Category: Biology

  • Trafigura’s West African dumping

    Here’s an interesting story, well told, about an industrial process that takes refinery waste from the United States (derived from high-sulfur Mexican crude oil), cycles it through Europe, then dumps the result in West Africa. The company running this racket (or “innovative commodity exchange”, as they call it) is Trafigura. Learn more here: Coker gasoline…

  • Is This the Big One?

    We know that a pandemic is coming. We don’t know when and how. Something’s coming out of Mexico (though the index case might have been someplace else, too soon to tell). Is this the Big One, the pandemic that we are overdue for? I am gathering information here to make sure I understand it, and…

  • 350

    No, not 300, that’s a movie. 350. Parts per million CO2 concentration. Pass the word. Oh, right, it’s just a number, not words… PS: This posting does not constitute an admission that CO2 causes global warming. But I happen to agree with everything that anti-carbon campaigners believe in, even if I think that global warming…

  • Thoughts of a man far away

    Hong Kong has turned out to be the epicenter of a serious outbreak of SARS. There is an incredibly moving article in BBC about the silent killer in the midst of the healtch care workers in Hong Kong. I found the e-mail address of the doctor and sent him a note. It is included below.…

  • Living in an sci-fi novel

    In Estonia, they have a public program to let people get their genes sequenced. I just can’t get my head wrapped around what this kind of thing will do to society. I’m not against it, I just feel a little like I felt when I saw the first web browser. I knew that things were…