Timothy Wilken
writes: A human once said that the end justifies the means. And if
I intend good, then my use of evil means is forgiven. Another human
said the means become the ends. If I use evil means even in the
pursuit of good ends, I become evil. … Historian K. Santhanam wrote: “It was Mahatma Gandhi’s firm conviction that means are at
least as important as, and often even more important than, ends. It is,
of course, desirable that ends should be good and reasonable. But they
merely give a direction to life while the means adopted constitute life
itself. Therefore, if the means are right, that is, if they conform to
the tests of truth and non-violence, even mistakes, errors and failures
aid the growth of the individual. On the other hand, wrong means
corrupt the soul and no good can ever come out of them. Gandhi
repudiated categorically the idea that ends justify the means. This
implies the rejection of war, espionage and crooked diplomacy, even
when they are adopted for the so-called noble ends of defending the
country, religion or humanity.” … The
doctrine of karma was accepted by Buddha ~500 BC and is incorporated in
modern Buddhism today. It appeared in western thought ~300 BC, in the
Old Testament of the Bible as the phrase:  “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” … We humans have three choices. We can sow adversary actions and reap
adversary resultants. We can sow neutral actions and reap neutral
resultants. Or we can sow synergic actions and reap synergic
resultants. Adversary means will produce adversary ends.
Neutral means produce neutral ends. And, synergic means will produce
synergic ends. … Thus,
means always become ends.  (12/29/04)
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Eldon New
writes: I have noticed a symmetry between terrorism and torture. They
are both tactics to influence military campaigns or political
movements. They both tend to backfire, that is they can have the
opposite effect than the one intended. The tactic of terror is used by
political movements with no ability or
authority to negotiate, and who do not feel included in the political
process. The tactic of torture is used by political groups in power
with legal authority and is used to maintain that power. The
Encyclopedia Americana has a section on torture: “In modern history,
torture of the sort which largely utilized
mechanical devices, stemmed from the Greeks and Romans and spread with
the systemization of the Inquisition to all of Europe during the 15th
century, to be generally abandoned by the end of the 18th. It seems to
have been common enough in England although there it never attained the
status of legal recognition. Nor did it attain a legal form in the
United States, as is evident in the prohibition in the 8th Amendment to
the Constitution against the infliction of ‘cruel and unusual
punishments.’ But torture still exists even though the picturesque
boot, rack, and others have not survived. The so called ‘third degree,’
an illegal and atrocious abuse of power, may range from the use of a
rubber hose, kidney punches, and a skilled knowledge of anatomy, to the
devices of continuous questioning in relays, under bright lights,
without sleep, for periods of 48 hours or more.” The article mentions
groups who practice these methods: “Nazis and Communists coupled these
things with applications of castor
oil and dentist’s drills plus the psychological coercion of
‘brainwashing’ accompanied by general ill treatment, promises of good
treatment, and threats of injury to relatives.” …  Newer issues
of this encyclopedia will have to be updated to include
the detail that some factions in the US government have decided that
torture will now be allowed and utilized. (12/29/04)
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BBC Environment –
An earthquake on a remote Antarctic archipelago home to 850,000 King
Penguins was the strongest on earth in four years, seismologists say.
The quake hit 400km (250 miles) off the Macquarie Islands on Friday,
measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale. Penguins appear to have escaped a
major disaster as the quake occurred deep under the sea, far from
inhabited land. There were no tsunamis, or large tidal waves, because
the quake moved horizontally rather than vertically. The tremors were
felt in Tasmania, 1000km (600 miles) away, but because the epicentre
was 10km underground, few observers noticed the initial quake. 
Buildings on the islands shook for 15 seconds, seismologist Cvetan
Sinadinovski said. “If this had happened underneath a population centre
it would probably have destroyed a whole city,” he said. The quake was
the biggest anywhere on earth since an 8.4-magnitude tremor off the
coast of Peru in June 2001. That killed 74 people. (12/29/04)
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BBC Environment –
In parts of Fairbanks, Alaska, houses and buildings lean at odd angles.
Some slump as if sliding downhill. Windows and doors inch closer and
closer to the ground. It is an architectural landscape that is becoming
more familiar as the world’s ice-rich permafrost gives way to thaw.
Water replaces ice and the ground subsides, taking the structures on
top along with it. Alaska is not the only region in a slump. The
permafrost melt is accelerating throughout the world’s cold regions,
scientists reported at the recent Fall Meeting of the American
Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. In addition to northern
Alaska, the permafrost zone includes most other Arctic land, such as
northern Canada and much of Siberia, as well as the higher reaches of
mountainous regions such as the Alps and Tibet. All report permafrost
thaw.  “It’s a very, very widespread problem,” said Frederick
Nelson, a geographer at the University of Delaware, US. Scientists
attribute the thaw to climate warming. As the air temperature warms, so
does the frozen ground beneath it. The observations reiterate the
recent findings of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report, which
attributed the northern polar region’s summer sea-ice loss and
permafrost thaw to dramatic warming over the past half-century. (12/29/04)
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BBC Science — Fish
are not just simple animals with a short-term memory, say researchers.
Guppies have been seen living in complex networks, choosing social
partners and remembering them, says a team from Leeds and Bath
universities. These networks are structured and appear to conform to
the human theory that everyone knows everyone else, through “six chains
of separation”. Biologist Dr Darren Croft found that any two fish in
their population could be connected via about two others. He said:
“Understanding the structure of social networks is of extreme
importance. For example, social network analysis has been used to
model the spread of diseases such as HIV in human populations, with
diseases that are socially transmitted spreading much faster in
networks with ’small world’ characteristics. An understanding of the
structure of social networks in wild animal populations may allow us to
make predictions about the spread of diseases, which may be
particularly important for endangered and threatened species.”  (12/29/04)
more…