Nexus - 1303 - New Times Magazine-pages

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... GLPBAL NEWS ... NEWS example, or that humans were on the march out of that continent by roughly 100,000 BC, not to mention good guesses for when language, hunting and farming arose—the fixation on a starting date of 4000 to 6000 BC begins to seem awfully arbitrary. And yet, as Smail goes on to argue in his essay (suggestively titled "In the Grip of Sacred History"), this chronological tick has a very interesting back story. "Every history curriculum in secondary schools and colleges that tacitly accepts a Near Eastern origin around 6,000 years ago," Professor Smail writes, "contains the unintended echo of the Judeo-Christian mythology of the special creation of man in the Garden of Eden." Through the 18th century and well into the 19th, Western historians, almost all of them Christian, thought that humankind (and Earth) dated to roughly 4000 to 7000 BC. And many thought that the Garden of Eden could be traced to the Fertile Crescent. Smail's theory is that, in the 19th century, as the biblical timeline lost credibility and the staggering age of the Earth began to be glimpsed, historians reflexively clung to as much of the traditional timeline as they could. A true reckoning with the long timelines envisioned by Darwin never occurred. (Source: The Boston Globe, 26 February 2006, http:/www.boston.com) low, inflation-targeting has encouraged the public to take on more debt and has accelerated a flow of money out of the world's major economies. For example, the US current account deficit is at a record level of almost seven per cent of the country's economic output, meaning an unprecedented amount of money is flowing out of the country. BIS's leading economist and head of monetary policy, Mr William White, said: "Those countries with the biggest external deficits [the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand] also tend to have the biggest internal imbalances. Rising asset prices in such countries (recently, for housing in particular) have led to higher perceptions of wealth, and more spending." However, he added, far from managing these worrying build-ups, inflation- targeting can encourage them. (Source: The Telegraph, UK, 20 February 2006, http:/www.telegraph.co.uk) and availability of drugs used in cytotoxic chemotherapy, a rigorous evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and impact on quality of life is urgently required". Associate Professor Michael Boyer of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, raised concerns about the methodology of the study and the fact that "if you start... saying how much does chemotherapy add in the people that you might actually use it [in], the numbers start creeping up...to five or six per cent". (Source: Australian Prescriber, vol. 29, nos 2-3, 2006, www.australianprescriber.com) NEW LAKES FOUND BENEATH ANTARCTIC ICE Me: than 140 lakes lie buried beneath varying thicknesses of Antarctic ice, but most of them are small and shallow says Michael Studinger, a geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. Lake Vostok, discovered decades ago, is the largest. Now, Studinger and his colleagues have used a collage of data to depict two large subglacial lakes near Lake Vostok. Ice-penetrating-radar data gathered dur- ing aerial surveys indicate that the upper surfaces of these lakes lie beneath four kilometres of ice. The lakes in some places are about 900 metres deep. "This is an important discovery,” says University of Hawaii oceanographer David Karl. "It shows how little we know about the Earth around us." (Source: Science News Online, 4 February 2006, http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/ 20060204/fob6.asp) CHEMOTHERAPY IMPROVES SURVIVAL BY ONLY 2.3% n Australian study (Clin Oncol 2004; 16:549-60) suggests the benefits of chemotherapy have been oversold. Based on the calculations in the study, the contribution of chemotherapy to adult survival from cancer was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA. The authors, two of whom are radiation oncologists but one of whom is a practising professor of medical oncology, concluded that "chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival" and that "to justify the continued funding HOUSEHOLD DEBT HASTENS MOVE TO GLOBAL CURRENCY? lhe world's top central banking authority has warned that the Bank of England's inflation-busting tactics are largely responsible for the dangerous pile- up of household debt in Britain, which last year passed £1,158 billion, £30 billion more than the country's total economic Antant Cn ee Oe a 4 output. The powerful Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has voiced grave doubts about the policy and called on politicians to begin debating an overhaul of the current global economic system. In another radical move, it has also suggested ditching many national currencies in favour of a small number of formal currency blocks based on the dollar, euro and renminbi or yen. The BIS, which is controlled by a coalition of central banks and helps oversee the global financial system, warned that by pushing interest rates so a os C7? LP APRIL — MAY 2006 NEXUS +7 "... and that cloud looks just like a mushroom." www.nexusmagazine.com