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Opinion > Marty Makary, MD, MPH
Marty Time: Same Old, Same Old in Medicine?
— MedPage Today's Editor-in-Chief Marty Makary, MD, MPH, talks with oncologist Azra Raza, MD
by Martin Makary MD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief, MedPage Today May 2, 2020
MedPage Today Editor-in-Chief Marty Makary, MD, MPH, talks with Azra Raza, MD, of Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center in New York City, about her recent book, The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last.
Note: this interview took place before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and social distancing guidelines were implemented.
Marty Makary, MD: You write: "Little has happened in the last 50 years and little will happen in the next 50 years if we insist on the same old, same old." What are you referring to there?
Azra Raza, MD: I'm referring to the fact that yes, we should be proclaiming this from the rooftops that we are curing 68% of cancer patients diagnosed today, but then we should hang our heads in humility by recognizing that what are we treating them with? The same old, same old -- poison, burn, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. Sixty years and hundreds of billions of dollars and four million papers later, it's time to ask, "What are we doing wrong?"
Makary: I'm hanging out here with Dr. Azra Raza from Columbia University, a professor of medicine and an oncologist. Thanks for being here. Great to meet you. Your new book, "The First Cell," is about cancer and our whole approach to cancer. The top paper at ASCO, the one that got the award several years ago, was showing the same chemo drug used for one type of cancer applied to another cancer can increase survival by approximately 1 to 2 months, an added 1 to 2 months. That's the top paper at ASCO. If that is our top paper that year, with this investment of close to $100 billion in research, what do we need to do differently?
Raza: This came to me in a very graphic way. My daughter, Sheherzad, was 15 years old when she brought who was to become her best friend, Andrew, this beautiful, gay young man to meet me. Since the time he's 15 years old, Marty, this boy is in and out of my house, my daughter, and Andrew, along with their two other friends -- Charles and Rebecca -- traveled all over Europe and Canada and Japan. They're best friends and when they're 22, one fine day Andrew develops weakness in his arm. He's taken to the emergency room and they find a 9-centimeter unresectable glioblastoma multiforme, which is one of the most aggressive cancers known to man. Now from this moment on...
Makary: Ted Kennedy's cancer.
Raza: Yes, Ted Kennedy's cancer and John McCain's cancer too. Here is a young man of 22, who until last week was partying, dancing, and designing clothes, into fashion. Within a week, he has an unresectable glioblastoma. Every oncologist from that moment knew that this poor boy's chance of survival is 0.00. He opens his eyes from his surgery. When he's told his diagnosis, he's so confident, Marty. He turns to his mom and he says, "Mom, don't worry. Just call Azra. She's on the cutting edge. She'll find the answer for me."
This moment made me realize how we are failing the Andrews of this world at every level. How have we failed him so badly, Marty? We failed him at multiple levels. First of all, we have nothing to offer him. No, sorry. We have. We offer him more surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, immune therapy, more surgery, more chemo, more radiation.
Makary: For an incurable cancer.
Raza: Incurable cancer. If that thing goes down, five others creep up. What are we doing? We fail him at that level. Secondly, we keep offering him confusing choices. You can take this treatment, but you don't have to. Basically what we're telling a 22-year-old is that you can die from cancer or die from the treatment we give. Why are these the only choices? Think of that mother of this 22-year-old boy who says to me, "Azra, if there is a one in a million chance, I want my son to have that chance." She's ready to do anything.
Makary: Maternal instinct, of course.
Raza: Of course. Look at Andrew. Three weeks before he died, they brought him a form to sign. "Do not resuscitate," which means if you stop breathing, we won't do anything. Let you go. Let nature take its course. To a 23-year-old now. It's been a year since he had cancer. You know what he did? He said, "Take it away. I'm not signing it." How can a 23-year-old sign a form like that? They took it away, but that night his father comes to relieve the mother and sister and spend the night with his son. As soon as the father is alone with him, he calls the people back and Andrew signs the form, saying, "I couldn't do it in front of my mother. She wouldn't be able to take it."
Makary: How much of this is the language that we've created around cancer, that it's a war? This sort of, "Are you going to fight or not?" It's not a battle or struggle. It's the almost overdramatization, using charged language about we're going to hunt and kill, and this sort of charged language that we use. Because if you phrase it as, "Are you going to fight or not?" of course, it's a different question than if you say, "Here's a condition. Think of it as a chronic disease, maybe with a shorter course, that we're going to have to manage," like we manage a chronic disease. Here are the statistics on how other people in the same situation with the same tumor type you have, have done in the past. Not saying that's going to be your trajectory. It's just this is the reality of where you are. How much of it is the language?
Raza: I'm particularly allergic to it. I have a whole section devoted to this in my book because the body gets confused. Is it to fight cancer or is it to fight the treatments we are giving? The only fight is for the body, by the body, on the body. There is total chaos. The immune system gets misdirected.
Pancreatic cancer is well known for having paraneoplastic syndromes, all kinds of distant manifestations that appear, that are tissue agnostic. They can appear one day as a rash in the skin and another day as a swelling in a joint, the third day as continuous fever. What are these manifestations? Extreme sweating from one tumor sitting in the pancreas. Why? Because it's the body's immune system confused, turning against itself, and a misguided immune system trying to fight the cancer cells, but ending up hurting some of the normal tissue.
These questions are so complicated and how are we trying to study cancer in this using the most reductionist approaches possible in animals, so most people who are studying cancer never see it because they're researchers. In animals who don't get it spontaneously, they create some kind of thing that they call a cancer or whatever and treat it with something or study its pathways and try and extrapolate it into a human situation.
How many people have sat down and cataloged sweating in mice or paraneoplastic syndromes? We, as scientists who demand such accuracy in every experiment we plan, we completely forget the fundamental propositions that are completely misguided.
My biggest problem with research is an understanding of the biology of cancer is very important and models are very important for understanding signaling pathways, the mechanisms of action of various molecules, etc., but they are completely useless in drug development. Everything we do for cancer today, any cancer research we do should be enlivened by and should be driven by only one purpose, which is to improve therapy for the patients.
We forget that and we are giving each other gold medals for yet another great understanding of the molecular signaling pathway of cancer. That is great, but it has not translated into improved treatment. I have been watching it personally since '77 till now -- 43 years later I'm using the same treatment.
Makary: Do we need fresh ideas? The way study sections work for grants is it's reviewed by senior peers in a field. Now I have nothing against senior folks ...
Raza: I'm one of them. You better show respect to me.
Makary: My father is one of them. People who do translational research, God bless them. People like you that have a laboratory. I can't pour a test tube.
Raza: I want to ask you something. How did you become a surgeon when your father is a hematologist?
Makary: I saw people in the community, in Danville, Pennsylvania, come up to him at the grocery store, on the street, and just have this incredible bond. "Thank you, Dr. Makary." You see this bond between a patient and a doctor. How could you not want to experience that? It's the greatest trust relationship of any profession in the world. When I saw people entrust their lives and appreciate my father, I thought that's something I want to be a part of. I have a lot of respect for hematologists and oncologists. It's hard work.
Raza: On the other hand, we took my mother shopping one day in Buffalo. 1988. My brother, who's a cardiac surgeon, and me. We could not walk 50 feet in the mall without somebody stopping my brother and pumping his hand up and down and saying, "Wow!" and beaming at my mother and telling her, "Your son saved my life. He cracked open my chest." Those were the days of open-heart surgery. My brother was legendary. He was a cardiac transplanter. He was doing all these heroic, dramatic things. Of course, at home, we did not let him develop the God Complex of Surgeons.
Makary: I don't know what you're talking about.
Raza: I'll tell you what I'm talking about. My youngest still would ask me, "So what do you call two surgeons looking at an EKG?" I would say, "A double-blind study."
Makary: You're a fan of ZDogg. Is that right?
Raza: I am, but let me finish. My mother was so impressed by this that everyone is thanking her in the mall because of how her son has saved their lives. Then on the way back, I knew this was coming. She turned to me and she goes, "You've been living in Buffalo for almost 10 years. How come I don't meet any of your patients?"
She asked me the question, "Why are patients with heart disease doing so much better than patients with cancer?" I said to her, "You have hit upon the exact topic of conversation that my brother, Tasneem, and I often had." That cardiologists and cardiac surgeons became smarter than oncologists. They knew that the best way to bring down cardiovascular mortality is to catch it early and prevent it. Not just with stenting or with doing coronary bypasses, but also statins, by lowering the cholesterol, by changing the lifestyle.
Makary: It's a prevention mentality.
Raza: A prevention mentality, an early-detection mentality. Early detection and prevention caused mortality to drop by 70%, so I told my mother in 1988 that this is why, since 1984, I realized that acute leukemia is too complicated to be solved in my lifetime. I turned my attention to pre-leukemia. Do you know from that day on she was so happy to hear that, to hear me say that I am studying early leukemia and trying to prevent it. You know what she said to me, which was very sweet? She said, "Then I'm very glad that you're living in this country, because if you were living in Pakistan, trying to change the whole thinking process would not happen in your lifetime, but here you have a chance because this is a very different kind of country."
I was very impressed by that, because it's true that only in America they basically treat everybody the same, at least by law. That I can get up from Karachi, Pakistan, an immigrant, a Muslim, a woman, I can come to this country and I can compete with the best pedigreed, best educated, Ivy League scholars for the same grant, and get it if it's a better idea. This is what my mother was talking about and it's exactly right.
Makary: I hope you share these stories with your students because I can tell you're a good teacher, so residents and students at Columbia are lucky to have you there.
Raza: Thank you.
Makary: The book is called "The First Cell" and it's an incredible book. Thank you for writing it. You are clearly making a contribution and you're an important voice in the field of oncology and hematology. I envy your students that have the opportunity to work with you. What do we need to do to get people to think differently about cancer because one last thing you can comment on is we do go through this training process that teaches, not deliberately, a whack-a-mole mentality. Identify this. Here's the criteria for surgery, chemo, and go after it.
When you pair things as diagnosis, treatment, here's the diagnosis, here's the treatment, you can come out with this mentality -- and we see this in our cancer committee, multidisciplinary clinics literally throwing up stands without knowing anything sometimes about the patient. That's fair. We're just saying, "This is resectable or not," but that shouldn't be the recommendation because so much depends on the patient. There's this reflex that we create in cancer care. How do we change that thinking? How do we think more about what the patient wants and deserves?
Raza: I think everything you've said, I agree with this, Marty. I think we are all becoming doctors. We detest ourselves. We don't want to be doing the things we are forced to do. Somehow the whole system has become so obscenely absurd that even we don't recognize how ridiculous some of the things are that we are doing. I mean, imagine this that I don't decide most of the time what my patient gets because key opinion leaders have decided it. If I don't follow the guidelines, I'm opening myself to legal challenges, so it is a very difficult situation.
But I also have great faith in mankind. I'm very optimistic and I am envisioning a future where all this can dramatically turn over. How? Because so far the goal has been, as you said, to go after the last cell. Going after that for 50 years has given us clinical trials that are failing, so if companies are willing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in an enterprise that has a failure rate of 95%, why not set a new goal? Go after the first cell and financially incentivize it. Overnight everything will turn around. You know a Japanese company 2 weeks ago just announced that from one drop of blood, using microRNA signatures, they can diagnose 13 different types of cancers for $180 a test.
Makary: Predisposition to certain cancers. Genetic testing?
Raza: No predisposition. No. The earliest sign of cancer through a microRNA signature. Other countries which all look at America for guidance are now taking different tacks they have recognized. I'm not saying in America work is not being done on early detection. We recognized this since 1903 ... that it's not cancer that kills, it's the delay in treatment that kills. An army of women used to go out in the 1940s and '50s trying to get people checked for cancer, so we have known for the longest time that early detection is good. Screening measures were put in place: mammography, Pap smears, colonoscopy, and PSAs [prostate-specific antigen tests]. But those are so ancient.
I'm saying, "In this day and age of amazing technology where we boast of God-like powers to cut and paste DNA, why are we using paleolithic measures to treat people with slash, poison, and burn? Why are we using stone-age technology for early detection?" We should be monitoring the human body not on a yearly basis using techniques developed 50 years ago, but on a daily, continuous basis to pick up cases like Andrew or Uma, who's 38-years-old, in my book.
This is what I'm talking about. It's doable. It's possible. I'm very optimistic. I think the future is bright, and I'm not saying everything that is being done today is wrong and should stop. All I'm saying is more resources should be diverted to early detection.
Makary: Dr. Raza, this has been great. You're an inspiration. Thank you for your book and your contribution. Keep up the great work at Columbia and your students are lucky to have you.
Raza: Can I end with a little poem?
Makary: Sure.
Raza: Just four lines from Emily Dickinson: A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.
Makary: Great to talk with you.
Raza: An honor to talk to you.
Makary: Keep up the great work.
Makary: Do you like thin crust or thick pizza?
Raza: I normally would like a steak, but if it's pizza, then any New York pizza is good.
Makary: OK, great. This was great. Thank you. Good luck with your book. I hope this helps. I wish I brought a book. I should have brought a book for you. Wow! Great, thank you.
Raza: Listen. I am a huge admirer of you. I have watched so many of your talks, even your parents haven't watched that [many].
Makary: Oh, really?
Raza: Do you know why? I like to remain any way relevant about what's going on in the cancer field. So every morning, I'm a runner, first of all. I run three to five miles every day, but then I trampoline on a small one for half an hour every day for 26 years. In that half-hour, while I'm on my trampoline, I'm watching all of you, so you'd better watch what you say. Here's another one for you: Surgeons must be very careful when they take the knife. Underneath their fine incisions stirs the Culprit -- Life! Emily Dickinson again.
Makary: I love that. That was beautiful.


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Several state lawmakers joined, observed US Capitol turmoil
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A West Virginia lawmaker who filmed himself and supporters of President Donald Trump storming into the U.S. Capitol is facing bipartisan calls for his resignation as federal prosecutors step up their pursuit of violent perpetrators.
West Virginia House of Delegates member Derrick Evans, left, is given the oath of office Dec. 14, 2020, in the House chamber at the state Capitol in Charleston, W.Va. Evans recorded video of himself and fellow supporters of President Donald Trump storming the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 prompting calls for his resignation and thousands of signatures on an online petition advocating his removal. (Perry Bennett/West Virginia Legislature via AP)
Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, R-Lancaster, left, and Rep. John Mark Windle, D-Livingston, confer during a House floor session in Nashville, Tenn. Tennessee state Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver on Wednesday night said it had been an "epic and historic day." The Republican lawmaker told The Tennessean that she was "in the thick of it" but hadn't seen any violence.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, attends a hearing of the Pennsylvania State Senate Majority Policy Committee in Gettysburg, Pa. Several lawmakers from across the country who traveled to Washington, D.C., for demonstrations rooted in the baseless conspiracy theory that Democrat Joe Biden stole the presidential election. Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano said he helped organize a bus ride to the demonstrations but left the U.S. Capitol area after the eruption of violence, which he called "unacceptable." A Democratic colleague called for his resignation nonetheless.
Alaska Rep. David Eastman sits at his desk on the Alaska House floor in Juneau, Alaska. Lawmakers from at least a half-dozen states attended or observed the massive demonstrations in Washington that turned into a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. Republican state Reps. David Eastman of Alaska and Justin Hill of Missouri both said they went to Washington to object to the Electoral College votes of several states confirming Biden's election, but didn't participate in the demonstrations.
Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Tucson, right, speaks during a Joint Border Security Advisory Committee at the Arizona Capitol as Arizona House Speaker David Gowan, R- Sierra Vista, listens in Phoenix. Lawmakers from at least a half-dozen states attended or observed the massive demonstrations in Washington that turned into a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem posted photos of himself attending the protest outside the Capitol, but his office said he observed from afar. Liberal groups in the state want him expelled for backing the effort to overturn the election.
Provided by the Missouri House of Representatives, Missouri state Rep. Justin Hill speaks on the Missouri House floor during debate on May 13, 2020, in Jefferson City, Mo. Lawmakers from at least a half-dozen states attended or observed the massive demonstrations in Washington that turned into a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. Republican state Rep. Justin Hill of Missouri said he went to Washington to object to the Electoral College votes of several states confirming Biden's election, but didn't participate in the demonstrations. (Tim Bommel/Missouri House of Representatives via AP, File)
State Del. Derrick Evans was among lawmakers from at least seven states who traveled to Washington, D.C., for demonstrations rooted in the baseless conspiracy theory that Democrat Joe Biden stole the presidential election. Wearing a helmet, Evans ultimately joined a screaming mob as it pushed its way into the Capitol building, and livestreamed himself joyfully strolling inside.
It's unclear if Evans was the only elected official to participate in what Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and many others called a "failed insurrection." It's also not known if any of them will be prosecuted.
Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano said he helped organize a bus ride to the demonstrations but left the U.S. Capitol area after the eruption of violence, which he called "unacceptable." The top Democrat in the Pennsylvania Senate, and eight of his colleagues, want him to resign, saying his actions and words disputing the election's integrity encouraged a coup attempt and inspired the people behind it.
Tennessee state Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver said Wednesday night that it had been an "epic and historic day." The Republican lawmaker told The Tennessean she was "in the thick of it" but hadn't seen any violence. Weaver did not respond to emailed questions from The Associated Press about whether she entered the Capitol.
Incoming Nevada state Assemblywoman Annie Black, a Republican, said she marched from the White House to the U.S. Capitol, where she saw men on megaphones revving the crowd to storm the security barrier. She said she retreated to avoid being associated with the mob.
"We all had a choice when that fence came down," she said. "Whether it was our group that incited that to happen or another group, every single person had the choice to make." Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem posted photos of himself attending the protest outside the Capitol, but his office said he observed from afar. Liberal groups in the state want him expelled for backing the effort to overturn the election.
Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, an outspoken Trump supporter who is running for governor, attended the president's rally Wednesday in which Trump urged supporters to march to the Capitol. Chase said in a Facebook video that she left near the end of the rally on the advice of her security team, and there is no indication she was part of the group that stormed the Capitol.
Republican state Reps. David Eastman of Alaska and Justin Hill of Missouri both said they went to Washington to object to the Electoral College votes of several states confirming Biden's election, but didn't participate in the demonstrations.
Hill described the Trump rally as "very peaceful." "But what I saw at the Capitol was not the same people," he said. "I wasn't there rallying troops to overthrow the government." The president of the national Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, Jessica Post, said "any Republican legislator who took part in yesterday's insurrection, in Washington, D.C., or anywhere else in the country, should resign immediately."
"Yesterday was a stain on our country's history and a dangerous affront to democracy — all those involved have no place making laws," Post said in a news release. Washington, D.C., officials said the FBI and the local Metropolitan Police Department were leading the investigation into identifying the participants in Wednesday's violence. D.C. police have arrested 68 people so far. The top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin, said 40 cases have already been presented in superior court and prosecutors plan to file 15 federal cases Thursday. Sherwin said "all options are on the table," including sedition charges.
John Bryan, a West Virginia attorney representing Evans, was defiant that the delegate will not resign despite lawmakers from both parties seeking to expel him. The Republican speaker of the West Virginia House of Delegates, Roger Hanshaw, said Wednesday night that Evans will need to "answer to his constituents and colleagues" for his actions. Democratic leadership called for his prosecution. About 40,000 people signed a petition on change.org asking for Evans' removal.
"He committed no criminal act that day," Bryan said in a statement late Thursday. The two U.S. Attorneys in West Virginia said in a statement that they are in touch with counterparts in other states and "prepared to enforce the Rule of Law and the laws of these United States."
Evans, a vocal conservative activist with more than 30,000 followers on Facebook, has not publicly posted on social media since issuing a statement Wednesday that he attended the events as an "independent member of the media to film history." He took his Twitter account private late Wednesday and didn't respond to emailed questions.
"At no point was Mr. Evans located in the crowd on the West side of the (Capitol) building, nor anywhere else on the Capitol grounds, where violence and destruction of property was, or had been, occurring," Bryan said.
In his now-deleted video, widely shared online, Evans is clamoring inside a jampacked Capitol building doorway, trying with others to push his way inside. He hollers along with other Trump loyalists and thanks a law enforcement officer for letting them in.
Strolling the grand Capitol Rotunda, where historic paintings depict the republic's founding, Evans implores others to not vandalize artwork and busts, some of which would indeed be vandalized. "Our house!" Evans yells inside Capitol halls. "I don't know where we're going. I'm following the crowd."
Like several other political first-time winners in November's West Virginia elections, Evans swept aside a Democratic rival to win his seat representing Wayne County. High GOP turnout credited to Trump elevated down-ballot Republicans in the state and gave the party a statehouse supermajority.
The chairwoman of the state GOP, Melody Potter, declined to answer questions about Evans.
Associated Press journalists John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tennessee; Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Mark Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Sam Metz in Carson City, Nevada; David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri; and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.
Follow Cuneyt Dil on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cuneytdil.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


We have written about Amherst's missionaries who traveled the world, but some missionary work was done much closer to home. For just over forty years, Amherst students worked with Holyoke's Rev. Dr. Edwin B. Robinson (class of 1896) at Grace Church. Holyoke was a busy manufacturing city; Grace Church was a working-class congregation located in the Flats, where tens of thousands of immigrant families worked in the paper and textile factories and lived in crowded tenements (often company-owned).
Parsons Paper Mill, in Holyoke (1909), with coal smoke billowing from its chimneys.
Amherst College and Western Massachusetts have experienced below-average rainfall amounts for a seventh straight month this year and as a result, water levels in town reservoirs are the lowest they have been in recent history. In mid-August, the state of Massachusetts issued a drought watch for the Connecticut River Region and the Town of Amherst has imposed mandatory water conservation measures for the town, including Amherst College campus.
If you're on campus, you've likely noticed these signs around encouraging conscious consumption and water conservation.
In the fall of 1980, Amherst experienced a severe water shortage due to a very dry summer, several hot days in September, an unusually light snowfall the preceding winter, and the yearly influx of many thousands of students to the area.
In early September, University of Massachusetts, the largest of the three colleges in Amherst, closed campus for several days as an emergency response to lessen demands on the town's water supply.
"Turn off the water when brushing teeth, washing face, and shaving.
Use plugs in sink–fill the sink with hot water instead of letting the faucet run.
The Amherst Student reported that members of the Conservation Project were meeting with the Physical Plants at University of Massachusetts, Hampshire College, and Amherst College to ensure that each institution was doing its best to conserve water.
The Amherst Student gives an interesting glimpse of the 1980 town water shortage and campus-wide response. A full run of the newspaper is available to read in the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.
For more information on Amherst College's ongoing efforts to conserve water and for ideas on how to do your part, visit the Amherst Conserves website.
In honor of the upcoming Global Divestment Day urging institutions to divest from fossil fuel companies and the work being done on the Amherst Campus in support of divestment from coal, I thought we should take a moment to look back at an earlier time that Amherst divested its investment holdings on ethical grounds. I'm referring, of course, to the international campaign to pressure the South African government to dismantle its apartheid system in the 1970s and 80s (although Amherst also divested from Sudan in 2006 on ethical grounds).


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India to launch new Earth observation satellite tonight. Here's how to watch live.
By Elizabeth Howell
EOS-03 will watch for natural disasters along with crop health, perched in geosynchronous orbit
Update for 9:34 pm ET: India's launch of a GSLV rocket carrying the EOS-03 Earth observation satellite has failed. The rocket suffered a catastrophic failure while firing its third stage leading to the loss of the vehicle and its payload. Read our full story here (opens in new tab).
India will send a new Earth observation satellite to space tonight (Aug. 11) to keep an eye on natural disasters, agriculture and forestry regions.
The India Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is scheduled to launch a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) carrying the the EOS-03 satellite from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in eastern India, near the Bay of Bengal, at 8:13 p.m. EDT (0013 GMT or 5:43 a.m. local time Friday, Aug. 12.) You can watch the launch live on this page, as well as on the ISRO website (opens in new tab) and YouTube channel (opens in new tab) at liftoff time. The webcast will begin at 7:40 p.m. EDT (2343 GMT).
The GSLV rocket is expected to place the satellite into a preliminary transfer orbit, and EOS-03 is expected to boost itself to geosynchronous orbit in the following days.
ISRO officials describe EOS-03 (opens in new tab) as a "state-of-the-art" Earth observation satellite with three main objectives: near real-time imaging with frequent revisits to the same region, monitoring natural disasters and other short-term events, and picking up spectral signatures for agriculture and forestry to monitor items like crop health.
Related: India's human spaceflight plans coming together despite delays
An Indian Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle carrying the EOS 3 satellite rolls out to its launchpad at the Satish Dhawan Space Center ahead of a planned launch at 8:43 p.m. EDT on Aug. 11, 2021. It will be Aug. 12 local time at launch. (Image credit: ISRO)
Wednesday's launch will be the fourteenth for the GSLV rocket type, which Indian news sources best remember as the launch vehicle for Chandrayaan-2, India's second lunar exploration mission that launched successfully from the same center in July 2019. While the combination lander-rover crashed during a landing attempt, the orbiter is still working well as it continues the search for lunar ice.
EOS-03 was delayed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which forced engineers and scientists to work remotely, according to an India Today (opens in new tab) report. ISRO is trying to recover its footing and to launch more frequently in the coming months, the report added, with EOS-04 expected to launch in September. The September mission will include synthetic aperture radar to peer through clouds, and will launch aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
Related: India looks beyond the moon to Mars, Venus and astronaut missions
EOS-03 will be ISRO's first satellite launch since Dec. 17, 2020 when the CMS-01 communications satellite went to space, according to agency data (opens in new tab). ISRO completed three launches in 2020 in January, November and December; the pandemic erupted that March.
ISRO also plans to launch a three-stage solid rocket called the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) by the end of 2021, India Today noted. The SSLV will be able to launch payloads to polar orbit or to sun-synchronous polar orbit (meaning that any satellite would have consistent lighting conditions below.)
The Indian Space Research Organization's EOS-03 satellite being readied before launch. (Image credit: ISRO)
Along with launching EOS-03, the GSLV will mark its first flight with a 13-foot (4-meter) payload fairing on board. The fairing will allow the rocket to accommodate larger payloads, ISRO stated.
Correction: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect launch time. It is 8:13 p.m. EDT, not 8:43 p.m. EDT.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Elizabeth Howell
Staff Writer, Spaceflight
Elizabeth Howell, Ph.D., is a staff writer in the spaceflight channel since 2022. She was contributing writer for Space.com (opens in new tab) for 10 years before that, since 2012. Elizabeth's reporting includes an exclusive with Office of the Vice-President of the United States, speaking several times with the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?", is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. Elizabeth holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Space Studies from the University of North Dakota, a Bachelor of Journalism from Canada's Carleton University and (soon) a Bachelor of History from Athabasca University. Elizabeth is also a post-secondary instructor in communications and science since 2015. Elizabeth first got interested in space after watching the movie Apollo 13 in 1996, and still wants to be an astronaut someday. Mastodon: https://qoto.org/@howellspace
Watch 2 pioneering former NASA astronauts receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor today


Which is the best form of economic regulation for postal markets? What role should the universal postal service play in exchanges? How can the postal sector contribute to economic growth and development? The structural analysis of various postal markets worldwide, as well as the economics of postal networks and their impact, as infrastructure, on the economic development of countries are essential.
The fragmentation of markets, supply and demand, regulatory models, the universal postal service and the economic viability of organizational and postal economics models are the structural factors on which growth in postal volumes and of the sector depend.
The exchanges facilitated by these markets and the use of postal infrastructure in implementing policies aimed at economic inclusiveness result in the improved growth potential of the economy as a whole. Consequently, in-depth studies on the experiences of economic integration through the postal networks are conducted in order to identify best practices and draw appropriate lessons for the sector.


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By David Craik - 14th January 2022
Conrad Capital has increased its large loans allocation to £25million to take advantage of a continued boom in both residential and commercial demand in 2022.
The London based real estate lender, which offers a range of bridging loans, secured against residential and commercial property, said given its access to extensive funding lines it is now able to offer larger loans between £10million and £25million.
That marks an increase from its existing loan range of between £250,000 and £5million.
Managing director John Clifford said both first and second charges were available and that the terms of the loans stretched between 3 and 24 months at variable LTVs.
The group said that smaller loans would be considered on an individual basis with longer terms also available up to 120 months again case by case.
Development projects will be considered if the borrower has a strong track record and a minimum 35% financial commitment to the deal. In addition, planning uplift & development agreement cases will be taken into account.
Clifford recently launched the Conrad Real Estate Lending Fund through which investors, mainly high net worth individuals, can invest in a portfolio of short-term bridging loans, with a minimum investment of £250,000.
Late last year Clifford told BLD that bridging demand and the current property market are buoyant not just in London but around the country.
"After the financial crisis of 2008 property prices plunged by some 30%. People feared the same would happen after Brexit and then Covid, but it just hasn't happened," he said.
"For the foreseeable future we see a strong property market."
Clifford is a 12-year veteran of the Bridging Industry notching up 35 years in total in the property and lending arena.
He set up and still manages Central Bridging, a specialist short term bridging lender launched in 2010.


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The Rational Optimist
Frank S. Robinson's blog on life, society, politics, and philosophy
Posts Tagged 'atheism'
God and meaning
Core claims of religion are that God gives us morality, and gives our lives meaning. An essay by Daniel Farrell, in Louise Antony's book Philosophers Without Gods, has no trouble disposing of the first, based on Socrates's Euthyphro question: is something moral because God says so, or does God say so because it is moral? If the latter, we can figure it out without God. If the former it's just arbitrary and we can do better.
But Farrell has more trouble with the problem of meaning. The idea that things are worth doing or have value because God imparts that value. Even given Socrates's insight, Farrell still posits that God is our best source for knowing what is right, hence losing God from the picture is a big loss. And without God, isn't everything futility and meaninglessness?
What this really shows is how religious concepts stuck in our heads mess up thinking. Farrell's problem is a problem only if you start from a paradigm with God at the center as the source of all meaning. Subtract God and there is a big hole. But what if you start from a paradigm that was never confused by that false idea? That is, a paradigm of reality as it actually is.
Then it's clear we must make our own meaning. And it's actually easier. Trying to ground the meaning of your life in the context of a supernatural concept full of logical absurdities (like, where did God come from in the first place, anyway?) is a fool's errand. Far better to ground it in reality.
The reality that life has value to us, who live it, as individuals. Living it as a story, from a beginning to an end; living it through sensory experience, through pleasure and pain. Such feelings, experienced by beings capable of them, are ultimately the only things in the cosmos that matter, or can matter. Nothing you might posit, not even the existence of the Universe itself, can matter except insofar as it impacts those sentient feelings. And that is the only conceivable source of meaning — our strivings to optimize feelings, to enhance pleasure and combat suffering, for ourselves and our fellow sentient beings. Meaning aplenty for us, with no need for any god.
This is truth. A concept of God only muddles things with falsity.
Farrell talks about important decisions, like a career choice, saying they're based on ultimately subjective mental modeling of how we'll feel under different scenarios. He says many non-believers don't find this as problematic as he does, because they're satisfied to make such decisions based on their feelings without a need to (somehow) know they're right. With that rightness being grounded in some notion of a "special significance" to one's life. A concept in turn that comes from God — even if one no longer believes in him!
Is this messed up or what? Farrell actually confesses his inability to really explain it himself. Yet he goes on to talk about wanting one's decisions to embody some sort of "rightness" above and beyond one's (mere?) feelings. And about God supplying that rightness. Which, after all, can only be pure delusion — even if God exists (he doesn't), nobody could know what he thinks about anything.
Contrary to Farrell, overcoming superstition is not a loss, but a benefit, in making meaningful sense of our lives, to live them authentically. We can do that only by eschewing delusions and coming to grips with reality. The rightness of our decisions can only come from within us.
Tags:atheism, religion
Posted in life, Philosophy | 4 Comments »
Secular Rescue – saving lives, freedom, and open debate
Religion can inspire good deeds. Or killing people with machetes.
This is happening today, notably in Bangladesh, where organized vigilantes target and murder dissenters from Muslim religious orthodoxy, particularly secularist and atheist writers, bloggers, and activists. While the government hardly pretends to disapprove.
The West has its own history, of course, of religious intolerance, persecution, and violence. The Inquisition tortured people for God. Untold numbers were burned at the stake (including philosopher Giordano Bruno who, unlike Galileo, refused to recant his ideas contrary to church dogma). The Thirty Years War, a conflict over theology, killed a third of Europe's population. Even in America, Mary Dyer was hanged in Boston Common for holding the wrong faith.
But in the West, religion finally calmed down, became domesticated, and nobody here any longer imagines burning people alive for God. My local humanist society meets openly, unmolested, even advertising its nonreligious orientation.
That would not be possible in most Muslim countries today. This actually represents retrogression, because in past epochs Muslims were much more tolerant of religious heterodoxy; but they've gone in the opposite direction from the Christian West. There's no church/state separation. In many Muslim nations, "apostasy" carries a death sentence. (In Pakistan "blasphemy" does. Pakistan has not actually executed anyone for blasphemy, but over 60 people accused of it have been murdered.)
If you read the Koran (here's my review), its number one theme is nonbelievers will be punished. Repeated on almost every page. But some Muslims today can't wait for God to do the punishing. They think they're doing his work for him. A small minority of Muslims, actually; but it doesn't take many to perpetrate an awful lot of violence.
I am a fearless blogger. Not courageous — but literally fearless because I have nothing to fear in America's paradise of free expression. I wouldn't have the courage to do this in a place like Bangladesh, risking machetes.
Some show bravery in battle, for their country or comrades; some in defending their families. But the courage we're talking about here — for an idea — is of a very special sort. I'm in awe of these noble heroes.
And I'm proud to support them, with money at least, by funding Secular Rescue, a program run by the Center for Inquiry (a leading organization promoting secular humanist values). The program assists, defends, and protects writers under threat for expressing viewpoints that challenge local religious orthodoxies, mainly in Muslim countries. It provides tangible help, such as legal services, and even relocating them to safer places — a kind of "underground railroad." Secular Rescue works very hard to evaluate and verify cases, to make sure the people helped are truly in danger. All that work, and the help itself, costs money.
I will match contributions to Secular Rescue by any of my blog readers (click here).
This is not just a matter of freedom of expression — increasingly important though that is in today's world. Open debate is crucial for moving any society forward. But it's especially urgent for the nations in question because they do harbor the kinds of pernicious beliefs that bring forth the sort of violence described. These Muslim societies are in need of an Enlightenment, like the one in the West that ultimately tamed religious persecution, and opened the path for human progress in so many other manifold ways. That sort of progress requires people with the vision and courage to challenge reigning orthodoxies. That sort of progress cannot happen if such people are silenced, intimidated by violence, squelching free debate. Not only the lives of these brave individuals, but these societies' futures, are at stake. That is the importance of Secular Rescue.
One nonbeliever in a Muslim country was not killed but was actually diagnosed as insane by its medical establishment, forcibly hospitalized and "treated" for his "affliction." I was reminded of the Twilight Zone episode where a gal undergoes surgery for her ugly facial deformity. But when, in the hospital, the bandages come off, it's a failure — she's still (in our eyes) beautiful, in contrast to all the "normal" people around, only now revealed as (to us) grotesque.
Atheism is the sane, rational understanding of a cosmos whose observable reality is wholly at odds with religious ideas. Those ideas would be called insane, delusional, if held only by a few; but when held by the many, they are normal. But that nonbeliever may have been the only truly sane person in that Muslim nut house.
Posted in Philosophy, Society, World affairs | 2 Comments »
Robert Ingersoll — the greatest man you never heard of
We went to a Syracuse shindig celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Robert Ingersoll Birthplace Museum. Run by the Center for Inquiry, a secular humanist organization, its first day featured presentations, the second a bus tour to Ingersoll's and other freethought landmarks. About ninety attended.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) was known as "The Great Agnostic." A lawyer, he was America's foremost public speaker in the late 19th century, traveling the country giving lectures, mostly anti-religious. People flocked to hear him. In those times, other kinds of public entertainments were almost nonexistent. And Ingersoll was such an engaging speaker that he always got a respectful hearing.
How different America is today. People were ignorant then, but knew they were. Now Americans are a little less ignorant but a lot more sure they know everything (regardless of empirical truth).
Ingersoll was a great humanist in every sense of the word — refuting the canard that "atheists believe in nothing." Ingersoll believed in the power of human rationality to give us progress and good lives. That the happiness of sentient beings is the ultimate source of meaning. That the time to be happy is now, and the place is here, on Earth. That one's happiness is entwined with that of others. And Ingersoll lived these principles, earning the love and admiration of everyone he touched.
His birthplace museum is in Dresden, NY, a tiny town. We were shown a screenshot from "Tripadvisor" labeling the Ingersoll site "#1 of 1 things to do in Dresden."
Tom Flynn (editor of CFI's Free Inquiry magazine) placed Ingersoll in the context of what he called "the Braid of Reform" in 19th Century America. The two great causes were abolition and women's rights (including suffrage). Not all these movements' adherents were religious freethinkers, but many were; and most freethinkers were abolitionists and suffragists. "Freethought" means thinking outside the box of traditional religious dogmas.
Blumner
Robyn Blumner heads the CFI. She noted that its $5 million budget is the largest for any U.S. secular organization, but is dwarfed by funding for the Christian right. "Campus Crusade for Christ" has a budget a hundred times larger. Blumner said, however, that we have reason, science, and truth on our side. Though truth used to have a bigger constituency.
One CFI program she discussed had particular resonance for me: "Secular Rescue." I am a fearless blogger — not courageous, but literally fearless because in America there's nothing to fear over what one writes. Not so in other countries, especially Muslim ones, where "blasphemy" is a crime, sometimes punishable by death; a Saudi blogger, Raif Badawi, was sentenced to ten years in prison and 1000 lashes (to be administered in installments). In Bangladesh there's a vigilante crusade murdering "blaspheming" bloggers. "Secular Rescue" is engaged in protecting such people and even relocating them to safer places.
Norman Dann spoke about Gerrit Smith (1797-1874), another great figure you never heard of. Extremely rich, all Smith wanted to do with his money was to advance human rights, especially abolition. He freed a lot of slaves by simply buying them. Initially he felt "moral suasion" could end slavery. Then political activism. Finally, a fellow came to him with a different approach: violence and war. That was John Brown, and Smith funded him.
Sue Boland talked about Matilda Joslyn Gage — the third woman's suffrage triumvir, with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, though much less famous now.
Gage was a freethinker whose battle for women's rights targeted religion, with all its patriarchal ideas. Indeed, Christianity was the most powerful force opposing female suffrage.
Gage's son-in-law was L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz — which Boland called a freethought fairy tale, telling us that everything we need is already inside us. (No need for that fraud behind the curtain!)
The bus tour included Gage's house in Fayetteville, as well as, in Peterboro, the Gerrit Smith site and the National Abolition Hall of Fame.
Another program centered on D.M. Bennett, publisher of a freethought periodical, The Truth Seeker, who in 1879 fell victim to "anti-vice" pervert Anthony Comstock, being imprisoned for mailing obscenity — a book of conjugal advice. Whose author President Hayes pardoned. But, bowing to church pressure, he wouldn't pardon Bennett.
Grube as Stanton
We also had two costumed dramatic impersonations. Melinda Grube channeled Stanton (Gerrit Smith's cousin). A focus was how her life was shaped by her brother's death in youth and her father's inability to take equal pride in her, being the wrong gender. "She couldn't change her father, or herself, so she'd have to change the world." Like Gage, Stanton saw women's oppression rooted in Christianity and the Bible; she authored The Woman's Bible with plain English explanations of its pernicious passages relating to women.
Margaret Downey gave us Eva Parker Ingersoll, Robert's wife, focusing on their love story. She quoted from a letter he wrote to Eva: "The world is getting free. I thank God every day that he does not exist."
After dinner, the keynote speech was by Susan Jacoby, Ingersoll biographer and author of several other books (one of which I recently wrote about). Her theme: what would Ingersoll think of today's America?
Jacoby stressed Ingersoll's linking religion's rejection of reason with the whole spectrum of social issues like women's rights and immigration. Yes, he was enlightened even on that, battling against the onset of immigration restrictions with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. As ever, his argument was moral: Chinese are human beings who should be treated the same as any other. "A great nation," he said, "should be bound by the highest conception of honor and justice." (Funny how believers insist morality comes from religion, when so often religious dogmas make them morally blind.)
Jacoby sees increasingly successful efforts by today's religionists to undermine church-state separation, using protection of religious freedom as a wedge, twisting it into a right to impose their beliefs on others. She said Ingersoll may have been too optimistic about science's ability to overcome all this.
The word "tribal" has been invoked a lot in analyzing Trump support. Jacoby sees that tribalism as being animated more by religion than anything else (such as economic concerns). It's a fact that the 40% of Americans who back Trump are largely the same people who are Christian fundamentalists. And just as religious faith works to seal people off from reality checks, the same seems true in the political realm, with Trumpism more like a faith cult than a mere political viewpoint.
Is there hope? Yes. One writer recently called the religious right's ascendancy "a cultural stab from the grave," demographically speaking. Throughout the rest of the developed world, Christian religion is in sharp retreat, with belief and churchgoing collapsing. In America, the younger you are, the less religious you are apt to be. The religious right's flame will ultimately burn out. In the long run, reason will defeat unreason.
Tags:atheism, freethought, religion
Posted in history, Philosophy, Politics | 2 Comments »
Was America founded as a "Christian nation?"
We're often told that it was. The aim is to cast secularism as somehow un-American, and override the Constitution's separation of church and state. But it's the latter idea that's un-American; and it's historical nonsense. Just one more way in which the religious right is steeped in lies (forgetting the Ninth Commandment).
They assault what is in fact one of the greatest things about America's birth. It's made clear in Susan Jacoby's book, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism.
Firstly, it tortures historical truth to paint the founding fathers as devout Christians. They were not; instead men of the Enlightenment. While "atheism" wasn't even a thing at the time, most of them were as close to it as an Eighteenth Century person could be. Franklin was surely one of the century's most irreverent. Washington never in his life penned the name "Christ." Jefferson cut-and-pasted his own New Testament, leaving out everything supernatural and Christ's divinity. In one letter he called Christian doctrine "metaphysical insanity."
The secularism issue was arguably joined in 1784 (before the Constitution) when Patrick Henry introduced a bill in Virginia's legislature to tax all citizens to fund "teachers of the Christian religion." Most states still routinely had quasi-official established churches. But James Madison and others mobilized public opinion onto an opposite path. The upshot was Virginia passing not Henry's bill but, instead, one Jefferson had proposed years earlier: the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.
It was one of three achievements Jefferson had engraved on his tombstone.
The law promulgated total separation of church and state. Nobody could be required to support any religion, nor be penalized or disadvantaged because of religious beliefs or opinions. In the world of the Eighteenth Century, this was revolutionary. News of it spread overseas and created an international sensation. After all, this was a world still bathed in blood from religious believers persecuting other religious believers. It was not so long since people were burned at the stake over religion, and since a third of Europe's population perished in wars of faith. Enough, cried Virginia, slashing this Gordian knot of embroiling governmental power with religion.
Soon thereafter delegates met in Philadelphia to create our Constitution. It too was revolutionary; in part for what it did not say. The word "God" nowhere appears, let alone the word "Christian." Instead of starting with a nod to the deity, which would have seemed almost obligatory, the Constitution begins "We the people of the United States . . . ." We people did this, ourselves, with no god in the picture.
This feature did not pass unnoticed at the time; to the contrary, it was widely denounced, as an important argument against ratifying the Constitution. But those views were outvoted, and every state ratified.
It gets better. Article 6, Section 3 says "no religious test shall ever be required" for holding any public office or trust. This too was highly controversial, contradicting what was still the practice in most states, and with opponents warning that it could allow a Muslim (!) president. But the "no religious test" provision shows the Constitution's framers were rejecting all that, and totally embracing, instead, the religious freedom stance of Virginia's then-recent enactment. And that too was ratified.
Indeed, it still wasn't even good enough. In the debates over ratification, many felt the Constitution didn't sufficiently safeguard freedoms, including religious freedom, and they insisted on amendments, which were duly adopted in 1791. That was the Bill of Rights. And the very first amendment guaranteed freedom of both speech and religion — which go hand-in-hand. This made clear that all Americans have a right to their opinions, and to voice those opinions, including ideas about religion, and that government could not interfere. Thus would Jefferson later write of "the wall of separation" between church and state.
All this was, again, revolutionary. The founders, people of great knowledge and wisdom, understood exactly what they were doing, having well in mind all the harm that had historically been done by government entanglement with religion. What they created was something new in the world, and something very good indeed.
Interestingly, as Jacoby's book explains, much early U.S. anti-Catholic prejudice stemmed from Protestants' fear that Catholics, if they got the chance, would undermine our hard-won church-state separation, repeating the horrors Europe had endured.
A final point by Jacoby: the religious attack on science (mainly, evolution science) does not show religion and science are necessarily incompatible. Rather, it shows that a religion claiming "the one true answer to the origins and ultimate purpose of human life" is "incompatible not only with science but with democracy." Because such a religion really says that issues like abortion, capital punishment, or biomedical research can never be resolved by imperfect human opinion, but only by God's word. This echoes the view of Islamic fundamentalists that democracy itself, with humans presuming to govern themselves, is offensive to God. What that means in practice, of course, is not rule by (a nonexistent) God but by pious frauds who pretend to speak for him.
I'm proud to be a citizen of a nation founded as a free one* — not a Christian one.
* What about slaves? What about women? Sorry, I have no truck with those who blacken America's founding because it was not a perfect utopia from Day One. Rome wasn't built in a day. The degree of democracy and freedom we did establish were virtually without precedent in the world of the time. And the founders were believers in human progress, who created a system open to positive change; and in the centuries since, we have indeed achieved much progress.
Posted in history, Philosophy, Politics, Science | 2 Comments »
Assume 50-50 odds of God existing or not. Which way should you bet? With your afterlife, that is. This is "Pascal's wager."
Blaise Pascal was a 17th century French mathematical genius responsible for great advances in probability theory. He answered his question this way: if you go "yes" and are wrong, you lose nothing. But if you wrongly bet "no," you can wind up in Hell. Therefore believing in God is the logical choice.
Childish though this little game might seem, it actually was a step toward a proper theory of decision-making and risk management. Pascal was propounding a method for analysis when weighing uncertain future possibilities, based on mapping out their consequences. It may seem obvious today, but in his time it wasn't.
Yet Pascal's analysis of the God problem was faulty (even assuming the odds really are 50-50). Betting "yes" is not actually cost-free. Far from it — as well illustrated by Pascal's own life. At an early age he put all his chips on that bet, and devoted himself entirely to religion. He gave up mathematics completely. What a waste of genius!
However, there's something very strange here. If Pascal was so deeply religious, how could he even have hypothesized God's nonexistence? And then fail to foresee his loss if he were wrong? No true believer would think that way. But perhaps I'm making here the common mistake of imputing some sort of rationality to religious thinking. The true cost of faith is sacrificing your rational engagement with reality.
Anyhow, Pascal's wager is as ridiculous as all so-called logical proofs of God's existence that religious apologist philosophers indefatigably concoct. The simplest answer is to ask why Pascal's same wager should not equally apply to every other religion in the world. Why bet on Christianity as opposed to Hinduism? Pascal would have to choose. Now the bet doesn't look so easy.
Well, hello, there is no God, no Heaven or Hell; no religion is true. You can bet on it. The odds are 100%.
Tags:atheism
Posted in Philosophy | 1 Comment »
"Without God everything is permitted"
My wife and I have been reading, aloud to each other, The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's 1880 novel. A key motif is whether "without God everything is permitted." That's become a major talking point against atheism; the notion that atheists have no reason to be moral. Indeed, the idea's societal reverberations may well be traceable back to Karamazov.
It was written when atheism was beginning to be important. Nietzsche soon declared, "God is dead." Dostoevsky was himself deeply religious, yet in Karamazov he does not cavalierly dismiss the opposing point of view. Rather, he wrestles with the moral implications.
I have previously discussed morality without God. If we need him for morality, we'd be in trouble, because of course he's a fiction. But in truth, whatever moral codes religions prescribe, they are merely a reflection of our pre-existing moral intuitions, rooted in evolution. Our ancestors lived in groups wherein cooperation, morality, and even altruism aided survival. People with tendencies toward those virtues lived to pass along their genes. These norms became further embedded through culture; religions are cultural inventions and again merely incorporate the moral ideas already a part of a given culture.
Further, each of us figures out, using common sense and our rational minds, how to live. Most of us do what's right because it feels right. Our empathy for others dissuades us from actions harming them. And we realize it's better to live in a society where people treat each other decently than in a Hobbesian "war of all against all." None of this requires a God.
In Karamazov, Ivan hallucinates a conversation with the Devil. And in it, the Devil makes this remarkable speech — imagining what he thinks Ivan himself would say:
"Once every member of the human race discards the idea of God (and I believe that such an era will come, like some new geological age), the old world-view will collapse by itself without recourse to cannibalism . . . . Men will unite in their efforts to get everything out of life that it can offer them, but only for joy and happiness in this world. Man will be exalted spiritually with a divine, titanic pride and the man-god will come into being. Extending his conquest over nature beyond all bounds through his will and his science, man will constantly experience such great joy that it will replace for him his former anticipation of the pleasures that await him in heaven. Everyone will know that he is mortal, and will accept his death with calm and dignity, like a god. He will understand, out of sheer pride, that there is no point in protesting that life lasts only a fleeting moment, and he will love his brother man without expecting any reward for it. Love will satisfy only a moment in life, but the very awareness of its momentary nature will concentrate its flames, which before were diffused and made pale by the anticipation of eternal life beyond the grave . . . And so on and so forth. Very sweet!"
The Devil is being sardonic, as the final words show. He's mocking Ivan. And yet this speech — put in the Devil's mouth by the very religious author — actually expresses pretty well my own humanist ethos.
In the next passage the Devil invokes twice the "everything is permitted" trope — the new "man-god" can "jump without scruple over every barrier of the old moral code devised for the man-slave."
Yet scruples are integral to our essential human nature. Our morality, which is self-built, does not enslave us, but liberates us, to live good lives, despite lacking ennoblement conferred by a god.
Tags:atheism, morality, religion
Posted in Philosophy, Society | 4 Comments »
Chris Stedman: Faitheist
Chris Stedman's career is in "interfaith work," but his book, Faitheist, is addressed mainly to his fellow atheists, urging them to lighten up.
It centers upon his own story. His Minnesota family was nonreligious, but at age 11, he experienced a crisis by reading "heavy" books that exposed him to the world's injustice and cruelty. Also, his parents divorced. Chris found refuge in his school's Christian group, which welcomed him and assuaged his social justice discomforts.
But there was one wee problem. Christianity seemed obsessively homophobic. And Chris was starting to realize this applied to him. His Teen Study Bible labeled him an abomination in God's eyes, and his resulting inner struggle drove him close to suicide.
At last his mother stumbled upon his personal journal and brought him to a different kind of Christian minister – who took one look at the relevant Teen Study Bible page, drew a big red X across it, and said, "This is dehumanizing garbage."
So Chris found a different path within Christianity, and went on to a Christian college, studying religion, headed for the ministry.
But there was another wee problem. He no longer believed in God. The book, after many pages chronicling Chris's agony over faith versus sexuality, has relatively few about faith versus non-faith. That seemed fairly easy for him. But he completed his degree, as the class atheist, and even proceeded to divinity school, winding up as Harvard's Assistant Humanist Chaplain. (He recently went to Yale.)
His "interfaith work" seeks to bridge religious divides by finding common ground and ways to work together and understand each other better. Stedman classifies the religious as either "totalitarians" or "pluralists," with the latter actually having more affinities with nonbelievers than with the totalitarians.
But as noted the book is aimed mainly at atheists, who are also divided. Stedman disparages the belligerence of the so-called "New Atheism." (He singles out PZ Myers, whose book I've also reviewed.) With some atheists seeing their goal as eradicating religion, Stedman is unsurprised at the religious push-back. After all, he notes in comparison, the gay rights movement hasn't sought to end heterosexuality. He doesn't like a "we're right, they're wrong" attitude.
I'm guilty of some of that myself. Obviously if you believe something, you believe people thinking differently are wrong. But I draw the line at "we're right, they're insane," and I've criticized writers like Charlie Pierce for that. It might be different if religion were practiced only by an eccentric minority; but in a country where most folks are religious, that must be considered normal and sane. And I'm all for greater mutual understanding, working together, and apple pie; and I do try to avoid personal insults, calling people crazy or stupid. Yet religion should not enjoy some special exemption from critical scrutiny; its ideas should be subjected to vigorous public debate like any others. That's what the "New Atheism" is about.
Furthermore, it would also be different were this just a matter of personal beliefs, kept personal. But most atheists would like to see the end of religion not only because it's false but because they consider it harmful. Religion's defenders can't deny some very bad things, but of course claim the good outweighs the bad. As I see it, the good works ascribed to faith are things people could, and mostly would, do even without religion,
because we are in fact more good than bad (societies like Denmark's or Norway's where religion has almost disappeared are some of the world's nicest); while the bad things (9/11; Boko Haram) are uniquely products of religious belief and would be hard to imagine absent that factor.
Religionists will of course retort that some of the worst crimes have been committed by atheistic regimes (though Hitler's at least wasn't atheist). But those crimes were not committed in service to atheism; not motivated by disbelief in God; the concept of God was simply irrelevant. In contrast, many bloody crimes throughout history were of course motivated by religious belief.
Believers will also say such crimes are perversions of proper faith. But the problem is that religion has an unavoidable tendency to inspire absolutism (Stedman's "totalitarianism") – the "one truth" so powerful that it can justify almost anything in service to it. Disbelief doesn't come close to having such inspirational power – a very good thing. In fact nobody kills for atheism.
This is why we would like to see religion disappear. But it bears emphasizing that – so unlike religion throughout most of history – atheists wield the pen, not the sword; words, not violence. And, given its long history of burning people at the stake, it's a bit rich for religion to be telling atheists to dial it back.
And Chris Stedman, of all people, should know the harm of religion. An inhumane religious dogma drove him to the brink of suicide. Just one more reason why atheists believe the world would be a better place without religion.
How I Got Irreligion
At around age six, I was sent to a Jewish "Sunday school," featuring Bible stories: Daniel and the lions, Noah's ark, etc. I was fine with them, as stories. But then I realized adults took them seriously; troubled by this, I confided in my mother.
No theologian, she. But I distinctly remember her ending the discussion by saying, "Well, you do believe in God, don't you?" I said yes. And I knew I was lying.
I was no rebellious kid; in fact, a meek, go-with-the-program, clueless kid. But even at six, I saw right through religion.
Odd, this common locution, "believe in God." We don't say we "believe in fire," or upholsterers, or aardvarks. Few have actually seen that beast, but an aardvark nonbeliever would be pretty weird. For reality, "belief" simply doesn't enter into it. Talk of belief in God implicitly bespeaks something other than reality.
Anyway, I went on to Hebrew school, Bar-mitzvah lessons, and the Bar-mitzvah itself, on stage in the synogogue, chanting the memorized gobblydegook. It never occurred to me to say no to any of this; again, I was a go-with-the-program kid. I actually did well in Hebrew school, if only to avoid humiliation when called on in class. But I drew the line at anything optional, to the despair of my religious teachers.
Through it all, my disbelief felt like a shameful, guilty secret, a personal failing. Performing at my Bar-mitzvah, I considered myself a fraud. The sanctimony all around me evoked virtue, propriety, right-thinking. It seemed universal – with the sole exclusion of pitiful me. Never, anywhere, was I exposed to a dissenting viewpoint. This was the '50s, with no Dawkins or Hitchens. Nothing to suggest I was not alone, or to provide any validation for my unbelief. What was wrong with me?
In that sense, I can understand how being gay must have felt – with no validation for that either. (So underground was gayness that not till my twenties did I actually understand what it was.)
Yet I never agonized; never made an effort to get with the program of religion. Notwithstanding how admirable faith might appear, to me it seemed just fundamentally false. The Emperor had no clothes.
Some believers imagine atheists will eventually "see the light," if only on their deathbeds (or in the proverbial foxholes). Human psychology varies endlessly, so it does happen, but quite rarely in fact. None of the many atheists I've known has ever lapsed. My own conviction has only grown stronger over time. What was at first a "simple faith" (or lack thereof) has profoundly deepened as I have learned ever more about the history of religions, the human psychology behind them, and all their spectacular philosophical contradictions. And I long ago stopped wondering "what's wrong with me?"
My humanist atheism is indeed the essence of what's right with me. Believers feel their faith is what gives their lives meaning. And if that's really true for a person, fine. But for all the consolation claimed for religion, many are tortured by doubt. Wrestling with doubt might be portrayed, by intellectualist apologists, as part of a wholesome experience of faith. But I'm not attracted by a hopeless effort to reconcile the irreconcilable. I don't feel it's possible to make proper sense of anything while laboring under so basic a mistake about reality.
I have never been afflicted by doubt about my most fundamental perceptions. There's much about life and the cosmos I don't yet truly understand (quantum mechanics; why there's something rather than nothing; the minds of priests who rape children); but my pursuit of such understanding is not hobbled by a need to reconcile it with preconceived dogmas that can never be squared with reality. Being thusly free to see the world as it really is, I feel, enables me to fit properly into that reality, and to make a life of authentic (not illusory) meaning.
Anyhow, that's me. If it's not you, I won't try to get you burned at the stake.
Tags:atheism, faith, reality
Posted in Philosophy | 8 Comments »
Proof that Heaven is Real?
Long atop the NY Times nonfiction best-seller list has been Todd Burpo's Heaven Is For Real. Burpo is an evangelical pastor whose book tells of his four-year-old son emerging from unconsciousness during surgery with a tale of visiting Heaven, meeting deceased relatives, and seeing angels, Jesus and God, etc. (This is "nonfiction"?!)
Now Newsweek — yes, Newsweek! — similarly headlines "Heaven Is Real," with no question mark, and the subtitle, "A Doctor's Experience of the Afterlife." Dr. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon, who spent a week in a coma, during which he says he too visited Heaven. He saw "transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky," trailing streamers, with whom he communicated by a method transcending language. They told him, "You are loved and cherished, you have nothing to fear," and suchlike treacle. Then he traveled to an infinite dark void, infinitely comforting, which he believes is the home of God. All this he labels a glimpse of a "reality" which left him a different person. (This is "news"?!)
Of course, religious faith means belief regardless of evidence, yet believers eat up any seeming scrap of supportive "evidence," especially for that all-important fantasy of life after death. And, like Burpo's publisher, Newsweek shamelessly panders to that, to boost sales.
As my wife put it, these people had near-death, not post-death experiences. It was not an "afterlife." Reports from many who survived similar episodes are pretty consistent about how the brain hallucinates in a particular way when deprived of oxygen and in the throes of what it construes as demise. Often there is some sort of tunnel, and bright light.
We know how the mind can play tricks even during normal consciousness. It's hardly news that it happens when the brain is undergoing the extreme trauma of the death process. There must be something in the brain's wiring that, in such circumstances, defaults to hallucinations of the general type so often reported. And of course prior religious belief might cause one to fill in details consonant with that religion.
Thus, in the Burpo case, even if you charitably accept it's really the kid's story (unembellished by Dad), with a father like that he'd have been powerfully pre-programmed to imagine just what he imagined. Dr. Alexander says that before his coma, he was a Christian, but not "deeply religious." Whatever – but it's neither coincidental nor surprising that his dream or hallucination conformed generally to notions pumped into his brain all his life in church. What would be surprising is if he came back with, for example, a Hindu-like story.
If he wants to believe, like the four-year-old, that his Heavenly tour was reality and not a mere dream or coma-induced hallucination, fine, but the only thing it proves is that even a self-described "man of science" can be deluded. This is no indictment of science. The population of scientists is very large, they are human, and inevitably a few eccentric beliefs will occur. But grown-ups should not treat silly stories like Burpo's and Alexander's as though they merit serious attention, let alone Newsweek covers. We all experience wacky dreams, but most of us have the sense not to confuse them with reality.
POSTSCRIPT: I've just learned that Newsweek's print edition will cease publication, going to web-only. They insist this is not the magazine's demise. Apparently Newsweek really does believe in an afterlife!
Tags:atheism, heaven, philosophy, religion
Posted in Philosophy | 10 Comments »
About Frank S. Robinson
E-mail: frank@fsrcoin.com
Frank's Photo
My book, "Angels and Pinheads"
My book, "The Case for Rational Optimism"
My coin website
The Frank S. Robinson Enlightenment Fund
Adam Choit's curious site
Another rational optimist
Blog by Scott Perlman
My wife's poetry blog
Democrats and Non-white Voters
UFO Abductions and America's Reality Crisis
China's Covid Catastrophe
Political Double Standards, Whataboutism, and Classified Documents
Judge LaSalle and the Left's Performative Politics
Biden at the Border: Democrats and Immigration
My book talk, "The Trump Shitstorm," SAT. JAN. 14, 3 PM
The United States House of Reprehensibles
Blacks Go Back to Africa
An Artificial Intelligence Rebuts Me!
Trumpery Recap
Reunifications and Republicans
The Supreme Court and Affirmative Action
Ai Weiwei and Bono on Art and Capitalism
Myanmar's Agony: "The Road Not Taken"


text:
The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins Pdf
Download PDF Image: SOURCE: DAVID WALTER/NIELSEN BOOK SCAN Basic. and the quality of the narrative matter," says Menon. Classics such as Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (Oxford Univ. Press, 1976).
The Selfish Gene is a 1976 book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, in which the author builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's Adaptation and Natural Selection (1966). Dawkins uses the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution (as opposed to the views focused on the organism and the group), popularising ideas developed during the 1960s by W. D.
Twenty-five years ago, Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene (Oxford Univ. Press, 1976), proposed the existence of cultural replicators or 'memes' that worked in a similar way to genes. According to.
Go to the original for links. Harsh words, but whenever I read such things I recall the remark made by Richard Dawkins when responding to an especially vicious, and badly misinformed, criticism of his.
The conventions, rules, professional charters, laws, regulations and technical standards that control how we identify in different contexts are memes; namely, heritable units of cultural transmission.
The power of evolution "to explain many things," as he puts it, struck him when he was still in high school in Tauranga, south of Auckland, after reading Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. Hooked,
One of his pet hates seems to be a remark made by Richard Dawkins [in The Selfish Gene] that the genes have "created us, body and mind". New York Review readers should have got the point, because.
Thus human behaviour can be hard-wired by genes that evolve through natural selection. However, as discussed by Richard Dawkins in his seminal book "The Selfish Gene", human behaviour also evolves.
Whenever someone claims that Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene has done more for biology than most front-line research in the field, we get a taste of those potential battles. Nevertheless, by.
Dec 02, 2014 · Simon Sheaff is a PhD Student in Political Science at the University of Maryland. He competed in policy debate for nine years, including two Top-10 finishes at the NSDA National Tournament and qualification for the National Debate Tournament.
Do Astronomers Get Paid Well So what can we do about this? Well I have tried. the first clue about astronomy. It is dead easy to check that we have only one sun. Hold a finger in front of it (don't stare at the Sun as you. What Muslims do is the opposite: they have the "theory" that their Qur'an is Allah's direct word (which was revealed and passed on to Muhammad's mind, then dictated by him and written in
DNA barcodes, gene-shuffling, BioBrick parts and cells as hardware: synthetic biology is saturated with metaphors. And it is not an isolated case. In 1976, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
COMPASSIONATE BIOLOGY How CRISPR-based "gene drives" could cheaply, rapidly and sustainably reduce suffering throughout the living world. "The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation.
One of the sadistic pleasures to be had from the defunct age of selfish-genery was to witness the mental loops of its proponents as they tried to extricate themselves from the illogical cul-de-sacs of.
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author.He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and.
"The emotional pull is partly a reflection of my own enthusiasm," says Lane. "Think what you like about Richard Dawkins, but when he wrote The Selfish Gene he said he didn't want to persuade people to.
But, as Richard Dawkins commented about people who have been disturbed by his book The Selfish Gene, in his [email protected] public lecture in London this year, "If something is true, no amount of wishful.
"Personally I am not so much into lab research," says Ji, who instead finds more pleasure in sharing his knowledge from books such as The Selfish Gene by British ethnologist Richard Dawkins. Since he.
ActionBioscience.org examines bioscience issues in biodiversity, environment, genomics, biotechnology, evolution, new frontiers in the sciences, and education. Includes peer-reviewed articles, class lessons, and educator resources
LONDON: Internet games can boost children's interest in mathematics. an Oxford position previously held by Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene. "I'm somebody who does science and I like.
Coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene, memes have risen in popularity in the last five years thanks to the internet and social media serving as tools for rapid repetition and.
He concludes that although an individual's atoms might fairly be considered as belonging to him or her, the ownership of genes is more complex, as we each own not a gene but. our "selfish.
With 2013's tour Robert Newman's New Theory of Evolution, the Londoner took aim at The Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins (and, by extension, the fundamentals of capitalism) and his 'survival of the.
Based on a molecular biological perspective, the central dogma treats the cell as passive; it's just a gene's way of making another gene, as British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has. in.
So I want to make a different point: How could sane people ever come to believe such things? If, as Richard Dawkins put it in The Selfish Gene: "We are survival machines — robot vehicles blindly.
In other words, what can the technology become? What does it want? Kelly's imperative goes beyond evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins's vivid metaphor of the "selfish gene" to his lesser-known but.
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Climate Central's peer-reviewed projections should business resume "as usual", published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. In summation, Lower Manhattan may want to start garnering gondolas and building floating docks, or it may just be time to head for the Colorado Rockies, build an ark, and wait for Waterworld to begin.
Illustration of Bren Smith's 3-D ocean farm. Image from GreenWave.org.
There is a revolving door in global markets for food fads. Coconut water and related products have become a billion-dollar industry. Kale, in the 'chip' form alone, made about two hundred million dollars last year. But there is a new contender that is gaining in popularity, sneaking up on a number of different food products and may turn out to be far more than just a fad – seaweed.
I've always been fascinated with seaweed, especially since my husband is an ecologist who studies algae, and I've worked with him on several studies, as well as in the aquaculture world. So last week's article by Dana Goodyear in The New Yorker was especially interesting.
The article laid out the future of seaweed on the American plate – "A New Leaf: Seaweed Could be a Miracle Food—If We Can Figure Out How to Make it Taste Good". In the article, Goodyear explores all the potential roads to success for the 'sea vegetable', especially against the backdrop of seaweed as a carbon negative crop; as a conservation measure to restore seaweed habitat and the thousands of marine species that rely on it, and as a way to mitigate impacts of run-off due to the fantastic ability of seaweed to absorb nitrogen and phosphorus.
Goodyear features Bren Smith – a fisherman turned entrepreneurial ocean farmer, who wants to bring sustainable seaweed and shellfish to a table near you. Smith is a lifelong commercial fisherman, who turned to aquaculture as a way to restore jobs for out of work fishermen, and help hedge against climate change, while creating an environmentally-friendly farm that has zero inputs.
Kelp harvest. Image from at Thimble Island Ocean Farm.
For an in-depth, 2014 Scuttlefish interview with Smith check out: Life in Salt: A Talk with Bren Smith, Owner of Thimble Island Oysters and Long Island Sound's First Vertical 3D Ocean Farm.
Screenshot from the BBC's video clip taken from Lesbos.
An estimated three-quarters of a million migrants have made the shores of Europe this year alone, mostly in the Greek Islands bordering Turkey. As a result, "tens of thousands" of lifejackets, the BBC reports lie along the shores of islands including Lesbos, where fishermen now say the waters are so clogged that they can't even manage to fish.
Unfortunately, these mountains of nylon, plastic and foam are presenting a far greater, long-term dilemma. Some are calling them an "ecological timebomb", but, according to the BBC, authorities say they don't have the capacity to "dispose" of the safety vests.
There's been a lot of talk about the recent footage of a white shark tearing apart a seal off Alcatraz, but did you know that there are about seven species of sharks that regularly visit San Francisco Bay, all of whom serve critical roles in the ecosystem?
Close out Sharktober with the Aquarium of the Bay on October 29th for an evening short films, photography and lectures on San Francisco Bay's sharks by David McGuire (Shark Stewards) and Michael Grassmann (Aquarium of the Bay).


text:
Sundayindependent
1 and 2. South African rhinos at the Longhui breeding facility in Sanya, Hainan Province, China.
Exposed: SA's dodgy rhino deals
By SIMON BLOCH and IVOR POWELL Jun 17, 2012
Conservation control failures and abuses are condemning hundreds of SA's threatened rhino to horror zoos and breeding programmes feeding into the Far East's traditional medicines industry.
Weekend Argus can reveal that scores, if not hundreds, of SA white rhino have ended up in the hands of Chinese and Vietnamese entrepreneurs linked to that industry, where rhino horn is used as a tonic and a traditional cure-all.
This is despite the recent tightening of export permit regulations under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
But some destinations where SA rhino have ended up could be even worse than Chinese breeding farms and Vietnamese zoos, where their horn is shaved for medical use.
In 2010 two Cites-listed rhino were exported to a company called Thai Skin and Hide – seemingly in complete defiance of international protocols under Cites which seek to ensure that rhino may only be exported to zoological institutions with adequate facilities, a strong conservation agenda and with no connection to the trade in animal body parts and derivatives.
The revelations come at a time when a powerful lobby is seeking to convince the international community to decriminalise the rhino horn trade, arguing that legal trade would reduce incentives for poaching the endangered animals.
Already this year, 245 rhino have been killed in SA for their horns.
Apparent failures to comply with Cites requirements and apply due diligence procedures, added to the seeming inability of the authorities to act decisively against rhino poachers, could weaken SA's negotiating position ahead of Cites's COP 2013 conference in Bangkok next year, where the SA delegation is expected to plead for a relaxation of controls.
Statistics provided by Water and Environmental Affairs minister Edna Molewa, in reply to parliamentary questions in April and May this year, reveal that 101 live white rhino have been exported from SA since 2007.
But the real number could be far higher; Cites's own data shows that 193 rhino were exported from SA between 2007 and 2010 alone.
In response to Parliamentary question no 1 394, in May, no details were provided regarding importers and exporters, nor on whether Threatened or Protected Species permits were issued. In only 11 of 29 shipments had Cites protocols been observed. In the remaining 18, no information was provided.
An earlier parliamentary response in April – where information passed on to the legislature relied largely on export records at OR Tambo International Airport – was more forthcoming, indicating a small group of dealers accounted for most of the rhino exports recorded.
These included a company called Decai International, which exported 28 rhino in the period to Far Eastern zoos. Decai's directors are Chinese, with only two in possession of SA identity numbers.
Interviewed last week, registered co-owner of Decai, Hong Yu Chen, confirmed the company was an import/exporter dealing in live animals, animals skins and SA wine. It also catered to the safari travel and hunting industry.
Chen said the company had not been able to fulfil requests from China for live rhino lately because the department had stopped issuing permits.
Alongside Decai, wildlife agency Bester Birds is listed as exporting 24 live rhino, and dealer Jimmy Magill six. Both Magill and Mike Bester denied any wrongdoing, insisting their exports were vetted and permitted.
Especially sketchy in the parliamentary replies was the information made available from the North West province, where Molewa was previously premier.
Water and Environmental Affairs officials are required by law to retain copies of all permits issued for the export of live rhino but no details were supplied to Parliament on exports. In every case it was only because the information was given in the OR Tambo paperwork that the destination of the rhino in question was revealed.
One such reference that slipped through is to the Longhui Breeding Company in Tailing Village in the province of Tianya. It is closely linked with the Chinese traditional medicine lobby, and campaigns to re-legalise the pharmaceutical use of rhino horn which was banned in China when it became a signatory to Cites in 1993.
Longhui's website spells it out: "To provide our pharmaceutical raw materials, the company has built an endangered animals breeding station in Sanya, Hainan province."
Its business plan says Longhui aims to produce rhino horn pharmaceuticals to the value of some $60 million (R500m).
Read next on IOL
Game of golf to fight joblessness in Limpopo


text:
Early American Literature
The Crisis of Restoration: Mary Rowlandson's Lost Home
Bridget Bennett
Volume 49, Number 2, 2014
10.1353/eal.2014.0028
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The Crisis of RestorationMary Rowlandson's Lost Home
Bridget Bennett (bio)
Catastrophic loss marks Mary Rowlandson's 1682 captivity narrative from almost its opening lines. Toward the end of the first remove she laments her fate in the following long sentence:
All was gone, my Husband gone (at least separated from me, he being in the Bay; and to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward) my Children gone, my Relations and Friends gone, our House and home and all our comforts within door, and without, all was gone, (except my life) and I knew not but the next moment that might go too.
(Rowlandson 71)
This moment of sorrowful recognition opens with an expression of inclusion and continues by delineating a set of losses. She starts and finishes with a totality—"all"—and moves from intimate human relationships—"my Children … Relations … Friends"—to material objects that carry an affective load as well as being signifiers of status and well-being—"our House and home and all our comforts." They bring mental solace as well as physical and spiritual ease.1 Since "all" are envisaged as already "gone," as she terms it, indicating the depth of her loss, they have also already moved to an imaginary or at the least intangible realm. They can only be restored imaginatively and textually, through language and an act of naming that invokes them momentarily only to register their absence more fully. The sentence finishes by stating that even Rowlandson's future existence was uncertain, for her life could be taken from her at any time. Her words resonate with Hamlet's mournful protestation to Polonius that "[y]ou cannot take from me anything that I will not more willingly part withal—except my life, except my life, except my life" (253), evoking a similar sense of bleakness and dismay.2
The fleeting verbal reinstatement reveals just how much has "gone," a word she uses five times, making her anguish resonate profoundly. The sentence [End Page 327] is a lament, compiled from a series of repetitions, each of which suggests a terrible gap caused either by death, absence, or separation. It suggests a longing for a more sustained restitution and the comfort it would bring. Her narrative ultimately reveals the fact that she is both redeemed and then restored, terms that delineate the process of bringing her back into her colonial Puritan family and community. Yet it also shows the way the experience of attack and captivity changes the structure of her family and her affective life. Her youngest child and several close family members die as a direct consequence, so the family's full reunion is not possible. She cannot ever return to the family home, "our House" from which she was taken, as it has been destroyed in the attack: "all was gone," as she puts it.
Home is what is lost to Rowlandson at the start of the narrative and is what she aims textually, affectively, and materially to rebuild. The title of her narrative names Rowlandson herself as the subject of this process—A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson—suggesting that it is her restoration from captivity that the first-person work depicts. Yet while this is certainly the case, regarding Rowlandson only as subject to restoration by others elides her persistent preoccupation with what she is restored to and what is restored to her—how she tries to render herself whole once more. The reestablishment of home is of key significance to the larger process charted in her work. Restoration thus emerges as not just adverting to the process of returning a female Puritan captive to her community, as the title of the narrative suggests and its prefatory material by Ter Amicum3 reiterates, but to defining the terms of colonial encounter through its impact on the home and its articulation using metaphors about home. It suggests that what needs to be repaired is a colonial home that requires spiritual and military protection. The restoration of Mary Rowlandson is also a reinstatement of one set of claims of home and a legitimization of the...
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