Alice Carlson's Blog

Lakefield Canoe Club has always specialised in running…

alicecarlson — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:32:15 +0000

Lakefield Canoe Club has always specialised in running wild water rivers and this is not the first of the clubs pioneering ventures into little known canoeing waters.
Many years ago the club led a team into the Pyrenees to explore the possibility of wild water rivers in that area and they canoed some very exciting rivers in that region.
Other members have taken part in running the Grand Canyon of the Colorado on three separate occasions and in expeditions to Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Finnish lapland, Turkey, Yugoslavia and Morocco among other venues in search of wild water rivers as yet unknown to most of us.
Lakeland Canoe Club is an old established club, formed in the year when Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne 40 years ago.
Possibly it is better known for inaugurating and managing the Leven Wild Water Test which are the forerunner of all wild water racing in Britain.
This continued without a break for 35 years until the advent of plastic canoes changed the event into a series of open days for practice on wild water rather than a serious competition, in accordance with the wishes of most of those visiting the river. I liked Mike Mill’s letter In support of estuaries in the same issue. It puts a point of view not shared by all canoeists.
I have consistently maintained that the canoe is the traditional craft for exploring wilderness areas without disturbing wildlife.
Our opponents say we do cause such disturbance but I suspect that is only that is only because they see all canoeists as a noisy bunch of exuberant youngsters. But these are not canoeists in the true sense.
Usually they are a group from an outdoor centre who are being given a taste of what canoeing can offer them and they have yet to appreciate the finer points of our sport or recreation.
This was brought home to me recently when the Conservation Officer of the Cumbria Wildlife Trust countered my defence of canoeing and canoeists by accepting that two or three canoeists are no problem in a sensitive area, whereas a large group does cause unacceptable disturbance to wildlife.
It follows that such noisy groups of youngsters whether in canoes, on cycles or on foot, need to be broken down into smaller groups each controlled by a responsible competent leader or instructor until such time as they become mature canoeists and are able to appreciate the magic and wonder of their surroundings.
On another occasion David Bellamy said to me “You can’t tell me that a canoe would not disturb an otter”.
My reply to that is that the quiet passage of a canoe going with the current is less likely to disturb the otter than a walker tramping along the bank of the river.
Editor’s note:Paddlers wanting more information on Costa Rica are invited to write to Mike Hayward at 289 Downhall Green rd, Bryan, Wigan WN4 ONB. Warm ideas
from Joy Perkins,Botley, Oxford to Andy Marsh.
Today I bought Canoeist , looking for warm ideas for some more canoeing; unfortunately there was nothing suitable.
But what a delight it was to come across your adventure, particularly so as Sept saw me doing 6 days canoeing the Zam with Shearwater and rafting Vic Falls 419 and a flip at 18, and I spent 2 days at Kariba lake on a houseboat.
You can imagine the excitement that returned to me when your pictures were so similar.
My canoeing skills, newly acquired, were not tested in Canadians, helmed by a guide, and I am disappointed but as I didn’t acquire my elementary skills until I was a 61 year old female I’m not complaining but I do complain that I’m quite unable to find a suitable canoe companion now I’m on my own. Where do people of my age go?
Well and that’s not for you to worry over.
Thanks for your writings of Zim and Zam; I did love being there, on my own. Any suitable warm suggestions would be very welcome.
Racism
From Aonghas Geddes ,Swindon, Wilts.
The Caption Competition , which usually gives me a source of amusement, in the Feb edition was in bad taste.

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More widely, engineers call it the concrete…

alicecarlson — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 08:00:47 +0000

More widely, engineers call it the concrete cancer.
It happens when alkali chemicals, present in cement and react with silica, which is in some aggregates that are mixed with cement to make concrete. The reaction cause’s a gel to form around the stones.
This absorbs water and expands and so cracking the concrete. More water then gets in.
After freezing it will widen the cracks further and may rust steel reinforcements.
Bridges have been hit by concrete cancer in Devon, Derbyshire, Surrey and Birmingham.
A recent outbreak of aggregate reactions in the concrete transformer bases of 11 electricity power stations has thrown up the possibility that most of the sands and gravels removed from the Trent valley (one of the most widely-used sources of aggregates in Britain) may contain the forms of silica that cause the reaction. CAN WE CONTROL INSECT PESTS?
Pesticides alone are not the best way to achieve long term control of agricultural pests.
A carefully orchestrated combination of biological, cultural and chemical controls may be the answer. GRAHAM MATTHEWS
OVER the last four decades, man has relied increasingly on powerful armoury of chemicals in the war against pests.
The “silent spring” predicted by Rachel Carson some 20 years ago has not arrived, even though global sales of pesticides last year totalled £7 billion; but persistent organochlorine insecticides and such as DDT, are damaging some populations of birds, and chemicals sometimes destroy beneficial natural enemies and thereby actually create pests. Pests are also becoming resistant to some pesticides.
Above all, when toxic chemicals are used in ignorance, as in many tropical countries and they can be hazardous to human health.
These serious problems have led to the concept of integrated pest management (IPM) which does not rely solely on pesticides.
A great variety of techniques for controlling insects are now available, and and sensibly co-ordinated and they could safely and effectively keep pests under control.
In an ideal integrated scheme, cultural controls (changes in farming habits) and biological controls would largely supplant pesticides; in practice, chemical control continues to be an essential component of IPM when a pest population has to be reduced rapidly to minimise financial loss. Even so, integrated management can reduce the farmer’s reliance on pesticides.
He can time an application of a pesticide more accurately to ensure that the cost of pesticide is justified by the increase in yields, use more selective chemicals, and apply the minimum dosages needed.
Such careful spraying can go hand in hand with long-established techniques such as crop rotation, and planting resistant varieties.
But for IPM to become a reality our scientific understanding of pests must be transmitted to the man in the field; IPM demands sophisticated techniques for decision-making and management.
Subsistence peasant agriculture and highly mechanised intensive farming are two extremes in agricultural development which present quite different problems for integrated pest management.
Peasant farming, low on capital but rich in labour and relies on traditional cultural controls.
Farmers employ mixed cropping systems and plant local cultivars with some resistance to pests. So most farmers in the Third World use few pesticides.
But in the 1960s attempts to increase crop production in these areas introduced higher yielding varieties of the “green revolution”.

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For opera lovers, Erato’s “Libretto”series launched in…

alicecarlson — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 18:22:29 +0000

For opera lovers, Erato’s “Libretto”series launched in the UK last year, aims to provide “affordable opera”.
In addition to mainstream repertoire, Erato also aims to present unknown or neglected works.
Hence “Libretto” includes recordings not available elsewhere such as faurÃ©’s PÃ©nÃ©lope , Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-Bleue and Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus and together with the more familiar Rossini Italian Girl in Algiers , Purcell’s Dido et Aeneas , Debussy’s PÃ©llÃ©as MÃ©lisande , Offenbach’s La PÃ©richole , Gounod’s Faust and from the English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner, handel’s Tamerlano .
Last October, Rozhdestvensky’s monumental Prokofiev War and Peace returned to the catalogue.
“Libretto” is identifiable by its distinctive red and white “stage curtain”packaging and, are top quality box sets with full documentation and ” naturally ” libretti!
Erato’s main mid-price label is “Emeraude”(DDD)” initially a dozen or so titles varying from Corelli and Charpentier to Grieg and Tchaikovsky, with established “Erato” names such as Schimone, Koopman, Paillard and Guschbauer.
This is due to be extended later this year, and should form a solid basis for Erato’s planned UK expansion programme.
Teldec’s contribution to our pockets comes from a new alldigital series somewhat unadventurously called “The Digital Experience”.
Concentrating on a range of much loved (but not overpopular) classics at around £8.49, we have the stylish Franz Liszt CO conducted by Janos Rolla in Rossini’s delightful String Sonatas, bach Concertos and Horn Concertos by the two Haydns (Joseph and Michael) the Leipzig Gewandhaus/Masur; the Royal Concertgebouw/Harnoncourt and pianists Katsaris and Buchbinder. [Peter Brown]
REPRODUCTION
How do three fascinating hi-fi products compare to…
THE GOLD STANDARD
This month: Ariston’s CD3 (a careful and thorough and successful implementation of a “standard” kit of parts), SD Acoustics’ Ribbon speaker (a vastly different design from the norm which repays a thoughtful approach to system building) and last but not least, Linn’s Karik/Numerik CD player. Better than a turntable?
Read on…
It is all too easy to become bemused and befuddled by the enormous range of compact disc hardware now cluttering deals’ shelves.
It is tempting to take the cynical view that compact disc is “all in the numbers”, and in most cases there is little to choose between them.
This feeling is only likely to be reinforced by the realisation that the underlying technology used by most players ” the set of chips that makes them tick ” comes from a very limited number of sources.
It’s easy to become cynical about the vastly excessive range of features and over-complicated facias that most manufacturers seem impelled to provide.
It’s not necessarily in the hi-fi reviewer’s own interests to belittle those differences that do exist of course, but it’s hard to avoid concluding that all too often the range of variations between CD players really is as small as suggested above.
What lends this observation particular piquancy however is that remarkably few players sound particularly good.

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FUNDAMENTAL science often leads to fresh technologies and…

alicecarlson — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 17:32:53 +0000

FUNDAMENTAL science often leads to fresh technologies and even to new industries, but is is far less usual for developments in technology to lead to new science.
A good example of this “reverse flow” comes from certain developments in the semiconductor industry.
These have allowed scientists to define a new absolute standard of electrical resistance, and to determine in a new way one of the most important physical constants.
The one thing that these, and other applications have in common, is a measurement of the Hall effect, in which, in certain circumstances, a voltage is set up perpendicular to a magnetic field and a current passing through a material.
What the new technology has allowed is the study of the Hall effect at the level where quantum theory takes over from “classical” electromagnetism, in other words and the quantum Hall effect.
The essential technology behind this breakthrough was the development of a type of transistor and the MOSFET, or metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (Figure 1).
This is a device consisting of a slice of insulator sandwiched between a piece of metal and known as the “gate”, and a semiconductor.
The semiconductor is usually a single crystal of p-type silicon and that is and silicon doped with excess positive-charge carriers, or holes.
Electrodes to admit and extract current and known as the “source” and “drain”respectively, are embedded in the semiconductor.
A strong positive voltage applied to the gate draws excess mobile electrons (which are negatively charged) into a layer between the insulator and the semiconductor.
The source and drain are thus connected by a so-called “inversion layer”, in which the majority charge carrier (electrons) is the minority one in the bulk of the semiconductor (which is p-type and so holes are the majority carrier).
Using a voltage to control the number of mobile electrons in this layer, or “induced surface channel” as it is sometimes called, is the basis of the device’s operation.
Interest in the scientific potential of the inversion layer was awakened in the late 1950s.
Theoretical considerations indicated that if the electric field applied to the surface could be made strong enough to confine the mobile electrons to a very thin layer near the semiconductor’s surface, with thickness comparable to the wavelength associated with the electrons there and then the electrons’ motion perpendicular to the surface would be “quantised”.
In other words, only certain discrete energies would be permitted, exactly as for an electron confined in a single atom. Motion parallel to the surface, on the other hand, would remain as normal.

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Usually, all that seemed necessary was a notice announcing the…

alicecarlson — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:07:20 +0000

Usually, all that seemed necessary was a notice announcing the site was protected, and occasionally some repair or the setting-up of a plain iron “unclimbable” fence.
Since the inspector’s budget was never more than £200 a year, he was unable to take on any site that required extensive work. At first, not a single owner would place his monument in guardianship.
Even Lubbock refused, who had bought part of Avebury to prevent cottages being built on it.
But by the end of 1884, 14 sites in England had been placed under the act, including the Arbor Low and Rollright stone circles and Silbury Hill, plus two in Scotland, and more followed in later years.
Firm refusals remained in the majority, even after personal visits to owners by Pitt-Rivers; of the dukes who owned monuments, for instance, Devonshire and Rutland consented but Marlborough, Richmond and Sutherland declined.
In the wilder parts of Scotland, even the tracing of ownership could be difficult; the owner of the Burgh of Clickamin, a Pictish broch in Shetland, was found to be an aged lady in Cheltenham who must, Pitt-Rivers insisted, be encouraged to sign over guardianship straight away, before she forgot all about it. Stonehenge was the subject of unpleasant exchanges.
For years souvenir-hunters had swarmed over it on summer Sundays (and now also on Lubbock’s bank holidays) and their hammers at the ready, and the owner, Antrobus, had Supplied an attendant to keep some order.
Antrobus considered archaeologists to be another kind of meddling vandal, and he had refused to let in a group from the British Association for the Advancement of Science that had included Lubbock and Pitt-Rivers, and who had wanted to excavate round the stones.
(Given the vigour of Victorian excavation techniques and the complexity of the Stonehenge stratigraphy, it is a good thing he refused!)
From the beginning, Pitt-Rivers saw the two flaws in the 1882 Ancient Monuments Protection Act.
It was solely permissive ” but it was precisely those owners who cared little for their sites who were likely to refuse protection.
And it concentrated on the famous sites and the ones that amused the excursionists ” while ignoring the thousands of lesser earthworks that were of value to the scientific archaeologist.
Pitt-Rivers retired in 1890 and though keeping the honorary title and acting as a consultant, but with his death in 1900 the post lapsed, and the act as a whole became a dead letter.
Still, it was the basis of a reformed act in 1913, giving a revived inspectorate compulsory powers, which has been the basis for more effective protection ever since. The general may have made a false start, but his was a worthwhile beginning.

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The only weakness in the book for me was…

alicecarlson — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 05:37:59 +0000

The only weakness in the book for me was Jones’s lack of a theological base, for he frequently verged on theological matters.
The strengths lie in its readability, its practical freshness (he gives examples of how to see the metaphors of physics through simple exercises), and its gentle and humorous approach. I suspect it will not make the impact of Capra’s work.
But it should, for it speaks about science wisely.
Science as a point of view
Rationality, and relativism edited by M. Hollis and S. Lukes,Blackwell, pp 312, £6.50 John Little
SCIENTIFIC investigation of other societies and other ages has increasingly come under attack from relativists claiming that other cultures, and even other scientific paradigms, can be understood only from within, and only in their own terms.
Thus they claim that modern Western science is but one of a galaxy of alternative explanatory schemes, and that what constitutes knowledge and reasoning is relative to norms defined by society.
Students of language have often concurred with Edward Sapir when he wrote, “The “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group.
The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.”
Surprisingly, philosophers and historians of science have frequently agreed: Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend argue that different systems of thought are not mutually expressible and that scientists within different paradigms live in different worlds. Scientific enterprise is undermined by the extreme forms of relativism.
If the world that science investigates is largely a social construction then the history of science may show change but it will not show progress.
This collection of 10 essays by sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers is part of the backlash against these relativist views (represented in the beginning of this volume by Barry Barnes and David Bloor and and to a lesser extent, by Ian Hacking). Several authors portray the threat in vivid language.
“A spectre haunts human thought: relativism,” begins Ernest Gellner.
“If relativism held with regard to reason…this would be a victory for the Kingdom of Darkness,” writes W. Newton-Smith.

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It turns out that the heaviest of…

alicecarlson — Sat, 29 May 2010 14:26:11 +0000

It turns out that the heaviest of the four upsilon particles has sufficient mass to decay radioactively into two B mesons and the b quark and antiquark splitting up to go their separate ways in the two B mesons.
CESR is the only machine that can produce reasonably large numbers of the heaviest upsilon and so its collisions between electrons and positrons provide the most promising hunting ground for B mesons.
The first indication that the fourth upsilon did indeed decay into B mesons came when the team working on the detector known as CLEO discovered energetic electrons and muons, presumably from the decays of B mesons (New Scientist , vol 87, p 776). Now the same team has more direct evidence.
This time the researchers have looked for steps in the decay chain of a B meson, in which the b quark converts first into a c quark and then into an s quark; this means that the B meson decays into a charmed D meson, and then a strange K meson.
The K mesons live long enough to produce tracks in the CLEO detector and so the team could work back from detected K mesons to hunt for those that seemed likely to have originated from a B meson.
In such cases the spray of particles emanating from the electron-positron collision would be entirely consistent with the steps expected for the decay of a B meson (see Figure).
From the 18 possible B mesons they were able to find and the researchers have deduced a mass of 5270 MeV for the neutral B meson and 5270 MeV for the charged B ” some 5.3 times as heavy as the proton.
The B mesons can now be assured of a place in the tables of known subatomic particles. Blind mites need vitamin A to “see”
AT FIRST sight it’s something of a puzzle how invertebrate animals without eyes measure daylength.
But the answer to this riddle is that they have a receptor, most probably in the brain and that enables light detection to bypass normal, ocular channels.
In fact, even the sighted cousins of these creatures are thought to use the brain receptor for photoperiod perception. Exactly how this extraocular photoreception works is still unknown.
But one attractive possibility is that it is similar to the normal mechanism used in eyes, which depends on the interaction of light with substances called rhodopsins, or their close chemical relatives and the porohyropsins.
Each rhodopsin molecule is made up of the aldehyde part of the vitamin A molecule and a protein.
Obviously, if vitamin A can be shown to be necessary for photoperiod detection by an extraocular receptor, it is likely that rhodopsins are at work.
This was the rationale behind a recent experiment carried out by Veerman and his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam (Nature vol 302, p 248). The scientists chose an eyeless mite Amblyseius potentillae for their studies.
Mites are arachnids ” close relatives of spiders and scorpions ” but they have a lot in common with insects.
For instance and they may show the state of arrested development called diapause, well known in insects.
In Amblyseius , diapause takes the form of a temporary blockage of reproduction and is probably a device for preventing breeding in adverse conditions. It is induced by daylength cues.
So, if you subject young mites to short days and they enter a state of diapause in the adult state of the life cycle.

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He was educated at Ochiltree and Coylton village schools…

alicecarlson — Sat, 29 May 2010 03:51:10 +0000

He was educated at Ochiltree and Coylton village schools until, at 12, he left to work on the pithead of Trabboch colliery. With his mother he moved to Cronberry and then to Crofthead, near Ayr.
Encouraged by local school teachers who recognised his outstanding intellect, he resumed his education at Ayr Academy and went on to Glasgow University, where he graduated M.A. with first class honours in classics and won a gold medal for Greek.
From Glasgow he obtained a Snell Exhibition (See Chapter 38) and continued his studies at Balliol College, Oxford.
After university, he became a free-lance journalist in London, writing articles for most of the leading literary magazines.
Of his several works of fiction and the best known is the novel,The House with the Green Shutters , which is set in Ochiltree. Unfortunately, he died aged 33, before his full potential was realised. DUNLOP CHEESE & AYRSHIRE BACON
In Dunlop Laigh Kirkyard there is a headstone which has been removed from its original position and now stands in a comer, leaning against the south wall of the kirk, partly hidden by a bush.
The lichen encrusted inscription reads:”"This is the burial place of John Dunlop of Overhill and Barbara Gilmor his spouse and their children ” 1732″.
It would seem to commemorate a humble farmer and his wife and truly two of Thomas Gray’s flowers “born to blush unseen”, but that is far from correct for Barbra Gilmor is a character in the story of Ayrshire’s heritage, a woman with a unique claim to fame in the annals of the county.
Barbra Gilmor ” Barbara Gilmour of Gilmore in its modem spelling ” was the daughter of an Ayrshire farmer who, like many of his calling, was committed to the Solemn League and Covenant (See chapter 21).
During the “Killing Times” of the 1880s, when the Covenanters were being hunted down and killed mercilessly and the father fled with his family to Ireland, where they stayed for several years, probably until after James II and VII was deposed in 1688.
After her return to Ayrshire, Barbara married John Dunlop, a farmer in Dunlop parish.
As is shown on their headstone and they lived at Overhill, which is now called Hill and is a short distance outside Dunlop village on the Stewarton Road.
On a door lintel at Hill there is an inscription, “J.D. ” B.G.1692″, which followed a custom of the time and probably commemorated the date of their wedding or betrothal.
In Ireland, Barbara had learned a method of making cheese with unskimmed cow’s milk and when she returned to Ayrshire she introduced the new process.

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The real cause of the trouble is and that…

alicecarlson — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:03:13 +0000

The real cause of the trouble is and that parents and teachers always pass on to us, as children, what they themselves have been told, and this has been going on for hundreds, or even thousands of years.
Fortunately there are now many people who think this is wrong, and they do so mainly for the same reason and that is, because the “god” spoken of has never been explained in a manner which they themselves can easily understand and believe in.
These people are often thoughtful and clever, but so far they have not been able to bring about worthwhile changes.
The best thing for me to tell you is that you must listen to what you are told about “god”, but try to remember that as you get older, you will have to make up your own mind what to believe.
But, whatever you do, you must never forget that there are a lot of very important things which are said to come from “god”, and which nevertheless, we all believe to be good.
Things such as telling the truth, being absolutely honest, being kind and helpful to other people and animals, avoiding the use of words which offend or hurt people.
As you get older and these and a lot of other things will become clear to you as being good, and you will understand that you must control your behaviour accordingly, whatever you believe about “god”.
Thus could a parent make a fairly reasonable answer which would acknowledge that the child is not silly, and has a perfect right to be treated in an adult way when he asks a serious question. That particular question is, of course, one that should never have arisen.
It illustrates the fact that the child is puzzled or confused about a subject on which he should have had reasonably clear instruction as soon as he was old enough to be taught anything at all .
The fact of the child’s puzzlement is due to his being a victim of the way in which the dogmatic religions of the world have been used for child indoctrination and resulting in the perpetuation of the inherent superstitions and subsequent evils that have shamed religion throughout civilised time.
The child starts off with an in-built certainty that sooner or later his intelligence will clash with his religious teaching.
The shameful manner in which adult humans have forced religious rubbish into the minds of their children will one day dawn on the human race, and it will be horrified. Religious Freedom Starts in Early Childhood
Because any religion must, at the root, be dependent upon at least one unprovable assumption, it is utterly wrong for any person to instruct a child about “god” or religion without also leaving him in no doubt that the instruction is so based.
Moreover and the child should be made fully aware that he will be expected to satisfy himself later in life as to what extent he accepts the instruction.
This also gives him an introduction to what he will later come to realise is an example of personal freedom. Human Behaviour can be Controlled Only Through Child Training
The only way that the behavioural development of the human race can be controlled, is through child education.
In this respect, adult responsibility, in its true magnitude, is frightening, for it is only they who can perform this onerous task.
It is self-deception on a frightening scale which pretends that there is an extra-worldly “god” overseeing all things and putting right human mistakes.
Thus, it is utterly vital to the well-being of humanity that the child-training element of human liability is given its overwhelmingly important position.
Child instruction has always been hampered by the age-old problem posed by constraints of religion.
Almost from the very beginning of the rearing process, parents and teachers are liable to find that these create a smothering blanket of difficulty, discouragement and disagreement.
Almost all the harrowing experiences of indecision that can arise almost daily for conscientious parents, are like that for no other reason than that they and the parents, have not themselves been trained in the light of a reliable and respected source of guidance.
The point is repeatedly made in this book and that mankind’s control over its affairs cannot be maintained by statute-laws alone.
It must have the additional power of a moral code based on a religion, and there is no part of human affairs in which this applies with more force than it does in the matter of child rearing.
Nevertheless and to bring about the desired end and the ultimate goal must be the establishment of but one religion world-wide based on a well-defined “god” that can be justified in all languages. The Created God of this book can meet the requirement.

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The anthropologist, Steven Mosher is a doctoral student at Stanford.

alicecarlson — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:09:57 +0000

The anthropologist, Steven Mosher is a doctoral student at Stanford.
He claims that Stanford has been leant on by the Chinese government and by American academics, who were scared that the door to China would be closed unless he was punished.
“Since fall 1980 each American academic exchange delegation to visit Peking has had to sit through a lengthy recounting of the research improprieties I am alleged to have committed,” Mosher said, in a statement last week. China has now tightened up on the access of social scientists to rural areas. The Mosher case is said to be the main reason.
Mosher was in Shunde county of Guangdong Province from September 1979 until June 1980.
He was on leave from his doctoral programme in Taiwan and was funded by the Washington-based Committee on Scholarly Exchange with the People’s Republic of China.
The Chinese charge that Mosher tried to smuggle antique coins out of the country, violated travel regulations, brought a female secretary from Hong Kong to China without permission and used photographs of abortions to mount a political attack on China. Mosher claims the charges have no merit and can be refuted.
All the fuss is over the fourth charge ” should Mosher have published an article in a Taiwan Sunday newspaper condemning Chinese birth-control methods and accompanied by photographs of women 7 months pregnant and about to be given an abortion?
The photographs have especially riled the Chinese: “The photographs…had nothing to do with any conceivable social science research topic and were an insult to those who were photographed”. His American critics say he has “jeopardised his informants”. But Mosher is unrepentant.
He says the duty of an anthropologist is to record the truth.
He resumed his attack last week labelling the population control programme as “sheer barbarity”.
He said: “I found that abortions were regularly carried out on women seven, eight, and even nine months pregnant, often against their will, and that there were even cases of officially-instigated infanticide.
Statutes which prohibit these and other inhumane practices were simply ignored by communist cadres in their drive to meet the stringent production quotas they were given.”
Mosher claims the abortions are still going on, but are fewer in number ” women are taking to the hills and giving birth under primitive conditions.
The Chinese academy of social science, in a letter to Stanford, “hoped that the university would deal with this matter severely”.
But Clifford Barnett and the head of the anthropology department which voted in closed session last week to expel Mosher from his PhD candidature, denies that the department was subjected to any pressure. Stanford is being extraordinarily tight-lipped about the affair. The eleven faculty members who made the decision are sworn to secrecy.
They will not reveal the substance of a confidential 47-page report on the reasons for Mosher’s expulsion. Barnett said the charges against Mosher involved “professional misbehaviour”.
The university says that to release the report would be injurious and to innocent parties”. Mosher will appeal against the department’s decision and may sue the university. Lead man deserts the government’s camp
Fred Pearce

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