Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

In memoriam: Renfrew Christie, who sabotaged South Africa's nuclear weapons program

2026-01-16T00:54:39Z

As is sometimes the case, I only heard about Christie and his part in the anti-apartheid fight after he died.

Renfrew Christie was a white South African scientist and member of the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. He went to Oxford University and studied South Africa's history of electrification "so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium," he told the BBC. That in turn let them figure out how much enriched uranium South Africa had, and many bombs it could build.

When he returned to South Africa, he was arrested and, after 48 hours of torture, wrote a forced confession, which he told the BBC was the best thing he ever wrote

noting that he had made sure the confession included “all my recommendations to the African National Congress” about the best way to sabotage Koeberg and other facilities.

“And, gloriously, the judge read it out in court,” Dr. Christie added. “So my recommendations went from the judge’s mouth” straight to the A.N.C.

Christie died of pneumonia last month, at the age of 76.

I'm linking to siderea's post, which includes the text of the (paywalled) NY Times obituary.

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redbird @ 2025-02-14T13:38:00

2025-02-14T18:43:23Z

For anyone in what rydra_wong tags as Watergate fandom, Here's Jay Kuo's write-up of the Thursday night massacre. [Since someone asked, the "massacres" here are metaphorical.]

The article is about current political news, both the Trump administration and current New York mayor Eric Adams.

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something cheerful, which I think we can all use

2025-02-13T00:33:19Z

Cool animal behavior result: cockatoos dipping their noodles in soy yogurt, with a preference for blueberry yogurt rather than plain. The article comes with a warning not to feed dairy yogurt to your pet parrots.

The only other example the researcher could find of animals only the second example of animals flavoring their food was an article about macaques dipping potatoes in salt water, from 1965.

(posting this also means I can find the article again.)

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gifts for people you hate

2023-12-08T15:49:22Z

naomikritzer has posted her annual guide to buying gifts for people you're pressured into buying something for: "to help you express your dislike with all the tact of Joe Biden writing an epitaph for Henry Kissinger."

Like every year, Naomi notes both that many of these would be good gifts for someone else, and that unfortunately a lot of people are in situations where not getting something for certain relatives or acquaintances could lead to fights they don't want to have. At least once in the past, I have read one of her descriptions and thought it sounded delightful, because one person's eye-searingly bright color is another's favorite.

This year, Naomi says that her new book, Liberty's Daughter, would be the perfect gift for a certain sort of Libertarian blowhard. Similarly, Waubgeshig Rice's novel Moon of the Crusted Snow is about people surviving an apocalypse in northern Ontario, and could be given to "white dude gun-collecting survivalists," who would almost certainly be home from the family gift-exchanging event before they got far enough into the book to realize that people like them are the bad guys here. (Disclaimer: I have read neither of these, though Naomi's is on my kindle, along with some other things that I will get to after reading Permutation City for my online book club.)

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a delightful poem

2023-06-23T16:35:36Z

Steve Irwin and the Unicorn, bv Theo Lorenz:

"'That’s right! When you look back in the family tree,
a whale is a closer relative to a unicorn than a horse is.'"

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generic drug naming

2023-03-13T14:11:52Z

Someone posted last week about long, unpronounceable generic names for drugs. This morning I found, via vass, a WHO website about choosing those names, including the meanings of a large assortment of stems (things like -micin and -mab). Some of the entries are things like "-tredekin (see -kin)" followed by an explanation of what the longer stem means.

The handbook also says to avoid the letters H and K, and use I instead of Y, to make pronunciation easier in various languages. That makes sense, and also reduces the number of possible names.

I am reminded here of "Exxon," a name carefully chosen not to mean anything in any language. If I recall correctly, there's only language that uses "xx" in words, Maltese, and "is 'exxon' a word in Maltese" was relatively easy to answer, compared to something like "is 'mitepunac' a word in any of the languages spoken anywhere we might be doing business?"

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This is just cool

2023-02-23T21:31:17Z

Via emmceeaich on Mastodon, who said that Meteorite crater discovered in French winery sounds like something out of Star Trek.

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Yuletide Rec

2022-12-25T17:24:24Z

A Christmas-themed xkcd story with, as noted in the additional tags, canon-typical obscure references:

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2022/works/43662427

I'm saving the four "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" fics for later; one of them is also a Voynich manuscript fic.

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heffalumps!

2022-11-12T17:00:52Z

The Syracuse, NY, zoo was delighted to announce the birth of healthy twin baby elephants.

Due to the sheer improbability as well as the complexity of elephant ultrasounds, the zoo team did not anticipate the birth of twins. However, they were prepared. Elephant care staff have been supplementing the second calf with a specialized milk replacer they received days before the delivery.

The article doesn't say who supplied the baby elephant formula.

If anyone reading this is in or near Syracuse, the elephants can be seen daily, either outdoors or in the Pachyderm Pavilion, depending on the weather.

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the world's longest footnote

2022-09-17T22:54:56Z

What is almost certainly the longest footnote in history: 173 pages about Hadrian's wall, going into detail to prove that it is in fact Hadrian's wall, not Severus'.

The author made it a footnote because he considered it off topic for the detailed history of Northumberland he was writing, but wanted to get it into print before he died.

(via andrewducker)

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Paxlovid interactions

2022-05-03T18:52:19Z

So I can find it again: this government of Quebec webpage (in English) has two lists of drug interactions for Paxlovid. The first, which I've seen elsewhere, are "do not take Paxlovid if you are taking any of these other drugs." The second, longer, list is other things that may interact with Paxlovid. In some cases, taking Paxlovid increases or decreases the effective dose of the other medication.

https://vaccin-covid.canada.ca/info/paxlovid-en.html and scroll down to "The following may also interact with PAXLOVID"

ETA: And the US FDA EUA includes a different list of drug interaction warnings: https://www.fda.gov/media/155050/download (via siderea) The UK has yet a third list. All of this seems to add up to "talk to your physician about whetber to take this, and about dosage of your other medications."

More about Paxlovid, not closely related but I already have one post today to keep track of this stuff:

The company that makes the drug did a study of whether it would prevent infection in people who live in the same household as someone with covid, and it doesn't seem to. (The study was of 2957 adults, who tested negative and did not have covid symptoms.) "Doesn't seem to" in this case means that there was a difference, but it's not statistically significant.

Also, something I hadn't known is that all the Paxlovid studies so far are in unvaccinated people. I got that part from a blog post by Derek Lowe. That might be relevant for the vast majority of my readers, who are vaccinated and have useful antibodies because it, though it won't affect my own decision-making.

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amusing story from New York City

2021-09-15T21:20:48Z

The New York Department of Health says that the UN General Assembly building is a convention center, and that proof of vaccination is therefore required to enter. (The requirement is for least one dose, of any vaccine approved by either the FDA or WHO.)

The Russian ambassador is furious, it's not clear whether he objects to the requirement itself, or to the NYC government claiming the authority to enforce that or any requirement.

I am amused by this because, when I was growing up, annoying foreign governments, and especially the Soviet government, was a sort of hobby of the New York City Council, which at that time had almost no real power. So the street corner nearest the Soviet embassy to the UN was named Sakharov-Bonner corner, after the Soviet dissidents Andrey Sakharov and Yelena Bonner.

I am not a lawyer, but it looks as though the extraterritorial status of that bit of Manhattan isn't relevant here. A little googling and a look at Wikipedia tell me that except as specifically provided, federal, state, and local law still apply.

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"as conntagious as chicken pox"

2021-08-09T00:48:02Z

siderea explains what "as contagious as chicken pox" means, having noticed that a lot of people were born after the vaccine became available.

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Coelacanth lifespan

2021-06-22T13:07:06Z

A new study shows that coelacanths are long-lived and have the longest gestation period of any known animal.

The previous estimate was a lifespan of 20 years, which this study corrects to a century. The estimated gestation period is five years. The previous record-holder was the frilled shark, with a gestation period of about three and a half years; the mammal with the longest gestation period is the elephant, which carries its young for two years.

These are all estimates based on museum specimens (as was the previous number), but the new values fit better with what's known about other fish that live in similar habitats.

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@siderea on Covid vaccination and immunity

2021-05-28T16:52:35Z

siderea just posted a discussion of vaccination and the transmission of COVID-19: it looks as though, not only are vaccinated people unlikely to catch Covid, but if they do, it's likely to be just a head cold, and not get into the lungs and vascular system.

Also, from that same article, even after one dose of the two-dose vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna, people are less likely to transmit the disease.

I tend to trust siderea on this, but she notes that the sources are less than clear here.

If her discussion is correct, unvaccinated people still need to mask to protect themselves and other unvaccinated people, but vaccinated people mostly don't, because we're not likely to be infected, and what we'd be risking from that relatively unlikely infection a bad cold, which wouldn't be pleasant but is a risk most people already take for granted. Exceptions to that guideline include anyone who will be spending time around people who can't be vaccinated yet, either because of supply issues or because they're too young.

[I started writing this as a reply to comments on my previous post, then decided it should be its own entry.]

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Federally subsidized internet service

2021-05-12T15:29:58Z

Tens of millions of Americans are eligible to get $50/month from the US government to help pay for their Internet service for the next few months. Eligibility for the "Emergency Broadband Benefit" includes people with low incomes, anyone who lost a job or significant income during the pandemic, people who are getting other benefits including food stamps, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security Income, and anyone who is already getting subsidized or low-income Internet service.

The FCC estimates that the application process should take about ten minutes, but you do have to apply. You can start at https://getemergencybroadband.org/how-to-apply/

The law authorizing this was passed in December, and the FCC now has it up and running in most of the United States.

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Federally subsidized internet service

2021-05-12T15:27:17Z

silliness

2021-04-16T15:59:48Z

Apropos of nothing in particular, Mike Ford doing Wodehouse doing Borges.

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surreal alternate history

2021-03-16T19:50:58Z

Camestros Felapton noticed that Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick were in the same high school class, and suggested that someone should write stories in which they knew each other, and "they fight crime."

From there, it got weird(er): https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2021/03/17/kin-and-crow/

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news note, that for some reason I want to quote here

2021-02-10T19:03:48Z

The CBC website has an article, from the Associated Press, on a Georgia investigation of Trump's attempts to steal the election.

The Fulton County District Attorney has written to the state's governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general to preserve all records relation to the election. (The Secretary of State is the person who was recorded telling Trump that no, he wasn't going to "find" him votes or otherwise change the election results.)

The DA's spokesperson doesn't explicitly name Trump, but did say "the matters reported on over the last several weeks are the matters being investigated." Also, the DA's letters say they "have no reason to believe that any Georgia official is a target of this investigation."

Meanwhile, here in Massachusetts, perennial losing candidate Shiva Ayyadurai is suing our secretary of state in federal court, demanding that he order Twitter to reinstate his account. No, that makes no more sense in context. In context, the state's lawyers have asked the judge to throw out that lawsuit, both because he's in the wrong court (the Eleventh Amendment* means he'd have to take this to a state court), and because he isn't suing Twitter and therefore the court couldn't order Twitter to do anything, even if his claims weren't nonsense.

*It's one of the obscure amendments, which sorted out some jurisdictional stuff early in US history. You didn't sleep through something important in history or civics class. The Eleventh Amendment sharply limits lawsuits against state governments (which is why the University of California, can get away with violating people's copyrights), and specifies that if one state sues another, over something like who owns Ellis Island, the case goes directly to the Supreme Court

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redbird @ 2020-10-27T21:33:00

2020-10-28T01:36:21Z

I have found a new way to avoid doomscrolling: I'm doing online jigsaw puzzles in between the text banking, discord conversations, and Scrabble.

I'm not bothering with much news commentary here, because you probably already know this. Hypothetical future historian, if you need this journal to tell you what 2020 was like, I would have no idea of where to start.

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Something cheerful, and nice to look at

2020-01-31T23:34:34Z

Amateur sky watchers in Finland have found a new kind of aurora. The amateurs not only got the professionals' attention after asking "what are these?" they worked together to take carefully coordinated photos that made it possible to identify these auroras' altitude.

via conuly, whose link notes "Not Steve, another one." These newly studied auroras have been named "the dunes" (though I don't see the resemblance). Compared to "Steve" and "Hanny's Thingie" (named for a Galaxy Zoo volunteer), "dunes" is downright straightforward.

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WEIRD societies and the law of unintended consequences

2019-11-20T21:38:23Z

Here's a paper arguing that the Catholic church's intense* concern with incest, eventually defined broadly enough to include distant cousins and "spiritual kin," explains large parts of WEIRD** culture and psychology: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6466/eaau5141

The correlations, and maybe causality, seems to be that changing the rules on who could marry weakened kinship ties, and that in turn reduced conformity and obedience to elders, and increased individualism and "impersonal prosociality," which seems to mean the tendency to trust and try to help strangers as well as family and friends.

This jumped out at me as "unintended consequences" because the short article in *Science* talked about the Catholic Church's "Marriage and family program," with the implication that this was the result of a deliberate, unified policy--but that phrasing but that turns out to be the authors' coinage for long-term policies against marriages to create alliances between families, and then discouraging second, third, and even sixth cousin marriages and arranged marriages, and encouraging or requiring newly married couples to set up their own households.

Whatever the intentions of the people who created those policies, I'm confident that their goals did not include increasing individualism and independence, while reducing conformity and obedience.

* compared to most other cultures and religions, including other forms of Christianity

**a great acronym, for "Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic"

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I think they're serious

2019-10-22T02:28:15Z

At the end of a BBC article about Brexit appears the following:

Do you have any questions about the Brexit bill and what happens next?

Use this form to ask your question:

[text entry box]
In some cases your question will be published, displaying your name and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published. Please ensure you have read the terms and conditions.

I think they're serious.

Anyone who *got* to the end of the article has questions about what happens next. But I don't think the BBC can answer them, because they don't know either.

Meanwhile, xkcd has an unusual suggestion for this problem. But Randall Munroe knows he's joking.

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Trilobites!

2019-10-21T02:57:47Z

sovay found and posted about a delightful paper about collective behavior in trilobites, 480 million years ago.

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