Sunday, July 29, 2007
Last one, I promise.
Together with a colleague here in Berlin, I wrote a wrap-up of the Tour de France doping scandals for the Christian Science Monitor. Because of our geography, it was sort of Germany-centric.
It's on the Monitor's front page, which is exciting.
Here's hoping next year I can write some articles about bike racing, as opposed to doping scandals.
It's on the Monitor's front page, which is exciting.
Here's hoping next year I can write some articles about bike racing, as opposed to doping scandals.
Labels: cycling, monitor, Tour
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Ritual sites -- or spaceship runways?
Ritual sites -- or spaceship runways for visiting aliens? Erich von Daeniken asked the question of the massive geoglyphs in Peru's Atacama desert in the 1960s. Then, as now, archaeologists thought it was a stupid question to ask.
But aside from laughing at von Daeniken, no one could really agree on anything else about the geoglyphs. Astronomical charts? Water maps? Kilometer-long rock doodles? After a decade of research, archaeologists from Germany, Austria and Switzerland have pretty convincing evidence the glyphs were used for ceremonies by the Nasca culture, which lived in the desert 2,000 years ago. Read my article about it in Science this week, if you have a subscription. Otherwise, trust me -- it's cool stuff.
Privacy rights
Too bad the EU doesn't have an ACLU. After serious pressure from the U.S., Europe signed a treaty that will provide the Department of Homeland Security with 19 different data points on airline passengers traveling to America -- from home addresses to passport numbers and frequent flier mileage accounts. Within 15 minutes of takeoff, Washington will know everything about everyone on every plane, American or not.
The U.S. government -- good at keeping its own secrets secret, not so good with other people's personal data -- will then hold on to all this info for 15 years.
It's a done deal as of Thursday. I wrote about it for SPIEGEL ONLINE on Friday.
The U.S. government -- good at keeping its own secrets secret, not so good with other people's personal data -- will then hold on to all this info for 15 years.
It's a done deal as of Thursday. I wrote about it for SPIEGEL ONLINE on Friday.
Labels: airline, privacy, spiegel
More doping...
Another day at SPIEGEL ONLINE, another doping story.
It's all getting pretty depressing. I used to be a big Rasmussen fan, actually -- he's so skinny his nickname used to be "Chicken." Pure climber. But his behavior the whole Tour was really arrogant, and it turned out he had been up to some fishy stuff before things even got rolling. Too bad.
All I can hope for is some sort of that this is as bad as it gets, and that things get better from here. But it'll take a long, long time to earn the trust of fans back, even if no one tests positive from here on out.
It's all getting pretty depressing. I used to be a big Rasmussen fan, actually -- he's so skinny his nickname used to be "Chicken." Pure climber. But his behavior the whole Tour was really arrogant, and it turned out he had been up to some fishy stuff before things even got rolling. Too bad.
All I can hope for is some sort of that this is as bad as it gets, and that things get better from here. But it'll take a long, long time to earn the trust of fans back, even if no one tests positive from here on out.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Et tu, Vino?
Yet another cri de coeur over the sad state of cycling, this time on the Spectator's blog. Worse, I can't convince myself that the impending victor is clean -- which is too bad, since it would be cool to see a pure climber win the Tour.
Labels: cycling, Tour, Vinokourov
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Yellow Book Debut
It's always a rush to publish in a new magazine. When the UPS guy showed up with the August issue of National Geographic a few days ago, I must admit to a slightly bigger buzz than usual. On page 20 you can find my first National Geographic byline. The story's about a Scythian mummy found by German Archaeological Institute head Hermann Parzinger.
Labels: National Geographic, Parzinger, Scythian
Ancient forests and Danish adventurers
The July 6 issue of Science featured a great paper by a fascinating Dane named Eske Willerslev. I wrote a profile of him for the same issue. From the profile:
"Willerslev ... has spent the past 8 years teasing information about the distant past from discarded ice and even less likely places. Since first extracting DNA from glacial ice in 1999, the 36-year-old biologist has pioneered what he calls "dirt DNA"--the extraction and cloning of plant and animal DNA from just a few grams of soil and ice. In 2003, he redefined ancient DNA research when he extracted the 300,000- to 400,000-year-old DNA of mammoths, bison, mosses, and much more from small samples of soil he collected from the Siberian permafrost. It was the oldest DNA ever discovered by more than 200,000 years.
... 'I did the permafrost stuff, and then suddenly it hit me: Silty ice is icy permafrost, right?' Judiciously cutting and melting the core bottoms, Willerslev and his colleagues analyzed the resulting water for signs of DNA. What Willerslev found ... broke his own record for the oldest DNA ever recovered, and promises to rewrite the history of Greenland's climate. His team identified and dated genetic sequences from coniferous trees, butterflies, beetles, and a variety of other boreal forest plants--traces of ancient forests that Willerslev says covered southern Greenland perhaps as far back as 800,000 years ago."
Reporting the story took me to the basement of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, where ice cores from Greenland are kept in a room-size freezer that has been maintained below -12 degrees for two decades. It was chilly -- and loud.Labels: greenland, science, willerslev
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Global Crisis
A significant portion of my diet is made up of dried durum wheat. I'm talking pasta here, people.
To my dismay, Italy's Pasta Manufacturer's Association announced last week that because of chaos in the global market for the golden grain, spaghetti is about to get more expensive. I covered this important breaking economic news for Spiegel Online this morning.
I may have to stop by the supermarket on my way home to lock in today's low, low pasta prices...
To my dismay, Italy's Pasta Manufacturer's Association announced last week that because of chaos in the global market for the golden grain, spaghetti is about to get more expensive. I covered this important breaking economic news for Spiegel Online this morning.
I may have to stop by the supermarket on my way home to lock in today's low, low pasta prices...
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Doping in the Mirror
I've been working at Spiegel Online's English site this week, editing and writing. It's fun to be in an office again after several years as a lone wolf. It's also fun to be writing on deadline -- a skill that takes practice. Today I wrote a piece on doping at the Tour de France, a subject that's obviously near to my heart. Yesterday it was Boeing. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
TDF Spectator
My depressed comment on the Tour de France, which starts today. Hopefully I'll be back soon with an update on my brief sojourn in the Vosges mountains of France.
