WhirledView

Happy Mole Day!

by Cheryl Rofer

Traffic has been brisk all week on my last year's greeting.

I can't really add a lot to that one, except to suggest that science is part of the liberal arts, and that the chemical mole is such a basic concept that it's like knowing where the major countries of the world are located.

Chemistry is all around us. When you cook, you're doing chemistry. When you make art, you're using chemistry. Driving your car depends on the chemistry of oxidation, carefully controlled by the car's computer system. The word chemical has acquired the bad connotations that chemicals are the dreadful things that non-organic farmers add to their produce. But that produce itself is made up of chemicals: cellulose, water, sugar, and starches, along with trace chemicals like vitamins and minerals. Everything we see, smell and touch is made up of chemicals, along with the air that we breathe.

So today, 10/23, from 6:02 this morning to 6:02 this evening, think about that number: 6.02 times ten to the 23rd. That's the number of molecules in a mole, or the number of atoms in a gram-atom.

Vantaa

by Cheryl Rofer

The New York Times reports that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is meeting his counterpart, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, just outside Helsinki, on the Vantaa River. That's good news in some big ways; Russia and the United States need to be talking more, particularly on military matters.

It's good news in little ways, too. It gives me a chance to post some beautiful northern scenery (photo from Vantaa's website), and it's nice to see that the Times is using diacritical marks again.

Chemo for the President

by Cheryl Rofer

I think that all of us know someone who has gone through the rigors of chemotherapy for cancer. It's not as bad as it once was; doctors are finding that smaller doses of those difficult drugs given more continuously seem to be more effective and less debilitating than big doses a few times. But the difficulty remains that killing cancer cells isn't too much different from killing healthy cells, and the patient suffers.

Nausea is only one of the side effects of chemotherapy, and there is more control for it than there once was, although not everyone can tolerate those drugs. Many people report "chemo brain," in which their memory is damaged and their ability to deal with daily life is compromised by mood swings.

Imagine a president undergoing chemotherapy. He would not be totally incapacitated, as recent presidents have been by short bouts of general anaesthesia. But he would not be at his best, by a long shot. Would he pass the responsibility to his vice president?

That's why it's important to know more about the candidates' health histories. The New York Times today recapitulated what we know. John McCain has had several surgeries for melanoma, one of the most metastatic cancers, the kind that are treated by chemotherapy. It's possible that Barack Obama could show up with prostate cancer or another health problem, but less likely for someone his age.

There is a general problem here that probably won't be solved until we actually face the situation. But we need to know more about the candidates' health records.

Diplomatic Faux-Pas: Damage Control Needed

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Reality check please. The UK Independent reported on October 3 that the British Ambassador to the US Sir Nigel Sheinwald had “expressed pointedly negative views of the Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama in a leaked, private seven-page letter to the prime minister.” The memo was originally leaked to the Daily Telegraph according to the Independent’s story. Both stories were filed from Washington. The internal British diplomatic memo was written just before Obama’s meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown last summer.

Looks like the British Foreign Ministry has two major problems on its hands:

• first how to spirit Sir Nigel out of town at the stroke of midnight if Barack Obama wins the elections; and
• second how to stop future leaks of this sort from inside the Ministry or perhaps from inside the British Embassy in Washington itself.

Now I heard an Ambassador from another EU country encourage members of a private group during the primaries to vote for Hillary – something I thought curious at the time but also something an envoy assigned to represent his or her government abroad should have thought more than twice about saying.

But what was the purpose of leaking this particular memo to the press during the final weeks of the campaign?

After all, it was foremost a private, internal assessment of Obama’s strengths and weaknesses as seen from the vantage point of the British Embassy – whether I agree with the assessment or not - before Brown was to meet Obama in London last summer.

Who was it designed to help or to hurt?

Prairie

by Cheryl Rofer

Grass. Grass in front of me. Grass to the sides. Grass above me against the sky.

Big grass. The seed stalks are at least a quarter inch in diameter, smooth as the leaves along them catch my skin. Seed heads wave far above me.

The grass is mostly big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii Vitman), but there are others I don’t know. Big bluestem is not like anything I’ve ever seen; my New Mexico yard contains little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium (Michx.) Nash), but that’s not remotely like big bluestem. Little bluestem is a grass. Big bluestem is an experience. Big bluestem teaches humans what a mouse’s world looks like.

Big bluestem is the largest part of the prairie; covered central North America before wheat, corn and soybeans took its place. But it is not all that is here, not by any means.

Late in the season, a few flowers still bloom at heights humans can look down on. Bright green carroty leaves prosper at the base of the bluestem, getting ready to bed down for the winter so they can sprout first in the spring. A compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) dries out, its leaf still aligned to catch the sun’s rays. I planted a compass plant at home this summer; it didn’t grow as much as I would have liked before it gave up for the season. Next spring will tell whether it survives.

Outside the prairie, ladybugs were the irritation of the weekend. They were flying everywhere in town, glinting in the sunlight. They land in hair, fall down shirt collars, come through open doors into the house, and occasionally administer a tiny nip, or something that feels like that. Those who dislike bugs swat at them. I was uneasy about the landings until I realized that they were ladybugs, although after a couple of nips, I brush them off gently as they land on skin. Those that land on my clothes are allowed to stay. They do not give off the unpleasant smell that some ladybugs do.

They do not come into the prairie. I see not a single one while I am in the grass.

Obama has best grasp of Iran’s threat - Victor Tomseth, Eugene, Oregon, Register Guard

by Victor Tomseth, Guest Contributor

The following oped was published in the Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard on September 18. 2008. Victor Tomseth of Vienna, Va., was born in Eugene, grew up in Springfield and graduated from the University of Oregon. He worked for 30 years as a Foreign Service officer in Thailand, Iran and Sri Lanka, and was U.S. ambassador to Laos from 1993 to 1996. He was among the 50 Americans held hostage for 444 days in Iran. Since retiring in 1996, Tomseth has worked for the Department of State in Croatia and Vienna, and as a consultant supporting the United States Pacific Command’s military exercise programs. He is a member of a group of over 300 retired Foreign Service officers supporting Barack Obama’s candidacy.

In January 2006, Sen. John McCain perhaps best summarized his approach to the Iranian nuclear conundrum: “There’s only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option — that is a nuclear-armed Iran. The military option is the last option, but cannot be taken off of the table.” In July of this year he told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, “While we don’t go around launching pre-emptive strikes all the time, we can’t afford to wait until a terrorist organization, or a nation which is an avowed enemy of the United States, has the capability to use weapons of mass destruction — or even uses them.”

As McCain’s friend Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked by Goldberg to name something unusual about McCain, put it: McCain believes that “some political problems have military solutions.” Perhaps McCain’s response in April 2007 at a campaign stop in South Carolina when an audience member asked when we would “send an air mail message to Tehran” was not as facetious as he later claimed: “Bomb, bomb, bomb … bomb, bomb Iran,” he sang to the tune of the Beach Boys’ standard, “Barbara Ann.”

The McCain campaign has ridiculed Sen. Barack Obama’s assertion at a rally in May that Iran does not pose a serious threat to the United States in the way the Soviet Union once did. According to a McCain campaign commercial, these comments demonstrate that Obama is dangerously unprepared to be president.

Even Israel has a military budget larger than Iran's

In fact, Obama’s comments demonstrate a more sophisticated understanding of Iran’s relative power than the McCain view that Iran poses an existential threat. According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, in 2006 Iran spent approximately $7.35 billion on defense. Compare that to the region’s other significant military powers such as Saudi Arabia ($37.6 billion) and Turkey ($35.16 billion), and Iran’s military capacities begin to come into better focus. Even tiny Israel has a military budget more than half again as large as Iran’s.

Granted, the possession of nuclear weapons is a qualitative advance in military capacity (provided it is accompanied by a capability to deliver such weapons). At the moment, however, it is highly doubtful that Iran possesses either a nuclear weapon or the capacity to deliver one against even Israel, let alone the United States.

Could that change? Obviously it might at some point. However, it does not appear that day has arrived or that it soon will (see the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate key judgments, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities.”

Iran does not hold all the nuclear cards

Left, Right and the Debate

by Bill Stewart

Liberals may wail, but in the political spectrum, the US traditionally is a center, center-right country. Simply put, we are more conservative than liberal.

Since Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 as the first Republican president of the United States, the country has had 26 presidents. In the space of 143 years since Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, only nine Democrats have been elected to that office. The others have all been Republicans. Historically, the Republicans have had a remarkable run.

It is also true, however, that in times of economic stress, the country moves back to center-left. In times of economic crisis, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, the country has moved definitely to the left. Franklin Roosevelt was elected four times, and decisively changed the political, social and economic face of America. We still live amid the ideals, aspirations and institutions of Roosevelt’s New Deal, though many Americans may not be aware of it. Nor do many Americans remember how so much of the country at the time thought that Roosevelt had saved the nation. Others, especially Republicans, thought that Roosevelt was “a traitor to his class.”

Welcome, Bill Stewart!

WhirledView welcomes a new contributor!

Bill Stewart writes a weekly column for the Santa Fe New Mexican, which he will share with WhirledView.

Bill has been both a Foreign Service officer and a journalist.

As a Foreign Service officer, he served in India and volunteered to go to Vietnam in 1966, where he was a civilian District Advisor, assistant to the Mayor of Saigon during the recovery from the Tet offensive, and Liason Officer between the Prime Minister of South Vietnam and the American ambassador.

He joined Time Magazine in 1971 and was Bureau Chief for Tokyo during the collapse of South Vietnam, and Middle East Bureau Chief during the Iran-Iraq war. He has interviewed many heads of state and other powerful people, including India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Pakistan’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Bangladesh’s Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Afghanistan’s President Mohammad Daoud, Yasser Arafat, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito (one of three interviews he ever gave), Jordan’s late King Hussein; Israel’s Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir; Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and Zambia’s President Kenneth Kaunda.

We’re hoping to talk Bill into writing more often than once a week. Commenters, be nice to him!