May 17, 2012

More on the Sentinelese

February 14, 2007 By Leave a Comment

In yesterday’s article, I talked about a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Sentinelese who live on North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean.

As a follow-up article, I want to talk about their current status. The arrow attack on the Indian Air Force helicopter demonstrated, the Sentinelese survived the immediate impact of the 2004 tsunami. However, their long-term survival was uncertain because the massive earthquake that caused the tsunami had uplifted much of the coral reef where the Sentinelese fish.

True to their policy, the Indian government allowed no interference with the tribe after the helicopter incident so nobody knew if the Sentinelese could survive the damage to their food supply. (I have to say the Sentinelese weren’t given enough credit because I’m sure they have survived far worse tsunamis in their 30,000-60,000 years on North Sentinel Island). However, this question was answered in a tragic way for the modern world on January 2006. Two very drunk fisherman illegally fishing near the island did a bad job of anchoring their boat before going to sleep (that is, they passed out after too much palm wine) and their boat mistakenly drifted near shore during the night. The outcome of this mistake was predictable and tragic as the fisherman were killed by Sentinelese defenders.

Indian authorities attempted to recover the bodies, but Sentinelese warriors armed with arrows made it impossible for the recovery helicopter to land. According to every source I could find, no further attempts were made to recover the bodies buried in swallow graves on the beach. (To the surprise of many, the crude stereotype of “savage tribesmen” practicing cannibalism by boiling their victims in a giant bowl wasn’t true for the Sentinelese.)

While nobody should celebrate what happened (one can only imagine how terrifying the fishermen’s last moments were), the father of one of the victims said it well: “My son Pandit got his own justice. He was breaking the law, poaching and trespassing on land that wasn’t his own and he was murdered. What more is there to say? As far as I am concerned the Sentinelese are the victims in this, not my son. They live in constant terror of heavily armed poachers from Myanmar [Burma] and Port Blair. They were only defending themselves with bows and arrows and rocks in the only way they know how. What I do want is my son’s body back so my wife and I can bury him; we don’t want retribution. It is an impossible case to prosecute anyway.”

Stay tuned for more on the Sentinelese. They are fascinating from an anthropology standpoint, but the image of them firing Stone Age arrows at a 21st century helicopter is really compelling to me. You have to respect their fiercely independent “don’t tread on me” stance towards outsiders. While it’s impossible to know exactly what they are thinking when they see helicopters and outsiders, they are correct to assume being friendly could possibly mean the end of their existence as they know it via disease and daunting task of trying assimilate into today’s modern world. I would compare it the modern world’s potential reaction to invading aliens (even if they were friendly like in the movie E.T.)

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1. “North Sentinel Island”

2. “Survival comes first for the last Stone Age tribe world” by Dan McDougall

Filed Under: Anthropology, Sentinelese

How hunter-gatherer tribes survived the 2004 tsunami

February 13, 2007 By 3 Comments

In this current period of rapid globalization, the rise of technically advanced societies is unprecedented. This particular period of technological growth is rapid and very noticeable. It’s strange to think that the large scale public Internet as we know it today is a very recent development. I was baby-sitting for a friend’s 10-year old the other day and was helping him do a report on owls. He had found some good websites as source material and I felt like saying in a mocking elderly voice “back in the good ol’ days (I was his age 15 years ago), we walked barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways to library to lift a heavy Encyclopedia Britannica off the shelf to take notes on index cards.”

While I wax nostalgic about the “primitive” pre-Wikipedia days of Encyclopedia Britannica, there are still parts of this world where humans still live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In the midst of the tragic news coming out of Southeast Asia after the massive December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, I remembered hearing a fascinating story about the Indian Air Force running helicopter sorties to survey the tsumani’s impact on numerous small islands in the Indian Ocean.

One of the islands the Indian Air Force checked on was the North Sentinel Island. When the helicopter came in for closer look, the inhabitants of the island attempted to shoot down the helicopters…with arrows. These inhabitants, known simply as the Sentinelese (nobody has been to figure out what they call themselves), are among the last remaining groups on the planet that have maintained complete isolation from the outside world and modern day technology.

This complete isolation is hard to believe in the 21st century, but every attempt to establish contact in the past has been met with fierce resistant thanks to the Sentinelese skill with the bow and arrow along with a overwhelming amount of courage and fearlessness. This unblinking foreign policy position has probably been maintained for thousands of years. Maybe even longer since the Sentinelese are part of the Negrito tribes that are believed to have arrived to the Great Andaman archipelago 30,000-60,000 years ago. DNA evidence has shown that they may be descendants of the earliest humans to migrate out of Africa.

At least for the time being, they will stay “frozen in time” because the Indian government has decided to simply leave them alone. In fact, the Indian Navy even runs patrols to make sure fisherman and curious tourists don’t venture into the 5 kilometer (~3 miles) buffer zone around the island.

Due to the scope of the 2004 tsunami, it was feared that even with these protections the Sentinelese could have been wiped out. The vigorous response to the helicopters showed otherwise. An interesting theory explaining their survival is 60,000 years of experience may have taught them to move inland when they feel earthquakes. Also, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle leads to a deep understanding of the environment and animals. Since many animals show behavior changes before storms and earthquakes, this have tipped them off to the situation even before sophisticated tsunami warning systems would have.

Stay tuned for more about the fascinating story of the Sentinelese.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1. “Did Island Tribes Use Ancient Lore to Evade Tsunami?”

2.Stone Age tribe kills fisherman

Filed Under: Anthropology, Human senses, Sentinelese, Tsunami

The Controversy of Yali’s Question

February 12, 2007 By Leave a Comment

This is the 2nd article in an ongoing series of articles discussing Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel. The 1st article in the series can be found here and a table of contents of this series can be found here.
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The first paragraph of Guns, Germs, Steel:
“This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents? In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are about to read a racist treatise, you aren’t: as you will see, the answers to the question don’t involve human racial differences at all. The book’s emphasis is on the search for ultimate explanations, and on pushing back the chain of historical causation as far as possible.”

Yali’s question is very controversial subject because there are lot of people who have immoral answers. The mere effort to talk about Yali’s questions can be confused as effort to justify why certain groups of people have dominated others. As Mr. Diamond points out psychologists attempt to analyze the minds of rapists not to justify the act, but to understand the causes so that future rape crimes can be prevented.

Throughout history and even today have used very racist justifications for dominating and enslaving other groups of people. For example, slavery of Africans in the United States was justified for many slaveholders because it was believed that people with dark skin where somehow sub-human. Obviously this a ridiculous belief, but sadly the idea that one race is better than another still persists in our world. The Holocaust is the obvious example and by far the most horrific example, but Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing reconstruction of New Orleans have brought racism front and center once again.

The fact that you’re reading an article written by me is simply a byproduct of my environment. I was born into a loving family in the most powerful and wealthy nation the world has ever know. Would you be reading this article if I had been born into the few remaining hunter-gather tribes still in existent? The odds of that happening would be very slim.

As this book explained to me (and I will explain to you) is that Eurasian people were simply dealt a winning hand in terms of geography and ecology. They got lucky. Because they got lucky thousands of years ago, the basis for modern civilization came into existence. They got a head start and these advantages were passed along to my ancestors who came to America in early 20th century from England, Ireland, Poland, and Russia. That is why you’re reading this article. I’m no better a person than individuals born in a hunter-gather tribes during 1981. Not only is it arrogant and racist to believe this, it’s simply scientifically false.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

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Stay tuned for the next article in this series on Guns, Germs, and Steel.

For a table of contents of this series, click here.

Filed Under: Anthropology, Book discussions, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond

What is the Jet Stream?

February 9, 2007 By 1 Comment

What is the Jet Stream?

When you hear this term used by forecaster, they are referring to fast moving air currents found around 36,000 feet up (roughly 11,000 meters). These currents represent the boundaries between the cold and warm air. [1] Since the clash of warm and cold air is essentially the root of all weather, meteorologists use the jet stream in many ways. One of key ways is that the jet stream steers storm systems across continents. For example, my state of Wisconsin will get a lot of snow if the jet stream dips south over the central states and then steers the storm north towards Wisconsin. When the storm system is in warmer climates it will collect moisture (cold air can’t hold as much moisture) and then this moisture will hit the colder Wisconsin air resulting in a lot of snow…the rough appoximation is 1 inch of rain equals 10 inches of snow. That’s 1 cm rain to 10 cm snow for readers who live in countries smart enough to adopt the metric system…we Americans are a stubborn people! :)

Also, you might here about jet streams from the captain on your next flight because the winds can either shorten or lengthen transit time for flights. In the summer, the jet stream moves an average of 55 km/h (~35 mph) and in the winter an average of 120 km/h (~55 mph). Jet streams have been measured as high as 400 kh/h (250 mph)….that’s a mighty wind that could make you arrive early (or miss your connecting flight!) [1]

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Source:
1. “Jet Stream”, Wikipedia entry

Filed Under: Meterology

XDR-TB – Extreme Drug Resistant Tuberculosis

February 8, 2007 By 1 Comment

Despite the mind-boggling donations by donors like Warren Buffet and the Bill and Melinda Gates, underdeveloped parts of our world are now having to deal with a emerging threat (if an HIV epidemic wasn’t enough): Extreme/Extensive Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR-TB).

Researchers have developed medications with deal with resistant forms of TB that could not be treated with 1st line medications isoniazid and rifampicin, but the emerging XDR-TB is defined as TB that is resistant to any fluoroquinolone, and at least one of three injectable second-line drugs (capreomycin, kanamycin, and amikacin). [1]

XDR-TB has developed due to poor health infrastructure and non-compliance by patients taking medications. When a TB patient doesn’t complete a proper course of medication, it gives the TB bacteria a chance to evolve protections from the medicines. That’s why your doctor and pharmacist give you firm reminders to finish the entire course of antibiotics even if you aren’t sick anymore.

While HIV/AIDS grabs all the headlines, hopefully some of those big time donations go towards improving overall health infrastructure such as TB treatment/containment. As Paul Sommereld of TB Alert (a British TB charity group) put it: “XDR TB is very serious – we are potentially getting close to a bacteria that we have no tools, no weapons against.” [2]

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1. XDR-TB – Frequently Asked QuestionsWorld Health Organization

2. “Virtually untreatable” TB found, BBC article

Filed Under: Antibiotics, Public Health, Resistant Bacteria, Tuberculosis, XDR-TB

Guns, Germs, and Steel – Yali’s Question

February 7, 2007 By Leave a Comment

One of the things on the docket for this science blog is a detailed discussion of great science books. The current plan is to breakdown a book (i.e. chapter a week). For people who haven’t read these books, it will be a great way of learning key concepts without having to read the entire book. Executive book summaries are becoming more and more popular, but I personally find them to be somewhat lacking. So, I hope to find the happy medium between a short summary and reading an entire book.

For people who have read the books , it will be a chance to revisit these books. I’m sure you have learned something after reading the book and this new knowledge will help you further understand concepts discussed on this blog. That’s what learning is all about: making connections with new and prior knowledge.

The first book I will discuss is one of my favorites: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

Mr. Diamond explains why Europe and America came to dominate the world in wealth and power during the past 500 years. He answers some very powerful and complicated questions like: why didn’t Native Americans colonize Europe and why didn’t Africans capture Europeans to be slaves in Africa?

The book begins in New Guinea where Mr. Diamond was doing research in the 1970s. White Europeans had colonized the island in the last 200 years and found a New Guinea population still using stone tools. The New Guineans were stunned to see all the tools and various goods (they called all these material goods “cargo”) that the Europeans brought to their island.

The thesis to this book is a question that a very inquisitive New Guinea politician named Yali asked the visiting researcher Mr. Diamond in 1973: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”

He describes not having answer to Yali’s question at the time and this book is his way of answering. Before I read this book, I definitely didn’t have an answer to this question. It’s a hard topic to discuss because the theme of this book is integral to foundation of my country the United States. Let’s face it, Manifest Destiny and the westward expansion wasn’t just about conquering the wilderness – the ancestors of many American conquered a native population.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

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Next article in this Guns, Germs, and Steel discussion series: The Controversy of Yali’s Question

For a table of contents of this series, click here.

Filed Under: Anthropology, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond

Guns, Germs, and Steel Index

February 7, 2007 By Leave a Comment

This page has moved, please see the new location for the index of Guns, Germs, and Steel.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Filed Under: Book discussions, Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond

2006 Hurricane Season

February 6, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Much to the relief of the Gulf Coast (especially those still rebuilding after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita), hurricanes didn’t really make the news in 2006. As the hurricane season 2006 begin last June, it was predicted there would be 13 to 16 named storms, 8-10 hurricanes, and 4-6 major storms.

Thankfully, not a single hurricane hit U.S. shores. Why was the forecast off?

El Nino…. (seems like everything weather-related can be blamed on abnormal warm waters in the central Pacific Ocean). The El Nino effect increases westerly winds and steers hurricanes away from the East Coast where they eventually die out in the cooler waters of the Northern Atlantic.

What is interesting about 2006-2007 El Nino event is that it was unexpected and had a rapid effect on weather worldwide. In fact, it was so rapid that it caught the highly-skilled hurricane forecasters off guard.

The residents of New Orleans definitely appreciated El Nino this year, but meteorologists warn that we are still in a very active hurricane period. Furthermore, the planet has been experiencing some of the warmest years on record. This means that the Gulf of Mexico will be a very warm body of water and a ripe area for hurricanes to gain incredible strength.

Stay tuned for more on hurricanes, especially as the 2007 hurricane forecasts are released.

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Source:
“2006 hurrican season bows out quietly”, CNN.com article

Filed Under: El Nino, Hurricanes, Weather forecasts

Doomsday Clock – 5 Minutes to Midnight

February 5, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Ever since atomic weapons were invented, the scientific community has been acutely aware of humankind’s growing power to do great harm to itself and the planet. Starting in 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) has maintained a Doomsday Clock to remind the public and political leaders what’s at stake. This clock was recently advanced two minutes to read 5 minutes to midnight. [1]

When the clock was first established, the time was 7 minutes to midnight. In 1949 the clock advanced to 3 minutes to midnight as the Soviet Union conducted their first nuclear test and Cold War began to escalate. The closest to Doomsday was 2 minutes to midnight in 1953 after both the United States and Soviet Union tested thermonuclear bombs. The time went up and down as the Cold War continued and the two superpowers conducted arms reduction talks. The most encouraging time for the clock was in 1991 when the clock read 17 minutes reflecting the official end of the Cold War when ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missles) and bombers were no longer at hair-trigger alert. [2]

The last time the clock was moved was in 2002 in response to 9/11 attacks and the possibility of terrorists using weapons of mass destruction. The recent movement was prompted by the obvious: North Korea’s nuclear test and Iran’s progress in developing nuclear technology. What was very significant about this recent movement was that for the first time, climate change was part of the BAS decision to move the clock up. The famous Stephen Hawking, a BAS sponsor and professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge explained at the Doomsday Clock press conference: “As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change.”

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Sources:
1.“5 Minutes to Midnight”, press release
2. Doomsday Clock Timeline

Filed Under: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), Climate change, Doomsday clock, Global warming, Nuclear weapons, Stephen Hawking

Repositioning global warming as theory, rather than fact

February 4, 2007 By 1 Comment

As mentioned in yesterday’s article, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wasn’t exactly breaking news. There have been an abundance of scientists and journal articles saying the same thing for a while now. The IPCC is simply a review body that has actually been criticized for being too conservative in its concerns over global warming.

As the scientific community comes to an even great consensus on the issue of global warming, a section of Al Gore’s book and movie An Inconvenient Truth comes to mind.

When discussing the scientific consenus, Gore quotes Jim Baker, the former head of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): “There is a better scientific consensus on this issue than any other…with the possible exception of Newton’s Law of Dynamics.”

Gore goes onto to discuss a peer-reviewed Science magazine study published by Dr. Naomi Oreskes at the University of California at San Diego where all 928 of the peer-reviewed science journal articles on global warming published between 1993 and 2003 were analyzed. Dr. Oreskes and her team choose a large random sample and determined if these papers agreed on the scientific consensus on global warming.

Percentage of articles in doubt as to the cause of global warming: 0%

Then it gets interesting:

Due to well-funded special interest groups, a very coordinated disinformation campaign is being conducted to raise doubt about global warming. (Big surprise: these groups happen to receive funding from the oil and coal industry). Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ross Gelbspan wrote a book called Boiling Point and discussed this information campaign. In this book, he describes an internal memo from one of these groups that stated their goal was to “reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact.”

Al Gore then proceeded to draw a compelling comparison to the reaction of the tobacco industry in the 1960s when the Surgeon General released a landmark report linking cigarette smoke to lung cancer.

“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.” – Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company memo from the 1960s.

Then it gets really interesting:

Similar to the study of the peer-reviewed journal articles, another study was done of the mainstream media coverage of the global warming issue. No formal citation was given for this story, but as avid news reader I have zero doubts about the study’s conclusion.

They studied articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal over 14 years (roughly 1990-2004). They took a 18% sample of the 636 articles and analyzed how they depicted the global warming issue.

Number of articles that gave equal weight to the “scientific articles” (translation: not peer-reviewed) that claim global warming isn’t due to human activity: 53%

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Posted by Tim Roth, author of the political blog Think Anew and Act Anew

Filed Under: Global warming, IPCC, Scientific consensus
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