DebateGate

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Good news for your Viagra-using hamster: On his next trip to Europe, he'll bounce back from jet lag faster than his unmedicated friends.

The researchers who revealed that bizarre fact earned one of 10 Ig Nobel prizes awarded Thursday night for quirky, funny and sometimes legitimate scientific achievements, from the mathematics of wrinkled sheets to U.S. military efforts to make a "gay bomb."

The recipients of the annual award handed out by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine were honored at Harvard University's Sanders Theater.

A team at Quilmes National University in Buenos Aires, Argentina, came up with the jet-lag study, which found that hamsters given the anti-impotence drug needed 50 percent less time to recover from a six-hour time zone change. They didn't fly rodents to Paris, incidentally -- they just turned the lights off and on at different times.

Odd as it might be, that research might have implications for millions of humans. The same cannot be said for another winning report, "Sword Swallowing and its Side Effects," published in the British Medical Journal last year.

It was the world's first comprehensive study of sword-swallowing injuries, said co-author Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, one of only a few dozen active sword swallowers in the world. Not surprisingly, throat abrasions, perforated esophagi and punctured blood vessels were the most common injuries.

"Most sword-swallowing injuries happen either after another smaller injury when the throat is tender and swollen, or while doing something out of the ordinary, like swallowing multiple swords," said Meyer, who went a month without solid food after doing the latter in 2005.

The Ig Nobel for nutrition went to a concept that sounds like a restaurant marketing ploy: a bottomless bowl of soup.

Cornell University professor Brian Wansink used bowls rigged with tubes that slowly and imperceptibly refilled them with creamy tomato soup to see if test subjects ate more than they would with a regular bowl.

"We found that people eating from the refillable soup bowls ended up eating 73 percent more soup, but they never rated themselves as any more full," said Wansink, a professor of consumer behavior and applied economics. "They thought 'How can I be full when the bowl has so much left in it?' "

His conclusion: "We as Americans judge satiety with our eyes, not with our stomachs."

Harvard professor of applied mathematics L. Mahadevan and professor Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago in Chile won for their studies on a problem that has vexed anyone who ever made up a bed: wrinkled sheets.

The wrinkle patterns seen on sheets are replicated in nature on human and animal skin, in science and in technology.

"We showed that you can understand all of them using a very simple formula," Mahadevan said.

His research, he says, shows that "there's no reason good science can't be fun."

Other winners include a Dutch researcher who conducted a census of all the creepy-crawlies that share our beds, and a man who patented a Batman-like device that drops a net over bank robbers.

This year's planned Ig Nobel program included a two-minute speech by keynote speaker Doug Zongker consisting only of the word "chicken," and a mini-opera entitled "Chicken versus Egg," performed by professional mother-daughter opera singers Gail Kilkelly and Maggie McNeil.

Most winners are more than happy to accept their awards from real Nobel laureates at the typically rowdy ceremony, including seven of the 10 winners this year. But there are still a few sticks-in-the-mud, magazine editor Marc Abrahams said.

The U.S. Air Force won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize this year for its proposal to develop a "gay bomb" -- a chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers want to make love with each other, not war with the enemy.

Abrahams talked to a number of retired and active Air Force personnel to try and get someone to accept the prize in person on behalf of the military. None would.

"Who in their right mind would turn something like this down?" Wansink said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Seven Questions: Is the Surge Working in Iraq?
Posted September 2007
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3982&page=1
 
Toby Dodge, one of the world?s foremost experts on modern-day Iraq, has been visiting the country regularly since 2003. FP recently sat down with a deeply pessimistic Dodge to get his take on U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, the surge, and the Biden-Gelb plan for partitioning Iraq.

FOREIGN POLICY: What did you think of U.S. Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker?s recent testimony before Congress? Is the so-called surge working?

Toby Dodge: General Petraeus had some undoubted successes to sell. There has been a ferocious debate about the metrics?certainly August is an odd month because of the intensity of the heat, so conflict tends to drop off a bit. However, I think violence has undoubtedly dropped off compared to 2006. Iraq, especially Baghdad, was in the midst of a civil war in 2006. In 2007, the surge has stopped or put a pause on that civil war. In terms of violence, that?s a success story, although the violence in 2007 is also higher than it was in 2004 and 2005.

The problem with Ambassador Crocker is that he didn?t have much to give. Crocker was doing the best he could without having much to work with.

FP: Some Iraq observers argue that the surge is essentially a fortunate coincidence: that it has coincided with a dampening of violence simply because some neighborhoods have been cleared of different sects. Would you dismiss that view?

TD: I wouldn?t dismiss it, but I wouldn?t say it is the major explanation. Up through February when the surge started, there was a very powerful, coordinated attempt to cleanse Baghdad of its Sunnis. As that was happening, government services in the western neighborhoods [of Baghdad] stopped. For example, there is no bank between Yamuk and Fallujah.

What the surge has done is bring down suicide bombings and constrain the effects of the religious cleansing that was driving out the Sunnis. If you drove through western neighborhoods in Baghdad like Mansur at the beginning of the surge, you?d find empty districts. If you move through them today, you find communities that have been rejuvenated. The markets are open, the shops are open, and people are there. The argument is, though, to what extent is that sustainable?

FP: Petraeus argues that keeping these communities apart is going to lead to broader political reconciliation on a national level. But do those ideas connect?separation followed by broader political agreement on an oil law and federalism?

TD: It?s a very fair question. Petraeus has repeatedly said that there is no military solution. But by deploying the American military, he is disincentivizing violence. And to be frank, Moqtada al-Sadr has been offered a choice: Do you use your militia to kill Sunnis, in which case the full force of the American military will be deployed against you, or do you come into the political process on your platform of Iraqi nationalism and play politics?

FP: Unless it can actually get into neighborhoods and provide necessary services, is there a future for the Iraqi government?

TD: I don?t think so. The fundamental cause of all these problems is the collapse of the Iraqi state. I was living in Baghdad in April 2003, and it was amazing to watch the institutions of the state disappear. You would see men running out [of buildings] with computers, then desks and chairs, then the plumbing and electrical wiring out of the walls. The state was dissembled, taken away, and put in people?s houses. And what the looters didn?t do, [Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul] Bremer?s de-Baathification did. It broke the institutional memory of the state.

On that basis, we don?t have a failing state or a collapsed state?we simply don?t have a state. If you stand in the Green Zone and look over the blast walls, the state doesn?t go much beyond that. The Iraqi state?s ability to deliver public goods to the population is crucial for drawing that population back into the state. If you look at the recent BBC/ABC poll, all the indicators?on jobs, water, and electricity?are down from presurge levels. There is a militant pessimism. First and foremost, the state needs to be rebuilt. And that is an international problem and it needs an international solution.

FP: What about Anbar province? Is the strategy of empowering groups like the Anbar Salvation Council working?

TD: The first thing to keep in mind is that the Anbar Awakening was a purely indigenous event that happened before the surge started. A series of Anbaris collectively and diffusely revolted against the heavy hand of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which was enforcing a very vicious, austere form of Islamism. And so they kicked back. The American Army, quite rightly, encouraged that, and pushed it forward.

But you run the danger of empowering social forces that could clearly be one-sided in a civil war. You lessen the danger of that by integrating these people into the police force and the Army. There has been an upsurge in applications of Anbaris to go to the police force and the Army. We need to take that manpower and integrate it into state institutions. The great problem there, which needs to be overseen, is whether the government allows these people to join and be paid by the central government.

FP: When people argue against an immediate U.S. withdrawal or troop drawdown, they cite the likelihood of an imminent genocide. Is that scenario realistic? Would a major troop withdrawal in 2008, as some in Washington are urging, lead to the continuation of civil war?

TD: Undoubtedly. Today, we have a very youthful surge, a collapsed state, and a traumatic civil war. If we pull troops out soon, Iraq will descend into a fully fledged civil war with heavy weapons, and the region will be dragged into containing that civil war within Iraq?s boundaries by picking sides and financing them. That looks to me like a vicious civil war in the heart of one of the most sensitive geopolitical areas in the world.

FP: What do you feel is the most misleading or troubling aspect of the Iraq debate in Washington?

TD: That?s an easy one. For the last four years, Iraq has been a huge problem in Washington. People are struggling to explain failure, to apportion blame, and to try to develop a policy that gets them out of the country. The most damaging outcome would be along the lines of the proposals that recommend partition, like the Gelb-Biden plan. I think those fundamentally misunderstand Iraq.

If you look at the three communities that are allegedly going to be partitioned, go down to the supposed Shiistan in the south. What we have in the south is a low-level civil war between the two main Shiite parties led by members of the Badr Brigade and al-Sadr. So, are we going to partition the south into a Badristan and a Sadristan? When we come up to supposed Sunnistan, we have a fight between al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely indigenous organization with foreign leadership, and the so-called sheikhs of Anbar? that is an intra-Sunni fight. Then we have Kurdistan. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan fought a vicious civil war in the 1990s, where the KDP actually asked Saddam Hussein?s Republican Guard to come in and help them. The idea that we have three neat communities is sociologically and politically illiterate. It has deliberately ignored the sociological complexities of Iraq in order to get a neat policy prescription that allows America to get out of Iraq. That is dangerous and reckless, and it isn?t the solution.

Toby Dodge is consulting senior fellow for the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and author of Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).

China dam 'catastrophe' warning
China's Three Gorges Dam could trigger an environmental catastrophe unless emerging problems are treated urgently, senior officials have warned.
The dam's head of construction, Wang Xiaofeng, said ecological problems like soil erosion, landslides and water pollution could not be ignored.

In some areas ill-judged development was making things worse, he said.

Critics have long warned the dam, the world's largest hydro-electric project, could cause huge environmental damage.


The $25bn (?12.5bn) project, across the country's biggest river, the Yangtze, is due to be completed by the end of 2008.

More than one million people were relocated to make way for the dam, which China says is needed to control flooding and provide much-needed electricity.

Environmental cost

Mr Wang told a conference that China had to address the environmental issues.


"We absolutely cannot relax our guard against ecological and environmental security problems sparked by the Three Gorges Project," he said.

"We cannot win passing economic prosperity at the cost of the environment," Xinhua news agency quoted him as saying.

The problems included landslides caused by erosion on the steep hills around the dam, conflicts over land shortages and "ecological deterioration caused by irrational development", he said.

Senior engineer Huang Xuebin told the forum that landslides were a "severe threat to the lives of residents around the dam".

Some landslides had caused waves several metres high that further damaged surrounding shores, he said.

Other officials warned that the quality of drinking water for residents was being affected.

The BBC's Quentin Somerville, in Shanghai, says that the admission comes with China's government increasingly worried that environmental damage is leading to growing political unrest.

Earlier this summer, the head of the State Environmental Protection Agency warned that pollution worries had led to an increase in protests and riots across China.

However, there is hardly a river in the country that has not been dammed and many more projects are still progressing, our correspondent says.

Beijing recently increased its targets for renewable energy production, most of which will still come from hydro-electric projects.


THE THREE GORGES DAM
Type: Concrete Gravity Dam
Cost: Official cost $25bn - actual cost believed to be much higher
Work began: 1993
Due for completion: 2009
Power generation: 26 turbines on left and right sides of dam. Six underground turbines planned for 2010
Power capacity: 18,000 megawatts
Reservoir: 660km long, submerging 632 sq km of land. When fully flooded, water will be 175m above sea level
Navigation: Two-way lock system became operational in 2004. One-step ship elevator due to open in 2009.
 



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7013953.stm

Wednesday, Sep. 26, 2007
My Dinner with Ahmadinejad
By Richard Stengel

The invitation was on creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy: The Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran "requests the pleasure" of my company to dine with H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dinner is at the Intercontinental Hotel ? with names carefully written out at all the place settings around a rectangular table. There are about 50 of us, academics and journalists mostly. There's Brian Williams across the room, and Christiane Amanpour a few seats down. And at a little after 8pm, on a day when he has already addressed the U.N., the evening after his confrontation at Columbia, a bowing and smiling Mahmoud Admadinejad glides into the room.

This is now an annual ritual for the President of Iran. Every year, during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, he plots out a media campaign that ? in its shrewdness, relentlessness, and quest for attention ? would rival Angelina Jolie on a movie junket. And like any international figure, Mr. Ahmadinejad hones his performance for multiple audiences: in this case, the journalists and academics who can filter his speech and ideas for a wider American audience.

The format of the evening is curious. In his calm and fluent voice ? "dear friends," he calls us ? he requests that we not ask questions, but make statements, so that he can react to them in a form of dialogue. The academics are not shy. They make statements not only about the need for dialogue and reconciliation, but castigate the Iranian government for chilling press freedoms and for arresting Iranian-American scholars who were only trying to foster better relations between America and Iran. Throughout, Ahmadinejad is courtly, preternaturally calm, and fiercely articulate.

After an hour, he is ready to respond. He does so first with a half-hour ode to the relationship between man and God that might have been dictated by the Iranian poet Rumi. "I believe that Almighty God created the universe for mankind. Man is God's most important creation and it is through him that we appreciate the beauties of the universe. God has sent man here on a mission." That mission, he says, is to pursue love, justice, kindness and dignity. In fact, he repeats those works so often that it begins to sound like a mantra: Love. Justice. Kindness. Dignity. He speaks with the quiet zeal of a not-very-flamboyant televangelist. "The pursuit of justice through love and kindness and human dignity can end all conflicts on earth," he says. "Inshallah."

When it comes time for him to address the comments, he does so by citing each speaker by name ? 23 in all, he notes. In contrast with what he calls the lack of respect and dignity accorded to him at Columbia ? where, he says, he found it odd that an academic institution which prizes tolerance would treat him without any ? he addresses each person carefully and patiently. Some highlights:

- Iran has not violated any of the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ahmadinejad says. He has proposed a multilateral uranium enrichment program with different nations, and can't understand why no one has taken up his offer.

- The US and Iran can play a positive role together in Iraq. "If the US withdraws from Iraq, good things will happen," he says. "I believe that the Iraqi people can rule themselves."

- In the Middle East, Ahmadinejad says the world must allow the Palestinians to decide their future for themselves: "That is the human solution to sixty years of instability." He refers to Israel only as "the Zionist regime" and does not mention the Holocaust.

- Ahmadinejad claims there are thirty newspapers published in Iran that are opposed to his government, citing that as evidence of press freedom in Iran.

- In answer to a question about how he viewed Hitler's legacy, he says, "I view Hitler's role as extremely negative, a despicably dark face."

- He notes that Americans don't understand Iranian history, saying that the movie 300 ? with which he seems intimately familiar ? was a "complete distortion of Iranian history." Iran, he says, has never invaded anyone in its history.

Finally, in response to a question about whether war with Iran was growing more likely, he says, "Mr. Bush is interested in harming Iran. But I believe there are wise politicians in America who will prevent such a war. We hate war. We would not welcome it. But we are prepared for every scenario. Yet I don't think war will happen."

With that, Ahmadinejad says he has an early morning appointment the next day, and that he welcomes greater dialogue like this evening. And then, still composed, and with the same slightly mysterious smile that never leaves his face all evening, he bows deeply and heads upstairs.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1665579,00.html

OHIO ISLAMIC SCHOOL VANDALIZED WITH NAZI, 'WHITE POWER' GRAFFITI

(CLEVELAND, OH, 9/20/07) - The Ohio office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Ohio) today called on local law enforcement authorities and the FBI to investigate vandalism at an Islamic school in that state as a possible hate crime. CAIR-Ohio also urged opinion leaders in American society to repudiate Islamophobia.

The principal of the Toledo Islamic Academy in Toledo, Ohio, told CAIR that vandals broke two school windows and sprayed-painted Nazi swastikas on doors, windows, trees, and a vehicle at the facility.

"White power" was also sprayed on a vehicle. The vandalism was discovered when the school opened this morning.

"Only strong support from mainstream religious and political leaders in Ohio and nationwide will counter the rising tide of Islamophobic rhetoric in our society that can lead to such disturbing incidents," said CAIR-Ohio Legal Director Jennifer Nimer.

Nimer said there have been a number of recent incidents targeting American Muslims. Worshipers at a Columbus, Ohio, mosque were attacked with rocks, a shot was fired into a Texas mosque, a Muslim woman in New York was badly beaten in a bias attack, arsonists torched a mosque in Northern California, and an Imam at an Arizona mosque was verbally harassed by intruders on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In Maryland, vandals slashed the tires of two vehicles owned by a Muslim activist whose family has suffered bias attacks over a number of years.

Druze bride crosses from Israel into Syria for wedding, never to return 
By The Associated Press 
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=905716&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1
 
A misty-eyed bride waved goodbye to the family she was leaving behind, as she stared across the sun-scorched pavement toward her husband and new life in Syria.

Then Waed Munzer, 26, a Druze from the village of Ein Qeinya in the Golan Heights, walked across the Quneitra border crossing Wednesday to marry her cousin in a rare moment when the heavily guarded Israeli-Syrian border was opened.

"I'm happy and I'm sad," said the camera-shy Munzer in her wedding finery, as her brother ushered her toward the Syrian border. The bride is not allowed to go back to Israel.
 
She and the few family members who accompanied her joined other relatives and friends in the United Nations-supervised demilitarized zone between the two countries for an hourlong celebration and farewell. The wedding is scheduled for Friday in Syria.

The Druze religion is an offshoot of Islam that keeps its tenants of faith secret. Israel's 1967 capture of the Golan split the Druze community between Syria and Israel, dividing families and friends. Other Druze live in nearby Lebanon.

The husband, Majd Munzer, 30, who comes from the village of Raha in southern Syria, said he met his bride at a wedding he attended last October at a UN-supervised demilitarized zone on the border. He proposed to her that same day.

Since then, she has been calling him on the phone. He, however, cannot call her.

In 1993, Israel opened a one-way telephone with Syria in the Golan, where some 20,000 Druse live. Syrians can communicate with relatives across the border only with loudhailers in an area known as the 'shouting valley'.

The border passage is also one way. Waed Munzer said she had to sign a document saying she would not return to Israel, ever. "She'll only be able to return if there's peace," said her brother. Even then, she'll only be a visitor.

Israel allowed 16 members of the bride's family to join the celebration on the pavement between the borders, giving them a rare opportunity see some family and friends for the first time in years.

"I am still hopeful that peace talks between Israel and Syria will resume soon," Majd Munzer said, adding, "so that the Golan would return to us and families on both sides of the border reunite."

The wedding-farewell ceremonies take place several times a year at the border. An award-winning 2004 Israeli movie, The Syrian Bride, chronicled the conflicting emotions involved.

Israel annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, but the move has won no international recognition. Syria demands return of the territory.

"The crisis over Israel's reported airstrike did not jeopardize the wedding," said Paul Conneally, deputy head of the delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross, referring to an alleged Israel Air Strike attack on Syria two weeks ago.

This represents a positive and humanitarian event, he said. The Red Cross has orchestrated more than 150 cross-border weddings since 1983.

sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-mosque-bullet,0,5818334.story

Bullet Pierces Texas Mosque
By Associated Press

6:16 PM EDT, September 16, 2007

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas

A bullet whizzed through the door of an empty mosque here, and police were investigating whether a hate crime was committed.

The bullet pierced the aluminum frame of a glass entry door at The Islamic Center of South Texas on Friday afternoon. The mosque was empty at the time and nobody was injured.

The bullet shattered an exit transom window at the other end of the mosque's central hallway, according to police.

"We're sure it's a high-caliber weapon, based on the damage," Corpus Christi police Cmdr. Jesse V. Garcia said.

Pieces of the bullet have been recovered for testing, but police have yet to name any suspects and haven't determined whether the incident is a hate crime.

Osama Bahloul, the spiritual leader of the mosque, is among some 600 members who are celebrating Ramadan, a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting, prayer and giving to the poor that started last week.

"We hope this is the end of it," Bahloul said. "But we are genuinely concerned about our people. We have a large number of children here this month, and if he or she did this again someone could be killed."

Copyright ? 2007, The Associated Press

For a short while, my husband was considering a job in Saudi Arabia. I always said that if I had to live there I would dress up like a man and go driving whenever I wanted. Bravo to this brave women who are fighting the system! I certainly hope that they are able to achieve their goals.

---

Saudi women challenge driving ban
A group of women in Saudi Arabia is for the first time to lobby the kingdom's government for the right to drive cars.
Members of the Committee of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars plan to deliver a petition to King Abdullah by Sunday, Saudi Arabia's National Day.

Correspondents say the demand is likely to be rejected, as conservatives argue if women are allowed to drive, they will be able to mix freely with men.

The issue of women driving has recently become the subject of public debate.

Two years ago, a member of the Consultative Council sparked a heated debate when he pointed out there was nothing under Islamic law or the constitution that justified the ban, and that the council ought to discuss ways of lifting it.

Mohammed al-Zulfa's comments later prompted the Saudi interior minister to dismiss calls for the ban to be lifted, saying the country had other priorities.

'Social issue'

The current driving ban applies to all women in Saudi Arabia, whatever their nationality.

It was originally unofficial, but became law after an incident in 1990, when 47 women challenged the authorities by taking their families' cars out for a drive.

After strong criticism from the Saudi religious authorities, the women were jailed for one day, their passports confiscated and many lost their jobs.

A founding member of the Committee of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars, Fawzia al-Oyouni, said its electronic petition would highlight what many Saudi men and women consider a "stolen right".

"We would like to remind officials that this is, as many have said, a social and not religious or political issue," she told the Associated Press. "Since it's a social issue, we have the right to lobby for it."

"This is a right that has been delayed for too long."

King Abdullah has in the past said that he thought a day would eventually come when Saudi women were allowed drive.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/7000499.stm