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481 Fwd: Fishing with Fidel -- rank: 1000

At 09:39 25/06/00 -0400, you wrote: [re the campaign against the death penalty] > The campaign may be more effective if >revolutionary, since the connections and implications may >embarrass the official candidates more than mere appeals to >humanity, so easily deflected by them into vacuous cliches. Yes. This is the best concept of a revolutionary approach to campaigning. It does not emphasise in a dogmatic fashion the uniqueness of its message. Instead it uses a materialist analysi ...

Document Size:	5217
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Tue Jun 27 00:14:09 PDT 2000

482 Fwd: Fishing with Fidel -- rank: 1000

At 22:50 24/06/00 -0400, you wrote: >>Castro indicated a lack of interest in the November US >>presidential race, in which the leading contenders are expected >>to be Vice President Al Gore and Texas governor George W. Bush. >>"I really disagree with both candidates," Castro said. "I'm going >>to be among the 50% of Americans who will go fishing on election >>day." So will progressive US citizens ignore the whole electoral process? It is ha ...

Document Size:	8114
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Jun 25 04:36:09 PDT 2000

483 UN condems execution of Graham -- rank: 1000

Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has written to Bush to express deep regret at the execution of Gary Graham on the grounds that this violates the growing global consensus that the death penalty should not apply to juveniles, and Graham was 17 when the crimes were committed. I suspect that the US, like the UK, usually contemptuously ignores UN opinion. But it is unwise to do so. A growing consensus is a growing consensus. Nor are all the states of the USA monolithically behin ...

Document Size:	5023
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Jun 23 14:16:27 PDT 2000

484 genetic information (was Re: Computation and Human Experience(RRE) -- rank: 1000

At 13:29 22/06/00 -0500, you wrote: >-----Original Message----- > >But could Newton explain why there is an asteroid belt in the solar system. > >Did he understand that the three body problem is unsolvable in any strictly > >predictable way? No. > >I'm not familiar with this. Could you elaborate a little? > >Ted Three body problem such as the interaction between say, the sun, Earth and Jupiter. At the end of the nineteenth century Poincare' showed mathematically ...

Document Size:	7009
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Jun 23 00:14:56 PDT 2000

485 CNN on Graham -- rank: 1000

For the maximum ritual benefits (I am sure Wojtek is right to talk of ritual) the execution should be as public and as gruesome as possible. Why does the US constitution barr death through torture? It is interesting that through the rise in judicial executions in the last quarter of the 20th century, the mode of execution appears to have switched increasingly to death through intravenous injection. Chris Burford London At 08:32 22/06/00 -0700, you wrote: >>All this is a preamble to say fr ...

Document Size:	6942
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Jun 22 23:38:16 PDT 2000

486 genetic information (was Re: Computation and Human Experience(RRE) -- rank: 1000

At 10:17 21/06/00 -0700, James wrote: > > > > But why assume a body is a machine in the first > > place? > > > >Why not? It takes in energy, it eliminates waste, it >breaks, it needs repair. It operates according to the >same physical laws that every other machine does Absolutely not. This is the fallacy that the natural world is analogous to clockwork machinery. The heart for example is not like a machine much as we would like to believe it. Its rhythms are ...

Document Size:	6778
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Jun 22 00:29:32 PDT 2000

487 CNN on Graham -- rank: 1000

At 21:02 20/06/00 -1000, you wrote: >I knew we could have neo-liberalism and free trade with rogue states, gays >kissing on prime time TV,... but I didn't see how we could have that *and* >an end to the death penalty...Life in a world of globalized capitalist >relations only gets more and more interesting.... > >Steve It is usually wise on the internet to refrain from expressing strong opinions about events in another country, but hopefully the internet does break down insulari ...

Document Size:	6838
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Wed Jun 21 16:39:06 PDT 2000

488 ROYAL COMMISSION on CLIMATE CHANGE -- rank: 1000

At 02:58 17/06/00 +0100, you wrote: >'Recklessly causing large-scale disruptions to climate by burning fossil >fuels will affect all countries. It is the poorest that would suffer most.' > >the new Royal Commission report is downloadable at: > > >http://www.rcep.org.uk/energy.html A Royal Commission may not seem a very revolutionary vehicle for change (often they are set up by UK governments to avoid change) but I agree with Mark that this report is highly significant. It ma ...

Document Size:	5362
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Jun 17 10:56:34 PDT 2000

489 genetic information (was Re: Computation and Human Experience (RRE) -- rank: 1000

Although Ted put it with arresting bluntness, I broadly agree with him. As the human genome project develops the reductionist assumptions are being exposed as more and more questionable. Events are multiply-determined even at the molecular DNA level. Evidence is beginning to accumulate of the environments affecting what we thought to be purely genetic inheritance. There is no one gene for schizophrenia, but a range of possible contributory factors and possible inhibitory factors. Still less is t ...

Document Size:	7447
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Jun 17 00:30:46 PDT 2000

490 Greenland melting at the edges -- rank: 1000

At 14:55 21/07/00 -0400, you wrote: >Washington Post - July 21, 2000 > >Greenland Is Skating on Thinner Ice > >By Curt Suplee > >The massive Greenland Ice Sheet--which contains nearly 10 percent of all >the frozen water on Earth--is melting at a rate of about 12 cubic miles >per year, accounting for 7 percent of sea-level rise worldwide. This news is important because 1. It is the first report that in addition to Antarctica, the northern polar regions are losing ice. ...

Document Size:	5712
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sat Jul 22 00:56:54 PDT 2000

491 Faster than light, light -- rank: 1000

This particular perspective is technical and if I understand correctly only suggests a few specialised situations where light might be speeded up. I have not grasped by how many orders of magnitude, but the headlines do not for example, even claim a doubling. The abstract starts by noting the relevance to Einstein's theory of relativity. Despite being an amiable, and progressive anarchistic son of a bourgeois, Einstein is known for his idealist tendencies ("God does not play dice", his ...

Document Size:	8198
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Fri Jul 21 00:45:21 PDT 2000

492 Global organisation of diamond sales -- rank: 1000

A major shift has occurred in the international diamond market. This has resulted from the pressures of finance capital, meeting political demand for more ethical control in view of the fact that diamond revenues have fuelled destructive civil wars in several African countries. Under pressure from investors De Beers has given up its role as the buyer of last resort. It has stockpiled diamonds since 1934 as a result of the depression. The stockpile stood at $3.9 billion at the end of 1999. The tr ...

Document Size:	6290
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Jul 20 00:08:35 PDT 2000

493 Britain's Annual Report -- rank: 1000

At 18:40 16/07/00 +0100, Jim H wrote: >The Week ending 16 July 2000 > >IT'S NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID > >British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons that Britain >had been 'chronically under-invested' on Thursday, as he unveiled the >government's Annual Report. Government spending under New Labour has >been held at a much lower rate than under the previous Tory government, >famous for its spending cuts. Between 1997 and March 2000 annual public >sector ...

Document Size:	6636
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Sun Jul 16 23:52:55 PDT 2000

494 Stiglitz -- rank: 1000

At 15:16 13/07/00 -0400, Charles wrote: >CB: Stiglitz is a liberal and anti-communist. No doubt (using the USA meaning of liberal). He is not a neo-liberal, and that has been his main battle on the world stage and why he has been progressive. He is playing to anti-Communist prejudices in referring to market-Bolsheviks but isn't he touching on a point that is relevant even if he puts it badly? It may be easier to see Russia's trajectory in contrast to China's. In China the emphasis has been ex ...

Document Size:	6321
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Thu Jul 13 23:41:00 PDT 2000

495 Fwd: What if the Republicans were ousted from control of Congress? -- rank: 1000

At 14:17 10/07/00 -0700, you wrote: >Isn't this a static, rather than a dynamic analysis. Although Clinton got >trade >deals through that the Repugs could not, some of his policies were better than >those of Bush or Dole. But by giving Clinton a free ride, we get Gore in the >next round. > >Slap them on the wrist a few election cycles and we might even get an >opposition >party. The CPUSA clearly have a point but the way the passage comes over looks like tailism. The ...

Document Size:	6456
Author:	Chris Burford
Date:	Mon Jul 10 23:47:22 PDT 2000