed in front of it on Aug. 20, 2002, and discovered that Pluto’s atmosphere was expanding. This seemed surprising to the team because they had thought it would shrink as it traveled farther from the sun.

When the starlight dimmed, and then about a minute later become visible once more, sounds of joy emanated from team members, according to a Globe article from the time.

“What this means is that Pluto has an atmosphere,’’ he told the Globe.

Bosh was on that flight and said Dr. Elliot took on the role of “the big-picture guy,’’ who led the team with an eye for detail and organization.

“For the longest time, it was considered impossible to have the precision you needed to predict those events,’’ Bosh said.

Pluto was considered the solar system’s ninth planet until 2006, when an international committee of astronomers decided that it was too small to be considered a planet.

Last year, an event to honor him, dubbed a “Jimboree,’’ was held at MIT and many students returned to share their memories of their experiences with a professor who had championed their careers.

Some students paid homage to his love of white index cards, writing notes of remembrances on them.

“So many students of his came back,’’ Bosh said. “He was so surprised by that, but I absolutely was not.’’

In addition to his daughter Lyn and his wife, Dr. Elliot leaves another daughter, Martha of Brooklyn, N.Y.; two sisters, Suzanne of New London, Conn., and Martha Bureau of Piedmont, Calif.; a brother, Tom, of Arlington, Va.; and a granddaughter.

"James Elliot Is Dead at 67; Discovered Rings of Uranus"

by

Jascha Hoffman

March 10th, 2011

The New York Times

James Elliot, an astronomer who used light from distant stars to study planetary objects throughout the solar system, leading to his discovery of the rings of Uranus, died on March 3 at his home in Wellesley, Mass. He was 67.

His daughter Lyn said the cause was complications of cancer treatment.

Dr. Elliot spent his career, mostly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, scrutinizing planets by observing how much starlight they blocked. Using phenomena known as stellar occultations, he could observe changes in the brightness of a star when it was hidden by a planet, thus determining the planet’s size and the temperature and pressure of any atmosphere it had.

Occultations are rare, and to observe them one must predict when the planet will pass in front of a star, and where on the Earth its shadow will be cast. A high degree of coordination is necessary to ensure that multiple telescopes around the world are trained on a star at the precise moments that it is obscured by a planet.

In 1977, using a telescope in an airplane, Dr. Elliot led a team of Cornell University scientists to observe the planet Uranus when it passed between Earth and a star. Flying at night over a patch of the Indian Ocean where Uranus’s shadow was to be cast, he had the foresight to turn on his equipment more than a half-hour early. This allowed him to record a series of slight dimmings that provided the first evidence of Uranus’s rings.

“This is science deeply rooted in preparation and planning, with only minutes of execution,” said Michael Person, an astronomer at M.I.T. who worked with Dr. Elliot. “You have to be there, prepared and ready, observing at the right time, or you don’t get it.”

The Uranus researchers — Dr. Elliot, Edward Dunham and Douglas Mink — were aboard the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration jet that flew above the clouds to gather unobstructed images of the stellar eclipse through a mounted three-foot telescope.

“He spent the whole flight pacing in a circle, so his headset wire would get twisted up, and he had to unplug and uncurl it,” said Dr. Dunham, who is now at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. “We worked until the sun came up, and the pilot was running out of gas, and we had to go home.”

Using the same method when Pluto passed in front of a distant star in 1988, Dr. Elliot and his team noticed that, rather than abruptly flashing off and on again, the starlight disappeared and reappeared gradually, providing definitive evidence that Pluto had an atmosphere.

In 2002 he was part of a group that used ground-based telescopes to discover that Pluto’s atmosphere had warmed and expanded, not long before the International Astronomical Union decided that it was not a full-fledged planet.

In recent years, working with a team led by Jay Pasachoff at Williams College and others, Dr. Elliot and his collaborators at M.I.T. turned their attention to the ring of small bodies beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt. Within the past year the group determined the size of a small planetary body that is among the brightest objects in the solar system. They plan to observe Pluto and its moons as they pass in front of two stars in June.

“In the current culture of giant spacecraft missions and multibillion-dollar experiments,” Dr. Person said, “he showed that someone dedicated to science with relatively small resources could still make very exciting discoveries.”

James Ludlow Elliot was born in Columbus, Ohio, on June 19, 1943, the eldest son of a dentist. He studied physics as an undergraduate at M.I.T. and received his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard in 1972. His early work with stellar occultations used ground-based telescopes to study Mars, Jupiter and the moons of Saturn as they passed in front of distant stars. After a brief stint at Cornell, during which he discovered Uranus’s rings, Dr. Elliot returned to M.I.T. in 1978, where he became director of the Wallace Astrophysical Observatory, and stayed on for the rest of his career. In later years he led a winter astronomy field camp at Lowell Observatory, where he trained his students for Grand Canyon hikes by loading their backpacks with books.

Dr. Elliot was a mentor to many students, particularly women. “He had an amazing ability to take students who were just kids, and make them feel they were part of the team,” said Heidi Hammel, executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, known as AURA, a consortium of universities and astronomy-related institutions. “He trusted us, he taught us, and sent us out into the world to be scientists.”

In addition to his daughter Lyn, Dr. Elliot is survived by his wife, Elaine; his daughter Martha of Brooklyn; his sisters Suzanne of New London, Conn., and Martha Bureau of Piedmont, Calif.; his brother, Tom, of Arlington, Va.; and a granddaughter.

Dr. Elliot’s penchant for preparation was apparent at home. A few years ago he drew up a list called “Jobs for Grandchildren.” When reminded that he did not yet have any grandchildren, he replied, “They aren’t things I need to have done soon.”

"James Elliot dies at 67; MIT astronomer discovered rings of Uranus and atmosphere of Pluto"

Elliot relied on an indirect technique called stellar occultation, in which astronomers watch a planet or other astronomical object very carefully as it passes in front of a star

by

Thomas H. Maugh II

March 20th, 2011

Los Angeles Times

James Elliot, the MIT astronomer who discovered the rings of Uranus and the faint atmosphere of Pluto, died March 3 at his home in Wellesley, Mass. He was 67 and had been suffering from cancer.

The rings of Uranus are narrow and faint and not observable from Earth. Pluto not only is small, but it is on the outer fringes of the solar system, making it equally difficult to view its atmosphere directly.

Elliot relied on an indirect technique called stellar occultation, in which astronomers watch a planet or other astronomical object very carefully as it passes in front of a star. But the technique requires immaculate planning, precise timing and careful observation.

There are no second chances.

In 1977, Elliot, Edward Dunham and Douglas Mink — all three then at Cornell University — flew over the Indian Ocean in the Kuiper Airborne Observatory to use its 36-inch telescope to observe an occultation of a bright star by Uranus. Elliot had the foresight to turn the instrument on about an hour in advance.

To the team's surprise, the light from the star winked out briefly several times before it was eclipsed by Uranus, then again several times after the eclipse. Those symmetrical drops in the star's brightness were a clear indication that Uranus possessed rings, something that astronomers had not suspected.

The rings were subsequently viewed directly by the Voyager 2 spacecraft.

In 1988, Elliot and his colleagues observed Pluto — which was then considered a planet but which has since been demoted to the status of dwarf planet — by the same technique. They observed that instead of winking out sharply, as had been expected, the light from the star faded gradually, then reappeared gradually once Pluto had fully passed in front of the star.

That was a sign that the celestial body had an atmosphere, albeit a thin one. Elliot's team plans to do similar occultation observations in June.

James Ludlow Elliot was born June 17, 1943, in Columbus, Ohio. He received his bachelor's degree in physics from MIT in 1965 and his doctorate in astronomy from Harvard in 1972. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell, then joined the faculty until he returned to MIT in 1978, spending the rest of his career there.

He was especially supportive of women in astronomy; more than half of his students were women. At a 2010 celebration of his life and work at MIT, called the "Jimboree," former students spoke about his gift for engaging them deeply in his research and then sending them off on their own, trusting that they could do the research themselves.

Students wrote their memories on white index cards because Elliot always had such cards and a pen in his pocket to jot down thoughts as they came to him.

Elliot is survived by his wife of 44 years, the former Elaine Kasparian; daughters Lyn of State College, Penn., and Martha of Brooklyn; sisters Suzanne Elliot of New London, Conn., and Martha Bureau of Piedmont, Calif.; a brother, Tom, of Arlington, Va.; and one granddaughter.

Not impossible...the original hitchhikers

A photograph taken through a scanning electron microscope of a CI1 meteorite (right) is similar in size and overall structure to the giant bacterium Titanospirillum velox (left), an organism found here on planet Earth, a NASA scientist said.

"Alien Life in Meteorites: 'Remarkable Achievement' or 'Garbage'?"

March 7th, 2011

FoxNews.com

A NASA scientist announced a shocking find Friday, claiming a rare meteorite holds the fossilized evidence of alien life.

But is the work a "remarkable achievement," as one scientist put it? Or in the words of another, simply "garbage"?

Dr. Richard B. Hoover, an astrobiologist with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, is convinced that he has found fossils within an extremely rare class of meteorites, called CI1 carbonaceous chondrites. He published his latest findings in the March edition of the online Journal of Cosmology -- research that suggests we are not alone in the universe, he told FoxNews.com.

“I interpret it as indicating that life is more broadly distributed than restricted strictly to the planet Earth,” Hoover said. “This field of study has just barely been touched -- because quite frankly, a great many scientist would say that this is impossible.”

Expecting controversy, the journal issued personal invitations to 100 scientists asking them to weigh in on the finding.

Now the journal itself has become the source of controversy.

On Monday, a NASA statement by Paul Hertz, chief scientist in the science division, said Hoover failed to advise the agency he had submitted the paper to the Journal of Cosmology -- and that the article failed to get published in a more established peer-reviewed journal.

Others point to a history of "out there" science stories, and note that the Journal's website is amateurish. Blogger and University of Minnesota biologist PZ Myers called it "the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics."

Editor Lana Tao recently fought back, calling such comments "tantamount to school-yard taunts by jealous children."

"The ad hominem attacks and complaints by those [that] say Dr. Hoover's article should have been published in these other periodicals, and not JOC, are just sour grapes and should not be taken seriously," she Tao said.

The Journal published early Monday morning 12 responses, said Dr. Rudy Schild, a scientist with the Harvard-Smithsonian's Center for Astrophysics and Cosmology's editor-in-chief.

He claimed that "no commentary has pointed out any major flaws in the data." Many scientists have indeed voiced concerns, however, just not to the Journal itself -- despite the open call for discussion.

David Morrison, senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute at Ames Research Center, told MSNBC he felt the choice of scientific journal was enough to call the report into question.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. At a bare minimum this would require publication in a prestigious peer-refereed scientific journal -- which this is not."

"Perhaps the publication came out too soon; more appropriate would have been on April 1," Morrison added.

Many scientists and writers have referenced the earlier work in this field, and similar claims of life in meteorites -- both the 1960s claims by Fordham University chemist Bartholomew Nagy as well as earlier claims by Dr. Hoover made in 2004 and 2007.

NASA science chief Hertz seconded those statements.

"While we value the free exchange of ideas, data, and information as part of scientific and technical inquiry, NASA cannot stand behind or support a scientific claim unless it has been peer-reviewed or thoroughly examined by other qualified experts," Mr Hertz said.

From the Journal of Cosmology...

Abstract

Environmental (ESEM) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) investigations of the internal surfaces of the CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites have yielded images of large complex filaments. The filaments have been observed to be embedded in freshly fractured internal surfaces of the stones. They exhibit features (e.g., the size and size ranges of the internal cells and their location and arrangement within sheaths) that are diagnostic of known genera and species of trichomic cyanobacteria and other trichomic prokaryotes such as the filamentous sulfur bacteria. ESEM and FESEM studies of living and fossil cyanobacteria show similar features in uniseriate and multiseriate, branched or unbranched, isodiametric or tapered, polarized or unpolarized filaments with trichomes encased within thin or thick external sheaths. Filaments found in the CI1 meteorites have also been detected that exhibit structures consistent with the specialized cells and structures used by cyanobacteria for reproduction (baeocytes, akinetes and hormogonia), nitrogen fixation (basal, intercalary or apical heterocysts) and attachment or motility (fimbriae). Energy dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS) studies indicate that the meteorite filaments are typically carbon rich sheaths infilled with magnesium sulfate and other minerals characteristic of the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites. The size, structure, detailed morphological characteristics and chemical compositions of the meteorite filaments are not consistent with known species of minerals. The nitrogen content of the meteorite filaments are almost always below the detection limit of the EDS detector. EDS analysis of terrestrial minerals and biological materials (e.g., fibrous epsomite, filamentous cyanobacteria; mummy and mammoth hair/tissues, and fossils of cyanobacteria, trilobites, insects in amber) indicate that nitrogen remains detectable in biological materials for thousands of years but is undetectable in the ancient fossils. These studies have led to the conclusion that the filaments found in the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites are indigenous fossils rather than modern terrestrial biological contaminants that entered the meteorites after arrival on Earth. The ?13C and D/H content of amino acids and other organics found in these stones are shown to be consistent with the interpretation that comets represent the parent bodies of the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites. The implications of the detection of fossils of cyanobacteria in the CI1 meteorites to the possibility of life on comets, Europa and Enceladus are discussed.

"Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites: Implications to Life on Comets, Europa, and Enceladus" by Richard B. Hoover

And this...

"Scientists dismiss alien life report"

A NASA researcher says he has found fossil bacteria in meteorites, but even his employer declines to stand behind that claim.

by

Thomas H. Maugh II

March 7th, 2011

Los Angeles Times

A report claiming to find remnants of alien life in meteorites has been broadly dismissed by scientists after its publication Friday in an eccentric online journal.

The report was written by Richard Hoover, an engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.. He had sliced open a couple of small meteorites, looked at them under a microscope and seen what he thought were the fossils of tiny bacteria called cyanobacteria.

Hoover wrote his report, concluding that life is common throughout the universe. He submitted a paper to the Journal of Astrobiology, which rejected it.

Hoover then sent his paper to the online Journal of Cosmology, which promotes the idea that life on Earth came from outer space. A report by Fox News on the paper triggered a meteor storm of publicity over the weekend followed quickly by derision by mainstream scientists.

NASA has distanced itself from Hoover's work. In an unusual step Monday, Paul Hertz, chief scientist of NASA's science mission directorate, issued a statement saying, among other things, that "NASA cannot stand behind or support a scientific claim unless it has been peer-reviewed or thoroughly examined by other qualified experts.... NASA was unaware of the recent submission of the paper to the Journal of Cosmology or of the paper's subsequent publication."

The Journal of Cosmology is a 2-year-old publication developed by Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that has unabashedly promoted the thesis that life exists throughout the universe and was brought to Earth from elsewhere. The journal has published just 13 issues and, in a news release Monday, said it would cease publication in May, "killed by thieves and crooks" at the journal Science and other subscription-based periodicals, whom it has accused of stifling its ability to distribute news.

The Journal of Cosmology claims to be peer-reviewed. In this case, the journal's editors said it had sent a copy of Hoover's article to 100 prominent scientists for critiques and would publish them as they come in. In normal scientific publishing, peer review is conducted before a paper is published to ensure accuracy.

The assessment of scientists, for the main part, has been harsh. "I'm surprised anyone is granting it any credibility at all," wrote blogger and biologist Paul Z. Myers of the University of Minnesota.

"Move along folks. There's nothing to see here," wrote Rosie Redfield, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia, saying that it is easy to find structures in nature that appear similar to bacteria.

"This appears to be science by wishful thinking," Redfield said in a telephone interview.

Hoover has not responded to media requests for interviews.

Others said that even if the traces Hoover spotted in the meteorite should prove to be bacteria, it would be difficult to rule out contamination.

This is not the first time that researchers have claimed to find fossils in a meteorite. In 1996, a NASA researcher — this time with the agency's imprimatur — said he had found fossil bacteria in a meteorite that had been blasted off the surface of Mars. The report, which was published in the journal Science, was featured on the cover of Time magazine and was trumpeted by the White House.

Eventually, however, most scientists concluded that what researchers had seen were merely rock formations that looked like fossils.

Last year, NASA-sponsored researchers said they had discovered that certain bacteria in Mono Lake in California could incorporate arsenic into their DNA in place of phosphorus, arguing that the finding indicated the possibility of unusual life forms in space. That conclusion also was derided by other scientists.

Poets gathering spot is doomed

This reminds me of a similar place in my undergraduate days called the Vanguard. Of course it bit the dust too. But the memories remain.

"A Place Where Emotions Became Poetry Is for Sale"

by

Colin Moynihan

March 6th, 2011

The New York Times

A man who runs a gallery and salon in the East Village that has managed to survive even as the neighborhood’s bohemian past fades recently got some startling news from a visitor.

Why, the visitor asked, was there a large metal sign on the man’s building announcing that it was for sale?

The gallery proprietor, Steve Cannon, who is blind, said he knew nothing about the sign. But he quickly asked a friend to call the real estate agency that had put it up.

The agent said the building was being offered for nearly $3 million, Mr. Cannon said. Furthermore, he added, the agent had told his friend that it could be sold without tenants.

Mr. Cannon, 75, was naturally alarmed by the news. He had sold the three-story federal-style town house on East Third Street between Avenues C and D to its present owner in 2004 believing that he would be able to occupy the second floor for at least a decade.

“I was surprised,” Mr. Cannon said on a recent afternoon as he sat inside his second-floor apartment. “Before that day, I thought everything was cool.”

The news sent shudders through generations of poets, artists, musicians and others, who felt a strong sense of devotion to A Gathering of the Tribes, a gallery and salon in the building, and to Mr. Cannon. A former humanities professor, who taught for 25 years at city university campuses including Hunter College in Manhattan and Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, Mr. Cannon decided in 1991 to turn the building, which he had bought for $35,000 in 1970, into a salon and open house where practically everybody was welcome.

The people who gather there have held art shows, published a literary magazine and arranged readings in cities around the country. For about the past 15 years, they have also organized a monthlong Charlie Parker festival at the gallery held in conjunction with an annual concert in Tompkins Square Park.

Now, Mr. Cannon and his supporters feel that their cultural pursuits, which were once inspired by the East Village’s energy and grit, may fall victim to the gentrification that has overtaken much of the neighborhood.

Faced with debt in 2004, Mr. Cannon sold the house on East Third Street to a woman named Lorraine Zhang. An agreement between them stipulated that Mr. Cannon could rent the second floor for $1,000 per month through August 2009, with an option to renew the agreement for five years at a monthly rent of $2,200, as long as he provided written notice of his intent to renew six months in advance.

Mr. Cannon said he thought that Ms. Zhang’s accepting of his rent checks since the end of the first lease constituted renewal. Ms. Zhang disagreed, saying Mr. Cannon and the gallery were still in the building only because she had allowed them to stay.

“I don’t want to give him trouble and ask him to move out, but legally I can,” she said.

A listing on the Web site of Marcus & Millichap, the real estate company hired by Ms. Zhang, listed the building for $2.9 million. The site said all four apartments inside were unregulated and added that a buyer could “potentially convert into a single-family town house.”

Mr. Cannon said he was exploring whether he had any legal recourse to oppose the sale in court. At the same time, he said, he would reach out to friends and arts patrons to see whether any of them might be interested in buying the building and turning it into an artists’ residence and cultural center.

Bob Holman, the owner of the Bowery Poetry Club, said the idea behind A Gathering of the Tribes was developed in the late 1980s, when Mr. Cannon and others began holding poetry seminars on the stoop of the East Third Street building. They were inspired by nearby performances at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, where loud, raucous poetry slams were changing the way the art form was viewed.

“To have this kind of poetry emerge in a world of advertisements and massaged neutral speech was a revelation,” Mr. Holman said. “And Steve lived it.”

Mr. Cannon became a mentor to a group of young poets, Mr. Holman said, spending hours on the stoop, listening to recitations, offering critiques and guidance and helping to shape raw emotion into literature.

After selling the building to Ms. Zhang, Mr. Cannon turned his apartment into a salon, where he fostered the artistic ambitions of younger people searching for a means of expression and a place to be heard.

One such group assembled on a recent Thursday night where they staged performances under the name the Catweazle Club, named after a similar series held in Oxford, England.

An organizer, Cal Folger Day, 23, who called Mr. Cannon “an indefatigable host,” said she preferred to hold events there instead of in a bar or at a theater because she wanted to be in an atmosphere where people gathered primarily to listen to one another, rather than to engage in commerce.

“We are not a moneymaker, however unfortunate, and neither is Steve,” she said. “So we decided to bring all the starving artists together.”

In one room, a few dozen people sat in chairs as a man sang a couple of songs, with his guitar and harmonica. A young woman and her dulcimer followed.

Mr. Cannon sat on the couch in the next room, listening and chatting with some of his young visitors.

“The real idea of Tribes is to be nonexclusive,” he said. “That’s why I always keep the door open to everyone.”

Ethical dilemma and an errant ATM machine

I love these ethical situations. As long as it didn't effect my account, I would keep the extra.

"What should you do if a cash machine overpays?"

by

Tom Geoghegan

March 4th, 2011

BBC News

Dozens of cash machines in Sydney, Australia, were accidentally overpaying customers this week. So if you take money under these circumstances, what is the correct course of action, legally and morally?

Free cash. It sounds too good to be true. And for some customers of the Commonwealth Bank in Sydney this week, it was.

When word got around the streets that some cash machines were giving out more money than customers were entitled to, queues began to form and people took advantage.

There was talk, according to one witness, that they were giving out "free money".

The bank later explained that an error had prevented the machines from properly identifying customer accounts, but that all transactions were correctly recorded and the bank would be pursuing the money.

But is it an offence to keep cash accidentally dispensed from a cash machine?

In England and Wales, it's pretty clear - it's not your money, says Mark Haslam, a criminal defence lawyer at BCL Burton Copeland in London.

"The only issue is what's going to be debited from your account, so if you ask for £10, they give you £100 and they debit £100, then it's yours.

"But if it's clearly a malfunction and it's dishing out money [without deducting it], and people come from miles around because word gets around quickly, then you're helping yourself knowingly and that's theft."

'Report it'

If you happen to be passing and someone tells you it's handing out £200 every time, then it's clearly theft because there's knowledge and intent, and the intent could be proved.

"So the best course of action in terms of the law is to report it straightaway to the bank," says Haslam. "It's the only way you can preserve your position, but if you sit on it and wait for them to find you, then it's a lot weaker."

The law concerned is more likely to be theft rather than fraud, he says, because you've taken money to which you are not entitled.

The 1968 Theft Act says: "A person is guilty of theft if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it."

In Scotland, the same principle applies under common law theft, says a spokeswoman for the Law Society of Scotland.

But UK banks don't always take a hard line.

Dozens of people who took advantage of a cash machine in Dundee paying out double the requested amount in January were told by the machine's operator that they would not have to return the extra money, although it was up to individuals' consciences.

Our advice is simple, says Brian Mairs, a spokesman for the British Bankers' Association. "If an ATM dispenses money to you in error, you should take it into the branch as soon as possible. Taking money that is not yours is a punishable crime.

"Banks have invested heavily in recent years in ensuring the security of customers' money and the integrity of ATMs. There have been instances where an ATM has malfunctioned and the bank has written off the loss, but it would be wrong to assume that they will do so every time."

Morally speaking you are doing something wrong, stealing, if you take it, says Simon Rippon of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. But the interesting question is whether this kind of stealing is more excusable than stealing from an individual.

Someone who takes cash from a malfunctioning cash machine is judged more leniently than someone else who takes cash that is accidentally left behind by the person in front of them, and who fails to inform that person of their loss, he says.

"The 18th Century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, who is best known for his 'invisible hand' economic theory, provided a moral theory in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments that can very naturally explain the distinction between these cases. On Smith's theory, moral judgements arise out of our sympathy with the feelings of others."

It's difficult to identify an individual to sympathise with in the case of the misfiring cash machine, says Rippon, so it is only natural for us to judge the person in that case much less harshly than we judge the person in the second example.

This feeling that a bank cannot be a victim of crime is sometimes felt very strongly. In 2003, a family in Coventry made repeated visits to an obliging cash machine and the four of them took out £134,410, which they spent on a new car and air tickets to Jamaica. Three of them were imprisoned.

It's a crime to take the money, but there are two reasons why many people instinctively find this kind of theft less serious or even harmless, says Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers' Magazine.

One is that the transaction is completely impersonal and does not require surreptitious behaviour. The other is that people view crime against large corporations as victimless, even though prices and insurance premiums are affected by theft and fraud.

"Leading a moral life requires us to be the kind of person who does the right thing without always stopping to work out if we gain or lose by doing so," says Baggini.

"We do what is right and hope that others will do the same because we want to be that kind of person, not some kind of egotist who is forever trying to work out what acts will serve our own petty self-interest."

People who keep money from rogue cashpoints are not modern day Robin Hoods, he says. Theirs is not a principle act but an opportunistic one.

"But any moral indignation should be proportionate. I think given that many people struggle with money, resisting temptation, even if it is the right thing to do, is hard enough for us to understand those who don't."

NEW MATH...25 divided by 5=14 & 7 x 13=28