Watching the World
Church Property Seized
● Malta’s Parliament moved to seize what is unofficially estimated as more than 75 percent of the Roman Catholic Church’s property in that country. The church is Malta’s largest property owner and 20 to 25 percent of Malta’s children attend church schools. Prime Minister Dom Mintoff and the episcopate have had strained relations, and the Vatican, according to The New York Times, has issued a protest and formal condemnation of the proposed action. “In unusually grave language,” the Vatican warned that “‘religious peace’ in Malta will be affected by Government seizure of most Roman Catholic Church property there,” reports the Times.
Literacy Progress
● Although one third of the world’s adult population is still illiterate, according to a report in The Toronto Star, things are improving, particularly in the Third World. The World Bank Development Report shows that “the literacy rate in the developing world stood at only 33 per cent in 1950. But it rose to . . . 56 per cent in 1979.” Though some experts question the validity of these figures, others note that in many Third World countries there is “an urgent awareness that literacy is the path to development.” But there are seemingly insurmountable problems. For example, there are more than 100 languages in Nigeria alone. Many African countries have set the goal of wiping out illiteracy “by the year 2000,” the article states.
Coral Reefs Dying?
● Scientists headed by Peter W. Glynn, Smithsonian research biologist, are discovering in the Pacific Ocean and in some areas of the Atlantic what may amount to “the most extensive reef devastation in modern times,” according to The New York Times. Why is this a cause for concern? Because these reefs and the algae they attract “provide shelter and feeding grounds for lobsters, fish and smaller creatures.” They also protect coastal areas from waves and storms. Abnormal weather patterns, such as the notorious El Niño, and pollution are some of the causes of the devastation of the reefs, says the report.
Married Priests
● “The Movement for Optional Celibacy claims that 70,000 of the more than 250,000 active priests in the world are married,” wrote Jesús Infiesta in Las Provincias of Valencia, Spain. Pope John Paul “looks askance at the practice, and has irreversibly rejected the abandonment of celibacy,” says Infiesta. The movement says that an eighth of the world’s priests have left the clergy. A meeting of married Catholic priests who were legally released from their vows of celibacy by Pope Paul VI was arranged to seek “a basis for peaceful coexistence of married and celibate clergy.”
Death Tied to Blood
● Reporting on the death of Frank Reynolds, chief anchorman on the ABC-TV evening news, the New York Post disclosed that he was convinced that he contracted his fatal infection of hepatitis from a blood transfusion. Though the American Red Cross denied this, Dr. Paul McCurdy, director of the American Red Cross Blood Program in Washington, is reported as stating that Reynolds received blood products from more than ten donors in connection with his surgery in March. Such exposure dramatically multiplies the risk of hepatitis. Although Reynolds was suffering from bone cancer, Ted Koppel of ABC’s “Nightline” remarked that the anchorman died from the hepatitis that was apparently caused by “a bad blood transfusion,” as reported by the New York Daily News.
Life Without the TV “Box”
● The Daily Mail of London recently reported the enlightening story of a family of four who discovered that there are other things in life besides “The Box.” Recalling the way it was two years ago, the mother said: “We’d eat nearly all our meals on our laps, and if anyone started talking the rest of us would immediately say ‘Ssh.’ It had a hypnotic hold on all of us.” Realizing that “TV was not only dominating our living-room but dominating our lives as well,” they decided there was only one thing to do—the TV must go. The result? “Now we wonder how we ever found time to watch the box.”
Cheap Energy
● Extracting energy from garbage is no longer just an idea. Compressed Air Magazine reports that “the world’s largest landfill methane recovery facility” was opened last October on Staten Island, New York, and during the winter supplied pipeline-quality gas to heat the equivalent of 10,000 homes. On the 400-acre (160-ha) site more than 100 wells, 60 to 75 feet (18 to 23 m) deep, were drilled and gas is withdrawn through these. The report states that the plant cost $20 million (U.S.) and “can process up to 10 million cubic feet [280,000 cu m] per day of raw landfill gas.” It claims that methane gas, which is mixed with natural gas, has a heating value equivalent to natural gas.
● The Hawaiian island of Oahu will soon have the world’s largest wind-turbine, according to Industry Week. The windmill-type generator, with a 400-foot (120-m) rotor, is expected to generate more than 30 million kwhr a year, which is enough to supply the needs of 3,500 homes.
Technological Improvement
● An engineer at the International Livestock Centre for Africa in Addis Ababa invented a simple inverted V yoke that could result in “a dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity,” reports New Scientist. “For centuries, agricultural development in Africa has been held up by farmers’ insistence that they need two oxen to pull a plough. . . . A simple new yoke . . . enables just one ox to do the job.” Although Ethiopia has six million draft oxen, only about half the farmers own two, and more than 20 percent own none. “Thus farmers have to team up with others,” either to rent a pair for a day or to borrow one, it is reported. Tests show that a single ox can cultivate about 60 percent of what two oxen can. One typical reaction to the single yoke when demonstrated was: “This is something our ancestors never dreamed of!”
Pollution Detectors
● New Scientist reports that electric fish from West Africa are helping to keep the drinking water clean in three cities in the Federal Republic of Germany. Being very particular about clean water, these elephant-trunk fish signal their dislike when they sense that the water is polluted. “The fish normally emits 400 to 800 milli-second blasts a minute,” says the article, adding: “When it smells something it does not like in the water, the frequency of impulses plummets.” By this, scientists know pollution is high. The advantage? This fish testing is faster than chemical testing and is constant. So, “400,000 people in three towns can now rest assured that their drinking water is up to a fish’s standards.”
Red Sea Riches
● Between 1969 and 1981, 605 corings were made in one area of the Red Sea known as Atlantis II. Its estimated reserves are “2-2.5mn tonnes of zinc, 500,000-600,000 tonnes of copper, 4,000-9,000 tonnes of silver and 80 tonnes of gold,” to quote the Red Sea Commission set up by Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Thus far 17 volcanic “hot spots” or “deeps,” some 2,100 meters (6,900 ft) deep, have been located that contain high concentrations of “metalliferous sediments.” Because the deposits are so far below sea level they are costly to extract. Thus the commission says that if funds are received before the end of the 1980’s they “might be the first to put metals from the sea bed onto the world market.”
Endangered Himalayas
● Even the “roof of the world”—the lofty Himalayas—is not immune from the ravages of exploitation by man. “Ecological degradation is threatening almost the entire range,” says Rashmi De Roy in the Times of India. The cause? Deforestation and overgrazing. The results are that animals are on the decline and are retreating “to newer, more remote habitats,” De Roy observes. Silt carried by soil-eroding floods discolors the Bay of Bengal for 400 miles (640 km) offshore. To reverse this trend, concludes the report, “conservation forestry is imperative.”
Exotic Foods
● “Monkey brains and meat, snake soup, tortoise and turtle soup, monitor lizard meat or the meats of flying foxes, flying squirrels, bats and deer” may not sound exotic as a tasty meal to Westerners, but they do to Malaysians, according to New Scientist magazine. A survey reveals that “although black market prices for exotic animals are rising, sales are still booming.” Many pet shops not only openly sell such birds and animals but also supply restaurants with them. Some current Malaysian prices (expressed in U.S. currency) are: monkey at $35, flying squirrel $20, owl $15, python $50 per meter. Some of these are on the endangered species list.
Clearest Glass
● A windowpane made of a newly developed halide glass could be 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) thick—and still be transparent, reports The New York Times. Halide glass has about ten times the light-transmission capability of conventional silicon-based glasses. Thus it has great potential in fiber optic communications systems, in which pulses of light are sent through hair-thin glass fiber lines. Conventional glass fibers must have repeaters every 10 to 50 kilometers (6 to 30 mi) to boost the signal, but halide glass requires no repeating for several hundred kilometers, allowing some underwater cables to get by without the use of repeaters, the report says.
A “Sneaky” VD
● As if the threat of such horrible diseases as herpes and AIDS were not enough, 400 doctors at a conference of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Disease Research, held at Seattle, were told of the need for “better diagnosis and public awareness of the most widespread and least-known venereal disease of them all: chlamydia,” reports The Seattle Times. This little-known disease “infects 3 million Americans a year, or more than syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes and AIDS combined,” says the report. Chlamydia is called ‘a sneaky disease’ because it is easily ignored by patients and misdiagnosed by doctors. If left unchecked, it can lead to sterility, says the report.
Blind Man Sails
● Using “Braille charts, a Braille compass, a ‘talking’ clock and a navigational system that reads his position aloud,” Hank Dekker was the first blind person to sail alone from San Francisco to Hawaii, reports The New York Times. Dekker, 42 years old, began losing his sight in 1972 due to glaucoma, and he has only about 2 percent of his vision left. Yet, in his 25-foot (8-m) sloop, he arrived in Honolulu right on schedule. He said he made the trip to show handicapped people “they can do new things, learn to sail, learn a new trade, a new skill.”